barbarossarants

Hello Reader(s)

2004-07-12T18:03:00.000+02:00

I moved to '2L84' (my own domain).

I would be glad to welcome you there!

GuerrillasMA, MilitantsMA, RebelsMA

2004-07-12T12:21:00.000+02:00

via lgf

SRINAGAR, India (Al-Reuters) - Suspected Muslim guerrillas sliced off the nose, ears and tongue of a 14-year-old girl in Indian Kashmir on Sunday, believing her to be an informer for the Indian army, police said.

Mariam Begum was abducted by a group of militants from her house in Doda district south of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital.

"The abductee was let off by the terrorists. However her ears, nose and tongue have been chopped off," a police spokesman said.

Rebels have in the past killed or maimed people who they believe are helping Indian soldiers put down the 15-year revolt in the Himalayan region.

Elsewhere in Kashmir, 16 Muslim rebels and four soldiers were killed in separate gun battles over the weekend as rebel violence mounted despite peace moves by India and Pakistan.

More than 100 people have been killed and scores wounded this month alone.

(emphasis mine)

Retreat and Refreshment

2004-07-11T17:32:00.000+02:00

via jihadwatch

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- An increasing number of Saudis who crossed the border into Iraq to fight the U.S.-led military occupation are returning home to plot attacks against the Saudi government and Western targets in the desert kingdom, according to Western counterterrorism officials and Saudis with ties to militant groups. The Iraq veterans are serving as fresh recruits for an underground network in Saudi Arabia that, until recently, was led by an older generation of fighters that had trained in Afghanistan and was closely connected to al Qaeda and its founder, Saudi native Osama bin Laden. Many of those leaders have been killed or captured in recent months by Saudi security forces.

Today, the proclaimed new chief of the primary militant group in the kingdom is Saleh Awfi, 33, a Saudi who journeyed north last year to join Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic radical group in Iraq that the U.S. government has branded as a terrorist organization. Awfi stayed for a few months, barely surviving U.S. aerial bombardment, before deciding to return and take up arms in his home country, according to a former Saudi radical who met with Awfi last year.

Other Saudis are returning after spending time in newly established training camps across the Red Sea in remote parts of Sudan where central government influence is weak, said a European intelligence official whose government is advising Saudi officials on their domestic terrorist threat.

Blunkett’s Law

2004-07-11T09:16:00.000+02:00

via lgf and telegraph

Some propose special protection for Muslims by saying that Islam is a racial identity because three of the four schools of Islamic law enjoin faithful Muslims to murder anyone who wishes to leave the faith, thus limiting every Muslim’s freedom of action. But is this a point in Islam’s favour? And is this the sort of religion we want to throw people into prison for condemning?

To argue that Islam should have special protection because it is a “religion” while Marxism or Conservatism are “merely philosophies” is equally specious. All that divides a religion from a secular ideology is something whose existence - supernatural support - is disputed by adherents of the latter. To privilege supernatural belief-systems by law would be to impose the view of the faithful about this on everyone, the situation that prevailed in the Middle Ages. This time, it is Islam, not Christianity, that New Labour wants to impose on Christendom.

A society in which one cannot revile a religion and its members is one in which there are limits to the human spirit. The Islamic world was intellectually and economically wrecked by its decision to put religion beyond the reach of invective, which is simply an extreme form of debate. By so doing, it put science and art beyond the reach of experiment, too. Now, at the behest of Muslim foreigners who have forced themselves on us, New Labour wants to import the same catastrophe into our own society.

In a recent television panel, Iqbal Sacranie explained why the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the organisation he leads, had pushed for this legislation. The British should be allowed not to believe in Islam, he said (thanks, Mr Sacranie!), but they should not be permitted to “criticise” it.

Ken Livingstone has gone even further. On Wednesday, the Mayor of London welcomed to City Hall the Qatari divine Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, according to the MCB “an Islamic scholar held in great respect throughout the Islamic world”.

Basing his teaching on Islam’s holiest texts, Dr al-Qaradawi has urged his fellow Muslims to beat their wives; to use child suicide bombers to kill female and infant civilians; to murder Jews, homosexuals and British servicemen; and to colonise, desecrate and usurp Christian Rome.

Mr Livingstone said that the newspapers that had condemned Dr al-Qaradawi for such views “showed why this legislation [Blunkett’s] is necessary”. It was the critics of Dr al-Qaradawi’s beliefs, Mr Livingstone insisted, who were, as the Muslim Association of Britain put it, “the image of evil”. Dr al-Qaradawi, a mainstream figure in a major religion, had endorsed Jew lynching and wife beating: Mr Livingstone seemed to imply that, like Islam, such activities should therefore be above criticism.

Bravery vs. Malevolence

2004-07-09T20:13:00.000+02:00

VDH via nro

The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.

This war — like all wars — is a terrible thing; but far, far worse are the mass murder of 3,000 innocents and the explosion of a city block in Manhattan, a ghoulish Islamic fascism and unfettered global terrorism, and 30 years of unchecked Baathist mass murder. So for myself, I prefer to be on the side of people like the Kurds, Elie Wiesel, Hamid Karzai, and Iyad Allawi rather than the idiotocrats like Jacques Chirac, Ralph (the Israelis are "puppeteers") Nader, Michael Moore, and Billy Crystal.

Sometimes life's choices really are that simple.

Good News From Iraq

2004-07-07T21:03:00.000+02:00

via chrenkoff, google and dailystar

Monday, July 05, 2004

BAGHDAD: Iraq has a new stock exchange, launched without fanfare and staffed almost entirely by women, which aims to become the leading bourse in the Middle East.

Trading on the first morning in late June was higher than at anytime during the lifespan of the former Baghdad Stock Exchange but the new bourse has yet to establish regular opening hours, its owners said.

"The plan at the moment is to open for business on Wednesday and Sunday from 10:00 am local time until midday but right now the situation is very fluid so we might change," said Talib al-Tabatabaie, chairman of the board of governors.

A slim trickle of brokers entered the unmarked but well guarded stock exchange building - tucked away behind a large hotel in the center of Baghdad - early Sunday for the bourse's second official day of trading.

"The old exchange used to be open three days a week for two hours at a time. We hope to match that but it will take time," Tabatabaie told AFP.

Once trading is fully underway, the potential for growth is huge, said the exchange's chief executive Ahmed Taha.

"There is a lot of interest in this exchange. At the moment the Iraqi economy is weak but it has a huge potential to grow," he said. "I don't want to be over optimistic but I think we will become larger than other exchanges in the region. However, this will take time so we are taking things step-by-step."

I may soon be able to bet on them. Chrenkoff has a lot of more good news!

The Unconcerned Johns

2004-07-07T14:45:00.000+02:00

via townhall

John Kerry thinks mending fences with France and the UN is his first foreign policy priority. He thinks "jobs" - whatever the heck that means - and education and the environment and "energy independence" are his job(s) number one.

Kerry's vice presidential pick reinforces all of that. Kerry is the most liberal Senator in the U.S. Senate, according to the respected National Journal, and in 2003 Edwards was the fourth most liberal. Edwards also voted against the $87 billion Iraqi reconstruction bill even though he voted for the war. Clearly, Kerry doesn't want to "balance" his ticket with a moderate, he wants to reinforce it with another liberal who can sell Kerry's message.

Indeed, as my colleague Byron York notes, Edwards' "Two Americas" speech, which earned him so much popularity among the Democratic base and which in turn bought him the nod from Kerry, does not mention terrorism at all. It was a crowd-pleasing speech for a party that wanted the whole issue of foreign policy just to go away. In fact, both Kerry and Edwards constantly appeal to the nostalgia of voters - "let America be America again" is Kerry's motto - for an imagined time when there were no serious challenges in the world, be it the 1990s or John Edward's childhood.

The two Johns believe that America's problems lie in the White House, not overseas. They believe that there's a rich supply of "allies" who would take bullets intended for Americans, if only George Bush had better manners. They believe, despite the fact that George Bush has increased spending on education by 60 percent, and despite the fact that the environment is cleaner now than any time in more than fifty years, that what America really needs more than anything is an education president, an environmental president. Meanwhile, as our enemies lop the heads off our citizens and plan more 9/11s, George Bush says we need a war president. Sounds like the makings of a great debate.

Happy Birthday!

2004-07-06T23:31:00.000+02:00

via ¡No Pasarán!

Five days from now, George Bush will be celebrating his birthday. Some will protest and say, that's not true, the president's birthday is today, July 6. But we're not talking about the same person, apparently. And the George Bush I have in mind will hardly be doing much bona fide celebrating, actually, in view of the fact that next Sunday he turns 1 year old.

The George Bush I have in mind is not the one whose full name is George Walker Bush, nor the one whose full name is George Herbert Walker Bush, but the one whose full name is George Bush Abdul Kader Faris Abed El-Hussein (no relation to Saddam). And this George Bush was born in Baghdad on July 11, 2003.

As far as can be ascertained, George Bush’s parents named him in honor of some Western leader one of whose recent feats they found to be not only impressive and admirable, obviously, but worthy enough to name their new-born son after. They must have been plenty impressed, in view of the fact that they gave their child the name of someone not of their faith, with linguistic roots not of their culture. (Sort of like a Westerner — say, someone from the Bush clan — giving a newborn son a name such as Mohammed Ahmed Yusuf Bush.)

Now, here is what I suggest. I suggest that the West should send a number of representatives to Baghdad. The type of people that David Brooks calls “the members of the sneering brigade”, “the think-tank johnnies and the rest of the commentariate” in “their usual sky-is-falling mode” — people like José Bové, François Hollande, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, José Luis Zapatero, Jean-Marie Colombani, Plantu, Willem (to name only the Europeans), etc… They should choose a couple of high-visibility VIPs, “arm” them with all the usual arguments, and send them to Baghdad.

And there, they should seek out the parents of George Bush. Once the couple has been found, they should patiently explain the “truth” to them and seek thereby to install some common sense in them. That would include telling them…
• that the war was unnecessary and a sham, conducted for bogus reasons;
• that Iraq, and the world, were far better off before the conflict;
• that the presence of foreign soldiers is “humiliating” for George Bush and his fellow countrymen;
• that they must resent America (or at least, the Bush administration) for the current situation in which thousands have been killed over a period of more than a year (almost as many months as George Bush has been alive) and hark back to the previous situation in which the secret police killed several thousands per month with total impunity;
• that, in contrast to the administration of George Bush’s namesake, they, the holier-than-thou members of the peace camp, had (and have) nothing but the best interests of his parents in mind;
• oh, and, of course, that George Bush’s namesake is nothing but a nincompoop and a despicable liar.

Once the parents of George Bush have been converted to the sky-is-falling truth, the “the members of the sneering brigade” could go to work convincing more of Iraq’s population.

The members of “the commentariate” could start with Mohammed, Ali, and Omar, the brothers from Iraq the Model and expand outwards, to include the Iraqis who lost hands and tongues to Saddam’s thugs, had their faced scarred by acid, had their sisters, mothers, and daughters raped, and had their parents, brothers, and children shot down and their bodies thrown into unnamed graves. With luck, “the think-tank johnnies” would eventually reach that vast majority of people who in polls believe life has never been better since the war toppled Saddam and who say they feel more optimistic than they ever had in the past.

Let us join together and wish them “good luck and godspeed with your sacred mission”.

Oh, and by the way, Georgie: Happy birthday!

I have nothing to add.

Darfur

2004-07-04T11:39:00.000+02:00

via wsj

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been raising the alarm about Darfur--and he also visited there this week--but not until two weeks ago did the Security Council call for an immediate halt to the fighting. This being the U.N., the resolution was toothless. Permanent members China and France are worried about jeopardizing their business interests in Sudan. Pakistan and Algeria, which hold temporary seats, refuse to impose sanctions on a fellow Muslim nation even as it is engaged in the mass killing of Muslims.

Rather, the event that finally caught the attention of the government in Khartoum was the Bush Administration's threat last month to impose serious sanctions on Sudan and refuse visas to Sudanese officials. The next day Sudan's president went on state radio to say he had ordered a "complete mobilization" to disarm the warring parties in Darfur. We'll see. This regime is not known for keeping its promises.

The ostensible reason for Europe's reluctance to pressure Sudan on Darfur is fear of torpedoing a peace deal between Khartoum and the south, where government forces have been slaughtering and enslaving Christian and animist Africans. But Europe's concern is rich with hypocrisy. That conflict, in which some two million people have died, has been going on for 21 years--while Europe watched.

Again, it was the U.S. that finally did something. The Bush Administration, under the leadership of special envoy John Danforth (soon to be ambassador to the U.N.), deserves most of the credit for brokering the deal.

A better measure of Europe's concern about Darfur was evident at the recent European Union summit, where one has to turn to page 18 of the summit conclusions to find a small paragraph about Darfur. The most forceful language the EU could muster was "deep concern" regarding Sudan's "humanitarian crisis," as if what is happening in Darfur is a tragic act of nature rather than a rampage by murderous, ruthless men.

Lest I Forget

2004-07-04T10:35:00.000+02:00

God bless America, happy Independence Day!

Germany Still Means No Worthy Ally

2004-07-04T09:08:00.000+02:00

more efaz

The old saying no means no held true this week in Istanbul as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder stuck by his refusal to send German troops to Iraq despite pleas from President George Bush for NATO involvement in the war-torn country.
We haven't budged at all from our position, Schröder told reporters, referring to his government's categorical 'no' to sending Bundeswehr soldiers to Iraq.
When the two-day NATO summit came to an end Tuesday, Bush had accepted Schröder's offer to train high ranking Iraqi officers in Germany and to continue training Iraqi police in the United Arab Emirates.
Schröder called the summit a success and said that past conflicts stemming from the United States' decision to invade Iraq with a coalition of the willing in March 2003 had been laid to rest.
Some have learned that you can win a war alone, but not peace, he said, without directly mentioning the United States or Britain.

I said it before and I say it again: What an asshole!

Schröder ruled out increasing the amount of German soldiers in Afghanistan beyond the 2,250 approved in a mandate passed by the Bundestag parliament. Germany has about 1,960 soldiers currently stationed in Afghanistan as part of ISAF, and with over 4,700 Bundeswehr soldiers already in the Balkans, the defense ministry has stressed that the army is already overextended.

We have 80 Million people and demand a seat in the U.N. security council, but the army is 'already overextended' with a few thousand soldiers hiding in Kabul or sitting on their hands in the Balkans. No wonder that we are no primary target of AQ.

Why don't the Nederlands or Luxemburg come to enable regime change in Germany while the Bundeswehr overreachs herself in military 'adventures' overseas? I would welcome them with flowers.

Not A Politician

2004-07-04T08:06:00.000+02:00

via efaz

The new president never was a politician and apparently does not plan to become one. I will continue to avoid slipping into political rhetoric, he says. I mean what I say, and everybody should understand it.
And the former head of the International Monetary Fund is already thinking about one of the messages he will be sharing with his fellow citizens while he is president. We can heal the social state, says Köhler, pointing to a system in which he thinks individual responsibility plays little or no role. More and more people believe that the collective community will take care of the problems of the elderly and infirm. The result of such thinking is a creeping form of irresponsibility, he says.

I kind of like him too. He gives me a little hope for a better future German government, though he of course will 'just' represent us as the head of the state.

Alexander Schertz, Munich

2004-07-03T21:59:00.000+02:00

via medienkritik

Someone I still like to live in the same country with.

From his letter to the editor of a daily German newspaper (weekly English version):

Today, supporters of the war are no longer to be heard. Has it then, aside from the question of weapons of mass destruction, been so clearly shown that they were wrong? One could draw a better judgment if the F.A.Z. would not exclusively report on the political development and the violent clashes.

As terrible as it is that people, mainly civilians, are murdered on a daily basis, one must still assume that there are a number of other significant factors affecting the lives of Iraqis that have improved. On the one hand, the terrorist threat has grown enormously. On the other hand, the citizens today are no longer under the yoke of a violent state. On the one hand, parents have to be worried about their children on the way to school. On the other hand the children no longer have to have an inhuman ideology stuffed down their throats, at least not in the name of the state. And today the adults are also no longer dependent on the “information” received through the media of the Baath party and can instead form a picture of things based on the reporting from more than one hundred newspapers and seventy radio stations.

One hears very little about these positive aspects of the development in Iraq in the German media including the F.A.Z. Those interested are unfortunately dependent upon the website of the American government. I read there for example that more than 2300 schools have already been reopened, that the building of a further 4500 schools is planned in the next four years, that more than eight million school books have been printed and distributed, that almost all children are going to school again, that this year 950 million dollars are being spent on the health care system (under Saddam Hussein: 16 million dollars in 2002) that everywhere in the country women’s centers are being opened and so on. All propaganda? Hard to judge as long as there is virtually no reporting on this aspect of the development in Iraq on the part of independent media. Next to politics and acts of violence, scandals, at the most, are seen as worth reporting. When Americans, in an unforgivable manner, brutally abuse dozens of prisoners, it is rightfully made into a matter which is reported on in great detail for weeks at a time. But when it comes to the building of the Iraqi school system by other Americans, which carries significance for hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, there is, as far as I can see, absolutely no reporting on the matter in Germany. It would also be of great interest to me what the newly won freedom of opinion, for example in the universities, means to the Iraqis. But I have searched in vain, also in my Frankfurter Allgemeine, for reports on such themes.

Naturally it must be asked whether such progress, if it in fact corresponds to reality, will have a future in Iraq. Certainly not, if the religious fanatics and the members of the old regime succeed. It is to be feared in view of the daily attacks, that such forces could in fact win the upper hand. But substantial reasons speak against this: As opposed to Vietnam, there is no strong foreign power behind the enemies of democracy in Iraq. The current military arsenal of the United States is much better suited to protecting the country’s soldiers and to holding the number of civilian casualties within limits. Additionally, Iraq is significantly more important to the United States than Vietnam. It is hard to imagine that they would cut and run and leave the country to a terrorist regime. On the other hand, “resistance fighters” are hitting more and more Iraqi civilians instead of foreign troops – how long can they sustain that politically? The radical Shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr is already calling on his followers to lay down their arms.

I think that the F.A.Z. that I once subscribed to because it used to regularly courageously defy the spirit of the times has no reason to be ashamed of its reporting before and immediately following the Iraq War. Today I expect from it (F.A.Z) reporting on developments in Iraq that, for the most part, I don’t find in the unified anti-Bush mish-mash (“Anti-Bush-Einheitsbrei”) of the remaining media. Under the given conditions such journalistic research is certainly risky. It would, however, be a priceless contribution to a factual and fair discussion in Germany.

While Waiting for Her New Book

2004-07-03T10:35:00.000+02:00

via fp

Oriana Fallaci in March 2003

...if seventy years ago the ineffective League of Nations had sent its inspectors to Germany, do you think that Hitler would have shown them Peenemünde where Von Braun was manufacturing V2s? Do you think that Hitler would have disclosed the camps of Auschwitz, of Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau? Yet the inspection comedy resumed. With such intensity that the role of prima donna passed from bin Laden to Saddam, and the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the engineer of September 11, was greeted almost with indifference. A comedy marked by the double games of the inspectors and the conflicting strategies of Mr. Bush who on the one hand asked the Security Council for permission to use force and on the other sent his troops to the front. In less than two months, a quarter of a million troops. With the British and Australians, 310,000. And all this without realizing that his enemies (but I should say the enemies of the West) are not only in Baghdad.

They are also in Europe. They are in Paris where the mellifluous Jacques Chirac does not give a damn for peace but plans to satisfy his vanity with the Nobel Peace Prize. Where there is no wish to remove Saddam Hussein because Saddam Hussein means the oil that the French companies pump from Iraqi wells. And where (forgetting a little flaw named Petain) France chases its Napoleonic desire to dominate the European Union, to establish its hegemony over it. They are in Berlin, where the party of the mediocre Gerhard Schroeder won the elections by comparing Mr. Bush to Hitler, where American flags are soiled with the swastika, and where, in the dream of playing the masters again, Germans go arm-in-arm with the French. They are in Rome where the communists left by the door and re-entered through the window like the birds of the Hitchcock movie. And where, pestering the world with his ecumenism, his pietism, his Thirdworldism, Pope Wojtyla receives Tariq Aziz as a dove or a martyr who is about to be eaten by lions. (Then he sends him to Assisi where the friars escort him to the tomb of St. Francis.) In the other European countries, it is more or less the same. In Europe your enemies are everywhere, Mr. Bush. What you quietly call "differences of opinion" are in reality pure hate. Because in Europe pacifism is synonymous with anti-Americanism, sir, and accompanied by the most sinister revival of anti-Semitism the anti-Americanism triumphs as much as in the Islamic world. Haven't your ambassadors informed you?

...

In Europe you only have one friend, one ally, sir: Tony Blair. But Mr. Blair too leads a country which is invaded by the Moors. A country that hides that resentment. Even his party opposes him, and by the way: I owe you an apology, Mr. Blair. In my book "The Rage and the Pride," I was unfair to you. Because I wrote that you would not persevere with your guts, that you would drop them as soon as it would no longer serve your political interests. With impeccable coherence, instead, you are sacrificing those interests to your convictions. Indeed, I apologize.

...

Upheld by their stubborn optimism, the same optimism for which at the Alamo they fought so well and all died slaughtered by Santa Anna, Americans think that in Baghdad they will be welcomed as they were in Rome and Florence and Paris. "They'll cheer us, throw us flowers." Maybe. In Baghdad anything can happen. But after that? Nearly two-thirds of the Iraqis are Shiites who have always dreamed of establishing an Islamic Republic of Iraq, and the Soviets too were once cheered in Kabul. They too imposed their peace. They even succeeded in convincing women to take off their burqa, remember? After a while, though, they had to leave. And the Taliban came. Thus, I ask: what if instead of learning freedom Iraq becomes a second Talibani Afghanistan? What if instead of becoming democratized by the Pax Americana the whole Middle East blows up and the cancer multiplies? As a proud defender of the West's civilization, without reservations I should join Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair in the new Alamo. Without reluctance I should fight and die with them. And this is the only thing about which I have no doubts at all.

Not too optimistic then. But still as brave as one can be. If all pessimism came that way, I wouldn't say a thing.

My Propose for a Constructive Dialogue

2004-07-02T17:29:00.000+02:00

via lgf

To the European people ... you only have a few more days to accept bin Laden's truce or you will only have yourselves to blame,

...

The race now is between you, time and European governments which have refused to stop their attacks against Muslims.

So do not blame us for what will happen and we apologize to you in advance if you are among those killed.

To the Islamofascist thugs ... you possibly have only a few more days or weeks to breath and they will get you all finally.

There is no race between me time and European governments but between you and the men and women that are behind you like irate Furies.

You can bet that I will blame you for all your inhumanities and crimes, in fact I will cheer for each and every one of you meeting his cowardly end.

F*** you!

The Spirit of Eurabia

2004-07-02T15:01:00.000+02:00

via fp

If there is a danger as Europe proclaims urbi et orbi, that danger can only come from America and Israel. What should one understand? For can anyone seriously maintain that it is the American and Israeli forces that threaten us in Europe? No, what must be understood is that American and Israeli policies of resistance to jihadist terror provoke reprisals against a Europe that has long ago ceased to defend itself. So that peace can prevail throughout the world, those two countries, America and Israel, need only adopt the European strategy of constant surrender, based on the denial of aggression. How simple it all is…

Some Causes for Optimism

2004-07-02T12:41:00.000+02:00

via IAFA

67 Iraqi cities with fully functioning municipalities only four months after the beginning of the war ("The Real Iraq," The New York Post, July 17, 2003)

85% Percentage of small Iraqi towns that had fully functioning municipalities only four months after the beginning of the war ("The Real Iraq," The New York Post, July 17, 2003)

81 Iraqi women serve on neighborhood and district councils around Baghdad ("U.S. Commitment to Women in Iraq," Office of International Women's Issues, May 24, 2004)

6 Iraqi women appointed as Cabinet-level ministers in the newly-formed Iraqi Interim Government ("The Interim Iraqi Government," Coalition Provisional Authority, June 1, 2004)

I'm especially hopeful about the six surely strong women participating in the interim government and about the bottom to top development of Iraqi democracy. The Iraqi people should have all our support on their way to freedom!

Hang Him High

2004-07-02T09:54:00.000+02:00

Don't burn him alive his family watching.
Don't put him in a plastic shredder feet forward.
Don't kill him in an acid bath.

But hang him high. And then start a new life without this living nightmare.

Shared Aspirations

2004-07-01T23:31:00.000+02:00

via wsj

I am a 52-year-old New Yorker who has never missed voting in a major election. I have never voted for a Republican and voted for Gore in 2000. I am an agnostic, but nonetheless, after 9/11, I thank God that Bush won. My wife has never voted for a Republican either. We live in the liberal state of New York, with roots in the liberal elite. I am a psychiatrist who read the New York Times every day until I canceled my subscription one year ago. The fact-checking and real reporting by parts of the blogosphere were instrumental in helping me make the break; the accretion of distortions that the liberal media consider "news" finally tipped me after Jayson Blair, but I was heading in that direction for several years in any event.

I also have two voting-age children. My son recently enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, to the horror of innumerable (former) friends and associates, and my daughter is in a liberal arts college in New York. My son is a confirmed Bush supporter; my daughter wavers only because she finds the right of a woman to have an abortion (in our house we generally support a woman's right to choose, first trimester: definitely, second: probably, third: only in very exceptional circumstances) to be vital and worries about pro-lifers on the Supreme Court taking that right away. Despite that, she is leaning toward Bush because she thinks the War on Islamofascism, of which Iraq is only one front, is the crucial issue facing our country.

Just thought you should know that two former Democratic voters, plus two voters who all precedents would suggest would be Democratic voters, are going to be voting for George W. in the fall. I might add that I find many people who tell me they agree with me on this, though they tend to whisper it since deviating from the liberal, mainstream-media party line is dangerous around here. I have actually heard from one patient, a psychologist herself, that her friends tell her they could never see a therapist who is a Republican.

Personally, I am hoping for a landslide Republican victory, since I think it is the only thing that can save the Democratic Party from its lunatic fringe (just as the Goldwater debacle ultimately saved the Republican Party). When and if the Dems grow up and refind "reason," I will reconsider voting for them.

--Perry Branson

Talking about America

2004-07-01T14:42:00.000+02:00

via cold fury

Yes, America is built on an idea, namely liberty; but far from being divorced from reality, it is an idea that Americans have realized, developed, and successfully exported for more than two centuries. We have demonstrated the depth of our commitment as a people to this idea by waging a revolution, a civil war, two World Wars, several smaller wars, and the Cold War in its name. It is, in short, an idea that is utterly indissoluble from our own living, breathing, everyday reality. By contrast, much of Western Europe is founded on an idea of itself that is significantly, and dangerously, divorced from reality. That idea, as Robert Kagan explains so adroitly, is that the world has moved beyond the necessity of war. It is a pretty fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. And keeping it alive requires that one ignore dangerous realities—such as the growing problem of militant Islam within Europe’s own borders.

Europeans mock American religiosity. But American religion, for all its attendant idiocies and cruelties, has never prevented Americans from acting pragmatically. Secular Western European intellectuals, however, have their own version of religion. It is a social-democratic religion that deifies international organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and, above all, the U.N. Not NATO, which is about waging war, and which has for that reason been the target of much European criticism in recent years; no, the NGOs are about waging peace, love, brotherhood, and solidarity, and, as such, are, for the elites of Western Europe, beyond criticism, for they embody Western Europe’s most cherished idea of itself and of the way the world works, or should work. The elites’ enthusiasm for these institutions, whether or not they are genuinely effective or even admirable, is a matter of maintaining a certain self-image and illusion of the world that is intimately tied up with their identity as social democrats; America’s unforgivable offense, as Kagan notes, is that it challenges that image and that illusion; and the degree to which the reality of America is distorted in the Western European media is a measure of the desperate need among Western European elites to preserve that self-image and illusion. It sometimes seems to me a miracle, frankly, that America has any friends at all in some parts of Western Europe, given the news media’s relentless anti-Americanism. There is no question that the chief obstacle to improved understanding and harmony between the U.S. and Western Europe is the Western European media establishment. It is an obstacle that must somehow be overcome, for Western civilization is under siege, and America and Europe need each other, perhaps more than ever.

Like All Iraqis, I Hate Americans

2004-06-30T14:36:00.000+02:00

via angie schultz at michele's comments

Like all Iraqis, I hate Americans. Of course. Here is why:

The Americans, although they brought us freedom, acted without authorisation from the United Nations. Arrogant Americans

The Americans, although they rescued us from Saddam Hussein, defied the will of many nations. Insular Americans.

The Americans won't leave Iraq, say newspaper reports. Get out, Americans!

Other newspaper reports say the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible after throwing us into chaos. Stay here, Americans!

The Americans spent tens of billions of dollars to liberate Iraq and help it become a prosperous democratic nation. Don't Americans care more about fixing their own problems? Crazy Americans.

The Americans started this whole war because of oil. That is why fuel costs are at record high levels in the US and is cheaper than water in Iraq. Selfish Americans.

The Americans are not using the necessary force to keep Iraq safe and secured. Lazy Americans! The Americans are also using excessive force in Iraq while dealing with the security problems. Brutal Americans!

The Americans support the Israeli terrorist government instead of the good peaceful people of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Says it all. Violent Americans.

Ali

Like many others, I love the Fadhil brothers!

Friend of Saddam, Enemy of Bush

2004-06-30T12:21:00.000+02:00

via safire

Only two days ago, I wrote with all the confidence of a bigfoot pundit that French President Jacques Chirac, at the NATO summit in Istanbul, would find it in his political interest to paper over past differences with the U.S., Britain and most other European nations about overthrowing Saddam.

So much for my certitude. Instead, Chirac stuck his thumb in the alliance's eye: he would not allow any troops under the NATO flag to help the newly sovereign Iraqis defeat the terrorists. Even the training of Iraqi police officers would have to take place outside that country; Chirac slyly suggested Rome.

And when President Bush dared to hope that the host nation, Turkey (a NATO nation that did more than France to counter the Soviet threat), would be accepted into the European Union, Chirac lashed out at the American with: "He not only went too far, but he has gone into a domain that is not his own. He has nothing to say on this subject."

I was profoundly mistaken about how far into isolation this former ally would go. Evidently Chirac finds political salvation in being openly and contemptuously anti-Bush. He has placed all of his nation's diplomatic chips on the defeat of Bush in November.

Chirac takes that gamble because he is afflicted with certitude about this: if freedom fails in Iraq, France's long and profitable protection of Saddam will somehow be justified.

Isn't he gentil, our cher ami Jacques?

Connect The Dots

2004-06-30T10:35:00.000+02:00

via lgf and telegraph

Bush has always been the issue for Moore. On September 11 itself, his only gripe was that the terrorists had targeted New York and DC instead of Texas or, indeed, my beloved New Hampshire: "They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC and the plane's destination of California – these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"

The fellows at the controls of those planes were training for 9/11 when Clinton was president and Gore was ahead in the polls, and they'd have still been in the cockpit had Ralph Nader been elected. Though Mohammed Atta took flying lessons in Florida, he apparently wasn't as exercised about its notorious hanging chads as Michael Moore. Mr Moore is guilty of what I believe psychologists call "projection".

The "Why didn't you terrorists kill the Bush voters?" line is not reprised in the movie, but the strange preoccupations it betrays drive the entire picture. Here's the way it works: if Bush is wearing the blue boxer shorts, they're a suspicious personal gift from Crown Prince Abdullah. If Bush is wearing the red boxer shorts, it's a conspiracy to distract public attention from the blue ones he was given by Crown Prince Abdullah. If he's wearing no boxer shorts, it's because he's so dumb he can't find his underwear in the morning.

So, shortly after 9/11, Moore wrote that footage of one of the World Trade Centre planes showed that it was being trailed by an F-16 – ie, the government could have shot it down but chose not to, so it could hit all those Al Gore voters. Imagine if, on September 11, the USAF had blown four passenger jets to kingdom come. Moore's film would be filled with poignant home movies of final Christmases and birthday parties and exploitative footage of anguished parents going to Washington to demand the truth about what happened that day and an end to the lame Bush spin about "threats" to public buildings.

Midway through the picture, a "peace" activist provides a perfect distillation of its argument. He recalls a conversation with an acquaintance, who observed, "bin Laden's a real asshole for killing all those people". "Yeah," says the "pacifist", "but he'll never be as big an asshole as Bush." That's who Michael Moore makes films for: those sophisticates who know that, no matter how many people bin Laden kills, in the assholian stakes he'll always come a distant second to Bush.

I can understand the point of being Michael Moore: there's a lot of money in it. What's harder to figure out is the point of being a devoted follower of Michael Moore. Apparently, the sophisticated, cynical intellectual class is so naïve it'll fall for any old hooey peddled by a preening opportunist burlesque act. If the Saudis were smart, they'd have bought him up years ago, established his anti-Saudi credentials, and then used him to promote the defeat of their nemesis Bush.

Hmm. Maybe they don't need to. Stick him in a headdress and he looks like King Fahd's brother. All I'm saying is connect the dots.

To Hell With Pessimism

2004-06-30T08:45:00.000+02:00

DANIEL PIPES, DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST FORUM: I'm not very optimistic. I supported the war and I support the attempt to make Iraq into a modern and decent country but I think my Government, the US Government, went too far in looking to create a democratic new Iraq. I don't think that's possible.

What is possible is an Iraq that is ruled by someone with a strong arm for some years who will over time move towards democracy. With luck, this will be the first step towards that but I'm not confident of it.

"I'm not very optimistic." is a 'strong' extenuation for such useless counterproductive pessimism .

What kind of promising 'strong men' does he have in mind anyhow?

I have a certain dislike against any Arabian strong men that I have seen emerging yet. Do you have counter-examples?

And 'strong men' since there are no 'men of steel' can be assassinated too (see Masood), why not better create a strong system?

I would far prefer the Swiss model of shared governmental responsibility, you don't even have to feel defeated to establish something like that.

And I'm not a dreamer here, Switzerland wasn't born in a peacefull surrounding too. It was created as a shelter of independent men of different origin against hostile neighbors. A haven of freedom surrounded by despotism.

A fitting role model as far as I can see.

I'm no Swiss but German, and I have history knowledge about 'someone with a strong arm for some years' like Bruening and von Papen. (Let 'Grand Ayatollah' Ali al-Sistani be Hindenburg if you like to stretch the analogy.)

Not exactly the way leading to democracy.

Conclusion: I'm no Islam expert, but I feel alienated by Mr.Pipes lack of confidence in democracy and in the Iraqi people and I would like to bet against his prognosis.

I would love to be one of the first holders of new Iraqi bonds.

Militants MA

2004-06-29T20:41:00.000+02:00

via coldfury

“Militants,” my chapped ass. Terrorists, murderers, slugs, swine, vermin, scum, filth, cowards, mangy curs, sewer-rats, bottom-feeders, thugs, villains, dregs, rabble, poltroons, knaves, vipers, scoundrels, monsters, wretches, toads, subhumans, devils, evildoers (nah, better strike that one, not nuanced enough for delicate DemocRat sensitivities), criminals, malefactors, reprobates, hoodlums, bullies, rakehells, serpents, perps; they had all these to choose from, and the AP dipshits go with “militants.” Ah well, they have to legitimize ‘em somehow, I guess. Otherwise, folks might actually think we have real enemies in the world and want to do something about it. Can’t have that now, can we?

Neocon quiz results

2004-06-29T16:27:00.000+02:00

via mhking

Based on your answers, you are most likely a neoconservative.

And I am damn proud of it, I have to add!

Neoconservatives…

* Want the US to be the world's unchallenged superpower
* Share unwavering support for Israel
* Support American unilateral action
* Support preemptive strikes to remove perceived threats to US security
* Promote the development of an American empire
* Equate American power with the potential for world peace
* Seek to democratize the Arab world
* Push regime change in states deemed threats to the US or its allies

Historical neoconservative: President Teddy Roosevelt
Modern neoconservative: President Ronald Reagan

Go Iraq Go ...

2004-06-29T11:39:00.000+02:00

via iraqthemodel

It’s hard to appreciate the efforts of all those who helped us to get our freedom and rebuild our country. We will never forget them. We will keep them in our hearts.
God bless Iraq and her people.
God bless America and her people.

God bless all the coalition forces who supported operation Iraqi freedom.
May God bless the souls of all those who sacrificed their lives to free Iraq.

By Mohammed

Let freedom reign!

A Good Interim Solution

2004-06-28T21:34:00.000+02:00

via lgf

Consider our enemies in the War on Terror. Men who believe, literally, that they are on a mission from God to destroy your civilization and who regard death as a promotion are not impressed by elegant maneuvers. You must find them, no matter how long it takes, then kill them. If they surrender, you must accord them their rights under the laws of war and international conventions. But, as we have learned so painfully from all the mindless, left-wing nonsense spouted about the prisoners at Guantanamo, you are much better off killing them before they have a chance to surrender.

We have heard no end of blather about network-centric warfare, to the great profit of defense contractors. If you want to see a superb—and cheap—example of “net-war,” look at al Qaeda. The mere possession of technology does not ensure that it will be used effectively. And effectiveness is what matters.

It isn’t a question of whether or not we want to fight a war of attrition against religion-fueled terrorists. We’re in a war of attrition with them. We have no realistic choice. Indeed, our enemies are, in some respects, better suited to both global and local wars of maneuver than we are. They have a world in which to hide, and the world is full of targets for them. They do not heed laws or boundaries. They make and observe no treaties. They do not expect the approval of the United Nations Security Council. They do not face election cycles. And their weapons are largely provided by our own societies.

We have the technical capabilities to deploy globally, but, for now, we are forced to watch as Pakistani forces fumble efforts to surround and destroy concentrations of terrorists; we cannot enter any country (except, temporarily, Iraq) without the permission of its government. We have many tools—military, diplomatic, economic, cultural, law enforcement, and so on—but we have less freedom of maneuver than our enemies.

But we do have superior killing power, once our enemies have been located. Ultimately, the key advantage of a superpower is super power. Faced with implacable enemies who would kill every man, woman, and child in our country and call the killing good (the ultimate war of attrition), we must be willing to use that power wisely, but remorselessly.

We are, militarily and nationally, in a transition phase. Even after 9/11, we do not fully appreciate the cruelty and determination of our enemies. We will learn our lesson, painfully, because the terrorists will not quit. The only solution is to kill them and keep on killing them: a war of attrition. But a war of attrition fought on our terms, not theirs.

Of course, we shall hear no end of fatuous arguments to the effect that we can’t kill our way out of the problem. Well, until a better methodology is discovered, killing every terrorist we can find is a good interim solution. The truth is that even if you can’t kill yourself out of the problem, you can make the problem a great deal smaller by effective targeting.

And we shall hear that killing terrorists only creates more terrorists. This is sophomoric nonsense. The surest way to swell the ranks of terror is to follow the approach we did in the decade before 9/11 and do nothing of substance. Success breeds success. Everybody loves a winner. The clichés exist because they’re true. Al Qaeda and related terrorist groups metastasized because they were viewed in the Muslim world as standing up to the West successfully and handing the Great Satan America embarrassing defeats with impunity. Some fanatics will flock to the standard of terror, no matter what we do. But it’s far easier for Islamic societies to purge themselves of terrorists if the terrorists are on the losing end of the global struggle than if they’re allowed to become triumphant heroes to every jobless, unstable teenager in the Middle East and beyond.

Far worse than fighting such a war of attrition aggressively is to pretend you’re not in one while your enemy keeps on killing you.

Evil Feeds Evil

2004-06-28T20:09:00.000+02:00

A must read for German visitors (by Mathias Küntzel):

Nicht Israel hatte den Palästinensern den Krieg erklärt – weder 1948, noch 1967, noch 1973 noch im Jahr 2000 -, sondern es verhielt sich stets umgekehrt. Im Jahr 2000 zog der israelische Ministerpräsident Ehud Barak die israelischen Truppen aus dem Libanon ab und machte der palästinensischen Seite in Camp David und Taba das bis dahin weitest gehende Angebot: 100 % des Gaza-Streifens und 97% der Westbank an die Palästinenser; Aufteilung Jerusalems in einen jüdischen und einen muslimisch-arabischen Teil. Bekanntlich zog sich Jassir Arafat vom Verhandlungstisch zurück, ließ die Kader der Hamas-Kriminellen aus den Gefängnissen frei und spornte ab September 2000 die II. Intifada an. Nur zwei Monate nach Beginn dieser Intifada, im November 2000, reiste Gerhard Schröder als erster Regierungschef der EU nach dem Scheitern von Camp David in enger Abstimmung mit der damaligen französischen Ratspräsidentschaft in den Nahen Osten und besuchte auch Arafat. „Die EU hat das Gewicht, Arafat zu einer Entscheidung zu bewegen“, erklärte hierzu Ehud Barak. „Will Arafat Frieden oder Krieg?“
In der Tat befanden sich Deutschland und die EU in einer Schlüsselposition: Seit dem Amtsantritt der rot-grünen Regierung war Berlin zum wichtigsten Geldgeber der Palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde avanciert: Keine andere Bevölkerungsgruppe der Welt wird seither, umgerechnet auf die Bevölkerungszahl, mit höheren deutschen Zuwendungen bedacht. Als aber Bundeskanzler Schröder im November 2000 Jassir Arafat besuchte, drängte er nicht auf dessen Rückkehr zum Verhandlungstisch. Er signalisierte dem PLO-Chef ganz im Gegenteil für dessen Intifada grünes Licht: Aus deutschen Delegationskreisen hieß es damals, „Schröder wolle keinen Druck auf Arafat ausüben, damit dieser wieder an den Verhandlungstisch zurückkehre. Es sei nicht sinnvoll, weitere Entwicklungshilfe an die politische Kompromissbereitschaft der Palästinenser zu koppeln." An diesem 1. November 2000, dem Besuch Schröders bei Arafat, wurde somit eine Weiche gestellte. Man hätte mit dem Druckmittel der Entwicklungshilfe Arafat zum Frieden mit Israel zwingen und damit die Lebensbedingungen insbesondere der Palästinserinnen und Palästinener schlagartig verbessern können. Ungeachtet aller Lippenbekenntnisse wollte man dies aber gerade nicht, sondern ließ der Selbstmordintifada freien Lauf. Mehr noch: Von nun an wurde Entwicklungshilfe mit propagiertem und praktiziertem Judenmord in Einklang gebracht. Nach Zunahme der Selbstmordattentate wurden auch Arafats Finanzhilfen weiter erhöht.
Als Israel im Gegenzug zu Arafats radikaler Kehrtwende die Transferzahlungen an die Palästinenser im Februar 2001 einfror, weil damit Mordanschläge gegen die Bewohner Israels finanziert würden, sprang die EU in die Bresche. Statt den israelischen Hinweisen auf eine verabredungswidrige Verwendung der Gelder auch nur ein einziges Mal nachzugehen, wurden zusätzlich 90 Millionen Euro als direkte Haushaltshilfe überwiesen. Als Arafat im Juni 2001 erneut Geldsorgen hat, weist die EU „der Palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde von Juni 2001 an eine monatliche Haushaltshilfe von zehn Millionen Euro an – direkt und nicht länger als ,Projekthilfe’. Bezahlt werden davon auch die Gehälter von Polizisten .... , die nach Feierabend für Terrormilizen bomben. Die Israelis legen bei Arafat sichergestellte Zahlungsbelege auf den Tisch, nach denen Gehälter für Täter von jenen Konten abgebucht wurden, auf die die EU einzahlt. Gutachten des Bundesnachrichtendienstes und der Inspekteur-Teams des EU-Amtes zur Betrugsbekämpfung halten die Dokumente für authentisch." So trugen offizielle EU-Subventionen zu Massakern an Israelis bei.

Yoel Esteron, der Herausgeber der linksliberalen israelischen Tageszeitung Ha’aretz prangerte diese Politik schon im Dezember 2001 an: „Seit den frühesten Tagen der Intifada hat die Haltung der Europäer Arafat in dem Glauben bestärkt und sogar ermutigt, er könne mörderische Terrorakte anordnen, ohne in irgendeiner Weise sein Gesicht in Europa zu verlieren ... Die EU ist der generöse Finanzier der PA. Ohne dieses EU-Geld würde sie keinen Monat überleben. Dieses Geld erlaubt es Herrn Arafat, den Sold für seine 40.000 Soldaten zu bezahlen, die dem Terror ein Ende setzen könnten, wenn sie nur den entsprechenden Befehl erhielten. ... Die europäischen Regierungen und anderer professionelle Gutmenschen ... sind mitverantwortlich für die Fortsetzung dieses bewaffneten Kampfes, dem Hunderte auf beiden Seiten zum Opfer fielen. An ihren Händen klebt ebenfalls Blut ... Die EU muss Arafat klar machen, dass europäisches Geld nur dann weiterhin auf seine Konten fließen kann, wenn er das Richtige tut." Die Bundesregierung und die EU haben diesen Aufruf bis heute ignoriert. Noch im Februar 2004 hielt Gerhard Schröder an seinem Kurs von November 2000 fest und erklärte gegenüber der Palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde, „die deutsche Hilfe auf dem gegenwärtigen Niveau beizubehalten und auch die Unterstützung der EU, zu der Deutschland etwa ein Drittel beitrage, in der jetzigen Höhe zu halten." Warum aber haben Deutschland und die EU auf die zweite Intifada und die Eskalation der Gewalt gesetzt? Ich komme nach meiner Darlegung über die Hamas auf diese Frage zurück.

Denn besonders bemerkenswert ist der Umgang mit den Islamisten, deren suizidale Massenmorde das Bild der II. Intifada prägten. In der gängigen europäischen Betrachtung und auch in den Stellungnahmen der Veranstalter der morgigen Konferenz werden diese Anschläge als „Verzweiflungstaten“ bewertet, als – so der Arbeitskreis Nahost, Berlin - „Ergebnis von Entwürdigung, Entrechtung, Verzweiflung und Perspektivlosigkeit“. Diese Parteinahme für den Terror hat mit der Realität nichts zu tun.
Zwar ist es richtig, dass die Situation vieler Menschen auf dieser Welt verzweifelt und ohne Perspektive ist. Niemals und nirgendwo aber haben Menschen aus ihrer hoffnungslosen Lage die Konsequenz gezogen, sich ausgerechnet in vollbesetzten Bussen oder überfüllten Restaurants mit dem Vorsatz des Massenmords in die Luft zu sprengen.
Zweitens sind die testamentarischen Videobotschaften der palästinensischen Attentäter keineswegs von Verzweiflung, sondern von Stolz und Begeisterung geprägt: „Es geht hier nicht um Selbstmord-Anschläge“, erklärte Scheich Qaradawi, einer der einflussreichsten sunnitischen Prediger der muslimischen Welt, „hier geht es um heroische Märtyrer-Operationen, und die Helden, die sie ausführen, werden nicht aufgrund von Hoffungslosigkeit und Verzweiflung dazu getrieben.“

Drittens aber zeigt besonders gut das Beispiel der Hamas, dass diese menschlichen Bomben immer dann neue Massaker auslösten, wenn die Chance einer Konfliktlösung und die Aussicht auf Verbesserung der Situation der Palästinenser in Sichtweite war: Die Selbstmordattentäter der Hamas verhinderten im Jahre 2000 die Wiederwahl von Barak und sorgten für den Wahlsieg von Scharon. Sie torpedierten mit dem Massaker von Netanja im März 2002 die aufkeimende Hoffnung auf eine Friedenslösung und machten mit ihren Massakern in 2003 die mit der „Road Map“ verbundenen Hoffnungen zunichte.
Das eigentliche Motiv dieser Attentate geht aus ihrer programmatischen Erklärung von 1988, der Charta der Hamas hervor, in der jede Dialoglösung mit Israel und jede Zwei-Staaten-Lösung prinzipiell abgelehnt und die Vernichtung Israels zum einzig legitimen Djihad-Ziel erklärt wird. Warum aber will die Hamas Israel um jeden Preis vernichten? Hier nun kommt der islamische – man kann auch sagen: islamfaschistische – Antisemitismus ins Spiel. So, als hätten die Autoren der Hamas-Charta beim Abfassen ihres Textes die Seiten des berüchtigsten antisemitischen Machwerks, der Protokolle der Weisen von Zion, offen aufgeschlagen neben sich liegen gehabt, so werden in dieser Programmschrift den Juden alle Bösartigkeiten“ der Weltgeschichte unterstellt: „Die Juden standen hinter der Französischen Revolution und hinter der kommunistischen Revolution“. Sie standen „hinter dem Ersten Weltkrieg, um so das islamische Kalifat auszuschalten ... und standen auch hinter dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, in dem sie immense Vorteile aus dem Handel mit Kriegsmaterial zogen.“ Sie veranlassten „die Gründung der Vereinten Nationen und des Sicherheitsrats, ... um die Welt durch ihre Mittelsmänner zu beherrschen. Es gab keinen Krieg an irgendeinem Ort, der nicht ihre Fingerabdrücke trüge.“ In Artikel 32 dieser Charta, wird endlich auch das Original benannt: „Das Programm der Zionisten wurde in den Protokollen der Weisen von Zion ausgebreitet und ihr gegenwärtiges Verhalten ist der beste Beweis für das, was dort gesagt wurde.“

Man möchte über derartigen Irrsinn lächeln, wie einst über das Gebrabbel eines Adolf Hitler gelächelt wurde. Doch eben dieser wahnwitzige Begriff von Juden als dem absoluten Bösen und Weltübel ist es, der der islamistischen Begeisterung über das Selbstmordattentat gegen israelische Zivilisten das Motiv verleiht. Wer Juden und wen immer sie dafür halten, tötet, begeht im Verständnis der Islamisten kein Verbrechen, sondern einen Akt der Befreiung, für den Gott im Himmel einen Lohn gewährt. Deshalb drücken die testamentarischen Videoaufzeichnungen der suizidalen Massenmörder nicht Verzweiflung, sondern Begeisterung und Freude aus.

Mehr noch: Wenn die Juden das absolute Böse darstellen, dann muss Israel – in antisemitischer Diktion die „Kommandozentrale“ – restlos zerstört werden. Und dann stellt die geforderte Auslöschung des jüdischen Staats nur den ersten Schritt dar, um Juden, wo immer in der Welt, zu vernichten. Der renommierte Erforscher des Holocaust, Jehuda Bauer, formulierte es so: „Die Sprache des Islamismus ist klar und deutlich genozidal. Eine Wiederholung des Massenmordes an den Juden wird angestrebt, das ist schwarz auf weiß nachzulesen.“

Und dennoch weigerte sich der Europäische Ministerrat noch bis Juli letzten Jahres, die Konten der Hamas einzufrieren und die Organisation auf die Liste terroristischer Organisationen zu setzen. Die Aktivitäten der Hamas seien „legitim“, betonte der Sprecher der EU-Kommission, Reijo Kempinnen, da sie soziale Dienste leiste und Kliniken betreibe. „Dass die Hamas in ihrer Gänze eine Terrororganisation sei, ist gewiss nicht unsere Position." Obwohl dies im September 2003 offiziell zumindest revidiert wurde, hat die Europäische Union entgegen aller Ankündigungen den politischen Flügel der Hamas bis heute nicht auf die Liste der verbotenen internationalen Terrorgruppen gesetzt. Überall in Europa setzt diese Terrorgruppe die Sammlung von Geldern weiterhin fort.

Die eigentlichen politische Katastrophe aber ist die Reaktion der europäischen Öffentlichkeit: Als sich die Selbstmordattentate im Frühjahr 2002 häuften, brach die Popularität der palästinensischen Sache in Europa nicht in sich zusammen. Sie wurde im Gegenteil mit jedem Massaker stärker. Von nun an gingen antijüdischer Terror und progressive Menschenrechts-Attitüde Hand in Hand. Die morgige „Stop the wall“-Konferenz steht in dieser ebenso politisch wie moralisch haltlosen Tradition. Man weigert sich beharrlich, die Charta der Hamas und die Existenz des islamischen Antisemitismus auch nur zur Kenntnis zu nehmen. Weil man aber diesen Teil der Wirklichkeit so verleugnet wie andere Auschwitz verleugnen, weil man die suizidalen Massenmorde stattdessen als eine rationale Reaktion auf reale Bedingungen zu interpretierten sucht, deshalb wird der palästinensische Terror zum neuen Maßstab für die Schuld der Israelis gemacht. Dann lautet die Devise: „Je barbarischer der antijüdische Terror, desto ungeheuerlicher die israelische Schuld.“
Diese massenhafte Selbstnarkotisierung des Bewusstseins bleibt selbstverständlich nicht ohne Folgen: Der Verzicht auf Klarheit ist der Beginn der Komplizenschaft. Wer den Antisemitismus nicht erkennen, ihm nicht entgegentreten will, macht sich zu dessem Komplizen und übernimmt ihn schlussendlich selbst. Wer darauf hofft, in Israel den Sündenbock für islamistische Gewalt gefunden zu haben, lenkt nicht nur von den Zielsetzungen des Islamismus ab, sondern knüpft mit dieser neusten „Der-Jud-ist-schuld“-Variante an uralte Muster des europäischen Antisemitismus wieder an. Das Ergebnis ist dann jene so unheimliche Sympathie für die Greueltaten der Hamas und ein Hass auf den israelischen Zaun auch deshalb, weil dieser den Greueln der Selbstmordbomber einen Riegel vorgeschoben hat.

Diese Stimmungslage in Europa wäre kaum vorstellbar ohne die damit korrespondierende europäische und deutsche Politik. Was treibt die Deutschen und die Europäer zu dieser Politik? Wirtschaftsinteressen? Machtkalküle? Sozialpsychologische und ideologische Motive?
Sozialpsychologisch ist der Hass auf Israel durch ein Phänomen motiviert, dass der israelische Psychologe Rex Zwi mit dem berühmten Satz: „Die Deutschen werden den Juden Auschwitz nie verzeihen“ umschrieb. Sein Bezug auf Deutschland greift jedoch zu kurz. Seit den ersten Jahrhunderten des Christentums fanden Antisemitismus und Judenverfolgung ausschließlich in Europa statt. Vor tausend Jahren rotteten Kreuzfahrer in zahlreichen Massakern die Juden in fast ganz Gallien aus. In Worms wurden damals 800 Juden in nur zwei Tagen massakriert. 11.000 französische Kinder wurden, nur weil sie jüdisch waren, nach Auschwitz deportiert und so weiter und so fort.
Ich halte die Vermutung für plausibel, dass Ausläufer eines hieraus resultierenden Schuldgefühls im christlichen Europa nach wie vor virulent sind. Dies aber würde bedeuten, dass jedwedes „Verbrechen“, für das man Juden oder gar den jüdischen Staat verantwortlich machen kann, wie eine Entlastung wirkt. Der von Sigmund Freud analysierte Wunsch, „sich Glücksversicherung und Leidensschutz durch wahnhafte Umbildung der Wirklichkeit zu schaffen“, ist in Deutschland freilich besonders ausgeprägt. Das Ausmaß der massenhaft begangenen NS-Verbrechen korreliert mit einer Art Sonderbedarf an Entlastung. Ein Beispiel: 69 % der Österreicher und 65 % der Deutschen gaben letztes Jahr auf die Frage, welcher Staat den Frieden in der Welt derzeit am meisten bedrohe, in „wahnhafter Umbildung der Wirklichkeit“ ausgerechnet Israel an, während im EU-Durchschnitt 59 Prozent so votierten.
Politisch wirksam ist zudem das unendlich tief im deutschen Gemüt verwurzelte völkische Element. Diese Ideologie setzt eine bestimmte Vorstellung von Subjekt voraus: Hier wird das Individuum nicht als ein politisches Subjekt betrachtet, sondern durch Herkunft oder „Abstammung“ – also kollektivistisch – definiert. Daraus resultiert einerseits eine Sichtweise auf den Nahost-Konflikt, die das mit den Attributen der „Künstlichkeit“ und der „Fremdheit“ versehene Israel mit der Romantik eines als „authentisch“ empfundenen palästinensischen Kampfes um Heimat, Gemeinschaft, Olivenbäume und Boden kontrastiert und für Letzteres emphatisch Partei ergreift. Daraus folgt andrerseits die so verhängnisvolle „Ent-Subjektivierung“ der arabischen Bevölkerung in Palästina: Man weigert sich, sie als bewusst handelnde Subjekte wahrzunehmen, die die Freiheit haben, auf eine bestimmte Situation so oder anders zu reagieren. Infolgedessen wird uns „der palästinensische Widerstand“ als ein geschlossener Block präsentiert, dessen kollektive Emotion sich angesichts israelischer Übermacht wie unter dem Bann eines Naturgesetzes nur noch reflexartig terroristisch entladen könne. Die 942 Palästinenser, die im Laufe der I. Intifada nachgewiesenermaßen durch Palästinenser getötet wurden, weil sie angeblich Kollaborateure für Israel gewesen seien, fallen dann ebenso unter den Tisch, wie die entschiedenen Kritiker der II. Intifada, die teils ermordet, teils stillgestellt wurden und wie die politischen Häftlinge der Autonomiebehörden, die auch heute noch bekanntermaßen misshandelt und gefoltert werden.
Natürlich hat die europäische Nahostpolitik auch eine ökonomischen Dimension: Europa bezieht 40% seines Ölbedarfs aus dem Mittleren Osten, die USA nur 20%. Von den Ölbeständen der OPEC-Länder liegen aber 90 % unter der Erde islamischer Staaten. Da liegt es nahe, sich der Israelpolitik der arabischen Welt lieber anzupassen anstatt diese herauszufordern und israelische Interessen lieber hinten an zu stellen, anstatt sie zu verteidigen. Darüber hinaus ist heute der Mittlere Osten – besonders Saudi-Arabien und Iran - ein Eldorado der deutschen Exportwirtschaft, speziell im Bereich Maschinenbau. Dessen Export-Zuwachsraten im Mittleren Osten lagen 2002 bei 25 % und 2003 bei 23 %. Ich glaube allerdings nicht, dass die ökonomische Dimension politikbestimmend ist. Japan z.B. bezieht nicht nur 40 % seines Ölbedarfs aus dem Mittleren Osten, wie die Europäer, sondern 80 % und verfolgt dennoch eine anderen Politik.
Bedeutsamer scheint mir das Konkurrenzmotiv gegenüber den USA zu sein. Frankreich und Deutschland verfolgen machtpolitisch das erklärte Ziel, den Einfluss der USA im Nahen und Mittleren Osten einzuschränken. 1998 schwärmte der Leiter es Deutschen Orientinstituts, Udo Steinbach, von der enormen „Sympathie, die Deutschland traditionell in der gesamten Region entgegengebracht wird“, wobei jene „traditionelle Sympathie“ die bis heute virulente Bewunderung für den Nationalsozialismus umfasst. Aus diesem Grund, so Steinbach weiter, werde Deutschland „im Nahen Osten weithin als künftige Großmacht gesehen“, die „ein Gegengewicht gegen eine allzu dominante amerikanische Machtausübung bilden kann." Der 11. September und der Krieg gegen Irak haben den Ehrgeiz insbesondere Frankreichs und Deutschlands, sich als Widersacher der USA in der arabisch-islamischen Welt zu profilieren, weiter verstärkt. Um in dieser Konkurrenz Punkte zu machen, wird gezielt auf die Kooperation mit Islamisten gesetzt, die man – so ein Papier der Bertelsmann-Stiftung – gegen eine „undifferenzierte Antiterrorkriegsführung der Amerikaner“ zu verteidigen verspricht.
Selbst islamistisch motiviert Massenmorde können in diesem Spiel europäische Trumpfkarten sein. Es war der Terror der Hamas, der Deutschland und der EU die Genugtuung verschaffte, erstmals im Kontext der Road-Map als Mitspieler im Nahost-Konflikt anerkannt zu sein. Es waren die großen Terroranschläge im Irak, durch die sich die USA genötigt sahen, die UN und die EU in ihre Planungen stärker einzubeziehen. In einem Leitartikel der FAZ benannte deren außenpolitischer Ressortleiter das darauf abgestellte Kalkül: „Können machtpolitisch selbstbewusste Länder möglicherweise daran interessiert sein, dass der Erfolg [der USA im Kampf gegen den Terror] nicht triumphal und auch nicht eindeutig ausfällt?" Zweifelsohne eine rhetorische Frage: Jeder außenpolitische Erfolg der USA ist ungünstig für den Stellenwert der EU. Je größer aber der amerikanische Misserfolg, je „weniger triumphal“ ihr Kampf gegen den Terror, desto größer die Gelegenheit für Deutschland und die EU, sich als eigentliche Alternative zu profilieren und so vom Scheitern der USA zu profitieren.

Mr. Küntzel gives you an insight in some of the most serious reasons why I don't want to be German or European anymore.

It's about the bad conscience of the Europeans and the resulting European hatred for Jewish and Israeli people combined with their envy for American greatness and bravery that makes the E.U. and Germany and France feed the evil homicidal HAMAS and PLO swine.

I hope I can leave this Europe ASAP and wouldn't mind to return in an Abrahams.

What We're Up Against

2004-06-28T14:58:00.000+02:00

via nypost

I'D like to make a documentary entitled "What We're Up Against." I'd include the following:

* Scenes from the destruction of the World Trade Center: jets crashing, people jumping from the upper floors, the towers' collapse, the months-long digging through the rubble — and the excruciating body-identification task faced by the medical examiner's office.

* The "beheading videos" — from reporter Daniel Pearl right through to Korean Kim Sun-il.

* The charred and mutilated bodies of four Halliburton workers hanging from a bridge in Fallujah.

* Post terror-bombing scenes from Bali, Madrid, and Istanbul. Ditto for Riyadh, but with additional footage of the recent attack showing the 22 victims whose throats were slit.

* The Saddam Hussein "torture videos," photos of the mass grave sites containing 300,000 Iraqis and photos of Kurdish men, women and children killed by chemical poisoning.

* Footage of the pregnant Israeli woman and her four daughters murdered by two Palestinians who then put an additional bullet in each child's head and one in the abdomen of the mother.

* A "montage" of numerous mullahs and imams whose non-stop spewing of anti-American and anti-Semitic speech incites further hatred and violence.

* Another montage of "joyous Arabs" dancing in the streets after virtually every successful act of terror.

Think I'd win a Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival? Neither do I.

Home Front

2004-06-27T23:52:00.000+02:00

via nro

The few hundred American lunatics who tried to explain away 9/11 (or apologize for it) turned into thousands a few weeks later who swore we either would or should lose in Afghanistan. Now they are millions who see our ongoing struggle in Iraq as either immoral or inept. George Bush did not create this cascading antiwar movement. It was rather fueled by the blood and treasure spent to eliminate the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, together with a has-been '60s generation that felt there was still one more creaky return to the barricades left in them.

Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that. Abu Ghraib is on the front pages daily. Stories of thousands of American soldiers in combat against terrorist killers from the Hindu Kush to Fallujah do not merit the D section. Senator Kennedy's two years of insane outbursts should have earned him formal censure rather than a commemoration from the Democratic establishment.

What a litany of distractions! Words — preemption," "unilateralism," "hegemony," — whiz by and lose all meaning. Names — "Halliburton," "Chalabi," "INC" — become little more than red meat. Vocabulary is turned upside down: "Contractors," who at great risk restore power and water to the poor, are now little more than "profiteers" and "opportunists"; killers are not even "terrorists" but mere "militants." "Neo-cons" are wild-eyed extremists; "realists" are no longer cynics — inclined to let thousands die abroad unless the chaos interrupts transit of oil or food — but rather "sober" and "circumspect," and more likely Kerry supporters.

A depressing array of transitory personalities parades before our screen, entering stage left to grab 15 minutes of notoriety for their scripted invective, only to exit on the right into oblivion. Who can remember all these one-tell-all-book, one-weekend-on-the-Sunday-news-programs personalities — a Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Howard Dean, Paul O'Neil, Joe Wilson, Richard Clark, or Richard ben Veniste? In between their appearances on Sunday morning television or 60 Minutes, a few D.C. functionaries are carted out for periodic shouting — an unhinged Al Gore, a puffed-up Ted Kennedy, a faux-serious Bob Kerry, and occasionally a Senator Byrd or Hollings. And since the very day after 9/11 we've gotten the Vietnam-era retreads — a Peter Arnett, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Robert Scheer, John Dean, or Seymour Hersh — tottering out with the latest conspiracies about the old bogeymen and "higher-ups."

We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, and a brutalized and demoralized civilian psyche are being remedied, often under fire. All this and more has been achieved at the price of political turmoil, deep divisions in the West — here and abroad — and the emergence of a strong minority, led by mostly elites, who simply wish it all to fail.

Whether this influential, snarling minority — so prominent in the media, on campuses, in government, and in the arts — succeeds in turning victory into defeat is open to question. Right now the matter rests on the nerve of a half-dozen in Washington who are daily slandered (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz), and with brilliant and courageous soldiers in the field. They are fighting desperately against the always-ticking clock of American impatience, and are forced to confront an Orwellian world in which their battle sacrifice is ignored or deprecated while killing a vicious enemy is tantamount to murder.

No, we — along with those brave Iraqis who have opted for freedom — could very easily still lose this war that our brave troops are somehow now winning.

Another Health Disaster in Africa

2004-06-27T16:13:00.000+02:00

via the economist

HAVING rid the world of the scourge of smallpox in the 1970s, the United Nations and its World Health Organisation (WHO) were until recently on course for another important victory in their war on the diseases that ravage the poorest people in the poorest nations: the eradication of polio. For the past four years, a “countdown clock” at UN headquarters in New York has been ticking away the seconds remaining until its target date of the end of next year for stamping out the poliomyelitis virus worldwide. But now the clock may have to be set back. On Tuesday June 22nd the WHO said that a resurgence of the crippling disease that began in Nigeria last year has now reached ten other African countries. A child crippled by the disease in Sudan’s conflict-torn province of Darfur was found to be carrying the same strain as seen in Nigeria. Until now, there had been no polio cases in Sudan for three years.

The new outbreak is a triumph of superstition over science. The polio cases have spread from the state of Kano, in the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria. There, clerics have preached nonsense about the polio vaccination, claiming it was a western plot to depopulate Africa by rendering girls infertile, or even giving its recipients AIDS. Kano’s state government, under pressure from the militant clerics, has suspended vaccinations. In January a committee of doctors and Muslim scholars set up by the state government said tests had revealed that the vaccine contained oestrogen, which plays a role in fertility. The WHO insists that other tests have refuted those claims. In May, Kano’s government announced that vaccination would begin again, but this has not yet happened.

Even if vaccination resumes tomorrow, damage will already have been done. The WHO says that five times as many children in west and central Africa have been infected with polio so far in 2004 as in the same period in 2003. Though the disease mainly strikes children aged under five—and leaves them crippled for life—it can also be carried by people without their showing any symptoms of infection. Thus, the movement of people escaping the region’s conflicts is helping to spread the outbreak. Several of the African states where it has now appeared have been destabilised by war, including Sudan, where the Arab-dominated government has been carrying out a campaign of terror against Darfur’s black Africans.

War Talk FAQ

2004-06-26T14:25:00.000+02:00

Did I mentioned before that Victor Davis Hanson is absolutely irreplaceable? I'm quite sure I did.

This 'just in':

via nro

If one talks at campuses or on the radio in support of the current American military response, the staccato of both hostile questions and the questioners themselves often blurs into a depressing pattern. What follows is a mélange from the dozens of actual inquiries I have encountered since September 11, along with the more or less standard replies.

The Pacifist
(The question is rarely presented as a question, but rather as a quite heated and very un-pacifistic rant — with ample references to little-known foundations, books, and the questioner's own high-minded efforts and programs.)

Q. Violence begets violence. What did war ever solve? Do we have to reply in kind — to get down to their level? Haven't we learned more than "an eye for an eye" in the last thousand years? You cannot bomb in my name.

A. Violence can, in fact, often breed an endless circle of violence (note Northern Ireland) — but only if there is no clear moral consensus, and it is practiced solely in equal measure. But overwhelming violence in response to great evil, while tragic, is not therein evil. Such a military response constitutes real humanity and bravery because it is not rhetorical or cheap, and stops the killing on the part of the killers. Those who work in peril 20 hours a day on carriers and behind enemy lines on the ground did not ask for this war, but they are nonetheless fighting to ensure that their own children and those of others to come do not have to make the sacrifices they are now so bravely enduring.

War — whether to end slavery, to ruin the Nazi death camps, or to dismantle the Japanese military — has in fact ended great evil inflicted on millions. And if we don't reply now — as we didn't to Hitler after Czechoslovakia, the Italians in Ethiopia, or the Japanese in Nanking — murder unchecked goes on to kill millions. Ask the Cambodians, Bosnians, or Tutus. We have learned from the last 2,500 years that human nature is unchanging and that the well-intentioned efforts to disarm and outlaw war are dangerous — and that such utopian pacifism is always at someone else's expense: usually those poorer, less educated, and not so "sophisticated" as yourself.

Can you please tell me what you would have advocated on December 8, 1941? And if we cannot in your name bomb the source of our terror, can our domestic forces at least use deadly force here at home to protect civilians from more crashing airliners and suicide bombers?

The Voice of Moral Equivalence
(Like the Pacifist, the moralist offers no realistic plan of action to deal with September 11, but wishes to force you to concede that you are in fact a murderer like the Taliban).

Q. They bomb us, we bomb them. They kill children, now we kill children. So what is the difference between them and us?

A. Quite a lot. First, we do know that almost 6,000 innocent were murdered, but we do not know how many Afghani citizens have been killed — either due to misplaced American bombs or to Taliban shells falling back among their citizens or to Taliban executions and terrorism against their own people. We do know that it is the deliberate policy of the Taliban to put their combatants among mosques, hospitals, and schools to ensure their survival, out of the expectation that Americans, unlike themselves, would not deliberately inflict collateral damage. If our enemies know that difference, why do not some of our own citizens, such as yourself?

For the sake of argument, let us assume that more than 100 noncombatant Afghanis have so far been killed. The dead, of course, are the dead, and their loss is tragic. But there is a difference, a moral difference, between deliberately targeting civilians in peace and deliberating attempting to avoid them in war — especially at the risk of endangering the lives of our own pilots. And just wars have never been waged with 100 percent moral perfection, but rather — as against Germany or Japan, for example — with the full knowledge that innocents die in order that the mass murder of their governments be stopped, and on the expectation that their own lives, and those of their children, will not in the future be sacrificed as victims of or abettors to their own government's evil.

The Europeanist
(The questioner is soft spoken and sometimes condescending, typically highly educated, well-traveled abroad, and a denizen of either coast. In a live setting, clapping usually follows his question)

Q. This is more of the senseless retaliation that is typical of American unilateralism. After Kyoto and Durban, why should Americans expect European support?

A. Well, the 6,000 dead are ours, not Europe's. And we, not they, must take care of our own — as we, not they, see fit. Still, although it took 21 days to invoke NATO's Article Five, in theory Europeans and Americans are not mere friends but military allies, sworn as such under treaty. The terrorists struck the U.S. first, but not necessarily last — and might equally have hit the Louvre (cf. the destruction of the great Buddha in Afghanistan), the Vatican (cf. their deadly rhetoric about non-Muslims, the murders in Pakistan of Christians, and murmurs of plots against the Pope), or the Eiffel Tower (as we now know was once planned). Without a long climate of permissiveness in Europe for terrorists, much of the present carnage would have been impossible. We in America were naïve and foolish, but those in Europe were far more knowingly and deliberately lax. The shores of the southern Mediterranean and what lies far across the Aegean are much closer to Europe than America — and most in Europe now recognize that far better than we. If anything, as our military continues to blast apart the enemy, small flotillas of European ships will join the fray before it ends.

The Anti-Americanist
(Full of all sorts of false knowledge, strange, but unsupported and fascinating, "'facts" and conspiracy theories; usually his voice breaks into pained stammering by the fourth minute of the question, which can be summarized by the following.)

Q. Why don't you admit that this is just more of the same imperialism, and that we have killed millions all over the globe in places like Iraq, Serbia, Panama, Grenada, and Haiti?

A. U.N. sanctions hurt Iraq, but not nearly as much as did its own government, which built palaces and bought weapons while its people — according to Iraqi "journalists" — went without. Those who preferred to act militarily and unilaterally against Saddam Hussein, rather than by sanctions with the U.N. against the Iraqi people, would have incurred even greater animus from you. How odd that we were told to work with the U.N. to obtain embargos, and then, after they were implemented, they were dubbed "U.S." sanctions. Hussein's attacks with nuclear and biological warfare, if they reach fruition, are indiscriminate and will not distinguish you from me; the fact that we are American, free, and relatively affluent makes us the same target in his eyes.

The bombing in Serbia — against Christian butchers of Muslims — saved hundreds of thousands, as even our European critics now admit. Hundreds, not millions, were lost through American intervention in and around the Caribbean. Despite our past unpredictable policy and sometimes poor planning, most in Panama, Grenada, and Haiti confess that they enjoy life now more than they did under the tyrannies we replaced.

The Military Alarmist
(Usually half-educated, he has culled the Internet for bits and pieces about Alexander the Great and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)

Q. Afghanistan has swallowed up dozens of armies — do we really want another Vietnam?

A. In fact, Alexander the Great and the British alike were eventually successful there, and at last defeated far greater armies with their own very small forces far from home. The Russians gave up because they sought, insanely, to replace Islam with atheism — and yet after a decade quit only due to sophisticated American support to their enemies, and their own collapsing society at home. How strange that, before the bombing started, we were told that Afghanistan was too formidable to attack — and then after we obliterated much of the command and control structure of the Taliban we are now "bullying" an "asset-poor" country. That Afghanistan might be more difficult than the Gulf War hardly makes it Vietnam. In fact, so successful and brilliant have been our war-makers in the last decade that we now define a three-week war — with hundreds, if not more likely thousands, of enemy dead, and fewer than five of ours — as "protracted."

The Islamist
(Usually a visitor from the Middle East, who mentions "Israel" in the first ten seconds of a very, very, very, long non-question, ending with…)

Q. America just won't leave Islam alone. You Americans quit intervening throughout the world to hurt Muslim nations!

A. The great killers of Muslims these last decades have been other Muslims — whether in Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Palestine, or Lebanon. Indigenous theocracy, homegrown statism, and traditional autocracy — not Israel or the United States — have impoverished the masses of the Middle East. The United States has intervened out of its own self-interest, but also with the result that Muslims have been helped, rather than hurt — in Kuwait, among the backwaters of Iraq, in Afghanistan, Somalia, Kosovo, and Bosnia. Our great fault is that we have supported illegitimate regimes, out of an understandable fear that their overthrow might produce something like the past reign of terror in Iran and Algeria, rather than Jeffersonian democracy. Still, promotion of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan may be our only chance of salvaging a viable Middle East policy — and therein thwarting the fundamentalists, as well as the corrupt and illegitimate Arab moderates who are alike now enemies of democracy. Israel has about as much to do with the poverty in Cairo or the undernourished babies in Baghdad as does life on Mars. What exactly is your question?

The Advocate of the Palestinians
(Usually on a student visa, he raises the word "Israel" after second two, and thereafter every third second, until minute five of the question. Questioner usually announces that he is a moderate, but then proceeds to prove by voice and tone that he in fact is hardly moderate at all. He also ends with…)

Q. The events of September 11 are very sad, BUT only to be expected given the American bombs Israel uses to kill Palestinian children. Why are you surprised?

A. I'm not surprised, but for reasons far different from your own. American restraint and timidity, not recklessness, got us into this mess. Bin Laden, like Saddam Hussein, only mentions the Palestinians when he is desperate and near defeat. Israel — unlike its opponents — is quite able to craft its own guns and planes without our help. We deplore the killing, and in the past have supported the concept of a Palestinian state that has reasonable borders and that pledges nonviolence toward Israel; in fact, we provide over 100 million a year to Mr. Arafat and 20 times that to Mr. Mubarak, despite the animus shown America in their state-controlled papers.

But we are not stupid either. Despite American prompting, Palestine is not a democracy; it has no free judiciary, nor any history of protecting human rights. It waged its first three wars not to free the West Bank, but to destroy Israel. And we remember Mr. Arafat's past alliance with Saddam Hussein and the present cheering in the streets of the West Bank at the news of our dead — not unlike the similar jubilation there a decade ago at the rumors that the Iraqi SCUDs landing in Tel Aviv were laden with gas. We are humans, not gods, and — like you, in fact — have a long memory. If you dislike us so, perhaps, by mutual agreement, for a year or two Americans will promise not to visit Palestine and you should not visit us. And finally, could we carry on this conversation in safety inside Palestine?

Our Seinfeld Decade

2004-06-25T18:45:00.000+02:00

via krauthammer

Clinton did conclude NAFTA and did sign welfare reform. His greatest achievement was an act of brilliant passivity: He got out of the way of one of the largest peacetime economic expansions in American history. And though he takes personal credit for all the jobs created -- a ridiculous assertion to make about the decade of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- he does deserve credit for not screwing things up. Presidents often do. He easily could have.

His great failing was foreign policy. Viewing the world through the narrow legalist lens of liberal internationalism, he spent most of his presidency drafting and signing treaty after useless treaty on such things as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. All this in a world where the biggest problem comes from terrorists and rogue states for whom treaties are meaningless.

Like the 1920s, the 1990s were a golden age permeated by a postwar euphoria of apparently endless peace and prosperity. Both eras ended abruptly, undermined ultimately by threats that were ignored as they grew and burrowed underground. Clinton let a decade of unprecedented American prosperity and power go without doing anything about al Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq (where his weakness allowed France and Russia to almost totally undermine the post-Gulf War sanctions). And although al Qaeda declared war on America in 1996 and, as we now know, hatched the Sept. 11 plot that same year, it continued to flourish throughout the decade.

Looking the other way was largely a function of the age -- our holiday from history, our retreat from seriousness, our Seinfeld decade of obsessive ordinariness. Clinton never could have been elected during the Cold War. The 1990s produced a president perfectly suited to the time -- a time of domesticity, triviality and self-absorption.

Stay Quiet and You’ll Be OK

2004-06-23T16:18:00.000+02:00

via frontpage

Here’s a new slogan for the zeitgeist: stay quiet and you’ll be OK. This was the message, according to the tapes released last week, that Muhammad Atta gave to the passengers on the ill-fated airplane that he and his fellow terrorists had commandeered.

Stay quiet and you’ll be OK. Don’t mention that a Saudi imam who spoke at the opening of a large new Islamic center in London once preached a sermon in which he called Jews “evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others’] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race ‘whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs,” and “an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption.” AP noted that in London he said that Islam’s history was “the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony.” The BBC called him “one of Islam’s most renowned Imams” and reported his praise for British Muslims for having “taken great steps towards achieving community cohesion.” Neither said anything about his hate speech.

Stay quiet and you’ll be OK. Have you heard about the churches destroyed in Kosovo? “To keep the Serbs from claiming this area as part of their national heritage,” says Mikhael de Thyse of the Council of Europe, “some Albanians are attacking their churches.” In March, the cathedrals in Pristina and Prizren, Kosovo’s two main cities, were burned to the ground. Others that have been destroyed include the Holy Archangels Monastery, a charming and, of course, irreplaceable jewel dating from the fourteenth century. The local bishop has had harsh words for NATO peacekeepers, who he says have done little or nothing to protect the churches. But the media establishment has kept mum. Jihad in Kosovo? Come on. Everyone knows the Balkan Muslims are the victims, not the perpetrators!

Stay quiet and you’ll be OK. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan went to Harvard to give the commencement speech and receive an honorary degree. The intrepid Charles Jacobs of the American Anti-Slavery Group was ready for him, saying at a rally the day before: “Kofi Annan does not need to come to Harvard tomorrow, he needs to go to Sudan. … He needs to go to the North, and he needs to tell Khartoum to free the slaves. There are tens of thousands of slaves like Francis Bok, still serving their masters in Sudan. Kofi Annan needs to tell the truth: For a decade Khartoum wages ... what they call a Jihad against Christians and tribalists in the South. Kofi Annan never once said that the war was a Jihad. It’s not diplomatic to say...but it’s the truth. Two million people died because of this war. Tens of thousands were enslaved. Arab militias storm African villages, kill the men and capture the women and children like Francis Bok. Kofi Annan needs to tell the world about Jihad slaves. It’s not diplomatic...but it’s the truth.”

Stay quiet and you’ll be OK. In Saudi Arabia, a young Indian Catholic, Brian Savio O’Connor, has been imprisoned and tortured by the religious police, the mutawa. Says L’Osservatore Romano: “Officially the Mutawa has accused O’Connor of using drugs and praying to Jesus Christ, accusations which imply he runs the risk of being punished with the death penalty. The family says that the proofs of his use of drugs have been fabricated by the police, while it does not deny that Brian is a good Christian.” Where is the outcry? Why haven’t you read about Brian O’Connor in the New York Times? Why hasn’t 60 Minutes gone to Riyadh to put a Saudi official or two on the hotseat?

As Ralph Peters has had the courage to declare, “It’s time to end the politically correct baby-talk insisting that Islam isn’t the problem. In the decaying Arab world, Islam is the problem — because of the way bitter old men interpret and deform its more humane precepts while embracing its cruelest injunctions.” It’s time to end the baby talk, and the silence. For whatever combination of political correctness, fear, and indifference has made for the silence on these stories and others like them, it does nothing but play into the hands of those who would destroy us.

The Ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11

2004-06-22T10:41:00.000+02:00

via lgf and slate

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Munich and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war.

...

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

...

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture.

Low Income

2004-06-21T00:07:00.000+02:00

via wsj

Higher GDP per capita allows the average American to spend about $9,700 more on consumption every year than the average European. So Yanks have by far more cars, TVs, computers and other modern goods. "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near," the Swedish study says.

But what about equality? Well, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has dropped to 12% from 22% since 1959. In 1999, 25% of American households were considered "low income," meaning they had an annual income of less than $25,000. If Sweden--the very model of a modern welfare state--were judged by the same standard, about 40% of its households would be considered low-income.

In other words poverty is relative, and in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the "poor" own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.

So what is Europe's problem? "The expansion of the public sector into overripe welfare states in large parts of Europe is and remains the best guess as to why our continent cannot measure up to our neighbor in the west," the authors write. In 1999, average EU tax revenues were more than 40% of GDP, and in some countries above 50%, compared with less than 30% for most of the U.S.

We don't report this with any nationalist glee. The world needs a prosperous, growing Europe, and its relative economic decline is one reason for growing EU-American tension.

Desecrators of their Undeserved Liberty

2004-06-19T11:32:00.000+02:00

"WE have learned our lesson from history. Listen now, how we think the world shall be!", some Germans dare to say.

I hear it for a very long time now, and it makes me more and more furious.

It's like saying Charles Manson or Jack the Ripper would be the most capable persons when it comes to social affairs since they were such enthusiastic murderers themselves and REALLY REALLY LEARNED something from that!

When I grew up you could hear people fizz "he must have been forgotten to be gassed" whenever they wanted to express their feelings towards handicapped people, homosexuals or other "antisocial persons". When old men got drunk they started to sing "Die Fahne hoch ..." (the Horst Wessel Lied), when they were sober they weren't that loud at least.

My grandfather (the one that survived WWII) talked about Russians exclusively as "Ivan", Italians were cowards (ie "we" lost the war because of them) and furthermore "Spaghettis", Americans "Amis" (without any less animosity). There was NOTHING that HE had learned as far as I could see. He's dead now, that's all what changed him.

But today, "after the post-wartime is finally over", anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are reaching new HIGHS in Germany.

Now tell me why I should feel any better about my fellow citizens protesting frenetically against Iraqi freedom and expressing their hatred against the elected leaders of allied democracies in war?

Because they normally are sticking that deep in the ass of their megalomaniac French collaborators, that at least I have to see just ONE sort of desecrators of their undeserved liberty at the same time?

You may have rightly guessed, that this just helps "un petit peu".

Let Europe Be Europe

2004-06-18T22:22:00.000+02:00

via vdh

The ethicists of Europe don't want to see success in Iraq, since it might be interpreted as a moral refutation of their own opposition to Saddam's removal. So let us in turn stop begging old Europe, NATO, and the EU to participate in the rebuilding or policing of the country. To join or help, in the collective European mind, would be to suggest that an emerging democracy far away was worth our own sacrifice to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. Liberating Iraq, shutting down Baathist terror, and establishing consensual rule, after all, was a dangerous — and mostly Anglo-American — idea, antithetical to all the Europeans have become.

Understandably, they do not want to be lumped in with the "missionaries of democracy" who evoke the ire of terrorists or the disdain of oil-producing grandees. They do not wish to forgive the debts run up by Saddam Hussein for their overpriced junk. And they most certainly are not willing to do any favors for Texas-twanged George W. Bush, whom they hope will be gone in less than six months. All this is not their world, which operates on self-interest gussied up with the elevated rhetoric of the utopian EU — appealing to an Al Gore's Earth-in-the-Balance mindset rather than to serious folk who worry about genocide and mass murder.

So there are reasons our alliances cannot simply be glued back together again, and they transcend neo-con zeal and Bush as el Loco cowboy. Europeans, aside from a few tiny brave countries and courageous individuals, will no more participate in the "illegal" action in Iraq than they did in the "approved" and "legal" Afghanistan intervention, where about 7,000 NATO troops now help a postbellum liberated population of 26 million. Even if we sent Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Jesse Jackson as an obsequious trio, the Euros would not act in a resolute, muscular way.

To the small degree Mr. Bush supposedly encountered a more conciliatory attitude from Europeans, it was likely because wiser heads in Germany finally saw that their animus had nearly succeeded in generating an American consensus to end the free defense of Europe — not because of a new remorseful "multilateralism" by the president. A quarter of Americans now see France as an enemy — not an ally or even a neutral — and the number is growing. Any sane person who carefully examined America's relationship to Europe over the last 60 years would have advised the Germans and French not to throw away something so advantageous to their own national interests. But they did, and now we must move on.

I highly recommend to read the whole thing, in fact I recommend to read everything what that man writes and has written. It is indispensable.

A Few Questions about the Prospect of German Conservatism

2004-06-17T10:13:00.000+02:00

What are the goals of the German conservatives over the next 5 to 10 years?

What is it that the CDU, CSU want to do against the reciprocal blockade of the German federal system?

How can I distinguish between German conservative policy and "democratic socialism"?

Is there a German conservative scheme against European etatism?

Do German conservatives distance themselves from R. Reagan and M. Thatcher, and if so why so?

If the CDU, CSU want a "conservative revolution" for Germany, how do they want to translate this then?

Why did/do German conservatives endorse subordination under Frances "great power" fantasies?

Why don't they prefer for us the vision of a "New Europe" including Germany?

Are the successors of H. Kohl in the meantime even willing to thank the French for their particular endeavors during the process of German reunification as our chancellor recently did?

What have the Turks actually done to deserve your obvious animosity? Did They move heaven and earth to prevent the end of socialism in east germany? Are They hosting terrorists for "humanitarian" reasons as we do? Do They support Y. Arafish as the "European Parliament" does?

Which kind of friends and which kind of followers do you prefer?

I.e. is there any reason for me to vote for you next time?

We Will Fight and We Will Win

2004-06-15T12:56:00.000+02:00

via iraqthemodel

I, being an Iraqi have accepted the challenge and I’m not alone; hundreds of thousands of IP, soldiers, officials and workers in different fields have decided the same by doing their job, cooperating with the coalition and marching persistently towards building their country, maintaining their freedom and embracing the changes towards democracy. Other Millions of Iraqis are supporting this process each in his own way.

We didn’t take the decision of the war, that’s right, but we’ve accepted it with full knowledge of the consequences and that’s why you cannot see one large demonstration asking the coalition to leave. We gained our freedom, after Saddam’s fall almost for free, as most of the enormous losses we suffered before that time were not the result of real attempts to gain freedom; they were in most times the result of mere disapproval with the Ba’athists or were part of the systematic killing to maintain the paralyzing fear at a maximum. Maybe it’s time to pay and this time we are ready because we are free from that fear after seeing the weakness of our enemies and we have seen what we were missing and are not ready to lose it no matter what happens. We will pay the price and we will not surrender or compromise, we will fight and we will win.

Just Watch

2004-06-15T00:41:00.000+02:00

via nro

It was hard for the Islamic fascists to find ideological support in the West, given their agenda of gender apartheid, homophobia, religious persecution, racial hatred, fundamentalism, polygamy, and primordial barbarism. But they sensed that there has always been a current of self-loathing among the comfortable Western elite, a perennial search for victims of racism, economic oppression, colonialism, and Christianity. Bin Laden's followers weren't white; they were sometimes poor; they inhabited of former British and French colonies; and they weren't exactly followers of the no-nonsense Pope or Jerry Falwell. If anyone doubts the nexus between right-wing Middle Eastern fascism and left-wing academic faddishness, go to booths in the Free Speech area at Berkeley or see what European elites have said and done for Hamas. Middle Eastern fascist killers enshrined as victims alongside our own oppressed? That has been gospel in our universities for the last three decades.

Like Hitler, bin Ladenism grasped the advantages of hating the Jews. It has been 60 years since the Holocaust; memories dim. Israel is not poor and invaded but strong, prosperous, and unapologetic. It is high time, in other words, to unleash the old anti-Semitic infectious bacillus. Thus Zionists caused the latest Saudi bombings, just as they have poisoned Arab-American relations, just as neo-conservatives hijacked American policy, just as Feith, Perle, and Wolfowitz cooked up this war.

Finally, bin Laden understood the importance of splitting the West, just like the sultan of old knew that a Europe trisected into Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism would fight among itself rather than unite against a pan-Islamic foe. Hit the Spanish and bring in an anti-American government. Leave France and Germany alone for a time so they can blame the United States for mobilizing against a "nonexistent" threat, unleashing the age-old envy and jealously of the American upstart.

If after four years of careful planning, al Qaedists hit the Olympics in August, the terrorists know better than we do that most Europeans will do nothing — but quickly point to the U.S. and scream "Iraq!" And they know that the upscale crowds in Athens are far more likely to boo a democratic America than they are a fascist Syria or theocratic Iran. Just watch.

Just follow the link above and read the whole thing!

Into a Miasma of Idiocy and Cowardice

2004-06-12T22:02:00.000+02:00

via vdh

To understand Reagan's greatness, we have to remember the toxic self-doubt that characterized the seventies and is best epitomized in one of our nation's worst presidents, Jimmy Carter. The elites in the academy, the media, and popular culture kept repeating one message: the United States and its institutions were hopelessly corrupt, and Americans are the dupes of sinister fascist forces that have created bogeys like communism and the Soviet Union in order to pursue their greed for profit and power. At home, racism, sexism, and environmental degradation were the fruits of these same wicked manipulators and their minions in the Republican Party. All our ideals such as freedom and equality were shams, the camouflage for oppression and exploitation. Vietnam and Watergate were supposedly the evidence for this indictment, the events that justified the failure of nerve that allowed the Soviet Union and its proxies to expand aggressively throughout the late seventies, and that tolerated the first attack by Islamists on the United States, the taking of the hostages in Tehran.

That this estimation was the peculiar superstition and irrational prejudice of a well-placed minority of Americans was proven by Reagan's political success. Into this miasma of moral relativism and cowardice he injected a simple message, all the more powerful because it was true: America is a force of good in the world, a champion of freedom, the sworn foe of tyranny everywhere. And the biggest tyranny and threat to freedom was the Soviet Union and its minions, the "focus of evil in the world," an "evil empire." While the oppressed in Eastern Europe cheered with relief that finally someone in the West had got it, the sophisticated pundits and intellectuals derided Reagan's words as simplistic and reductive, without nuance or subtlety, more suitable in a movie like Star Wars than in a presidential speech.

So Reagan the alleged simpleton went to Berlin and said what millions of Americans with common sense had been saying for years: "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Any bar-room philosopher uncorrupted by the typical university's general ed courses could figure out that if communism is so great, why do you need a wall--and hundreds of thousands of troops in Eastern Europe--to keep people from leaving? The "progressives" gnashed their teeth in rage at hearing their failing god besmirched, but the simple truth of Reagan's question was devastating in its effects. He pulled aside the curtain to reveal decrepit old communist New Man working his ideological dials and levers, while the apologists for communist tyranny in the West squeaked, like the Wizard of Oz, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" But it was too late. In a year the Communist utopia worshiped for decades by Western useful idiots was gone with the wind.

...

The greatest oddity, however, of the current adulation is that we are in the midst of another spasm of self-doubt and moral uncertainty on the part of the same elites, many of whom right now are acknowledging Reagan's greatness. The hand-wringing in the media over Iraq reflects the same sort of failure of nerve disguised as sophisticated critical thought on the part of those who do not have faith in the rightness of our ideals and values. For the true test of that faith is the courage to accept that action will always carry with it consequences and mistakes we would never choose, and that often some must die today so that more do not die later.

The most important question, however, raised by our consideration of Reagan's legacy is whether or not George Bush can live up to that model and prosecute the war against Islamist radicalism with the same dedication Reagan showed against communism. After 9/11 President Bush indeed showed that same sort of grit, and suffered the same derision that Reagan endured for calling a tyrannical spade a spade, as Bush did after his "axis of evil" speech.

But since then he has faltered at times, particularly in his adherence to the notion that Islamist radicalism is an anomalous deformation of Islamic civilization created by political and economic conditions, rather than an expression of an essential part of Islam. For the Islamist threat will never be removed until we compel Islamic civilization itself to face up to its dysfunctions and adapt to the modern world, instead of enabling their denial by validating the various excuses--autocratic regimes, globalization, the Israeli-Arab conflict, or colonial and imperial after-effects--always trotted out to obscure the cultural causes of terror.

We won't know whether George Bush can live up to Reagan's legacy, of course, until after the election. But one thing we know for sure: John Kerry as president would be the anti-Reagan, his administration a return to the politics of doubt and moral uncertainty that pleases the "progressive" elites, delights our rivals, and heartens our enemies, but that puts this nation at risk. The greatest homage to Ronald Reagan will not be the media's hypocritical puffery but rather the election of George Bush to a second term.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

2004-06-11T13:09:00.000+02:00

via lgf

Palestinian nationalism is the hot new cause for the cool kids, and the new (or is it old?) anti-Semitism is the handiwork of the far-left and their radical campus friends from the Middle East.

Most of the students who promote a free Palestine don't hate Jews, whatever they think of Israeli counter-terrorism. But they put up with hate in the ranks all the same. Even the more radical and racist Palestinian activists are "allies" in the campus cause du jour.

Meanwhile, Daniel Pipes, an articulate opponent of radical Islam and its armed terrorist factions actually was called a racist and worse at his campus speech in Berkeley, as the East Bay Express article reports. Mr. Pipes, who wisely said "militant Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution," is hardly an Islamophobe or a racist. It's just a back-alley libel against a historian of the Middle East because he doesn't toe the radical leftist line.

This is what Political Correctness has become. Mere opponents are falsely denounced as "racists" while virulently racist allies are given a pass by the very same people.

It's bad enough that the torchbearers of Political Correctness compromised their honorable anti-racist principles with expediency and hypocrisy. But what's left of Political Correctness is worse even than that. There's also something implicitly racist about it. White Christians are held to the highest possible standard. They're expected not to have a racist thought in their heads and are called out for the slightest infraction. Culprits who really are racist (and who aren't merely guilty of checking the "wrong" box on their voter registration) deserve all the shellacking they get. Meanwhile, however, ethnic and religious minorities are allowed to behave like skinheads. It looks as though the activist set expects hatemongering anti-social behavior from Muslim immigrants just as they expect a dog to pee on the rug. It's the "soft bigotry of low expectations" with a racial twist.

I could be wrong. Maybe the double standard isn't racist at all. Maybe it's all about fear. For the politically correct activist, nothing is worse than being denounced as a racist. Who would want to suffer the Daniel Pipes treatment? Criticize Muslim anti-Semitism and your comrades just might lump you in with the Klan. Maybe the PC brigade is afraid -- literally -- of itself.

If skinheads or neo-Nazis were behind the spasms of anti-Semitism we all know there would be huge demonstrations and community action to neutralize and expunge it. Whenever the Klan plans rallies anywhere they face enormous counter-protests. But since the new anti-Semitism is imported from another part of the world, too many people feel queasy about taking a stand against immigrants.

I understand. I feel awkward myself lecturing immigrants from the third world. But I wouldn't think twice about giving a European skinhead a good shove in the chest. If I moved to another country I would hope to be given a break while I adjusted. No one can instantly adapt to a new culture. If you want to give immigrants a pass on some things, good for you. But if an exchange student from, say, Egypt scrawls "Die, Juden" next to a swastika on a wall, come on, it's time to get over it.

Political Correctness is finished. What started out as intolerance of hate has become hatred's enabler. It fails to live up to its own standard and can't possibly become more absurd than it already is. It slid all the way down the slippery slope and annihilated itself.

Thanking America, Blair and Bush

2004-06-09T22:33:00.000+02:00

via wsj

First in Arabic and then in English, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address to the Iraqi people last Tuesday that "I would like to record our profound gratitude and appreciation to the U.S.-led international coalition, which has made great sacrifices for the liberation of Iraq." In his own remarks, President Ghazi al-Yawer said: "Before I end my speech, I would like us to remember our martyrs who fell in defense of freedom and honor, as well as our friends who fell in the battle for the liberation of Iraq."

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the U.N. Security Council much the same thing last Thursday: "We Iraqis are grateful to the coalition who helped liberate us from the persecution of Saddam Hussein's regime. We thank President Bush and Prime Minister Blair for their dedication and commitment."

We Dissidents Were Ecstatic

2004-06-09T22:12:00.000+02:00

via jpost

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil.
Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

Those same critics used to love calling Reagan a simpleton who saw the world through a primitive ideological prism and who would convey his ideas through jokes and anecdotes. In our first meeting, he told me that Soviet premier Brezhnev and Kosygin, his second-in-command, were discussing whether they should allow freedom of emigration. "Look, America's really pressuring us," Brezhnev said, "maybe we should just open up the gates. The problem is, we might be the only two people who wouldn't leave." To which Kosygin replied, "Speak for yourself."

What his critics didn't seem to understand was that the jokes and anecdotes that so endeared Reagan to people were merely his way of expressing fundamental truths in a way that everyone could understand.

Reagan's tendency to confuse names and dates, something I, too, experienced first-hand, also made him the target of ridicule. In September 1987, a few months before a summit meeting with Gorbachev in Washington, I met with Reagan to ask him what he thought about the idea of holding a massive rally of hundreds of thousands of people on behalf of Soviet Jewry during the summit. Some Jewish leaders, concerned that if the rally were held Jews would be accused of undermining a renewed hope for peace between the superpowers, had expressed reservations about such a frontal challenge to the Soviet premier.

Seeing me together for the first time with my wife Avital, who had fought for many years for my release, Reagan greeted us like a proud grandparent, knowing he had played an important role in securing my freedom. He told us about his commitment to Soviet Jewry. "My dear Mr. and Mrs. Shevardnadze," he said, "I just spoke with Soviet Foreign Minister Sharansky, and I said you better let those Jews go."

Not wanting to embarrass the president over his mistake, I quickly asked him about the rally, outlining the concerns raised by some of my colleagues. His response was immediate: "Do you think I am interested in a friendship with the Soviets if they continue to keep their people in prison? You do what you believe is right."

Reagan may have confused names and dates, but his moral compass was always good. Today's leaders, in contrast, may know their facts and figures, but are often woefully confused about what should be the simplest distinctions between freedom and tyranny, democrats and terrorists.

Be an Active Part of BBC

2004-06-09T13:10:00.000+02:00

Be an active Part of BBC News, and use the Feedback Form.

(1) Factual Errors

While you in your "Manhunt after attack on BBC crew" called the "Islamic militants" that happened to shot several of your colleagues "terrorists",

your article "Israeli strike on Gaza workshop" refers to the terrorist(?) group Hamas again as an "Islamic militant group".

I m a little confused?

(1) Was the previous "terrorist" remark just a one-time "factual" error?

/*Or

(2) do you only switch to the "terror-mode" if one of your own people gets hurt?

And wouldn't that be a supremacist ("BBC ueber alles", in particular BBC >>> ordinary people, American soldiers, Israeli kids) and immoral attitude?

I would think so.

Why not call Hamas plainly "Islamic Resistance Movement", and just repeat what they say all the time, it would spare you a lot of time and work and danger, but might not fit with "your journalistic ethos",

or would it?*/

(2) Complain

While you in your "Manhunt after attack on BBC crew" called the "Islamic militants" that happened to shot several of your colleagues "terrorists",

your article "Israeli strike on Gaza workshop" refers to the terrorist(?) group Hamas again as an "Islamic militant group".

I m a little confused?

(1) Was the previous "terrorist" remark just a one-time "factual" error?

Or

(2) do you only switch to the "terror-mode" if one of your own people gets hurt?

And wouldn't that be a supremacist ("BBC ueber alles", in particular BBC >>> ordinary people, American soldiers, Israeli kids) and immoral attitude?

I would think so.

Why not call Hamas plainly "Islamic Resistance Movement", and just repeat what they say all the time, it would spare you a lot of time and work and danger, but might not fit with "your journalistic ethos",

or would it?

Prove the Doomsters Wrong

2004-06-08T01:14:00.000+02:00

via blackfive

Can Iraq become a democracy? “There is no need to ask the question,” says Hoshyar Zebari, who has retained his post as foreign minister. “Iraq today has no choice but to become a democracy. Our people know that without democracy there will be no Iraq.”

He is right. Even if a fresh despot fancied turning Iraq back into a dictatorship it would prove a nigh impossible task. The edifice of despotism built over almost half a century has been reduced to debris. Saddam is in prison, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. His ruling party has evaporated and his military and police machine has been shattered.

The Soviet-style economic system, controlled by a corrupt elite, is being rapidly replaced by one based on enterprise and the market.

The new government — which includes five women — appears to be a broad-based coalition representing Iraq’s ethnic, religious and political diversity. The president is Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni, the deputy president is Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shi’ite, and the second deputy is Rowsch Shways, a Kurd. But it will need strong support in military, political and economic terms for some time, as the increased violence that marred last week’s ceremony demonstrates.

Allawi said he expected Iraq to continue its close “partnership” with the US and European states after the handover of partial powers. He said “friendly” countries would continue “defending Iraq until it could defend itself”.

Key to the success of the provisional government is the perception that it holds real power.

It is imperative that it controls Iraq’s armed services and police and has a real say in how the coalition uses its forces in Iraq. The government must also control Iraq’s oil income and have a say in how the American aid package is spent.

For a country emerging from half a century of dictatorship and three wars in one generation, things in Iraq are better than anyone might have expected. Even a moderate success here could transform the whole of the Middle East.

Iraq is not about to disintegrate. Nor is it on the verge of civil war. Nor is it about to repeat Iran’s mistake by establishing a repressive theocracy. Despite becoming the focus of anti-American energies in the past year, its people still hold the West in high regard. Iraq has difficult months ahead, nobody would dispute that. But it has a chance to create a new society. Its well-wishers should keep the faith and prove the doomsters wrong.

What might have enlighten them?

2004-06-08T00:09:00.000+02:00

via lgf

Wow! I lived up to see the British Broadcasting Cooperation actually calling Islamic terrorists neither "extremists" nor "militants" but simply "terrorists".

How come? What might have enlighten them?

And more important: will they have learned their lesson now?

I doubt it.

Germany is a Sponsor of Terrorism

2004-06-07T12:03:00.000+02:00

via jihadwatch

Germany doesn't support "American adventures" but it apparently supports terrorism, riot and crime.

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has spent about £4 million, which it received in return for releasing 17 European tourists kidnapped last year, on surface-to-air missiles, heavy machine-guns and mortars.

It also bought satellite positioning equipment to enable it to conceal and later return to weapons caches buried in the sands of the Sahara.

I already disdained the happy Sahara hostages and the German government for paying ransom for them, but when I saw the photo of that “hostage” posing with an AK47 of their kidnappers, I could puke.

What a slut!

Sorry Tom, I'm ashamed of them

2004-06-07T00:42:00.000+02:00

As an American, I cannot understand the animosity prevalent throughout the world against my nation, my countrymen, and myself. Please help me understand. I have spent these last few hours surfing international news; particularly the comments on BBC.co.uk Talking Points and learned…

Reagan was a warmongering monster and mass murderer. Reagan was responsible for the spread of AIDS. Reagan should have let the Soviets have Afghanistan and anywhere else they desired. D-Day was a waste of life fought over Imperialism (not against Fascism). The Soviets could have defeated the Nazis on their own in WWII with better results for people around the world. The men on the Arab street are only angry with Americans over Iraq, so no terrorism previously existed and we deserve it anyway. Only Americans should be held accountable for the actions of any government on the planet. No westerners should be allowed in Saudi Arabia, but the reverse and equal position that non-westerners should not be allowed in the western world would be considered racist and ignorant by the same people that hold the opposite view. I have created Arab anger. I have created Islamic extremism. I have created corruption and violence in Islam and Arab governments. I have made Muslim extremists (those lovers of justice and liberal principles) hate Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Atheists, Hindus, Gays and everyone else. I am to blame there is no cure for AIDS. I am to blame because African governments and culture have ignored the fact of AIDs for 30 years. I am to blame for global warming since the Ice Age.

How can Americans be to blame for all of the bad, but get no portion of credit for any of the good. I should fix all these things that I have done, knowing full well I will do it completely wrong and the result will be for the worse, or my contribution will be useless. Too late. Not enough. Not right. I have done no good. I find this world hopelessly confusing. Please help me understand. My grandfather fought in WWII for nothing? My countrymen fought and died in two world wars on European soil for nothing? My father fought in Vietnam for nothing? God bless Ronald Reagan and the soldiers from all those in all nations who have fought for the freedom and representative governments of the ungrateful and unfair.

Posted by: TomPenn on "Davids Medienkritik" Juni 6, 2004

A Painfully Familiar Ring

2004-06-06T12:43:00.000+02:00

via c&f and wsj

Before Pearl Harbor but long after the character of Hitlerism was clear--after the Nuremberg laws, the Kristallnacht pogrom, the establishment of Dachau and the Gestapo--American intellectuals tended to be dead against the U.S. joining Britain's war on Hitler.

Today's students learn (sometimes) about right-wing isolationists like Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters. They are less likely to read documents like this, which appeared in Partisan Review (the U.S. intelligentsia's No. 1 favorite mag) in fall 1939, signed by John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer Schapiro and many more of the era's leading lights. "The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan of 'Stop Hitler!' would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. . . . The American masses can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties." The intelligentsia acted on its convictions. "By one means or another," Diana Trilling later wrote of this period, "most of the intellectuals of our acquaintance evaded the draft."

Why rake up these Profiles in Disgrace? Because in the Iraq War era they have a painfully familiar ring.

A Great American

2004-06-06T11:54:00.000+02:00

via gwb

Ronald Reagan won America's respect with his greatness, and won its love with his goodness. He had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom. He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.

During the years of President Reagan, America laid to rest an era of division and self-doubt. And because of his leadership, the world laid to rest an era of fear and tyranny. Now, in laying our leader to rest, we say thank you.

Thank You

2004-06-06T00:08:00.000+02:00

Well, the task I’ve set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best —— a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Rest in Peace.

June 6, 1984

2004-06-05T22:35:00.000+02:00

via ashbrook

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought—or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.

There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance—a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose—to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

Ronald Reagan
U.S. Ranger Monument
Pointe du Hoc, France

Nothing but Misery

2004-06-05T16:29:00.000+02:00

via commentary

Israel cannot swallow the Palestinians. It cannot drive them out. It cannot arrive at a peaceful settlement with them. All it can do is disengage itself from them.

It is not an ideal solution. A better one would have been a negotiated partition in which Israelis and Palestinians would live in two separate but friendly states within the geographical framework of one, mutually accessible country. But such an arrangement, if it was ever feasible, is so no longer. Four years of Palestinian terrorism, and the lawlessness of a Palestinian society that has come to be dominated by fanatically Israel-hating gunmen and religious groups, make it evident that a Palestinian state friendly to Israel is an impossibility in our time. And since Israelis have no particular interest in an unfriendly Palestinian state, it is enough for them to concentrate on being a Jewish state with militarily and demographically defensible borders while letting the Palestinians fend for themselves.

What the Palestinians will then do politically is an open question. But it is, indeed, time to reexamine the commonplace that the Palestinians need to have their own state, which has become such a shibboleth of contemporary intellectual and diplomatic discourse that even politicians and Middle East specialists sympathetic to Israel mouth it as an axiom. But why should it be axiomatic? Because all national and ethnic groups that want their own states and have struggled for them must get them, in the name of self-determination? If so, why is it not a commonplace that there should be a state of Tibet, a state of Southern Sudan, a Tamil state in Sri Lanka?

And why is it an axiom in today’s world that the Kurds should not have a state? Why, of all the peoples on earth who have not yet been granted the sovereignty they have fought for—the Chechnyans, the Uighurs of China, the Karens of Burma, the Mizos and Nagas of northeast India, the Ibo of Nigeria, the Western Saharans of Morocco, the Acehans of Indonesia, to name but a few—should the Palestinians alone be universally acknowledged as deserving of it? Is it perhaps because, having attained a degree of political independence that few other nonsovereign peoples have achieved, they have systematically wasted the opportunity by creating an authoritarian, corrupt, and anarchically violent political structure that has brought them and others nothing but misery?

If anything, there are far less compelling reasons for a Palestinian state than there are in the case of other peoples. Apart from the competence to manage one’s own affairs, of which the Palestinians have so far demonstrated little, one important criterion for statehood must surely be the degree to which a people is different from its neighbors and needs the framework of sovereignty to protect that uniqueness. The Tibetans, for example, have their own special culture, language, and religion, which they will lose if they continue to be ruled by the Chinese; the Kurds have a culture and language unlike that of the Arabs; the Karens a language and religion different from that of the Burmese.

But the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza have none of these things. They are Muslims just like the Arabs of Jordan and Syria. They speak the same dialect of Arabic that is spoken in Jordan and Syria. They have the same family structure, customs, dress, foods, music, and social values that are found in Jordan and Syria. And they live in an environment whose physical landscape, flora, fauna, and climate are indistinguishable from much of Jordan and Syria. Moreover, they share a common border with the Arabs of Jordan and have strong kinship ties with them, there being hardly a West Bank family that does not have relatives there. If the international community expects the Tibetans to get along as part of China, the Kurds as part of Iraq, and the Karens as part of Burma, why, apart from kowtowing to Arab pressure, should the Palestinians not be expected to get along as part of Jordan?

After four years of being the target of unremitting Palestinian terror, Israel does not owe the Palestinians anything except the obligation to let them live their own lives, free of Israeli domination and control—or, conversely, to extend full citizenship and civil rights to the small number of them ending up on the Israeli side of a unilaterally determined border. Those on the other side can reunite with Jordan, to which the West Bank belonged from 1949 to 1967. (The Gaza Strip, too, could be linked to Jordan by means of a corridor.) They would certainly enjoy a more stable and prosperous life under the Jordanian government than they did under the PLO.

Never again! Jamais plus!

2004-06-05T12:22:00.000+02:00

via Allah

"Merde in France" has moved to "¡No Pasarán!".

Commemorate Tiananmen

2004-06-05T11:40:00.000+02:00

via wsj

Wang Dan and I were young men who thought we could change the world. Instead we inadvertently led a lot of people to their deaths. That has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people, and an apology is a first step toward healing that pain. However, ours is not the most important apology, the apology that will allow my exiled generation to go home. That apology is still to come, from the men who ordered the killings.

I spent months thinking about how yesterday's 15th anniversary of the June 4 massacre should be marked. It was difficult to decide. The world has changed. These, in so many ways, are less idealistic times than those giddy days of the fall of the Berlin Wall--when anything briefly seemed possible.

But, if we could return to that idealism--in the spirit of the students who took to the streets of Beijing in 1989--I would ask the world to spend it looking hard at the China with which it has struck business deals, and remembering the mother in Beijing who is still waiting for that apology. Until it comes, China will remain a dark place.

Without that apology, China's progress in the past 15 years will be incomplete. The acceleration of economic freedoms that has brought such prosperity to urban China since Tiananmen was an acknowledgement by the Chinese government that students of my generation had a right to protest. But the wait for an apology is a reminder of what we failed to achieve: freedom of speech and democracy.

The apology that all of China awaits is the long-suppressed next stage of the unfinished revolution that began on the streets of Beijing in 1989. Sooner or later--whether through people power, or reforms initiated by Chinese leaders--that stage will have to come.

Mr. Wu'er Kaixi, a Tiananmen student leader, is now exiled in Taiwan.

Arafish and the "CIA-Exiles"

2004-06-05T00:16:00.000+02:00

via krauthammer

As of this week, we have an interim Iraqi government, remarkably balanced in terms of ethnicity, region and tribe. Such encouraging developments, however, are apparently not to be permitted to puncture the current defeatism.

A moderate Shiite is appointed prime minister, and the headlines prominently mention that he was supported by the CIA, thus implicitly encouraging the notion that the man is illegitimate.

First of all, from where was an Iraqi exile, hunted by Saddam Hussein, to get help, if not from the CIA and MI6? From France? Germany? Russia? Kofi Annan? George Soros?

Second, Ayad Allawi cooperated with the CIA in a mission that was entirely honorable (though terribly bungled by the CIA): a coup to overthrow the Hussein dictatorship.

Then it is said that this new Iraqi government is illegitimate because it consists of just the old, discredited interim Iraqi Governing Council reappointing itself. In fact, the new government of 36 ministers contains just four from the Governing Council.

Then comes my favorite: The new government has no legitimacy because it is composed of so many exiles. What kind of political leadership does one expect in a country that endured three decades of Stalinist tyranny in which any expression of opposition met with torture and death?

Strange. I do not remember any of these critics complaining about the universally hailed Oslo peace accords that imposed upon the Palestinians a PLO government flown in from Tunisia composed nearly entirely of political exiles.

Ah, but Yasser Arafat, thug and terrorist, instantly wins legitimacy in the eyes of Western intelligentsia because he is a self-proclaimed revolutionary, while Iraq's interim prime minister, who was nearly axed to death by Hussein's agents in London, is dismissed as an "exile."

Who better than these exiles -- some rather heroic, many of whom created and sustained organized political opposition for decades -- to run a transitional government? Note: Transitional. Unlike the Palestinian Authority, a tyrannous kleptocracy that grabbed power and has not relinquished it for 10 years, this Iraqi government will be out of business in seven months. Its major function is to prepare elections, which will ratify the rise of indigenous leaders who have emerged in the (by then) year and a half since the fall of Hussein.

Michael Moore is a Screwed Asshole

2004-06-03T20:43:00.000+02:00

I already knew that, but thanks to ashbrook and Secular Blasphemy I learned today that Ray Bradbury, the author of "Fahrenheit 451", obviously agrees.

Al Reuters' Angry Iraqi Slurs

2004-06-03T19:37:00.000+02:00

via weeklystandard

THE ANGRY IRAQI first made his appearance at the start of the war, as Coalition troops raced through Umm Qasr on their way to Baghdad. While reporters from other organizations saw crowds giving Coalition troops the thumbs up and people tearing Saddam posters off the wall, Reuters found the Angry Iraqi. "We don't want Americans here," said one Hussein to Reuters correspondent Rosalind Russell. Another defiantly pulled a picture of the dictator out of his waistband. "Saddam is our leader. Saddam is good." Did anyone favor liberation? Clearly, if anyone did, Russell couldn't find them. On the same day--March 23, 2003--up the road in Shiite Safwan, Reuters' Michael Georgy had a real scoop. A few days into the war, Iraqis already had decided that the occupation was a failure. "I swear it was better when Saddam was here," claimed one Jamal Kathim, whose "angry friends" all nodded in agreement. "The Americans and British said this was going to be a liberation but it is an occupation," said one Majid, who, at age 15, was clearly a good source for sophisticated geopolitical analysis.

...

When U.S. forces succeeded in killing Uday and Qusay Hussein, an event other reports said was largely celebrated throughout the country, Michael Georgy could only find Iraqis who were outraged. "We will fight and fight until they leave," said Badr Mohammed--another of Reuters' eloquent 15-year-old sources.

MORE RECENTLY, Reuters' attention has fallen on Moktada al Sadr's abortive anti-Coalition rebellion where. "You Americans, do not fall into a quagmire," warned Sadr City Sheik Nassar al Saedi, "Rivers of your blood will flow." Reuters then goes on to cite their usual collection of America haters, who "damn [us] always."

What's going on here? Do Iraqis hate us with such complete uniformity?

Polls, most recently a March 2004 ABC News survey show that Iraqis are as divided about the war as we are. According to the review, 48 percent of Iraqis thought the United States was right to invade; 51 percent want coalition forces gone, though in months, not immediately, 39 percent want Coalition troops to stay. Though Reuters reports prominently feature Iraqis who favor the slaughtering of Coalition forces, only 17 percent of Iraqis favor attacks while 78 percent oppose them.

Overall, despite the uniform view of Reuters' Angry Iraqi that things are worse in Iraq because of the invasion, only 19 percent of those surveyed agree while 23 percent say conditions are the same, and 56 percent say they are better. To read Reuters, you would think that Iraqis' first priority is ejecting Coalition forces, preferably in body bags. The ABC poll says that the biggest concern of Iraqis (64 percent) is "Regaining public security."

ARE REUTERS REPORTERS the victims of chance? Have they simply not been able to find Iraqis who think well of the Coalition and see their lot as improving? Perhaps. Or perhaps there's something more going on.

According to the "Trust Principles" posted on their website, Reuters is "committed to reporting the facts. . . . We do not take sides. . . . Reuters' journalists do not offer opinions or views." (Indeed, days after the September 11 attacks, Reuters took down the digital U.S. flag that was displayed outside its New York office in Times Square. It didn't want anyone to conclude that it supported the United States, as opposed to Osama Bin Laden.)

Yet the "Trust Policy" gives Reuters reporters a more subtle way to editorialize. We "avoid the use of emotive terms," it says, "[E]xcept when we are quoting someone directly or in indirect speech." Since Reuters reporters aren't allowed to tell readers what they think about the Coalition and George Bush, they let the Angry Iraqi do it for them.

His Truth is marching on

2004-06-03T17:57:00.000+02:00

via gwb

Some who call themselves "realists" question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality. America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat. America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.

All our commitments in the Middle East -- all of the four commitments of our strategy -- are now being tested in Iraq. We have removed a state-sponsor of terror with a history of using weapons of mass destruction. And the whole world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell. (Applause.) We now face al Qaeda associates like the terrorist Zarqawi, who seek to hijack the future of that nation. We are fighting enemies who want us to retreat, and leave Iraq to tyranny, so they can claim an ideological victory over America. They would use that victory to gather new strength, and take their violence directly to America and to our friends.

Yet our coalition is determined, and the Iraqi people have made clear: Iraq will remain in the camp of free nations. (Applause.)

...

As we fight the war on terror in Iraq and on other fronts, we must keep in mind the nature of the enemy. No act of America explains terrorist violence, and no concession of America could appease it. The terrorists who attacked our country on September the 11th, 2001 were not protesting our policies. They were protesting our existence. Some say that by fighting the terrorists abroad since September the 11th, we only stir up a hornet's nest. But the terrorists who struck that day were stirred up already. (Applause.) If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and elsewhere, what would these thousands of killers do, suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? (Laughter.) Would the terrorists who beheaded an American on camera just be quiet, peaceful citizens if America had not liberated Iraq? We are dealing here with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives. And America has made a decision about these terrorists: Instead of waiting for them to strike again in our midst, we will take this fight to the enemy. (Applause.)

Stay out of the Way

2004-06-01T23:46:00.000+02:00

via aspen

I am not convinced, Monsieur Barnier!

Welt am Sonntag, 30.05.2004

French foreign minister Michel Barnier warns the United States that the upcoming "transfer of power to the new (Iraqi) government must be a complete, sincere and clear one." It is time for the U.S. to act in a "credible" manner, the Minister adds. That a French politician can speak this way is surely a tribute to cynicism.

Wolfgang Koydl echoed another popular sentiment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung this week when he seemed to lament President Bush′s decision to ignore the will of the American people. "Was die meisten seiner Landsleute am liebsten von ihrem Präsidenten gehört hätten," schrieb Koydl," wäre ein festes Datum für einen Abzug der US-Truppen aus dem Irak gewesen." Ah, vox populi.

Americans never understood why Europeans could not take greater responsibility for Bosnia and Kosovo. So four years ago George W. Bush suggests withdrawing American forces from the Balkans. Remember the howls from European capitals about American unilateralism? Since when, by the way, did the French government become interested in the sovereignty and fate of the Iraqi people? If Jacques Chirac had his way, the tyrant Saddam Hussein would still rule in Baghdad today.

But these days it counts as bad form to mention such inconvenient little truths. The twin ideologies of EU nationalism and anti-Americanism trump facts nearly each and every time.

Take "Bush Lied." It is repeated in media ad nauseum. The drum beat is so steady that every ten-year-old and his dog knows that George W. used weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war. A respectable journalist proudly asserted to me recently that Joschka Fischer had been right all along! Fischer had said famously (in English): "I am not convinced." But to assert such things is either outright dishonesty or amnesia. What Fischer said was that he was not convinced that force was the right way to disarm Saddam Hussein. Fischer otherwise said that Germany′s assessment tracked with that of the Americans. Should we be chanting, "Fischer Lied"?

More interesting would be other questions such as why we all underestimated Saddam′s nuclear program in 1991. And why this time the opposite seems to have been the case. That′s right, America, the UK, Germany, France, Israel, the Arab world, and Peter Scholl-Latour all believed that Saddam was lying and concealing illegal weapons. We should be asking what is broken, how to fix it and what our intelligence services really know about what the Iranians and North Koreans are up to. "Bush Lied," though, feels so good and these other details seem like so much trouble, right?

There is also a continuing obsession with the so-called neo-conservatives. The dangerous "neo-cons," as we all know by now, hijacked American foreign policy. These Jewish intellectuals, we are told, are driven by blind loyalty to Israel. Thus their obsession to attack Iraq to make the Jewish state safer.

The problem is many prominent neo-conservatives are not Jewish (Jeane Kirkpatrick, Michael Novak, James Woolsey, and Gary Schmitt, the head of the most important neo-con think tank). Other neo-cons who are Jews have almost always pursued hard-line foreign policies, including in instances where Israel (and oil for that matter) played no role at all. Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and William Kristol, editor of the influential Weekly Standard magazine, were tough on arms control with the Soviets. They advocated force to defend Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Today they insist on protecting Taiwan against Communist China. Surely there was nothing mysterious when folks like these wanted to end the rule of the Butcher of Baghdad. They committed one additional unforgivable sin, however. They talked of prospects for Iraqi democracy, while realists, racists and cynical intellectuals knew that Arabs are incapable of pluralism, tolerance, and decent accountable government. Those terrible American ideologues!

Finally, there is the nonsense about Iraq already being lost. The anti-war crowd insists on feeling vindicated. Sorry. We Americans have made our share of mistakes. The challenges are immense. But ask yourself why, after revelations of American abuse at Abu Ghraib, 500,000 Iraqis were not marching in Baghdad. That′s because tens of thousands of Iraqi children have been immunized, new schools have been opened and municipal elections have been taking place. Health care is improving and social science--history, literature, for example--are being introduced for the first time into Iraqi universities.

Progress is messy and extremist violence is a serious problem. We Americans are good for a thousand new mistakes. But relax, Mssr. Barnier, real Iraqi sovereignty is on the way. For those who have credible offers of help, there is plenty of room. For others, it is time to stay out of the way, s′il vous plait.

I mirrored the whole thing, not because it might disappear but because it's overall brilliant and rather impossible to abbreviate.

Moral Relativism

2004-06-01T00:22:00.000+02:00

via Banagor

Moral Relativism seeks for all of us to walk a mile in another's moccasins. Thanks to the liberal and free mentality of the Western media, press, writers, commentators, and editorialists, and thanks to my experience abroad, I can safely say that I can perfectly well understand the point of view of any repressed people in the world. I can put myself in the shoes of any criminal whom has just stolen money to feed his starving family, or even understand the sheer dread of a rapist on death roe in Texas. Thanks to movies such as "Dead Man Walking", I can fully understand the horror of Death Penalty, which the Europeans seemingly abhor. Thanks to the World Press, I can even taste the fear of the Afghan refugees crowded around a line of food baskets waiting for a handout as their eyes look skyward in the hopes that no stray bombs will kill them or their immediate family. I can truly sense the horror of a wayward missile which has penetrated the house of an innocent group of Arab Palestinians whom are just trying to get out of harms' way while two opposing armies duke it out in the streets of Ramallah.

I can, to use the ultimate 60's relativism word, truly Grok it. I understand where they are coming from in ever single detail, and I feel their pain and despair.

I just happen not to agree with it. Does this make me wrong?

Well, to the Europeans, it seems that this does. You see, the Europeans have not forgotten that it may be sage and wise not to judge another's cultural tendencies and moralities, but they have forgotten the basic tenet of this new philosophy: to judge no cultures at all. In the Arab culture, it is perfectly acceptable (and even deemed heroic) to send in a suicide bomber and blow civilians to bits to make a political statement. This, the Europeans do not want to really judge. They say that it really is a terrible thing and a real shame. But they also point out that it is perfectly understandable if one is walking a mile in Arab sandals.

And yet, when, in our culture, it is perfectly acceptable to respond to such attacks and take out those who perpetrate such crimes as these, the Europeans seem perfectly fit to respond with a tirade of accusations, judging our culture from without. I understand the Arab point of view, but they should also understand mine: I accept the killing of such criminals (as freely labeled by MY cultural point of view) as a good thing, and I gosh darn wish the Europeans understood that my point of view is just as valid as the Arab point of view.

But no. Europe is being single-minded and unilateral in dealing its' judgment to others. They are, in effect, guilty of judging others when they themselves say that no one should be judged. The fact is that the Europeans have become some of the greediest, immoral, sniveling ungrateful snits of Moral Relativism in the world. They accuse America of egregious Capitalism, calling for more socialist reforms in our country, while they placate the Arab world for better business offers. They are not, in effect, real Moral Relativists but, more to the point, have become anti-American business lobbyists. They don't want us to bomb Iraq because it might upset their precious oil deals which enrich them with the blood money of Saddam Hussein. They say that they really are upset over the fact that thousands of Iraqis might die, but they didn't really do anything to stop the bloodshed in Kosovo, Somalia, the Sudan, Rwanda, the Congo, Lebanon, Kuwait, or even Bosnia. Wringing their hands in frightful poses and passing legislation from without, they still made business deals with all of these countries to enrich themselves, all the while as they point their fingers at us and scream bloody murder because we do nothing to stop it. Where was the spearhead of European forces into Srebrenica? Where was the righteous vanguard of European soldiers in Somalia? Where are the Europeans fighting to save lives, exactly? And if they no longer believe in any sort of violent confrontation, what on earth do they even have militaries for? It boggles the mind of this writer what earthly reason the Europeans have for maintaining nuclear submarines and war planes if they think that using them under any circumstances is a bad thing. Why not, say, just free themselves of the billions of dollars in annual cost and, instead, drop all of that money translated into food and medical supplies on needy refugees in Afghanistan?

And yet, all the while maintaining their military relevance, the Europeans do nothing but sit and complain and call their greatest defenders in the entire world names such as "crass" and "unsophisticated".

Well, here is a crass and unsophisticated reply from this cowboy: Get lost. We don't need you. Afghanistan was conquered without your help, and we don't really care what you think anymore. Go and sulk in your own little corner, pass bureaucratically stupid little resolutions about how terrible the rest of the world is, and get rid of your militaries because you don't really need them. But if things go according to plan, you won't have your petty little Arab dictatorships to placate and make deals with for much longer because, while we may fully understand your point of view and theirs, we don't agree with it. And when people get murdered in our culture, we drag them through cactus before hangin' them high.

Now...maybe they'll understand our point of view.

Nathaniel Harari
03.17.02

Hole to so many

2004-05-31T16:51:00.000+02:00

Can the US successfully pursue a war against terror without our traditional allies in Europe?

Hanson: In the narrow military sense, yes; but it is hard without their help in rounding up terrorists in Europe—the home to so many of our enemies such as the 9-11 killers. And when they unleash their formidable culture machinery—print, television, intelligentsia—against us, our problems multiply worldwide. Yet we have cards to play ourselves, starting with strengthening our alliances with Britain, Eastern Europe, and Japan, as well as withdrawing troops from Western Europe, reexamining NATO, and demanding radical changes in the UN. We must remain friends with Europe but that involves an entirely new relationship.

Progress in Iraq

2004-05-31T13:52:00.000+02:00

via NYT (therefore I copied the whole thing)

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: May 31, 2004

WASHINGTON — Have you read the encouraging headlines from Iraq? "Monthly U.S. Combat Deaths Down by Half in May" is one. "Radical Shiite Cleric's Militia Decimated in Holy Cities" is another, and finally: "Iraqi Leaders, Defying U.S. and U.N. Dictates, Choose Prime Minister."

No, those were not headlines anybody could see. In Gloomy Gus newsrooms, good news is no news. And as Handover Day arrives in a month, casualties may well rise, the semi-truce with al-Sadr's force in Najaf may break down ("decimated" means reduced by 10 percent), and — most likely — political bickering may break into the open in the selection of an Iraqi sovereign transition government. But consider the possibility, for a change, that on our Memorial Day, we have cause for cautious optimism.

Rather than admit this, our dovish defeatists have turned themselves into the hardest of hardliners. They ask: Why haven't we stormed Falluja instead of making a deal with the Sunni devils? Why don't we wipe out the Sadr Shiite rebels, as we threatened to do, even if it means shooting up mosques being used as arsenals?

Of course, if coalition forces were to crack down hard on the centers of insurgency and terror — as we should — the critics now going nyah-nyah would be asking: What about the hearts and minds of innocents caught in the crossfire? And what about the cost in U.S. lives? The "prophets of gloom and doom," in Adlai Stevenson's phrase, want to have bad news both ways.

But the naysayers were astounded, along with the U.N.'s Lakhdar Brahimi and the White House's Robert Blackwill, when Iraqi leaders started acting last week like Iraqi leaders. No thanks, they said to the U.N.-U.S. notion of an interim government of toothless technocrats, and rejected Brahimi's choice for the top slot. Like real politicians, they cut a few deals and chose one of their own — a secular Shiite, not an Islamist or a Sunni or a Kurd — to be prime minister.

Iyad Alawi is the Acceptable Arab. At the Ambrosetti conference in Italy last year, he and Adnan Pachachi — a Sunni in his 80's close to the Saudi royals — were the only Iraqis present. They spent most of their time in close consultation with Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League. Pachachi, whose exile ended with our overthrow of Saddam, was overtly ungrateful to the Americans.

Alawi, however, was noncommittal, so I plonked myself next to him at lunch and asked who was going to run Iraq after the U.S. left. He said only "I have a real political organization in Iraq." Mebbeso; at any rate, this tough-minded escapee from Saddam's assassins knows how to dicker with disparate colleagues and knew precisely when to make his move.

Present and former C.I.A. types, fresh from exacting their vengeance on their hated critic, Ahmad Chalabi, are telling media outlets that Alawi has always been their asset. This boasting by our leakiest intelligence agents is harmful to the presumptive prime minister because Alawi cannot let himself appear to be any outsider's puppet. But apparently some of our spooks feel that settling scores and falsely claiming credit takes precedence over U.S. and Iraqi interests.

Now the fast-fading three B's — Brahimi, Blackwill and Bremer — are joining with Alawi to put across Pachachi as figurehead president to appeal to the Arab League's Moussa. The Kurds, who have so far been outmaneuvered by Iraqi Arabs and, as usual, abandoned by our State department, prefer the younger Ghazi al-Yawar, sheik of the powerful Shamar Arab tribe and a businessman educated in the U.S.

The purpose of all this jockeying is to form an organization capable of holding an election in a country beset by Saddam loyalists and terrorists determined to block that election. This will take Iraqi politicians courageous enough to risk their lives, sensible enough to work closely with coalition generals to protect the voters from the killers, and persuasive enough to enlist many more Iraqis to join the fight for freedom.

Present Iraqi leaders like Alawi are clearly asserting themselves. We will not like all they insist upon. But they are lurching toward a democratic decision, and despite the hand-wringing of Gloomy Gus & Company, that's real progress.

Know Your Enemy

2004-05-30T21:37:00.000+02:00

I wanted to post excerpts from a worthwhile article by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, which I found via lgf.

But then I remembered that I live in Eurabia, home of the kinds of Jack Straw and Dominique de Villepin, and so I refused to do it, because I don't want to bother a predominantly hostile crowd with Talmudic sages and Joooish harm.

I refer to Victor Davis Hanson's Question Log:

It looks like Europeans hate Israel more than they love themselves, and encourage terrorists everywhere, including in Europe, by supporting the Palestinian 'struggle'. Is there any hope that they would wake up to that fact?

Hanson: No. Add as well oil, fear of terrorists, demographic concerns, the old anti-Semitism, hatred of an American ally, and guilt over colonialism and you have a pretty strong anti-Israel foundation. The key is not their hatred, but Israeli defiance and self-confidence; if Israelis can accept that hatred from a continent that gave them the holocaust, then all will be fine. But if they wish acceptance and love from Europe, they will be sorely disappointed and find themselves at great risk.

Backstabbing

2004-05-30T11:54:00.000+02:00

via misha

I’m so sick of people back home who barely have a fraction of a clue as to what’s happening out here pretend to care about my welfare and demand my return from Iraq-all the while inserting “This proves the war is immoral” or “I told you so!” in-between the lines. Told us what exactly? Only a handful of people addressed concern as to what happens after Saddam-and many in that crowd supported military action to oust him! Most of those in the so-called I-told-you-so crowd weren’t asking what happens afterward…they were too busy yelling “No blood for oil”, “No to Bush”, “This war is not in my name” and other uninspired and unimaginative manufactured (and/or recycled) anti-war slogans. Clearly these people don’t understand that if we surrender to adversity and terror like Spain and abandon the Iraqi people, one of two things will happen. Either:

Saddam’s brown-shirt thugs and their Ba’ath Party Butt-buddies stage a coup relying on what little military organization they still have left (after the 1st Marine Division gave them a much-overdue ass-whooping) and take control of Iraq and lay in the groundwork for another despot to take power-quite possibly another Saddam. End result? We’ll be back here to do this whole thing over again in 5-10 years.

Or

Al-Satan and his Illiterate Fanatics Club better known as the Mahdi Army take power, ushering in yet another extremist-run theocracy which, at best, will resemble the Iranian Inquisition and at worst will be in the likeness of the Taliban administration we just toppled in Afghanistan. What Al-Qaeda lost in Afghanistan they may yet gain in Iraq if we were to leave now. End result? We’re back here to do this whole thing over again in 5-10 years.

Either way you slice it, leaving now is only gonna leave Iraq in chaos that will resolve into yet another clusterfrell that will have us back here to do this whole thing over again sometime down the road and confirm to the Iraqi people the common Arab stereotype that Americans only care about Americans. Unfortunately, even in this case that stereotype would not be true. Because the simple fact is that they don’t care about me or the other Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen, either. They are using our hardships as a selling point for their naïve belief that Saddam and bin Laden could be reasoned with and that tyranny can somehow be overcome by unsupported diplomacy. Yet a historical example of such a feat cannot be found without the said diplomacy being backed up by serious firepower, in which case it’s hardly unsupported. The only ways tyranny has been overcome historically has been by means of military victory or revolution…and both include bloodshed. Does this fact suck royale? You bet! But such is the way of this fallen world.

I’m getting a bit off topic, but the fact remains that the primary failure of reason on the part of those claiming to be so utterly concerned about my safety is that somehow their actions back home are going to achieve the desired effect of inducing emotional euphoria on their audience so that some of those who actually do support the troops are actually going to embrace them because they pretend to show concern. As such, it bears the asking-what have you done to support us lately? How is interfering with the completion of our mission supporting us? Why do you, with your incomplete picture of Iraq, assume that because some of us aren’t coming home mean that our situation here is hopeless and that our efforts are meaningless?

Better yet, let’s wax historical! Did the fact that the 29th ID took heavy casualties merit a withdrawal from Omaha Beach? Did the fact that the Marines on Iwo Jima faced incredible resistance from a motivated enemy determined to die fighting mean that the battle was hopeless and the war was immoral? Remember the opening scenes from Saving Private Ryan? By those accounts, was Operation Overlord a failure? Could Operation Overlord been less bloody if there were more troops and they had better equipment? Sure it would have, but was the fact that they didn’t all Roosevelt’s fault? Where were all the I-told-you-so nay-sayers then? Does this mean Roosevelt failed our troops and our nation? If Roosevelt had not been elected, would Pearl Harbor never have been attacked?

I could go on all day, but that fact remains that your pseudo-support is not fooling us and is not appreciated. No one questions your right to protest our efforts and speak out against the war. Part of our job is risking our own lives and forgoing all our comforts to confront the threats, foreign and domestic, to preserve your freedom to speak your mind and even use us as political fodder. But don’t start believing your own propaganda that you’re “doing it for the troops”.

We’re out here for you all, folks. You may not “feel” safer because of this war, but the fact that Al-Qaeda is spending all its remaining time and resources trying to fight us in their backyard just like what we did at Inchon means that the tangos are too busy trying to take us on, a well-armed force, instead of trying to slaughter you in another terror attack. Care packages, letters of support, and little yellow ribbons are nice, but we don’t expect them and we would still be committed to your defense even in their absence. Hell, even if we didn’t get an occasional “thank you” we would still be holding the shield without complaint. But using our images to foster an emotional orgy to fuel your pet agenda isn’t out of concern for us. It’s not gratitude for our willingness to walk in dark places where unspeakable evil lurks. It’s not admiration for foregoing lives of wealth, privilege, and freedom for the poverty, loneliness, and desolation of the battlefield from where we may not return. It’s not even basic respect. It’s stabbing us in the back.

Neoconservatives

2004-05-29T19:16:00.000+02:00

via wsj

Cynics may be correct that many U.S. citizens are unaware of the actual content of the Constitution, but they are very aware of its basic purpose: to restrict the power of the government in the name of individual liberty. The U.S. Constitution is essentially a product of 18th-century Enlightenment thought that elevates the protection of individual liberty as a core purpose of government. As a result, many of the rights set down in it are protections against the intrusion of the state (e.g., "Congress shall make no law . . ."). Regardless of the number of individuals who can cite chapter and verse from the Constitution, most understand that it is a document designed to protect the citizen from an overreaching government.

This is a very different social contract from what is found in European constitutions. Those documents were generally drafted later and reflect social democratic ideas arising in the 19th century. As a result, they often establish expanded conceptions of what the state will provide its citizens, including social security, housing, and even environmental protection. Often those same constitutions also spell out what the citizen is expected to give the state in return, such as obligatory military service.

The difference is quite fundamental. The U.S. Constitution puts a premium on individual liberty and freedom from governmental interference in the citizens' daily affairs. Most European constitutions place a premium on social harmony, reserving the right of the state to more directly affect the lives of its citizens for the provision of specific public goods. One can argue that those documents are a reflection of the values found in their societies or, conversely, that the values found in society are imposed by the system of governance flowing from the founding document. Either way, the end result is that Europe and the United States hold up different ideas about the role of government and the ideals that undergird the political system.

We should be skeptical of making vast generalizations based on such a cursory look at a few documents--clearly there are exceptions--but the assessment presented here is a condensation of longstanding comparative analyses. What is important to note, however, is that it is precisely those principles that distinguish the United States from Europe that neoconservatives have invoked to argue for the current direction of American foreign policy.

It is difficult to define neoconservative foreign policy or to spell out what distinguishes it from other strains of political thought. Originally the label was applied to former leftists who became anticommunist after World War II and to Democrats who found themselves more in the Republican camp in the post-Vietnam era. But many of the individuals identified as neocons today are too young to have been part of the original group or were never associated with the Democratic Party.

Some turn to a more arcane definition of "the neoconservatives" as the students of the University of Chicago political philosophy professor Leo Strauss. Others note the Jewish surnames of many of the president's foreign affairs and defense advisors and hint darkly that the U.S. government is being manipulated for the benefit of Israel. Once again, these definitions fail to satisfy. Strauss may have been an influence on some, but it is difficult to believe that a relatively obscure philosophy professor dead for 30 years could now suddenly wield such influence over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. By the same token, many of President Bush's advisors may indeed have Jewish roots, but many do not; it is, moreover, truly bizarre to believe that individuals can work their way to the top of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus by advocating the interests of another state to the detriment of the United States.

More often than not, the label is now employed as a pejorative to mean "hawkish on foreign policy." But this description applies to much of the American public since September 11. What has happened is that some commentators and defense intellectuals associated with the neocon label have been successful after 9/11 in articulating ideas that resonate with the general public and deep-seated beliefs that have historically guided the conduct of American foreign policy.

As much as some may have wanted to push the U.S. toward intervention in Iraq and take a firmer line with state supporters of terrorism, it simply was not politically possible until the clear and present danger presented itself. The arguments of Paul Wolfowitz and others were originally made in the early 1990s. They pressed for a more interventionist policy based on the threat to U.S. national security posed by inaction in the Greater Middle East, particularly in Iraq. One does not have to look any further than the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992 (co-authored by Mr. Wolfowitz), which in part advises removing the Saddam Hussein regime, to see the pattern. Others have long been advocating increased U.S. pressure on other regimes in the region, such as Iran and Syria. But it was not until September 11 that such a policy could have resonance in American public opinion.

There is also a strong misperception in Europe that the ideas ascribed to the neocons represent a small, extreme faction of the Republican Party. Although the so-called neocons may in general be Republicans, their ideas have a fair degree of approval within the ranks of the Democratic Party as well. In my own recollection, the first two individuals to promote the idea of military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power were both Democratic Party figures--one a retired congressman and the other a former Clinton administration official. It also bears repeating that 81 Democrats in the House voted in favor of authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq. Clearly there is more involved here than a handful of Rasputin-like ideologues whispering in the president's ear.

In truth, much of what has been identified as the neoconservative agenda has little to do with Republican versus Democrat; it is more a contest between realists and idealists--with the neocons firmly in the idealist camp. Realists are generally conservative in the true sense of the word. They do not seek to take risks to extend liberal democratic ideals. On the contrary, they seek to maintain American primacy and would not risk diluting finite resources to take on an enormous and protracted mission such as remaking the Middle East.

The realist school of thought contrasts sharply with the neoconservative camp, whose agenda would not be unfamiliar to Woodrow Wilson. He too sought to remake the international system from a position of relative strength, to spread democracy and the rule of law. It is true that today's crusaders are not about to place their trust in international institutions to do the job, but the basic ideals are similar in that they seek to use American power to reshape the global environment in the name of a set of liberal democratic ideals. It is their belief that this will make the United States more secure by reducing the seemingly intractable problems of the Middle East, thus getting at some of the root causes of terrorism. In taking up this banner, the neocons play into a very deep and old aspect of American political thought. This is why President Bush could speak for a large majority of the country when he set forth such an ambitious agenda based on their proposals.

The Liberals’ Creed

2004-05-28T16:10:00.000+02:00

via ashbrook

We believe in the United Nations, and Kofi Annan, the maker of international legitimacy.

We believe that the UN inspections worked.
We believe that SCUD missiles fired at U.S. troops minutes after the war began don’t change anything;
We believe that 3 liters of sarin gas used against U.S. troops doesn’t change anything;
We believe that finding evidence of mustard gas doesn’t change anything.

We believe that the war in Iraq conducted by a Republican president was unjustified because it lacked UN approval;
We believe that the "military action" in Kosovo conducted by a Democratic president was justified without UN approval.

We believe that the Iraq war was unilateral.
We believe that the participation of Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Ukraine does not change the fact that the war was unilateral;
We believe that multilateralism can only be achieved with the participation of France and Germany;
We believe in multilateralism.

We believe that this war was motivated by greed and oil;
We believe that when France, Germany, and Russia opposed the war, they were motivated by principle, and not by sweetheart oil deals or Oil-For-Food kickbacks;
We believe that US oil prices are too high, and that the administration failed in its responsibility to do something about it.

We believe that the U.S. may only legitimately use force for humanitarian ends in one place if it does so in all places where aid might be needed;
We believe that the U.S. may not quell threats in places where the cost is relatively low unless it is willing to use force in places like North Korea, where the cost in lives would likely be very high;
We believe that a humanitarian action is only truly humanitarian if there are no strategic interests to muddle the altruism.

We believe that President Bush lied.
We believe that Prime Minister Blair lied.
We believe that when Hillary Clinton and Dick Gephardt voted for the war based on the same intelligence relied upon by Bush and Blair, they made reasonable decisions based on the intelligence available at the time.

We believe that the administration did not make the case for war;
We believe that the administration offered many different reasons but could not offer a coherent message explaining the need to go to war;
We believe that the administration made perfectly clear that the only reason we were going to war was because of the threat from WMDs.

We believe that there were no WMDs.
We believe that finding sarin gas is 14th page news;
We believe that if the sarin gas is old, then it really isn’t a WMD we were looking for;
We believe that it wasn’t really sarin gas;
We believe that sarin gas isn’t necessarily a WMD.

We believe that there was no terrorist connection to, or threat from, Iraq.
We believe that members of Abu Nidal in Iraq would not have committed terrorist acts if we had not invaded;
We believe that al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not have committed terrorist acts if we had not invaded;
We believe that Saddam’s terrorist training camp at Salman Pak—complete with a Boeing 707 plane used for hijacking drills—did not exist or posed no real threat;
We believe that it was merely a coincidence that the pharmaceutical factory bombed by President Clinton in Sudan was using al Qaeda funds and a uniquely Iraqi formula to produce VX gas;
We believe that we are responsible for bringing terror on ourselves.

We believe that the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib is widespread and is probably the tip of the iceberg;
We believe that Abu Ghraib proves that the America’s occupation is no different than Saddam’s tyranny;
We believe that any attempt to suggest that there is a moral difference between a regime which systematically killed 300,000 people and tortured countless others and a regime which punished the acts of Abu Ghraib is illegitimate.

We believe that soldiers deliberately target women and children;
We believe that the soldiers abuse and kill Iraqis because they are racists;
We support our troops.

We believe that no one should question our statement that we "support our troops";
We believe that the best thing that could happen for this country would be for Bush to lose in November;
We believe that the best way for Bush to lose in November is for the Iraq effort to go poorly, even if that means that more Iraqis and troops will die;
We believe that most of the troops are minorities and the poor;
We believe that when the word "heroes" is used to describe our troops, it should always be enclosed in scare quotes.

We believe in quagmire.
We believe that when fringe Iraqi groups attack hard targets and are soundly defeated with relatively low Coalition casualties, that this is inescapable evidence of crisis;
We believe that Iraq is Bush’s Vietnam.

We believe that Vietnam is the lens through which all wars should be viewed.
We believe that soldiers in Vietnam were baby killers;
We believe that John Kerry is a hero for his service in Vietnam.

We believe that because John Kerry is a hero, he necessarily has the national security expertise necessary to be commander-in-chief.
We believe that any attempt to question his national security expertise based on his voting record, including his decision to vote against a supplemental bill used to buy the soldiers body armor, is an unfair attack on the patriotism of a hero, who by virtue of this honorific has the expertise to be commander-in-chief.

We believe in the trinity: NPR, CNN, and the New York Times. We believe in Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, and all the DNC, and we look for President Clinton yet to come. Amen.

Hail to the U.N.

2004-05-26T10:18:00.000+02:00

via lgf

25 May 2004

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.

The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 - the victims of multiple rape by militiamen - can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.

Testimony from girls and aid workers in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Bunia, in the north-east corner of Congo, claims that every night teenage girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining UN compound to sell their bodies to Moroccan and Uruguayan soldiers.

Lucky girls not being oppressed by evil American racist child eaters, but have the United Nothings on their side to protect them from human rights and dignity.

And happy militiamen who dont have to fear that their lordliness and their cultural identity as murderers and rapists might be touched by evil American racist imperialists.

Not to forget the lion-hearted peace troops, that are no trigger happy evil American racist wardogs but rather hide from the ill tempered bad boys while getting in affectionate terms with the teenage locals.

What a great peaceful world we could all live in, if only the evil American racist white men and the Jooos would disappear.

Celebrating Moore

2004-05-25T16:25:00.000+02:00

via joeham

Moore Film Captures French, Arab Awards

(2004-05-23) -- After the stunning triumph of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Cannes Film Festival in France, the winner of the coveted Palme d'Or headed to the Gulf state of Qatar to accept another best film award from Al Jazeera.

The "Arab Street" public prize has gone to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and his video production "Qata Al-Raas".