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More on King

Colbert King's wacky column comparing the level of crime in Zurich to that of Washington, DC last week touched a nerve. King may not have a clue, but judging from the letters he got, his readers do. King quotes at length from a letter he received from a local cop, Officer Timothy Finnegan:

"We work in one of the most dangerous cities in the country and if we pepper-spray somebody or strike someone with an ASP [expandable metal baton] 2 times in one year we are put on the EWTS. Come on! And that is even if I or another officer was attacked. Who wants that hanging over their head?

"Where I work, there are many people that would not hesitate to injure or kill me if given the opportunity. And if they do happen to hurt or kill an officer it will be argued that the poor dear had a hard time growing up. PLEASE.

"You ask any officer who is in uniform working the street, and they will tell you it is not worth being sued, losing your house, your car or your savings. And the department will not back the officer up."

The some new ideas for the NY Times platform in 2004

Bill Keller has some new ideas for Democrats - some are good, some are horrible, all are interesting:

Take the high ground on capital punishment. When political discussion turns to issues of law and order, Democrats feel a desperate need to splash themselves with testosterone. One of my more dispiriting moments in the 2000 presidential campaign was that exchange in the third Bush-Gore debate when Mr. Gore tried to sound as execution-friendly as the Death Row King himself. (Hands up, everyone who believes Mr. Gore really, truly favors the death penalty.)
[...]

Suppose a candidate announced that immediately upon election he would create a high-powered, bipartisan commission and give it one year to design a blueprint for radically simpler taxes. The objective would be a tax code most Americans could understand without an economics degree and comply with in a couple of hours. No hidden agendas: the mandate would be to leave the government neither bigger nor smaller and to shift the burden as little as possible from one category of taxpayer to another.
[...]

The military is also looking at bunker-busting atom bombs and other nuclear novelties.

A sober, thoughtful critic might explain that, when one of the greatest threats to our homeland security is the proliferation of nuclear technology that could fall into terrorist hands, inventing new workaday uses for atomic explosives is, um, counterproductive. A candidate in campaign mode might reach for something less measured, like, "ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS?!"
[...]

Democrats muffle themselves out of fear of the right-wing Miami Cuban minority that wags the dog of Florida's 25 electoral votes. But a proposal for an opening aimed at preparing Cubans for the post-Castro era might peel some Cuban-Americans away from the zealots. (The way the Bush administration is bleeding Social Security, a Democrat might well survive Florida next time without the Cuban-Americans.)

My goodness

Reader Dan Bruc notes in the comments under this post:

I have NEVER seen discussed, on any network or cyberzine, critical issues regarding claims and counter claims of Arabs and Israelis, and I think it would be salutary to see these discussed. Some examples:

1. Arabs claim proof that there were 19 years of peace when there WAS NO Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and a reversion to the old conditions would be the only requirement for peace between conciliatory Arabs and the Jewish state; Israelis claim to have proof that there were many killings at that time, and to revert to the old conditions would probably place Israel in great danger.

2. Arabs claim that the Jewish schools in Israel are purveyors of hate, have been so for close to two generations,and that all Israelis wish to do away with all the surrounding Arabs, while Arab schools teach peace between the two peoples; Israelis claim that the situation is reversed - Arabs have been teaching their children to hate all Israelis for many years, while Israel's schools teach peace between the two peoples.

3. Israelis claim that Arabs have been using the latest machine guns and short range missiles, have begun to use intermediate range missiles and other advance artillery, that coordinated attacks with Hezbollah have occured and threaten all of Israel, and that offensive thrusts aided by Iraq and factions in Saudi Arabia and Iran are being planned; Arabs claim that they have nothing but stones and a few rifles to face the formidable Israeli military machine, and their struggles are purely defensive and limited to the West Bank and Gaza.

4. Israelis claim roots in Palestine going back more than two millenia; Arabs claim roots going back two millenia, and that Jewish roots go back only to the 19th century.

5. Arabs claim that the Israeli defense forces show absolutely no restraint re:targeting civilians, and treat the latter as if they were all terrorists, while the IDF claims that they try to warn civilians with loudspeakers and leaflets, check areas before shelling, and try to limit violent actions to known belligerents.

May I suggest that both parties be challenged to provide photos, files, and other documentation of their allegations?

Hanson, again!

Today Victor Davis Hanson's needle pops one European's balloon of pomposity:

I had a conversation not long ago with a European, who typically so, began with the pained look of someone who was methodically entering a long grandfatherly lecture about the American pathologies of "unilateralism" and "exceptionalism." When I laughed and told him he should worry more about keeping us in NATO than threatening to leave, more about America turning its attention to Russia, India, Japan, and South America than to Paris and Rome, and expect pride rather than guilt that we stopped the Russians, fought the Gulf War, kicked out Noriega, and bombed in Serbia. In short, when I made it clear that Europe is irrelevant, he was shocked — and, mon dieu!, of all things, hurt! Europeans, I think, are going to learn that their real fears are not that we wish to control them, work with them, influence them, or corrupt them, but rather that we simply prefer to forget about them. They are rapidly becoming little more than an old windy Nestor — wordy, impotent, and full of empty advice about a glorious past in someone else's busy present.

Renewing America's Strength

It has been seven months since evil made a comeback. The question remains - will we prevail? Is civilization going to survive? The evil men have shaken my faith. I used to believe in the Statue of Liberty theory of immigration – let them all in. As I am fond of saying, America is an idea, not an ethnicity. But those bastards live among us. The murderers of September 11th lived here, breathed our air and drank our water. They somehow managed to resist the infection of the freedom virus. Their comrades live here still, watching and waiting. [Continued...]

If Peggy were pope

Peggy Noonan has some advice for the pope when he meets with the American cardinals:

He could begin with leaning toward a cardinal kneeling before him, thanking him for his long years of effort, and then removing and taking away his cardinal's hat and ring. Thus showing the cardinals and the world that he will not accept the continuance of the calamity.

He could start with Cardinal Bernard Law, whose actions have at least broken the spirit of the law. That would send a message to those in the church who need to hear it, that covering up, going along, and paying off victims is over. That careerism is over, and Christianity is back.

How do you define terror?

Benjamin Netanyahu in the Wall Street Journal: (link requires registration)

Mahatma Gandhi fought for the independence of India without resorting to terrorism. So too did the peoples of Eastern Europe in their struggle to bring down the Berlin Wall. And Martin Luther King's campaign for equal rights for all Americans eschewed all violence, much less terrorism.

If the deprivation of rights is indeed the root cause of terrorism, why did all these people pursue their cause without resorting to terror? Put simply, because they were democrats, not terrorists. They believed in the sanctity of each human life, were committed to the ideals of liberty, and championed the values of democracy.

But those who practice terrorism do not believe in these things. In fact, they believe in the very opposite. For them, the cause they espouse is so all-encompassing, so total, that it justifies anything. It allows them to break any law, discard any moral code and trample all human rights in the dust. In their eyes, it permits them to indiscriminately murder and maim innocent men and women, and lets them blow up a bus full of children.

There is a name for the doctrine that produces this evil. It is called totalitarianism.

More on Pearl

The poise that Mariane Perl exhibited on TV is in evidence in this NY Times piece:

Both Danny and I knew better than to believe what the fundamentalists were telling us about jihad. Jihad is the name of a process that can be undertaken successfully only by a courageous person. A jihadi fights with himself or herself in what I, as a Buddhist, think of as a personal revolution. It doesn't involve demonstrating in front of TV cameras or murdering innocent people. It is a slow and difficult process in which one seeks to overcome fears, prejudices and limitations to defend justice and do something that we call épanouir in French — allowing our personality to expand and blossom so that we can fully contribute to society at large.

I came to believe that only through such struggle — a true jihad — could Pakistan address the core issues that the fundamentalists use to manipulate people and exploit ignorance. Education, freedom of expression and the alleviation of poverty could no longer be considered a government responsibility alone. Citizens had to find ways to claim and defend their own rights. It was for the people of Pakistan to decide where their country stands in the global arena, and it was for the people of Pakistan to shake off submissiveness and restore their country's dignity.

Then Danny was kidnapped.

Pithy NYT

Friday's NY Times Op-Ed on Thursday:

The Times spanks Andrew Cuomo for his immature criticism of Pataki.

Paul Krugman invokes cartooning blogger Tom Tomorrow to link Bush's tax cuts to medicare shortages. Unlike David Broder, Krugman ignores the recent CalPERS 25% hike in premiums.

This installment of the Nicholas Kristof world tour comes to us from the Sudan, where he lauds the performance of the Bush team over that of the Clinton team. He claims former Senator John Danforth, Bush's envoy, achieved a cease-fire because it was willing to negotiate with a terror-tainted regime. Naive Kristof misunderstands the Bush doctrine (and Arafat) and says that there is a lesson here for the Israel/Palestinian issue.

Mariane Pearl writes about her experiences in Pakistan.

The hero is a mind of such balance...

...that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A group of 100 family members of the passengers and crew of hijacked flight 93 got to hear the cockpit tapes:

Before hearing the tape, Alice Hoglan, of Los Gatos, California, said she knew the contents would be disturbing.

Her son, Mark Bingham, was one of the passengers hailed as heroes for vowing to take on the hijackers moments before the crash.

Ms Hoglan said she was told families would hear a woman pleading for her life, and the last five to seven minutes would be filled with violence and yelling in both Arabic and English.

"Still, I feel compelled to listen. I owe it to the memory of Mark to learn all I can," the former United flight attendant said before she went inside.

Is it live or is it PhotoShop?

Color pictures of the New York Times's columnists. What has Gail Collins wrought? Krugman and Friedman don't make out too well, but Maureen Dowd looks like a babe! (well, kind of - not as much when you look at the larger version, but still, photographer Fred Conrad can have a booming boudoir business if he so chooses.

Would you like some fries with that?

Is this the way the youth of France treat the "big cheese?"

(via Jonah)

Technical problems

The page has been loading slowly. I removed the counters and it seems to be fine now. If Patio Pundit seems slow to you, please leave a comment. (I mean slow to load - there's not much I can do about my intellectual slowness)

The good (bad) old days

Mark Evanier remembers Sam Kinison:

The Comedy Store loved him. One night, I dropped in to catch another friend in the Original Room and noticed that Kinison was scheduled to appear in about half-an-hour in the Main Room. I strolled over there and found that the room was packed for the comic performing...but there was a line of people waiting to see Kinison. I whispered to the host, "There aren't any more seats...why are these people waiting?"

He whispered back, "Don't worry. It'll work out. With Sam, it always does."

And, sure enough, when Sam emerged and started his act, just enough red-faced patrons walked out so that there were empty seats for everyone waiting in line. The Store got to collect twice on the same seats. Why shouldn't they love Sam?

Bro-mail

Today's grab bag of links:

Put on your thinking cap to stimulate creative thinking.

Music trivia lovers - here's one for you. The Covers Project aims to build a database of "cover songs (songs performed by an artist other than the original performer) with the intention of creating cover chains. A cover chain is a set of songs in which each song is a cover of a song by the band who covered the preceding song. " Fun for all you academic shut-ins that are in breadstick withdrawal.

A site devoted to pithy writers that can say what is on their minds in exactly 100 words.

Over at the UK MSN site there are 5 people who live their lives according to the wishes of web voters. I wonder if CAIR knows about this?

TLC literally searches for paradise.

Broken breadstick

Attention all you shut-ins. Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom reports:

Because of some snafu at Network Solutions, protein wisdom will be down for a coupla days. Can you please maybe post an alert (I'm sure we share at least a few readers).

Of course, most people won't even notice that we're gone -- but for those 5 or 6 shut-ins who rely on breast jokes and daily snark, your willingness to help us out might be all they have...

Meantime, I'll be out throwing stones at squirrels

Conservative Caribou

While I don't generally trust the Republicans on the environment, from what I can tell drilling in ANWAR makes sense. Ann Coulter manages to give me second thoughts with her latest shrill attack. The "Mary McGrory" of the right wing says:

There is not a thinking man's Democrat in the country. If only caribou voted instead of Democrats, the country would finally have a serious energy policy.

Andrea Koppel

I got a copy of the e-mail about Andrea Koppel that Andrew Sullivan discusses today. I've held back on it until I could check it out. Apparently Andrew did. The part he quoted is identical to the e-mail I got from friends in Israel. It is a he said/she said, but sadly I do not find Koppel's denial credible.

Pithy NYT

Thursday's Op-Eds, Wednesday:

Bob Herbert defends New York's new police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, from what he thinks is a cheap shot.

Bill Safire examines the effect of Botox on politics.

Jennifer McCoy says that Hugo Chávez now has a second chance to make things right in Venezuela. It just takes her 556 words more than it took me to tell you that.

Terrence Joyce explains how global warming could wind up making the Northeast cooler.

Pithy WaPo

Thursday's Op-Eds, Wednesday:

Mary McGrory plays it cute by comparing Bush's handling of the Middle East crisis with the Pope's handling of the pederast/pedophilia crisis. Yes, reading this content free column was a waste of my time but --hey, but at least you don't have to read it now.

Robert Kagan examines Tom Friedman's idea of putting US troops in Israel as a way of keeping the peace. I think it is a great piece, but then I would, since Kagan makes many of the same arguments I used when I deconstructed the Friedman column that first suggested it.

Jim Hoagland gets inside Arafat's head. Using the first person narrator he explores what Arafat is really after.

George Will looks at GM, and their 70 year old "car guy" Bob Lutz.

Richard Cohen thinks that Bush flunked foreign policy. This arrogant, self indulgent effort presents Charles Austin with truly scourge worthy target.

People make me laugh - part of an ongoing series

Why is it so hard for people to say "I don't know?" It is, by far, the biggest problem holding scientific progress back today. It is a major issue in the business world - admitting your mistakes does not go over well in corporate America. It is a real problem for the armed services. Pretty much anywhere you look, you can see a field or a process that would benefit tremendously from a candid willingness to admit "I don't know."

How was the Universe created? "I don't know." There. That wasn't so hard. What about "the Big Bang?" What about it? It is a theory that explains much of what we can observe about the Universe quite well. It can be contorted to explain the rest of what we can observe pretty well. But I can say with absolute certainty that 200 years from now, it will not be taught in high school texts without some major revisions. How can I be so sure? Because our ability to observe the Universe is growing exponentially every ten years or less. We don't have enough facts to figure it out yet, and a whole boatload of new facts are headed our way. Who knows how much being stuck here on earth handicaps us? Maybe if we could see the Universe from the vantage point of Alpha Centauri we'd get a whole different perspective.

When scientists say that the Big Bang theory is a theory, that's all it means. It is what scientists think is the best explanation we have so far. Human nature being what it is, most scientists forget, and behave as if the "Big Bang" theory is a fact. This blinds them to new ways of thinking. The same scientists that scorn Galileo's contemporaries for small-mindedness are scorning their iconoclastic colleagues right now.

I don't think that Fred Hoyle's "Steady State" theory is stronger than "the Big Bang," but it does explain certain facts (like the red shift) more elegantly than the "Big Bang" does. But put the merits of Hoyle's theory aside. A keen observer of human nature can easily see that the venom that Hoyle's colleagues heaped upon him for putting his theory forward came from the same impulses that motivated Galileo's critics. The scientific orthodoxy responds no differently to being challenged than the hierarchy of the Catholic church does, or than the leaders of the US Senate do when challenged. A cozy tenured position, a Nobel prize, international acclaim are all factors that human scientists use when evaluating other people's work. Sometimes the challengers are wrong, but the human tendency to resist change is a great hindrance to scientific achievement.

When Sir Isaac Newton developed what we now call Newtonian physics, he explained just about every motion that was observable by humans of his time. But he couldn't explain many of the things we can now observe. Who knows what someone of Newton's intellect would come up with today. When one of my teachers once looked at some old Sanskrit meditations he joked "this is what mathematicians born a thousand years too soon had to do to amuse themselves. Imagine being Einstein before mathematics was invented. What would you do to keep that brain occupied?"

Year ago when I was in Yeshiva, some of my friends asked me if I believed in the theory of evolution. As it happens, in religious Jewish circles evolution is not heresy. The modern orthodox believe that evolution is the method God used to create the Universe with, and will show you supporting text in the Torah to "prove" it. What my friends were asking was really, do you believe in evolution in the context of the Torah, or do you just believe the straight Torah narrative without the evolutionary spin. My answer was not what they expected. So do I believe that the theory of evolution as it is currently taught is factually correct? Nope.

It is true, I don't have a better explanation. But I am comfortable with "I don't know." Evolution is the best theory we have so far. It is very good at explaining "what is," but it does not do as well at explaining "how it got to be that way." For example, I see the similarities in bone structure between mammals as very compelling evidence of a link between species. The DNA links are also strong evidence. But how do you go from an ape to a human? How can a species grow wings slowly over time? What is the mechanism? Am I slowly evolving? How does that work? Do you start out with one species, add 10 million years, and you get a new species? Are my kids 1/10,000,000th more evolved than I am? I can believe that we evolved from apes over time, but nothing I've seen proves to me that time alone will do it. Perhaps there really is a "missing link." Or perhaps there isn't, but rather there is another explanation for how humans "evolved" from one of the hominids that is currently identified. Perhaps the mechanism is mutation from cosmic radiation. Perhaps it is something else. Perhaps it really is just the passage of time, as I was taught. One way or another I am confident that enough evidence will be discovered to shed light on the real answer.

The theory of evolution as it is currently constituted is the best answer we've got, so let's teach it to our kids. I have no doubt that 200 years from now some elements of the theory of evolution will still be taught, and hopefully by then a more satisfying answer will be found to the question of how one species evolves into a new one. But let's not stop asking questions, because as far as I can tell, the real answer to the question of how evolution works is - we don't know.

Next time you see a specialist of any kind come across your TV screen give an explanation that sets off your BS detector for reasons you just can't explain, ask yourself - could it be that he just doesn't know the answer to the question he was just asked? You might just catch yourself laughing.

One more thing

My dad read in a french language paper that a columnist was wondering why surveys keep showing that esteem for France keeps falling. We had a good chuckle over that. They must think the whole "cheese eating surrender monkey" epithet is meant as a joke.....

News from Europe

I just picked up my folks from the airport and took them home. If you missed an earlier post, they were visiting friends and family in Belgium and Germany. From what my parents say, it sounds like being a Jew in Germany is safer than being one in Belgium these days. They report that at least one of the parties in Belgium's ruling coalition is very concerned about the ant-Semitism. They sent fliers to all the synagogues stating that the agitators are a foreign element and don't speak for Belgium. My folks didn't bring the flyer - I'll see if I can get it from someone.

Meanwhile, my cousin's car war destroyed by a Molotov cocktail late one night. It is not officially a hate crime, since my cousin was not in the car, but he is an orthodox Jew - and recognizable as such. I'd say it was more than just kids goofing around. There were many reports of Jews being hassled or worse. One aunt will no longer walk the certain streets that she has been walking on for 30+ years. The younger generation is leaving Belgium if they can.

The situation in Germany is much better, with support fro Israel much higher in general. My dad says that there is more than just politics at play in the wrangling over Merkava tank parts -- he thinks there may be some price issues. Again, some of the governmental problems in Germany are due to the more leftist coalition partners. Immigration concerns loom large in the coming election. One of the major candidates is looking to halt immigration altogether until they can "solve some of their problems," whatever the heck that means.

My dad really regrets that they didn't go to Israel and visit his family as well. While my dad and I went to baggage claim to get the luggage, my mom sat next to a lady who was waiting for her grandchildren to return from a trip to Europe. The lady said she had never been to Europe and asked if the people there were nice. My mom replied "in all my travels I've concluded that the nicest people in the world are Americans." :-) My parents are very happy to be home. I am happy, but relieved as well.

Italian women

Oriana Fallaci sounds like someone you'd enjoy a drink and a cigar with. Can you imagine what it would be like to have her mad at you?

(via everyone)

Meeting minutes

I hereby bring this meeting of the Victor Davis Hanson fan club to order. First order of business, a reading from his latest work, a parody of the Powell/Sharon talks:

Mr. Sharon: How shall I bring up a sensitive point?

Mr. Powell: Go ahead.

Mr. Sharon: Well, the talk here is that there exists some type of vendetta — an old feud between Saddam and the Bushes. Of course that is silly; but even some in Europe believe that Bush junior is attacking Saddam to avenge the plot to kill his dad. They are claiming that the blood hatred goes way, way back — a personality thing between two proud leaders that gets in the way of peace.

Mr. Powell: That is puerile.

Mr. Sharon: Yes, but a feud between two men is exactly what they are saying — and it gets worse. Some also lie that this strike against Iraq is an American war party obsession, claiming that Clinton and the Democrats would have never gotten America into this war. As a general and veteran you know the stereotypes yourself.

Mr. Powell: Look the American people voted for Bush — in part because they were tired of Clinton's inaction and failure to deal with terrorists.

Mr. Sharon: We know that. But the perception lingers that the present American administration is full of hawks, obsessed with Saddam — and wants to punish an old nemesis rather than deal with more fundamental social issues.

Mr. Powell: Mr. Bush was elected. There is no such thing as a "Bush-Saddam" grudge. We don't implement policy that way.

This is not good

Well, at least they are admitting it:

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

Happy Birthday Israel!

It is hard to believe that this happened 54 years ago:

Wednesday's Post on Tuesday

On the Washington post Op-Ed page:

Count Michael Kelly in with the rope-a-dope camp - sort of. He say that Bush was laying down markers in his April 4th speech, against all evidence to the contrary. Encouraging if true. I have my doubts, but am willing to be convinced.

David Broder warns of an impending health care crisis. He thinks that the large increase in premiums announced by CalPERS represent the canary dying in the coal mine.

Phyllis Oakley examines world population trends and sees the improvement in the treatment of women as a key to solving long range problems. She leaves the minor implementation issues for the readers to work out for themselves.

Anthony Clark Arend is concerned that the proper case for a war against Iraq has not yet been made. He argues that such a case is needed in order to conform with the requirements of the UN Charter. (You think I could make this up?)

The Post runs the Robert J. Samuelson piece on the Wall Street Journal redesign that you might have seen in Newsweek. He explains that even venerable brands like the Journal need to stay fresh to appeal to the next generation of consumers.

It's your principles, stupid

When the Wall Street Journal editorial board (registration required) starts turning on Bush, you know there is trouble. Bushies look to the Wall Street Journal like Clintonites looked to the New York Times. The White House won't enjoy this:

Will the George W. Bush we once knew please stand up? Suddenly the President who soared by standing on principle seems to have been replaced by an imposter who's lost his foreign-policy bearings.

Last weekend alone, the U.S. got caught winking at a failed coup in Venezuela. A news leak targeting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seemed intended to undermine Mr. Bush's inspections strategy toward Iraq. And on ABC's "This Week," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice admitted that the U.S. isn't sure what it's doing next in the Mideast. "A lot has happened in the last week or so, and we need to assess where we are," she said.

This isn't yet the gang that couldn't shoot straight, but without a course correction it may get there. The Administration that once dominated events now seems hostage to them. If we had to pick a date when this slippage began, we'd choose March 5. That was the day Mr. Bush imposed steel tariffs for domestic political reasons. The decision irritated most of the world, but that is not always bad. What made that decision so damaging was that it repudiated a core principle of Mr. Bush's foreign policy: free trade.

The Fun(d) never stops

John Fund on Al Gore in Opinion Journal:

Mr. Gore prefers to look back at the career of another former vice president, Richard Nixon. In 1960, Nixon lost a heartbreakingly close election to John F. Kennedy. Two years later he ran for governor of California and was trounced. But in the years after, he gamely campaigned for dozens of GOP candidates, building up political chits while improving his television skills. In 1968 he was elected president.

Mr. Gore hopes to repeat the Nixon model of political rehabilitation in only four years, and he's working hard to convince skeptical Democrats to take a second look at him. That's no doubt why the former vice president had the band play "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" as he left the stage in Orlando.

Note to James Lileks

Since you are now extending Blogger technology to replace e-mail, I meant to ask you - what do you think of the Padrón 1964 Anniversary Series? I prefer them over the Partagas - unless you mean the D4's that er, you can smoke in London. I'm smoking an Exclusivo as we speak....

NYT Roundup

Wednesday's Op-Ed's on Tuesday:

Thomas Friedman sees opportunity within the Middle East madness, if Bush steps up to the challenge.

Maureen Dowd has an amusing look through the big mailbag she got from her last column, where she lamented that men don't want to date women who out-achieve them.

Max Rodenbeck, The Economist's Middle East correspondent, takes a look at how Arab TV has internationalized the Palestinian struggle. Rodenbeck's piece is interesting and informative, but includes a couple of cheap shots that I've come to expect from the "morally equivalent" Economist.

Beautiful Mind author Sylvia Nasar argues against the Authors Guild's protest of Amazon.com's practice of selling used books. Nasar, recently elected to the Guild board, thinks that used books will expand the market, making for a classic "win-win" situation. Refreshing.

Z -1

Sgt. Sheridan is off to Z'ha'dum. Will he return? If so, when?

The other Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to have a pretty successful trip to the US this week. He managed to get himself on just about every cable TV show, spoke to members of congress, and generally advanced Israel's case in the states. Despite his very Hebrew last name, his years in American schools are readily apparent. It is no wonder that Israelis think of him as an American-style politician. Any time spent looking at Israeli politics is enough to convince one that this is a compliment, though it is surely not meant as one. But Bibi has some things in common with one famous American politician, John F. Kennedy, besides good looks and Harvard. Like Kennedy, Netanyahu served in his country's armed services. And like JFK, he emerged from the shadow of an older brother killed in combat. Many historians wonder if Joseph Kennedy would have become president if he had lived. Who knows what Jonathan "Yoni" Netanyahu would have accomplished had he lived.

Since today is the day that Israel remembers her fallen soldiers, it is an appropriate time to remember Yoni. I can vividly recall that day back when I was in 6th grade. The stunning news came out about the daring hostage rescue raid on Entebbe, and the loss of the mission commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu (zt'l). You can read the whole story at the Yoni tribute site. It is full of interesting details like this one:

His most important meeting at the Kirya was, without a doubt, the one he had with Defense Minister Shimon Peres.

“I asked somebody what the meeting was about,” says Rachel, the secretary to Motta Gur, the chief of staff. When she saw Yoni waiting to go into Peres’s office, she “was told that Shimon had asked Yoni to come so that he could look him in the eyes and ask him straight, ‘Yoni, can it be done?’ That was the whole purpose of the meeting. Yoni stood there [outside Peres’s door] with maps in his hands, very preoccupied….He was pressed for time and said that he was in a terrible hurry and they should let him in already.”

“He presented the plan to me in detail,” recalls Peres, “and I liked it very much. The two of us sat alone…My impression was one of exactness and imagination…and complete self-confidence…which without a doubt influenced me. We had a problem with lack of intelligence. But Yoni said: ‘Do you know of any oepration that wasn’t carried out half blind? Every operation is half blind.’ But Yoni was well aware of the problem, and he told me that the operation was absolutely doable. And as to the cost, he said we had every chance of coming out of it with almost no losses.”

PR at the retail level

Jens Peter Hansen of the Danish SID Generel Workers Union decided to postpone buying a large order from an Israeli software company because he objected to the Israeli military action. He sent a letter of explanation to Dov Shoam, the general manager of the Israeli company Radix. Shoam posted his reply on the Radix web site:

Imagine yourself drinking beer in your lovely Tivoli gardens when a bomb exploding under the seat spreading your body all over the garden. Imagine yourself in a situation when a bus exploded in the center of Copenhagen and you know that your daughter might be on that bus. You can't reach her because thousands like you trying to reach their relatives using the same overloaded cellular network.

Now imagine that this is the everyday situation in Denmark for 18 months.

Would you accept such situation? I don't think so.

No mater what is the cause of the Palestinian suffer, my daughter is not responsible for that. She is not the one that has to be blamed for the Palestinian suffer and she shouldn't pay the price for Arafat's megalomania.

Robert Urich R.I.P.

When I was a kid I loved to watch the TV show "S.W.A.T." It had great action combined with some drama and the best theme song on TV. My favorite character was Officer Jim Street, played by Canadian born actor Robert Urich. Urich went on to star in "Vega$" and "Spenser: for Hire" (with pre-DS9 Avery Brooks). He went for laughs in his small but important role as libidinal tennis pro Peter Campbell on "Soap", and in the short-lived "Bewitched" spin-off "Tabitha" (opposite Lisa Hartman). Urich died this morning at a hospital in Thousand Oaks.

He never won an Emmy, let alone an Oscar, but he was a good, solid actor who constantly worked. I will miss him. If you happen to be walking around Hollywood, you can see his "Star" near 7083 Hollywood Boulevard. His NY Times orbituary can be found here. Robert Urich, R.I.P.

Ouch!

Tunku Mad. You not like Tunku when he is angry. Tunku SMASH:

The man embodied Venezuela. In the three weeks I was there, I encountered numerous people with his mindset: brooding, impotent folk whose aim in life was to get happy quick, to make a buck without a sweat, to gratify the senses instantly. I've traveled widely--in all continents--and never have I encountered a national character that is so feckless, and so indolent, as the Venezuelan one.

Of course, these are impressions; by their nature, they are superficial. But the sense I had on that trip through the country--in Caracas, in Merida, Maracaibo, Puerto Ordaz, Tucupita, Ciudad Guayana--has endured; and nothing I have read about Venezuela, or seen on TV since I left, has caused me to alter my assessment in the slightest.

From top to bottom, Venezuela is a welfare state that lives off oil. Nothing of note is manufactured there. Nothing of note is manmade. The country's riches--oil, vast rivers, rich delta soil, rainforests, a vivid coastline, huge gold deposits, spectacular waterfalls and some of the most beautiful landscape one could hope to see--are all part of nature's bounty. What man--Venezuelan man--has done is to take, take, take.

Bonus column

P.J. O'Rourke guest stars (requires registration) in today's Wall Street Journal:

Israel banned journalists from covering military operations in the West Bank. The Committee to Protect Journalists called this "unacceptable." The International Federation of Journalists stated, "Censorship will not bring peace." Margaret Engel, managing editor of the Freedom Forum's Newseum, said, "It's an outrage."

Actually, it's a mistake. (Something Israel seems to have realized, since it has partially lifted the ban.) Journalism is the opposite of pancake makeup and boudoir lighting. The farther journalists get away from you, the worse you look. But attempting to control news during a war is too usual to be labeled outrageous. Stalin didn't ban journalists from Stalingrad. He sent them there. They couldn't refuse. I'd rather be banned. And there was censorship in the Soviet press anyway. The International Federation of Journalists is right. Censorship did not bring peace. Not that peace with Germany would have been a good idea.

Tonight's NYT

The round up:

The editors do a nice obit for Whizzer White, whose opinions I always enjoyed reading in college.

Robert Semple Jr. marks Arnold Palmer's last Masters.

Nicholas Kristof continues his worldwide search for a clue, this time from Sudan, and discovers Arab hypocrisy. "After lots of soul-searching conversations with Arabs" he concludes that there are "double standards" at work. No word from the editors why they need to send him to the Sudan to learn this, or why they continue to pay him. Don't miss this one -- it is priceless.

You know Paul Krugman couldn't pass up the opportunity to bash Bush on the aborted coup in Venezuela. The Valenzuela take in the Post that I told you to skip earlier is better.

Stanford Law Prof. Deborah Rhode worries that the indictment of terrorist defense lawyer and suspected collaborator Lynne Stewart will make lawyers reluctant to represent terrorists. She doesn't explain what kind of attorney fears Ashcroft more than she does having convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as a client, but I can figure that out for myself.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joe Biden supports the idea of having a Middle Eastern peace conference along the lines of the one held in Madrid in 1991.

Tonight's WaPo

A quick run through the Post Op-Ed's reveals:

Richard Cohen seconds Ehud Bark's suggestion that Israel should build a fence, in his own fingernails-on-the-blackboard style that he has perfected. Skip it and read Barak's original piece instead.

Ex-Clinton diplomat Arturo Valenzuela nails Bush for accepting the aborted military coup in Venezuela. Bush spoke too soon and was - busted! Valenzuela is correct, if a bit nit-picky. Hugo Chavez had not been acting very democratically.

E.J. Dionne trumpets the Ryan Commission report in Illinois improve the administration of the death penalty.

In his argument against polygraph tests, Mark S. Zaid reveals that polygraph inventor William M. Marston, also created Wonder Woman, and her golden lasso, under the name Charles Moulton. And you wonder why I read the Op-Eds.

Finally, Thomas Carothers looks at foreign aid, but fears that we will wind up short-changing the poorest countries that tend to have the worst infrastructure for deploying aid. Carothers does not explain how we can increase aid to those countries with send good money after bad.

Bush v. Gore II?

Future GOP presidential campaign manager Patrick Ruffini has more thoughts on Al Gore:

In a general election, Gore would face the same basic disadvantages he faced last time: an opponent with who knows when to advance, and perhaps more importantly, when to back off. This is important because Bush’s more relaxed strategy has ultimately proven more sustainable than the perpetual clanging of a Gore campaign that invariably feels a misplaced need to always be on top. The big risk of Gore’s strategy is that it makes him seem so easily overwrought. That perception hurt him in 2000, and there’s no reason to believe it work in his favor in 2004. However, it’s the entirely novel liabilities Gore would confront by running as a challenger that might deal him his most decisive setbacks: this time, Gore will have to run as the candidate second in experience, second in maturity, second in gravitas. So much of the public’s sense of what the presidency means was defined in the aftermath of September 11, and it was defined by none other than President George W. Bush.

- The staunch support of African-Americans, unless Al Sharpton is taken seriously as a candidate and stays in the race long enough to siphon votes from Gore.
- The support of core rank and file Democrats who feel that "Gore wuz robbed" in 2000, and feel that Gore deserves another chance out of fairness
- The "green vote"
- More "National Security" credibility than anyone except for Kerry
- Many of the strongest challengers will fold if Bush is still polling well after the mid-term elections

- He is no longer the incumbent, nor is he an office holder. He doesn't get to use Air-Force 2, and can't get the press to cover quasi-campaign events as if they were "non-political," which the Democratic office holders can do to some extent
- Many of the key money men are not backing him (yet?)
- Many of the sharpest political operatives that were on his team in 2000 have gone elsewhere, since a bunch of them don't really like him personally
- He has to break the perception that he blew the 2000 election that he should have won in a landslide
- Voter know him, so any positions he takes on the issues will be seen in the context of his past positions to a far greater extent than any of his rivals

College courses we'd like to see

Bad people 101

Reality check

Gerald Steinberg examines the outlook in Israel right now:

For the vast majority of Israelis (80 percent, according to the polls, meaning all but the radical Left fringe and the hostile Arab minority), the Oslo experiment is now viewed as a disaster. Many of the politicians and intellectuals who supported the fiasco that brought Yasser Arafat and his terror network into Israeli cities, have either recanted or been removed to the edge of political life. Shimon Peres, who directed the Oslo negotiations, has been reborn as Ariel Sharon's foreign minister, and often sounds as hawkish and angry as Sharon. Uri Savir, who was the main negotiator, and was naïve enough to believe in the smiles and handshakes from his Palestinian "partners", has disappeared from public life. Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben Ami, who had central roles under Peres and later in Ehud Barak's government, are clinging, barely to positions in the Labor Party, but have lost any hope for playing leadership roles. (The fact that these has-beens are still the main Israeli interlocutors for the European Union only demonstrates how little EU leaders and academics understand the Middle East.) Labor Party leaders are trying to get the public to forget its role in Oslo, and the policies of the new leader, Defense Minister Eliezer, are hard to distinguish from those of Ariel Sharon.

Reader mail

Philippe Richards writes:

While one might quibble about Alterman's sloppiness, you, and others who have gotten all upset about Eric's List seem to have avoided the fact that it is largely accurate. Looking at the first 17 names you list, Alterman's on the money. I'd say 18, because I think one could quibble with Kondracke(but not much). Then he's pretty much gold until you get to William F. Buckley, and Bill O'Reilly. Most of this can be gleaned from your summaries of their columns. No one has really pointed out anybody that Alterman got wrong, only suggesting that the list is nonsense because he seemed to have guessed Cathy Young's leanings rather than drawing conclusions from her own writings on the Middle East. Then it turned out he guessed right.

The fact that ideological enemies seem to be fellow travelers on Israel is not ridiculous. Novak is arch-conservative, but he'll trash his own any day he feels like talking about Israel. The fact that Dershowitz, Safire, and Coulter would probably not want to be in the same room with each other does not mean that they cannot share some common viewpoints. They all presumably believe that Communism is bad, for example. And alliance of Dick Morris, Bill Bennett and Andrew Sullivan seems implausible, but look at their columns.

As for Lawrence Kudlow, I hope this answers it for you.

Busy guy

"A-List" commentator Daniel Pipes has been busy, with two columns out today. In the New York Post he suggests that we should make the Saudis pay for terrorism. He outlines some promising legal developments that may enable family members of the victims in the 9/11 attacks to hold the Saudis accountable for the mischief they financed, and then he says:

Together, these three developments suggest that 9/11 claimants are on solid legal, factual and political grounds in seeking compensation from the kingdom. Should Riyadh reject their claims, they can demand per death as much as the Lockerbie families, which would bring their claim to more than $100 billion.

There's a widespread notion that if only Israel would withdraw its forces and population from the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian violence against Israelis would stop and negotiations would start. After all, what more would they have to fight about?.

In this spirit, the French government insists that the Israeli army "must withdraw." President Bush told Israel that "the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognize boundaries consistent with United Nations Resolutions." And no less a personage than U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reports that "the whole world is demanding that Israel withdraw."

It sounds good -- but only if you ignore the historical record. We have seen this movie and it did not have a happy ending. The movie is titled "Lebanon 2000," and it bears retelling for the lessons it contains.

Rally for Israel

You can watch the webcast here.

News from the reap what you sow department

The IDF has captured Marwan Barghouti.

Sometimes it is better to shut up

Somewhere along the line I learned that you don't have to win every argument right away, and that your credibility will often serve you better than a dazzling display of rhetoric. So when I see people breaking those rules it makes me laugh. I pointed this out in my critique of Tracy Wilkinson's LA TImes report last Tuesday. You may recall that I noted that it seemed bizarre that Wilkinson chose to depart from the standard journalistic practice of evaluating CIA associations skeptically, and reported that Israel had attacked the offices of a "moderate", Jabril Rajoub. This type of inconsistency is glaring when spotted and quickly erodes the credibility of anyone who employs the tactic. Bill Safire devotes today's column to the topic of Mr. Rajoub.

Another amusing example of this technique appears in today's very informative column by Robert Novak. It is no secret that while Novak is generally right wing, he is a critic of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Novak is a great reporter, and there are some interesting nuggets of information that shed new light on the Bush wobble, if they are true, notably:

Bennett represents gradual but accelerating escalation of support for Israel from the Republican Party's dominant conservative wing, especially from the Christian religious right. When 46 years ago a Republican president in the midst of his re-election campaign took a tough stand against the Israeli attack on Egypt, Dwight D. Eisenhower did not have to worry about his party's base. Conservatives then tilted toward the Arabs. The move by the American right, overwhelmingly non-Jewish, toward Israel has intensified over the last 10 years.

Some Israeli policies are more popular with Republican conservatives than others. The Oslo agreement and the former Prime Minister Ehud Barak's failed peace initiative are not. Sharon's Bismarckian policy of settling the Palestinian question with blood and iron are.

[...] Bush might consider the words of a distinguished Israeli Knesset member: former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin. In a PBS interview Thursday, he asserted "this operation has cost us a lot, not only in our international image, which has deteriorated, but I believe that mainly we increased ambitions on the Palestinian side to take revenge, and we increased the hatred toward us."

Voices from the A-List

It is time to check in on the commentators on our favorite paranoid's list, as promised. For our first go around, I thought we'd look at the latest work I could find on each person (where possible). I'm planning to do a more in depth look at a small subsection in the future. For now, let's see what we've got:

"Reflexively Pro-Israel":

George Will - bashes Bush for screwing Pakistan over tariffs
William Safire - urges US to let Sharon finish the job
A.M. Rosenthal - nothing in 2002 on Google
Charles Krauthammer - warns us about the danger from Lebanon
Michael Kelly - reviews the evidence against Arafat
Lally Weymouth - conducts an interview with Rumsfeld (in December)
Martin Peretz - writes a brief history of Arafat
Daniel Pipes - appeared on Hardball and CNN
Andrea Peyser - writes about the deaf Lesbian couple that engineered a deaf baby for themselves
Dick Morris - argues that Israel should build a wall
Lawrence Kaplan - writes that there are limits to what US diplomacy can accomplish
William Bennett- signed the "Don't go Wobbly" letter to Bush
William Kristol and Robert Kagan- think that the Bush administration is Lost in the Wilderness
Mortimer Zuckerman - says that the Israeli is now fighting on the front line in the war against terror
David Gelertner - thinks that Europe has just told Israel to drop dead
John Podhoretz - writes that Sharon doesn't work for Bush
Mona Charen - examines why the Nobel committee want to revoke the prize from Peres
Morton Kondracke - argues that congress should allow, but control cloning
Fred Barnes - reminds us how how Israel got here with Arafat
Yossi Klein Halevi - asks if the world prefers it when the Jews are the victims
Sidney Zion - nothing recent on Google, or in the New York Post
Norman Podhoretz - takes the anti-war crowd seriously
Jonah Goldberg - says that the fastest route to congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's brain is through her Alterman
Laura Ingraham - got a kiss from Bono
Jeff Jacoby - thinks that the US should let Israel fight its way to peace
Rich Lowry - thinks that Israel should not do as Egypt says, but rather do as Egypt does
Andrew Sullivan - sent the multitudes to this patio (and oh yeah, also thinks that Israel should build a fence)
Seth Lipsky - is busy preparing for the launch of the Sun
Irving Kristol - nothing recent, but son Bill has picked up the slack (see above)
Allan Keyes - is trying to make sense of what he calls the Euro-Powell approach to the Middle East
Brit Hume - interviewed Donald Rumsfeld
John Leo - is opposed to paying reparations to blacks for slavery
Robert Bartley - hopes that Bill Clinton will find peace
John Fund - reports that some unions in Washington state were playing dirty
Peggy Noonan - is literally praying for peace in the Middle East
Ben Wattenberg - examines Middle East and the Media
Tony Snow - interviewed Senator Joseph Biden on Fox News Sunday
Lawrence Kudlow - argues for Israel's economic freedom
Alan Dershowitz - wants to make sure torture is an option
David Horowitz - give five reasons why reparations are bad
Jacob Heilbrun - nothing recent
Thomas Sowell - muses about firing people
Frank Gaffney Jr - asks What If Bush 41 had finished Saddam, and both the Taliban and Arafat had said "yes"
Emmett Tyrell - goes to a party celebrating a new Sun rise
Cal Thomas - looks at Arafat's books
Oliver North - thinks the International Court is a danger to the military
Michael Ledeen - once again urges the Bush administration to go Faster, Please
William F. Buckley - bashes Ariel Sharon
Bill O’Reilly - thinks America should keep its powder dry, and ready
Paul Greenberg - writes about the murder of Gus Artemakis, proprietor of the D&D diner on Main Street in downtown Little Rock
L. Brent Bozell - thinks the media is hypocritical for calling Bush fuzzy, since they've been asking him to be
Tod Lindberg - says that the Democrats are on the defensive
Michael Barone - writes about Our Vichy gamble of sending Powell to the Middle East
Ann Coulter - revisits the Orlando Bosch pardon
Linda Chavez - asserts that Israel has a right to defend herself
Cathy Young - writes her first article about Israel(!), prompting Eric Alterman to prove what a sloppy jackass he is
Uri Dan - says Arafat is looking to widen the war
Dr. Laura Schlessinger - is at the The Yeah Baby! Family Expo
Rush Limbaugh - looks at Israel as the US' first line of defense in the Middle East
Zev Chafets - covers Brooklyn Benedict Arnold Adam Shapiro


"Critical of Both Israel and the Palestinians, but Support Israeli Security over Palestinian Rights":
Thomas Friedman - thinks Bush's speech last week restored clear lines to the future for the Middle East
Richard Cohen - smacked a ruler across the Catholic Church's knuckles
Avishai Margolit - most recent piece was this article in January called Occidentalism, coauthored by Ian Buruma
David Remnick - sees One Way Out of the Middle East Crisis - for Bush to step up to the plate
Eric Alterman - thinks Jennifer Harbury is cool
The New York Times Editorial Board - think that congress should look to make CEO's more accountable
The Washington Post Editorial Board - is thinking about what Washington will look like after the 2012 Olympics, should DC win the bid to host the games

"Reflexively Anti-Israel and/or Pro-Palestinian":
Robert Novak - reports that Bibi Netanyahu warned Senators about the Iraqi nuclear threat
Pat Buchanan - says that Bush's presidency is at the breaking point
Alexander Cockburn - gives Israel a break (sort of ) to ruminate and reflect on the barbecue
Christopher Hitchens - takes on religion
Edward Said - is Thinking Ahead

Does he have a blog?

UCLA Law Professor Russell Korobkin contributes the rarest thing seen in a discussion of the Middle East - a novel approach:

The problem of nonsimultaneous performance is common in bargaining contexts. Why would I pay you today for goods to be delivered later when you might decide to keep my money and either never provide the goods or provide shoddy goods?

Two types of solutions can make such bargains possible. First, an external enforcement mechanism such as a judicial system can guarantee to the first party the performance of the second party. Second, the agreement itself can provide a mechanism for the first party to recoup its losses if the second party fails to perform, both to protect the first party and provide incentives to the second.

Many commentators have essentially called for the development of an external enforcement mechanism by suggesting that U.S. or other outside peacekeeping forces go to the region. The problem with this approach--besides Western reluctance--is that neutral soldiers cannot prevent Palestinian suicide bombings any better than Israeli soldiers can.

A better approach is to build into the agreement a provision that permits Israel to reoccupy portions of the territories if the Palestinians fail to provide the peace they promise, with higher levels of terror triggering the right of Israel to reoccupy larger portions of land. This approach would give Israel the security to sacrifice land and the Palestinians the strongest possible incentive to prevent future terrorism.

Another must read

Bret Stephens looks at how the quest for "objectivity" and "balance" in modern journalism means that it is now bereft of moral clarity. News reports emphasize certain facts to shoehorn a story into a phoney balanced narrative. To prove his point Stephens looks at how the New York Times and Newsweek recently used resorted to a TV-style split screen format in covering teenage homicide/suicide bomber Ayat al-Akhras on one side and (one of) her victim(s) Rachel Levy.

Stephens' critique is insightful. He found Joshua Hammer's coverage of the story to be deeper and more informative, but notes that even here the facts don't fit Newsweek's neat teen vs. teen narrative:

The larger failing of Hammer's story, however, lies in the basic narrative choice of playing this as an Akhras versus Levy story. For whatever your view on the vexed subject of martyrdom or murder, the supermarket bombing was not a one-for-one deal. There was a second victim, security guard Haim Smadar. The Israeli press has given him his due, as does Etgar Lefkovits's story in today's Jerusalem Post magazine. But in the West, he doesn't count: his presence interrupts the happy fictive symmetries of its political imagination. So a word about Haim Smadar.

He was a father of five. Two of his children are deaf. He had been married for more than 30 years. He made a security guard's salary. He prided himself on his alertness. He received a commendation last year from Mayor Ehud Olmert for his diligence. His knowledge of Arabic - he was born in Tunisia - may have alerted him to the danger posed by Akhras. Witnesses attest that his last words, as he struggled to stop Akhras from entering the supermarket were, "You are not coming in here. You and I will blow up here." He may have saved 12 or 20 or 30 lives, or more.

Plan B

I'm happy to know that my daughters are Americans, and would find it strange for anyone to question why they think of themselves as Americans. There is no better place for a human being to live than the United States. I pray that in the next millennium the world finally learns to cherish American ideals as I do. As much as I love Israel, there is still much the founding fathers could teach her. And yet, the existence of America does not vitiate the necessity for Israel.

From my perspective as a child of holocaust survivors the need for the state of Israel has always been obvious, but I find that is much less clear to others. I suspect that my children think of Israel as the place where Mark, Chava and their kids live. The place with all of Dad's aunts, uncles and cousins. The place where Mom sometimes goes to research her thesis. But for me Israel represents Plan B, as it has for as long as I can remember. It is the place to go if the world decides that it is time to kill Jews again.

If you have the poor judgement to share this belief with others, you will often find yourself receiving a "are you scared of black helicopters too" kind of stare. No, I don't believe that the United States will falter in my lifetime. The beacon of liberty will not lose her strength nor betray her principles. Patrick Buchanan will not be elected President. But I assume that the world of 2102 will be as different from the world today as 1902 was.

In the mid 1930's my paternal grandfather went on a visit to the Holy Land. He fell in love with the place, and with Zionism. When he returned home to Hust, he decided that it was time to pack up the family and move to Palestine. But my grandmother gave him what I imagine was the 1930's version of the "black helicopter stare." The Nazi thing will blow over. Czechoslovakia is one of the most enlightened countries in Europe. The family was wealthy, and well established. Who wanted to go drain some swamps in Palestine? That's no place for us.

My grandmother, of blessed memory, was one stubborn lady. So they stayed. A couple of years later, the whole family was scattered in various concentration camps. The irony was, of course, they all came back. Except for my grandfather, the one I never knew, the one for whom I was named after. After the war my father's family reunited in Israel, where most of them now live. In my mind, it also helps explain why my grandmother became so devoutly religious.

Though no surprise to me, I hope that the reactions of European leaders to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict of the past two weeks has woken up the Jews of Europe. Save for the exceptional United States, the league of nations seems quite happy to condemn the Jews to death by suicide bomber. I hope that my maternal family in Belgium hears the message. For them, Israel should become "Plan A."

If I haven't convinced you by now to read Daniel Gordis' wonderful NY Times Op-Ed on why we need Israel, perhaps this will convince your mouse to click:

On Tuesday night, my 12-year-old son, Avi, told me about a Yom Hashoah class discussion about whether the Holocaust could happen again — a session he said he found "stupid." Why? I asked. "Because we have a strong army," he answered, "America is our friend, and look out there now — we take care of ourselves."

NY Times while standing on one leg*

I don't have the time to go through the whole NY Times Op-Ed page today. The pithy take is:

Steven Weisman: Bush should have been engaged in the Middle East - good thing he finally realized it. Think Sandy Berger, but candid. This is what Bush gets for his fuzzy wuzzy imitation.

Daniel Ford: Solid piece that argues that we should have tight quality control, if we are going to have nuclear reactors.

Denise Clark Pope: Poorly argued, content free piece against the SAT. Joanne Jacobs, call your office.

Frank Rich: Bush Doctrine R.I.P. I think that Rich is wrong as usual, but Bush's fuzzy wuzzy imitation means Rich has plenty of arguments in his favor.

Daniel Gordis: So good it deserves a full post. You can go read it in the meantime.

Are you sure it wasn't the food?

A sign that America is getting back to normal:

The lack of leg room on a flight from Paris to San Francisco led to a near-fatal heart attack, according to a suit filed against two major airlines by a woman who blames "economy-class syndrome" for her ailment.

Debra Miller, 37, of Oakland, sued Air France and Continental Airlines in federal court earlier this week.

Miller traveled from Paris to San Francisco, with a stop in Newark, N.J., on April 12, 2001. On April 28, while visiting Napa with her husband, Miller suffered a near fatal heart attack and had to have a blood clot removed from her body, said Michael Danko, one of Miller's lawyers. The medical term for "economy-class syndrome" is deep-vein thrombosis.

Skinny WaPo today

Pretty quiet at the Post. Colbert King compares crime in Zurich, Switzerland to Washington D.C. In Washington:

Last Saturday I reported that 55 people had been murdered in the city since Jan. 1. Scratch that: Make it 57 as of yesterday.

And gun-related crimes in which folks live to tell about it? Sorry, there's not enough space.

Which, in light of the city's tough gun control laws, might be laughable were the consequences not so sickening -- and deadly. At night, some of our neighborhoods sound like shooting galleries.

Contrast that scene with Switzerland, where every man between 21 and 32 has, courtesy of the government, an M-57 assault rifle and two dozen rounds of ammo, which he is required to keep in his home. Switzerland, where as many as 2 million firearms may be in homes, has a national gun crime rate that is probably on a par with Disney World's.

But even assuming that the law's provisions are perfectly tailored to have the effects intended, true reform will remain elusive without proper enforcement by the Federal Election Commission. If recent history is any guide, the FEC has little appetite for rigorous enforcement of the nation's campaign finance laws.

Which side of the bed does Starr get?

Dan Walters reports on a strange alliance forming to challenge CFR in court:

Politics, it's been often and accurately said, make for strange bedfellows -- but one of the odder has to be the California Democratic Party and Ken Starr, the prosecutor of former President Clinton.

State Democratic officials are ready to file a lawsuit that would complement one Starr is already pressing against the just-enacted McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation -- fearing that its provisions would put a significant damper on party fund raising in California.

Pick up the phone

Fox interviews Nathan Sharansky:

One of the Israeli cabinet’s leading hawks says his country’s military is showing more restraint against Palestinian fighters than the United States has shown in Afghanistan, and he says European criticism of the Israeli campaign is anti-Semitic.

Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky, Israel's minister of housing, told Fox News in an interview Thursday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should take the initiative in developing a closer personal relationship with President Bush.

Sharon, he said, should not wait to be called by Bush, but should call the American president more often to brief him on the situation in the Middle East.

Arafat condemns terrorism

I guess he really wanted to chat with Colin Powell. Dennis Ross must be so pleased.

A suggestion

Don't you think it is time for some smart editor to give Steven Den Beste a syndicated column? I mean besides this one.

Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee

Mark Steyn has been vying with Victor Davis Hanson for the MVP title in the war on terror, columnists division. But if you read blogs, you already know that... So I click over to see if Mark Steyn has a new column out- and - yippee! He does! So I read it. But it is about Canada. Darn.

"Unfair" you cry? "Cheap shot", you say. After all, if Steyn is great, maybe this is just one of those columns where knowledge of Canada is a prerequisite? Perhaps, but bear in mind that I grew up in Montreal. In fact, it was when separatist leader René Levesque first won election to be Premier of Quebec over Robert Bourassa as I was in 7th grade that sparked my interest in politics to begin with. I have enough background to follow a column that would interest only Canadians.

Before I continue, let me assert that I have no qualms believing that Mark Steyn is the most astute commentator on Canadian politics alive today. The problem is his subject matter. See for yourself:

Why are republicans so lazy? There are serious arguments in favour of a republic -- I've advanced a few of them myself in these pages -- but professional republicans never seem to make them. Take Jeffrey Simpson of The Globe And Mail. One sympathizes with the poor fellow: It must have been distressing to drive into work this last week and find the airwaves clogged with chaps from the Canadian Forces Medical Corps and horsey types from the Queen's Plate reminiscing about what a gracious lady the old dear was. So Jeff (son of Mrs. Simpson?) gets to the Globe, fires up the typewriter and rattles off a column headlined "Will Canada Ever Grow Up?"

"When is Canada going to grow up?" sighed Jeffrey, cutting to the chase in his opening sentence. "Deaths bring out the worst of Canada's infantile instincts toward the Royals."

Ah, the oldest fall-back in the columnar handbook: People who disagree with me need to grow up. Jeffrey doesn't want to argue the merits of republicanism. After all, it's obvious, isn't it? Obvious, that is, to anyone who isn't a child, who isn't "infantile," who isn't immature. And, as we all know, the definition of the maturing process is that one grows into the sort of person who agrees with Jeff. Given the choice between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Jeffrey Simpson, which would you say was the remote imperious old queen?

Links

I've been putting off a major links overhaul, but decided I need to post an interim update. I added a category for blogs from Israel and also sprinkled in a few new links to some blogs here and there.

Political plug

I've been very focused on the situation in Israel, but I've been meaning to mention how great Taegan Goddard's Political Wire is for a while now. Political junkies can go there to find summaries and links to the big (and little) political stories of the day. For example, here's one recent post of note:

In Massachusetts, GOP Tries To Keep Convention Vote Secret

Massachusetts Republican leaders "have literally buried the results of last week's convention - keeping secret the identities of nearly 1,500 delegates who snubbed Mitt Romney's handpicked running mate. GOP officials admitted that the parliamentarian of Saturday's convention threw the votes of all the delegates into a dumpster," the Boston Herald reports. "The move prevents Romney and other candidates, including lieutenant governor hopeful James Rappaport, from finding out who their friends and enemies were in the convention hall."

Goodies from family

Just got an e-mail from my brother full of links. Here are the highlights:

A report that the Israeli town Nes Tziona has hired security forces to guard all the kindergartens

Some IDF video of the capture of the gun running ship Karine A

Ex-Ringo Starr stunt double Yasser Arafat vows to fight to the death

The IDF has a web page of captured incriminating documents

Voices from the enemies list

Bill Buckley, a member of Eric Alterman's "Reflexively Pro-Israel" category of commentators, has this to say about Israel's military campaign:

My vote is that General Sharon's offensive is the stupidest campaign in recent memory. Defined here as a campaign that has: solved nothing, increased Israel's problems, intensified Palestinian hatred of Israel, estranged many Europeans and Americans, and fanned Islamic hostility. What is General Sharon up to?

Boy Genius makes good

My sense of geography may be a bit strange, but from my perspective Patrick Ruffini is a local boy, since he comes from Bloggaritaville. So don't miss his take on "the nastiest bit of judicial activism in an elections case this side of the Florida supreme court" in the National Review Online. The same keen insight you find in his blog, now available in longer form. Does this mean they will let him post on "the corner"?

WaPoOpEd is rolling

I thoroughly enjoyed tonight's Washington Post Op-Ed page, and I think you will too. We begin with David Ignatius who looks at Qatar and sees potential for what the Arab world can become:

A decade ago Qatar had a reputation in the oil industry as a sleepy backwater. The country had a weak ruler, underutilized energy resources and a name most Westerners found unpronounceable. (Try saying "gutter" with a clutch in your throat, and you'll come close.)

Today Qatar is emerging as the first of the "successor" regimes in the gulf, taking over from the autocratic rulers who have governed for decades. The clearest sign of its new role came a week ago when The Post reported that the U.S. Central Command is preparing to "replicate" at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base the elaborate command and control facilities it had built in Saudi Arabia.

Remember that old criticism of the political press, that we're so obsessed with the "horse race" aspect of electoral campaigns -- who's up, who's down -- that we never get around to covering the issues?

Well, Chris Gallagher, a lawyer-lobbyist here, is now positively nostalgic for the horse race, because routine political talk no longer even focuses on who will be successful with the voters. Instead, he says, it highlights only who will be able to raise enough money to buy the most ads.

To take the most unpleasant example, have you ever fired someone? In Washington there are people who have fired rockets -- and many who have written articles urging others to fire rockets -- but have never fired a human being. The natural tendency is to think, "I'm much too nice a person to do that sort of thing" -- and to feel superior to anyone without such scruples. Yet in an organization of any size there are going to be people who need or actually deserve to be fired. It is hardly the nicest solution to leave that job to someone nasty enough to enjoy it. The amateur's approach is either to work yourself up into a sadistic fury of your own or to chicken out. Watching a pro get the job done with minimum emotional damage on both sides is impressive. I couldn't do it, and most of you, dear readers, couldn't either

And why is Oscar Biscet, a physician, still rotting in jail in Holguin, more than 400 miles away from Havana, his hometown? His "crime" consisted of a civil disobedience campaign and a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights in a public park in Havana. Oscar has served 80 percent of his sentence.

Why not release Bernardo Arevalo, an independent journalist, who was sentenced to six years for contempt and has already served 74 percent of his sentence. Bernardo revealed cattle slaughtering by members of the military, and since in Cuba individual slaughter is forbidden and punished with a 10-year sentence, his information implicated the army and high-ranking state officials in a crime.

Why does Castro keep these three men locked up -- all three declared prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International -- in prisons that he himself acknowledges are nothing more than "universities of delinquency"? And why are these men in jail in the first place?

In the face of mounting evidence that this approach did not deter narcotic use, however, DARE switched course. Rather than stressing the evil consequences of drugs, teachers and police officers now lead discussions about why people choose to ingest them.

That's a welcome reform, but it won't work if we ignore the most obvious reason: a desire for pleasure. At present, educators stress every reason for alcohol and drug use except pleasure. Peer pressure, low self-esteem, parental abuse -- the list goes on and on. But nowhere do we acknowledge the plain fact that alcohol and drugs can promote euphoric feelings in the human psyche.

Focus

Peggy is praying. Thanks Peggy.

Time for the NY Times

As we look in on the NY Times Op-Ed pages tonight there are new columns by Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof, as well as a Op-Ed pieces by Nitsan Alon, a colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, and Kathy Finn, a business writer.

Kathy Finn does a survey of New Orleans, reporting on the incoming mayor Ray Nagin, and the expectations that he will goose the local economy. She explains that a ballot measure that approved a municipal minimum wage hike of one dollar above the federal level may be problematic. Except that she doesn't really explain it so much as talk about it. She piqued my curiosity about the city's prospects, but in the end I couldn't tell you what motivated her to write an op-Ed. She didn't explain anything, or advocate a position. Still, I shouldn't complain, given that in a couple of paragraphs we'll be covering writers who will make me wish we were talking about New Orleans again.

Next, Nitsan Alon explains the rationale behind the Israeli military action. He does not pretend that this military action will be a permanent solution, but he argues that it is not merely an emotional reaction:

The choice of targets focused on the terrorist organizations and especially on the location of their senior activists. In the village of Tubas, east of Nablus, Israeli Special Forces, using precise intelligence, located and killed six senior Hamas terrorists. The head of the group was Qeis Odwan, commander of the Hamas military wing in the northern West Bank. He was personally responsible for several suicide bombings, including the Netanya bombing, that together took 75 Israeli lives. Israeli troops also killed Akram al-Atrash, Qeis Odwan's counterpart in Hebron, who had an equally gruesome résumé. Terrorists from Fatah's Tanzim group, as well as Palestinian Authority officials and security officers involved in terrorism, are also on the wanted list. Israeli forces are currently searching for Marwan Barghouti, the Tanzim leader whose involvement in the fatal shooting in Hadera in January was recently exposed.

So far, the two-week-old operation has proved to be a considerable success. Hundreds of militant terrorists have been killed, and several hundred more were apprehended and interrogated, including senior people that the Israeli forces had included on terrorist lists submitted to both the Palestinian Authority and American officials. Large amounts of weapons and ammunition — all illegal under Israel-Palestinian Authority agreements — were captured in the course of the operation, including hundreds of explosive devices, ready-to-use suicide bombs, sniper rifles and anti-tank rocket launchers. Also captured were workshops for the manufacture of explosives. While Palestinian smugglers will try to replace these items over time, there can be no doubt that their capture saved Israeli lives.

Who would have imagined that anyone could turn a vacillating dictator like Yasir Arafat into a hero, while also sowing discord between Israel and its greatest ally?

Ariel Sharon has managed to do both. And by defying President Bush's appeals and using helicopters paid for with United States tax dollars to destroy Palestinian homes and lives, he is also undermining American credibility in the region.

The world simply isn't so tidy as to provide a blanket solution to terrorism. Sometimes, as in Afghanistan, there is a military answer.

In other cases, such as Pakistan, there is a political answer. In some places, there is both: the Philippines has worked out peace deals with two rebel groups but is using military power to try to destroy a third.

Our principle should not be "Never negotiate with terrorists" but rather "Don't reward terrorism." Unfortunately, by turning a menace like Mr. Arafat into a hero all over the Arab world, Mr. Sharon is creating incentives for terrorism and undermining Israel's long-term security.

One theory I've heard is that Mr. White can't be fired: that there are facts about the administration's relationship with Enron that it doesn't want to come out, and that Mr. White knows where the bodies are buried.

My preferred explanation, however, is that Mr. White has been protected by the administration's infallibility complex. In case you haven't noticed, this administration never, ever admits making a mistake; even when it makes a policy U-turn, it tries to rewrite history to pretend that everything is still going according to plan. One recent example involved foreign aid. First the administration came out with a miserly proposal; faced with outrage from the rest of the world, it doubled its offer. But it claimed, to an incredulous press corps, that there had been no change in plan, that the proposal had simply been badly presented

No sudden movements

Die hard Cub fan is persecuted by the government. Hasn't poor Spoons suffered enough?

Will he appeal?

You know what they say about a man who represents himself in court - he has a fool for a client. Looks like the space aliens who are in charge of the justice department won this round:

A jury on Thursday found colorful Ohio Rep. James Traficant guilty on bribery, corruption and racketeering charges following a raucous trial.

The boisterous nine-term congressman, known for his signature sign-off "beam me up!" to conclude his ramblings on the floor of the House of Representatives, was accused of running his office as a racketeering enterprise.

Traficant, 60, could face up to 63 years in prison and possible ouster from Congress by his colleagues, though that has only happened once since the U.S. Civil War.

Senior officials - continued

If President Bush was unhappy at the attacks he is getting from the right, he is going to be *very* unhappy with this piece from uber-pundit Bill Kristol:

The Washington Post quoted "administration sources" saying support for Sharon was "eroding . . . inside the White House." These "senior White House aides are beginning to express doubts about whether the Israeli leader can be a long-term partner in achieving the administration's goals in the Middle East."

These "senior White House aides" may be unaware that the current Israeli military operation has the overwhelming support of Israeli people across the political spectrum. But in any case, isn't it rather extraordinary, at a time when Secretary Powell is reaching out his hand to "Chairman" Arafat, that White House officials are now suggesting they would like to see the elected prime minister of Israel out of office?

Which leads to the question: Who are these "senior White House aides"? For months we've been reading about the unprecedented discipline of this White House--how no one speaks to the press without authorization. So we can safely assume that only the highest officials in the White House could be making statements with such significant policy implications. People at the level of, say, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and Ari Fleischer.

Is it really the case that "regime change" in Israel is now administration policy? If not, these officials may want to publicly dispel the impression left by "senior White House aides."

Stay flexible

Somehow I missed this great Ron Brownstein article that came out a couple of days ago. He thinks that the pundits should cut Bush some slack for his willingness to change tack:

President Bush's decision to send Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the Middle East last week has inspired both loud praise and quiet gloating. Most analysts welcome the initiative. But critics see it as a tacit admission that Bush's initial decision to disengage from the region was a mistake.

That's a common reflex in Washington--and a destructive one. When a politician changes position, the capital's general assumption is that there are only two possible explanations. One is political opportunism. The other is that the initial position was wrong to begin with. Measured against those yardsticks, change almost always looks like a sign of weakness.

It shouldn't be. Politicians can also change positions because they learn from experience. Or because they are confronting changing conditions. Indeed, of all the skills a president needs to succeed, the ability to adapt to new circumstances may be the most often overlooked.

If english teachers ruled the world

I'm not an Oprah groupy, but I don't get Norah Vincent, who is glad that Oprah is shutting down the book club:

Finally, there's the question of quality. People who dislike Oprah's Book Club dislike it for the same reason that they dislike Barnes & Noble. The fact that the two do a brisk business isn't accidental.

Winfrey and B&N represent the same pernicious homogenization of American life that makes existential despair all but unavoidable.

They are the generic market force that always pushes the charming, singular neighborhood bookstore cafe out of business or the quirky black comic novel into the remainder bin; the bland cultural juggernaut that makes every corner of America look the same and, more frightening, think the same.

No. really, just this last chance

Dennis Ross is back on the LA Times Op-Ed pages arguing for one last chance for Arafat:

If there is any hope for Arafat, he must conclude from his meeting with Powell that he is out of chances. Bush also threw down a gauntlet, challenging Arab leaders either to help produce a change in Arafat's behavior or to exert their leadership given the absence of effective Palestinian leadership.

A new kind of SWAT team

The LA Times fronts a look at Israeli "Special Recon" units that patrol the streets looking for suicide murderers:

Even if officers are on the lookout for a known face, the Recon 7 unit faces a profound dilemma when it comes to using deadly force.

"Shooting is a problem," Abukasi said. "Because if you make a mistake, you can't turn back the clock." It's a tightrope between under-reaction and overreaction. In one incident, Uzan said, an Arab suspect seemed like the real thing: He acted nervous. He carried a big bag. When challenged, he made a move to flee, then reached into his bag as the officers aimed their guns.

Although the officers were as terrified as the suspect, they did not fire. It turned out that he was just reaching into the bag to pull out his ID card.

"He was very close to being killed," Uzan said.

Inside baseball

Lots of good stuff in The Note today (I'll enable the web links for you using advanced blogger technology). The speculation on what is going on behind the scenes at the White House is funny, but my favorite part was the blogger style towel snapping they give Liz Smith and Judy Woodruff:

Liz Smith gives Judy Woodruff's interviews with the 2004 contenders and their spouses a little puff today, teasing the Edwards installment expected this afternoon. Then Liz writes this about the Florida convention: "Tomorrow, Judy hits Orlando, where the important Florida State Democratic Convention gets under way, with actor Alec Baldwin as keynote speaker. Lieberman and Edwards, plus Bob Kerrey, Chris Dodd and Al Gore are expected. Only Dick Gephardt seems to have a conflict and won't be there." ( http://www.nypost.com/gossip/liz.html )

"I asked Judy if former President Bill Clinton would be in Orlando? She mused, 'I don't think so. They are looking to the future, I believe.'"

Our reactions to this?

1. Note to David Wade: call Liz Smith and tell her it's John, not Bob, and no "e."

2. Note to Judy Woodruff: read our stuff and you won't have to "muse" about Bill Clinton. ( http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/fladem_020408.html )

3. Note to Liz Smith: don't forget Tom Daschle and Howard Dean — they won't be there, either.

Finally

Yale graduate student Tarek Masoud has a great pro-Palestinian Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today (it is today's featured article, so the link requires registration until tomorrow). While I'm sure that Mr. Masoud and I would find plenty to argue about, his words give me some hope that one day Israelis and Palestinians can live together as peaceful neighbors:

But of course, as Thomas Friedman and others have pointed out, the choice before the Palestinians is not between liberty and death. Israel's leaders long ago accepted the logic of a Palestinian state; they put forward proposals for what that state would look like, and they haggled with the Palestinians over these proposals. Whatever one wants to say about the quality of Israeli proposals or the personal commitment of Ariel Sharon to a Palestinian state -- and I happen to think both were fairly low -- surely the Palestinians were not in a hopeless situation, the kind of situation which, we are told, causes sane men and women to fall into murder and suicide?

It is by now the received wisdom that Palestinians deserve better leaders. We are offered an example of the kind of leadership they need by the esteemed British historian Martin Gilbert. In 1948, the U.N. mediator in Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated by members of the Stern Gang, a Jewish militant group that included a future prime minister of Israel named Yitzhak Shamir. In the half century since then, Arabs have often pointed to the episode to justify their own acts of terror.

But what Arabs seem to forget -- and what Palestinians would do well to remember -- is how David Ben-Gurion, the father of modern Israel, responded to that murder carried out in the name of the Jewish state. According to Mr. Gilbert, when Ben-Gurion learned of the assassination of Count Bernadotte, he thundered: "Arrest all Stern gang leaders. Surround all Stern bases. Confiscate all arms. Kill any who resist." Yes, the Palestinians deserve better leaders. What they deserve is a David Ben-Gurion.

WaPoOpEd

Mary McGrory takes some time away from her duties at the DNC and devotes a column to the Queen mum's funeral. She reviews a bit of a history and does some obligatory navel gazing about what her passing means. Towards the end she manages to slip in a snarky paragraph:

Only the context was jarring: In a news break, Secretary of State Colin Powell was shown in Morocco, whose king understandably greeted him by asking why he was not in Jerusalem. Ariel Sharon was saying, yeah, yeah, he's withdrawing, but he kept the tanks rolling on the West Bank. Yasser Arafat didn't say anything against suicide bombing in any language, and from Boston came new evidence of perfidious prelates who lied and sent a pedophile to an unsuspecting California parish.

In the Wall Street Journal recently, the defense intellectual Eliot Cohen called on Thomas White to resign as secretary of the Army. Others have urged the same, either because White stayed in touch with his former associates at Enron, where he was once an important executive, or because he used government airplanes to conduct personal business. Cohen had a different reason: White had benefited from a corrupt institution. He simply lacked the moral standing to lead soldiers.

Catholics express betrayal. Their church, their priests: They trusted them both with their kids. Everyone is shocked, appalled, saddened. Law must resign. The pope must insist on it. The church must come clean, admit where it was wrong and deal severely with liars. A great institution has harmed itself. A great institution has failed us all.

As a physician and legislator who struggles with this inherent tension between scientific progress and ethical concerns, I focus on two fundamental questions: (1) Does the scientific potential of human research cloning experimentation justify the purposeful creation of human embryos, which must be destroyed in experiments? (2) Does the promise of human embryonic stem cell research depend on experimental human research cloning?

At this point in the evolution of this new science, I cannot justify the purposeful creation and destruction of human embryos in order to experiment on them, especially when the promise and success of human embryonic stem cell research do not depend on experimental research cloning.

"[...] it is not possible to pretend the clock started when the last attack on Israelis took place. Three times as many Palestinians have been killed as Israelis during these tragic 18 months, in both cases mostly innocent civilians. "

Eric Alterman's List

Here is a web enabled version of Eric Alterman's list. I have not changed it other than adding web links to each name. Sid Zion and Sidney Zion seem to be duplicates. If I could not find an on line archive for a person the link is to a google search of that person. To allow people a "clean link" to this list, I have posted my observations about this list below.

COLUMNISTS AND COMMENTATORS WHO CAN BE COUNTED UPON TO SUPPORT ISRAEL REFLEXIVELY AND WITHOUT QUALIFICATION:

George Will, The Washington Post, Newsweek and ABC News
William Safire, The New York Times
A.M. Rosenthal, The New York Daily News, formerly Executive Editor of and later columnist for, The New York Times,
Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, PBS, Time, and The Weekly Standard, formerly of the New Republic.
Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, National Journal, and MSNBC.com, formerly of The New Republic and The New Yorker.
Lally Weymouth, The Washington Post and Newsweek
Martin Peretz, The New Republic,
Daniel Pipes, The New York Post
Andrea Peyser, The New York Post
Dick Morris, The New York Post,
Lawrence Kaplan, The New Republic
William Bennett, CNN
William Kristol, The Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, Fox News, formerly of ABC News
Robert Kagan, The Washington Post and The Weekly Standard,
Mortimer Zuckerman, US News and World Report (Zuckerman is also Chairman of Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations ).
David Gelertner, The Weekly Standard
John Podhoretz, The New York Post and The Weekly Standard
Mona Charen, The Washington Times
Morton Kondracke, Roll Call, Fox News formerly of The McLaughlin Group, The New Republic and PBS
Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, Fox News, formerly of The New Republic, The McLaughlin Group, and The Baltimore Sun
Sid Zion, The New York Post, The New York Daily News,
Yossi Klein Halevi The New Republic,
Sidney Zion, The New York Post, formerly of The New York Daily News
Norman Podhoretz, Commentary,
Jonah Goldberg, National Review and CNN
Laura Ingraham, CNN, formerly of MSNBC and CBS News
Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe
Rich Lowry, National Review
Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic
Seth Lipsky, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Sun, formerly of the Jewish Forward
Irving Kristol, The Public Interest, The National Interest and The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Allan Keyes, MSNBC, WorldNetDaily.com
Brit Hume, Fox News
John Leo, US News and World Report
Robert Bartley, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
John Fund, The Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal, formerly of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page,
Ben Wattenberg, The Washington Times, PBS
Tony Snow, Washington Times and Fox News
Lawrence Kudlow, National Review and CNBC
Alan Dershowitz, Boston Herald, Washington Times
David Horowitz, Frontpage.com
Jacob Heilbrun, The Los Angeles Times
Thomas Sowell, Washington Times
Frank Gaffney Jr, Washington Times
Emmett Tyrell, American Spectator and New York Sun
Cal Thomas, Washington Times
Oliver North, Washington Times and Fox News, formerly of MSNBC
Michael Ledeen, Jewish World Review
William F. Buckley, National Review
Bill O’Reilly, Fox News
Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,
L. Brent Bozell, Washington Times
Todd Lindberg, Washington Times [actually Tod Lindberg --MD]
Michael Barone, US News and World Report and The McLaughlin Group
Ann Coulter, Human Events,
Linda Chavez, Creators Syndicate
Cathy Young, Reason Magazine
Uri Dan, New York Post
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, morality maven
Rush Limbaugh, radio host
Zev Chafets, New York Daily News


PUBLICATIONS THAT, FOR REASONS OF OWNER OR EDITORSHIP CAN BE COUNTED UPON TO SUPPORT ISRAEL REFLEXIVELY AND WITHOUT QUALIFICATION:
The New Republic (Martin Peretz, Michael Steinhardt, Roger Hertog, Owners)
Commentary (American Jewish Committee, Owner)
US News and World Report (Mortimer Zuckerman, Owner)
The New York Daily News (Mortimer Zuckerman, Owner)
The New York Post (Rupert Murdoch, Owner)
The Weekly Standard (Rupert Murdoch, Owner)
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page (Peter Kann, Editor) [Actually edited by Paul Gigot- MD]
The Atlantic Monthly (Michael Kelly, Editor)

COLUMNISTS LIKELY TO CRITICIZE BOTH ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS, BUT VIEW THEMSELVES TO BE CRITICALLY SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL, AND ULTIMATELY, WOULD SUPPORT ISRAELI SECURITY OVER PALESTINIAN RIGHTS:
Thomas Friedman, The New York Times,
Richard Cohen, The Washington Post and New York Daily News
Avishai Margolit, The New York Review of Books
David Remnick, The New Yorker
Eric Alterman, The Nation and MSNBC.com
The New York Times Editorial Board
The Washington Post Editorial Board

COLUMNISTS LIKELY TO BE REFLEXIVELY ANTI-ISRAEL AND/OR PRO-PALESTINIAN REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE:
Robert Novak, The Washington Post
Pat Buchanan, WorldNetDaily.com, formerly of The Washington Times and CNN.
Alexander Cockburn, The Nation and New York Press
Christopher Hitchens, The Nation and Vanity Fair
Edward Said, The Nation


Update: If, like Thomas Vincent, you find a better source for any of these links than the one I found, please let me know in the comments, and I'll update the list.
Second Update Please note that the correct spelling of commentator of Tod Lindberg is with just one 'd' - Alterman spelled his first name Todd.

Observations about Mr. Alterman's list

When I read Eric Alterman's article and perused his list I found it strange. Conservatives and Liberals have very different views about the existence of bias in the media, so it would not have surprised me to see that other people might look at commentators differently than I do. I regularly read about 35% of the folks listed, including 8 of the 12 people/entities listed in the last two categories (Criticize both Israel and the Palestinians and Reflexively Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestinian), and I found Alterman's characterizations to be a bit odd even at first glance.

In the course of researching and compiling these links a couple of things quickly became apparent. First of all, Alterman was sloppy. He picked people that don't fit at all. If you include Larry Kudlow, you may as well throw Lou Dobbs and Paul Krugman into one of those categories since all three deal primarily with business/economics issues. Perhaps Kudlow wrote some pro-Israel piece somewhere, but it sure isn't his focus. Sid Zion and Sidney Zion seem to be the same person. I suppose that everyone makes mistakes, but this mistake seems to be the result of the haphazard shopping list manner he put the list together. The people are not grouped alphabetically, by publication or in any order that I can discern.

It also became clear to me that Alterman lives in a very different world than the one I inhabit. His world is a very scary place. If I saw the incredible diversity of opinion represented in the "Reflexively Pro-Israel" camp as accurate, it would make me paranoid too. Try to picture Alan Dershowitz, Bill Safire and Ann Coulter sharing a cab to the airport. Do you think you could get them to agree on the route the cab should take? I'd bet $50 they'd all miss their flights when the cabby kicks them out for bickering and tells them they can walk to Queens. If the three of them can agree on something, watch out. You don't like that trio? How about Dick Morris, Bill Bennett and Andrew Sullivan? A world where all those opinion leaders follow a "party line" would really be scary. Furthermore, looking at the reflexively anti-Israel list, I wouldn't call Christopher Hitchens reflexively anything. I might disagree with him on Israel, but I'm sure that Hitchens has thought his position through. Does Alterman read The Nation?

Over the next few weeks, I will try to read at least column from everyone on this list, and give you my take on them. But here's the thing, now that I've hyperlinked them all for you, you can read them yourself and decide what you think. Strange that Alterman, writing for the supposedly web-savvy MSNBC, didn't make sure that they were link-enabled in the first place.

Rummy shakes things up

In a move that is much more in keeping with the corporate world, Donald Rumsfeld is installing a new set of leaders to help him transform the military:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has worked for months on filling the top command slots, which involve the chiefs of U.S. forces in every region of the world except the Pacific, as well as the heads of two of the four armed services. He has said he expects the moves to be among his most significant acts at the Pentagon.

For two of the most important positions – the top military job in Europe and the new head of the Army – Rumsfeld has selected people who stand out among the current top brass as unconventional thinkers who are likely to be supportive of his drive to "transform" the military to better address terrorism and other new challenges.

Times review

Tonight we start with Bill Safire, who compares Bush 41's decision not to finish off Saddam with Colin Powell's mission that is attempting to restrain Israel:

A decade ago, television pictures of a bloodied Iraqi Army in retreat caused Gen. Colin Powell — ever sensitive to "world opinion" — to stay America's hand. As a result of our failure to finish that fight, American lives must soon be put at risk to protect us from Saddam Hussein's nuclear blackmail.

Has our secretary of state learned the lesson of closure? Apparently not; he is now on a mission to stop Israel from winning the war of terror that was launched against it.

It's not that either a serious accident or a terrorist attack at Indian Point is likely. It's that nearly everyone realizes now that some terrible occurrence is possible. And new polling data compiled by the respected Marist Institute for Public Opinion show that more and more residents of the metropolitan area feel that the benefits to be derived from the continued operation of Indian Point are not worth the risks.

Children will benefit even more if we can keep families together — particularly if the welfare system encourages marriage. Erosion of marriage is the principal cause of child poverty, welfare dependence, higher emotional instability in children and higher crime rates for children.

But in its current form the welfare system discriminates against marriage. A married couple must work more hours than a single mother to earn a welfare check of equal value — so there is little incentive for a single mother to marry. We want to change it so that married or not, the same number of hours are required to receive the same welfare check.

Realizing this vision will take careful planning as well as bold strokes. Previous pronouncements for the island's future have floundered as elected leaders struggled with difficult political relationships as well as the considerable challenges of reusing the island in ways that would benefit the public and make economic sense for the private investors who will probably be part of any final financing arrangement.

Now there may be a chance to overcome that history. The cordial relationship between Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, and their ability to speak with one voice to the president, helped bring about the president's offer. The city and state now need to establish a governance structure for the island that recognizes its educational mission and other public interests, with efforts made to include the voices of the City Council and New York's Congressional delegation. The city and state also must carry out the necessary legal commitments so that the federal government can legitimately transfer the property.

Careful what you ask for

Terrific Asparagirl post:

So let's say the Palestinians do end up with an independent country called Palestine: wholly autonomous, a member of the UN, the whole nine yards. Bush sure seems to want that route, as do I. Arafat sure seems to not want that route, as do much of the other Middle East despots. But let's assume a country called Palestine, made up of the West Bank (the Gaza Strip goes to the Egyptians) does come into being. What would such a state be like? Would it be a democracy? Would it be able to provide for its citizens' most basic needs, like education and food and medicine? Would it grant women the right to vote? Who would their statesmen and politicians be? Would the other Arab states help out this fledgling country made up of people they themselves had killed (Jordan, Syria) or tossed out (Kuwait) of their own countries only a few years ago? Might they not instead want the new country to fail and attempt to sabotage it? Might they not succeed in sabotaging it if Israel and the U.S. really did take the hands-off-Palestine approach that so many pro-Palestinian people ostensibly want?

Pictures

On the PR theme, here is a site that debunks some propaganda using pictures.

(Note: The pictures are ordered chronologically right to left, since the article is translated from Hebrew.)

He writes about stuff besides bloggers

John Dvorak writes about the follow up to Ed Black's book on IBM's involvement with the Nazis:

The IBM situation will die down the way it did the last time, and Black will probably come up with something even more interesting than Watson Business Machines. His pictures of the Hollerith cards with the SS logo on them are pretty chilling (see photos accompanying this column). I'm guessing that he's looking for IBM to publicly apologize, and he'll continue to hound the company until it does. So this story will never end.

Even Oz won't show you this

Perhaps the folks at Camp X-Ray could take a page from this prison's management handbook. NPR reports:

How do you handle a hungry con? If he ain't misbehavin', regular old, godawful prison food will do. But if he's been bad, and if he happens to be a resident of Baltimore's Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, he might be stuck eating what the prison calls a "special management meal," and what the inmates call…. Well, this is a family public radio network.

Excuse me sir, what time is it?

Amusing low tech/high tech clock. (requires flash)

(via Bro)

Bush might want to think about it a bit more

Jack O'Toole explains that the political potency of gun rights advocates comes from their willingness to vote on that single issue, turning a race into a "referendum election." He sees a new issue with that kind of contour:

The question O'Toole File asks today is this: Is "therapeutic cloning" (i.e., cloning parts for research, rather than people) the same sort of issue? Isn't it entirely possible that the millions of Americans who are waiting for a cure based on this technology will become, in essence, single-issue voters?

The importance of good public relations

One of the biggest problems Israel is saddled with as long as Sharon is Prime Minister is bad PR. The guy is kind of an Israeli Patton. He was (is) a brilliant general, but let's just say he wouldn't do well on Bill Maher's show. While Israelis sometimes mock Benjamin Netanyahu for being "an American," he is a great PR asset to Israel. His speech at the National Press Club today is a great example:

America must show that it will not heed the international call to stop Israel from exercising its right to defend itself. If America compromises its principles and joins in the chorus of those who demand that Israel disengage, the war on terror will be undermined.

[...]That today a Europe which sixty years ago refused to lift a finger to save millions of Jews has turned its collective back on the Jewish State is downright shameful.

But my friends, I must admit. I expected no better from them.

Yet the America I know has always been different.

History has entrusted this nation with carrying the torch of freedom. And time and time again, through both war and peace, America has carried that torch with courage and with honor, combining a might the world has never known with a sense of justice that no power in history has possessed.

Logistics

Security arrangements are being made for Powell to meet with Arafat.

Another cup of Joe to go with that Washington Post?

Only an Op-Ed from Israeli leftist Yossi Beilin (think Noam Chomsky) could dampen the joy of reading todays cavalcade of columns, with efforts from Robert J. Samuelson, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Kelly, and George F. Will. What a bumper crop!

Let's get Shimon's Peres' poodle (Beilin) out of the way first. Beilin, frustrated over his lack of influence in even the Labour party, has some goals for Colin Powell's trip, restore Arafat's power so that Israel can get him to sign some more agreements with him. I'd quote some extracts from his piece, but I'm afraid I cannot dispense them without a prescription since they will cause severe nausea. If your doctor has given you medical clearance, you can read it here.

Moving on, Robert Samuelson is pleased to eat some crow:

It's time to eat crow. I have relentlessly suggested that the aftermath of the 1990s' economic boom would be grim. We had binged; indigestion was inevitable. The recession would be stubborn, the recovery grudging. Well, the facts are otherwise. The economy grew slightly in late 2001; growth in the first quarter of 2002 is expected at a 4 percent to 5 percent annual rate. In March the number of jobs rose 58,000 -- a tiny gain but nothing like the average monthly losses of 144,000 from last March through January.

Western observers totally missed the irony of the Arab summit whose "Saudi peace plan" ostensibly offered Israel peace in return for full territorial withdrawal. The offer was made in Beirut, capital of a country from which Israel had done precisely that -- fully withdraw -- and received in return a more entrenched, emboldened, heavily armed enemy ready to trigger a general war.

It gets better. To justify carrying on the war after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah concocted a territorial claim on a few acres called the Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah says it is Lebanese territory, and therefore occupied -- a position contrary to the internationally sanctioned Blue Line drawn by the United Nations, hardly a partisan of Israel.

At an emotional, visceral level, Bush is Israel's very good friend -- its best presidential friend since Ronald Reagan, or perhaps even Harry Truman. But Bush's policy, bent by persons determined to nuance into inanity his war against terrorism, may teach this lesson: Although it is dangerous to be America's enemy, it can be fatal to be America's friend.

But perhaps with some morning coffee?

Maureen Dowd scolds men for being intimidated by smart women in a dull, paint by numbers column about the trouble with men. Dowd covers all the bases taught in Punditry 101: (a) generalize the experience from a sample of one, yourself (check), (b) find a topical supporting puff piece in Time or Newsweek (Time), (c) quote some expert (economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children"). All Dowd has to do is add some snarky remarks - and columns done. If I haven't convinced you it is safe to skip it, here's a snippet:

The males were happy to give up a little dominance once they realized the deal they were being offered: all those aggressive female primates, after a busy day of dominating their jungle, were primed for sex, not for the withholding of it.

Whatever explanations Washington offers, both Afghans and international officials see the refusal to expand the international force as the start of American disengagement, repeating the mistake of the 1990's despite promises to learn from that experience. Providing security for rebuilding Afghanistan is now the front line in the war against terrorism. Failure here will undermine all other commitments. Many fear that failure has already started. There is still time to prove them wrong.

In its quest to stop suicide bombings in Israel, the Israeli Army invaded Bethlehem last week and has placed the entire civilian population under siege. The people here are running short of water, food and milk for the young. Those lucky enough to have stored food before the invasion now sit in crowded rooms far away from windows exposed to gunfire. Those without food wait in desperation for the Red Cross to reach them with supplies. Armored personnel carriers and soldiers patrol the streets, and shots are fired in all directions. A safe corner in the house today can be a deathbed tomorrow.

Not tonight

I'm afraid you guys will have to read the Op-Ed pages yourself tonight - I'm going out.....

LA Times: Reuters West

Check out the lead paragraph of this front page, above the fold news analysis by staffer Tracy Wilkinson:

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in his strongest defiance yet of Washington, vowed Monday to press ahead with a massive military offensive in the West Bank. As if to underscore the point, Israeli combat helicopters pummeled a refugee camp and ground forces took hundreds of Palestinians prisoner.

The designs of Israel's vast military offensive are etched in the dust and debris of the battered landscape here. The greatest destruction, by far, has been visited on symbols of Palestinian self-rule.

Israel's offensive has been portrayed as a fight against terrorism, and, to be sure, Israel would very much like to stop the wave of suicide bombers and ambushing gunmen who killed 106 Israeli civilians and soldiers last month alone. The last suicide bombing took place April 1. But at its core, the offensive is a systematic attempt, fathered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and midwifed by his military commanders, to finish off the Palestinian Authority, any remnant of the landmark Oslo peace process and, most important, Arafat.

Police, especially, were singled out for humiliating treatment. They were forced to strip to their underwear and turn in their weapons. Once in detention camps, they were forced to sit with their heads in a downward position, according to other Palestinians who have been released.

By hitting steadily at the police forces, Sharon is undermining the very pillars of the Palestinian Authority. Nothing more symbolizes the autonomy of the aspiring Palestinian state than its own security services.

Rajoub's police force is precisely the body that would have to enforce a cease-fire and crackdown on terrorists. Rajoub has long maintained close contacts with American and Israeli security officials and is seen as a protege of the CIA. One of the few photographs on his desk before his office was destroyed was of himself with CIA Director George J. Tenet.

In addition, Rajoub embodied the kind of Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation enshrined in the Oslo accords. Sharon's post-Arafat vision may not have room for such cooperation, preferring to leave security exclusively in the hands of Israel. That in turn implies a long-term reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel.

For all the weapons seized and all the militants killed or arrested, many more are on hand to replace those lost. No one believes that Palestinian resistance will truly be snuffed out, and the reoccupation of the last 11 days has, if nothing else, left an even larger repository of anti-Israel wrath.

The operation in the West Bank "is a very long story," Israeli commentator Danny Rubinstein wrote this week, "the essence of which is the return of Israeli rule to the territories."

Some clear headed thinking

Patrick Ruffini has some sharp insights on the "Cycle of Retreat." A must read. Here's a taste:

Both Chait's explanation and my own tend to discredit the notion that a "cycle of violence" takes root as both sides spontaneously strike back with ever-increasing frequency and force. If the violence were truly spontaneous, and not orchestrated, then yes, the "cycle of violence" metaphor might apply. But a suicide bombing is anything but spontaneous, as the successful effort to "turn off" the violence after September 11 testifies. Of course, there's a heavy dose of bragaddocio in any such claim, but the larger point still stands. Perhaps this particular cohort of Hamas terrorists didn't turn off the violence in the weeks after 9/11, but it sure looks like somebody did.

Wish we could skip this movie of the week

Saul Singer writes in the Jerusalem Post that in some ways, Israel's relationship with the Palestinians is like a bad marriage, TV style:

Israel has been living through one of those made-for-TV movies that make the audience want to scream at the wife, "Don't let him back in! Don't fall for his promises to be better this time!" Each of Yasser Arafat's "cease-fires" have amounted to such empty promises to change, and each has been met with baseless hopes that this time will be different.

One might think that Israel's current rolling incursion into Arafat's terrorist sanctuaries was all about putting an end to this gruesome drama with its forgone conclusion. Yet it is not at all clear that Israel has decided never to trust Arafat again, and the US openly continues to pin its hopes on reforming him.

The truth? We can't handle the truth

If you've finished with the Op-Eds, check out this post on ChicagoBoyz that is better than any of the columns that I have just reviewed in both the Times and the Post. It is a frank examination of how the US military campaign is really going. Check it out.

Late night Post

The Washington Post Op-Ed pages are bursting tonight, with a bunch of columns by the regulars, and a guest shot by Warren Buffett. First , J. Robinson West agrees with Krugman, and does him one better and argues that we need the Saudis. West served in the Reagan and Ford eras, but unlike Rummy, West has not kept up with the latest news. He touts Saudi stability because "[..] Moscow may not be the ideal energy partner, since its interests, values and policies are frequently not aligned with our own." Dude, how September 10th of you! If you need more evidence that this guy just woke up from a coma:

Criticism of some aspects of Saudi society -- corrupt princes, support for anti-American fundamentalism, the mistreatment of women -- may be legitimate. But the record of Saudi Arabia as a reliable supplier of oil for the past 25 years cannot be challenged. Our policy cannot be to reject Saudi Arabia for Russia. That option does not exist.

At Berkshire we frequently buy companies that awarded options to their employees -- and then we do away with the option program. When such a company is negotiating a sale to us, its management rightly expects us to proffer a new performance-based cash program to substitute for the option compensation being lost. These managers -- and we -- have no trouble calculating the cost to the company of the vanishing program. And in making the substitution, of course, we take on a substantial expense, even though the company that was acquired had never recorded a cost for its option program.

Bandar bin Sultan is Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. He has been in Washington a long time, in the country an even longer time, and part of that time a friend of mine. It pains me, then, to tell him that he is, with all due respect, full of it.

[....]
In his op-ed article, Bandar is silent about these payments. He is silent about his government's supporting fundamentalist Islamic schools abroad where anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are part of the curriculum. He is silent about an Arab press, all of it government-controlled, which spews out anti-Semitic idiocy of the sort not seen since the Nazi era. In his own country, the daily al-Riyadh recently ran a two-part series on how Jews "prepare very special pastries" by using the blood of Christians or Muslims. I must have missed Bandar's op-ed on that.

Times roundup

Interesting European perspective in an Op-Ed by Timothy Garton Ash. He argues that America has too much power, and that only Europe can serve as a counterweight. He doesn't hate the US, nor blame us for the imbalance. Ash argues that Europe should bulk up militarily so it can check US power. Had it been present it could have accomplished a number of specific policy goals. Although I disagree with almost all of his policy goals, I welcome his proposal. Just having some skin in the game would change Europe for the better, I think. In any case, his piece is a cut above the usual EU sneering, and a welcome break from the histrionic propaganda often found in that slot.

Next, Paul Krugman says that we may be at risk of a third oil crisis. It might happen. Or it might not. He hopes it doesn't. At least he sounds like an economist again, waffling away. I wouldn't dream of quarrelling with him on this, armed with a mere undergraduate economics degree. I'm sure Meg will have deconstructed it with charts and all by this time tomorrow. But the column is fine. (They pay him for this?) Really it is fine.

Meanwhile, the Nicolas Kristof international waking dream tour continues. Today, writing from Jerusalem, he is fantasizing about ways to solve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Before you read this column, if you want to do it properly, you should put on your CD player and listen to Simon & Garfunkel (+ James Taylor) singing "Wonderful World." Kristof wishes that the Palestinians would give up holding out for a "right of return," and wishes that the Israelis give up the settlements - and then, what a wonderful, wonderful world it would be. His dream reaches its climax when he writes:

Javier Solana, the European foreign policy chief, has suggested that it's time for both Mr. Arafat and Mr. Sharon to leave the scene. My dream is that one of them will publicly offer to retire completely from politics if the other will do so, too. If Mr. Sharon offered to live out his remaining days on the island of Elba, imagine the public pressure on Mr. Arafat to seal the deal by retiring to St. Helena!

Words from the hated Sharon

Ariel Sharon said this (in Hebrew) in his address to Knesset:

From here, I address the Palestinian people. On behalf of the people of Israel, I tell you: we have no quarrel with you. We have no desire to control you or to dictate your fate. We want to live side by side with you in peace, as good neighbors, helping and respecting each other.

(Full text in English)

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If this were a movie

Jonah Goldberg is a credit to the National Review because he proves conservatives can be funny when they try to make a point. But he is also very good at making a point without using humor too:

I know that life isn't a movie. But life, like movies, benefits from moral clarity. The war on terrorism began with it and it is now melting away. There is certainly room and reason to be critical of Israel. But, for the most part, the arguments used to denounce Israel and cheer Arafat strike me as little more than moral Styrofoam, holding the form and shape of an argument but actually crushable with very little effort.

Few arguments marry self-righteousness and absurdity so magically as the one that says Israel must be in the wrong because more Palestinians are dying than Jews. "First, there is a number; the number is 1,200 and counting of Palestinians dead. There's a number of Israeli dead, 420…" exclaimed Rashid Khalidi of the University of Chicago on NPR's Talk of the Nation last week. "That is the number of people who have been killed. Now maybe the Arabs are not human. Maybe the fact that Arabs are being killed by Israelis is completely coincidence."

It's not a coincidence, it's the logical consequence of the fact that the Israelis have built a better army than the Arabs have. They did this because Arabs kept attacking Israel, trying to destroy it. Equating every dead Palestinian gunman with every murdered Israeli is absurd. Sure, Israelis kill innocents from time to time. But it isn't intentional. When the Israeli Defense Forces accidentally killed the family of a leading suicide-bomber recruiter, thinking he would be in the car instead, the IDF apologized. Can you imagine Hamas apologizing to a senior Israeli officer when it killed his family? Of course not. Because Hamas aims for the families. When they succeed, they celebrate.

DSL comes up, Blogger goes down

Aaargh!

That and a subway token will get you to Brooklyn

As I sit here waiting for Earthlink to fix DSL and re-connect me with the Internet, I realize how important the web has become to me. On the bright side, it gives me time to think, since I am blogging as both a "linker and a thinker" (though I admit sometimes I can be a bit of a stinker, but I strive never to be a hoodwinker). Naturally, my thoughts turn yet again to - what in heavens name is Bush thinking.

I believe that are some hidden factors at play. Even if you just think Bush has gone wobbly, the question still remains, wobbly from what? Before I put forth some speculations I have, let me share with you my assumptions about Bush:

1. Bush sees his job as defending the US and US interests first and foremost. After that, he is trying to promote freedom and justice in the world. After that, he is trying to be loyal to US allies. He will punish direct enemies of the US, but he will tolerate a fair amount of abuse from lukewarm friends or lukewarm enemies.

2. He means the Bush doctrine. When he says you're either with us or against us, and if you harbor a terrorist you are branded a terrorist, he means it.

3. Bush will stubbornly stick with his principles unless they conflict. In the event that they conflict, he will compromise lesser principle in service of higher ones.

4. Bush believes that US interests are in grave danger from Iraq and Iran (and perhaps even from North Korea).

5. For reasons that are not apparent to me, he feels that Saddam poses the most serious and immediate threat.

6. Bush thinks that Arafat is sort of a junior partner to the Axis of Evil, but poses an immediate threat to Israel. Any Palestinian threat to the US is more long term and indirect.

Brits....

I don't mention Andrew Sullivan much because I assume that my readers spend time at his site before taking a break on the patio. But did you read his Sunday Times column on the monarchy? What in heavens name was he prattling on about? Near as I can tell, the British system works for them. Why they need a Queen is beyond me, and since the usually crystal clear Sullivan is a complete muddle on this topic, it may be beyond the Brits too. Do you think I'm exaggerating? Then please explain what the heck this paragraph means:

This is perhaps the current Queen's least appreciated achievement: the mixture of elements has made her version of monarchy not simply far more stable than it sometimes appears, but also deeply durable. Besides, what are the realistic alternatives? A French or American presidency? Superfluous. The evolution of the prime minister's office under Thatcher and Blair has given Britain such an institution already - but not as a formal instrument of state. And that's surely a blessing. Can you imagine how unstoppable Thatcher would have been as a directly elected president? Her worst instincts would have been hardened; and her best ones undermined. And if you think Tony Blair is a control-freak in Number 10, Downing Street, try and imagine what he'd be like if his official residence were at Buckingham Palace. On second thoughts, try not to. Any way you look at it, we're better off with Brenda. The monarchy, in subtle ways, might even act occasionally like a psychological check on the first minister from above - forcing him or her to at least adopt a posture of humility that is rarely misplaced.

Lucky for the Times, I had DSL Troubles

I've only just gotten back on-line, so I couldn't post this last night...

Things are pretty quiet over at the Times. Just a new Herbert and Safire to amuse us tonight. Herbert focuses on a possible new nuclear power plant. Instead of arguing for or (obviously) against it, he decides to spend the whole column examining the possible escape routes in the vent of an emergency. Never mind that (as Jonah Goldberg might say) more Americans have died from eating haggis than from nuclear power, say Herbert, let's play what if on escape routes. If you are against nuclear power, no contingency plans will mollify you. If you are undecided or in favor of nuclear power, this Herbert won't shed any new light on the topic. So, unless you have some strange sleep disorder, skip it.

Safire makes a plea for the Kurds in Iraq. He think we should help them and also hurry up and attack Iraq. On a side note, underscores the problem with the CIA having diplomatic duties - it distracts them from their real job - gathering intelligence. He convinced me, but then I was already there. Still, it is well worth reading.

Sunday Evening Post (plus a bonus Fisking)

This is not going to be a daily feature (he says to himself), but since I'm reading it anyway, I'll give you my take the Washington Post Op-Ed pages. Unfortunately, the Michael Kinsley episode is a rerun, because Kinsley is one of the smartest liberal commentators who packs more into a paragraph then four Nick Kristoff and five Mary McGrory columns do combined.

I guess the editors think that most readers don't get cable (Slate on the internet) so they can pass this off on us. If you missed it in Slate, I'll recap it for you. Kinsley concedes "opposition to therapeutic cloning among religious conservatives is easy to understand and even easy to respect in a way," but he'll brook no dissent from "the anti-cloning liberals" who object to cloning out of a "respect for nature." For about two thirds of the piece he slices and dices their arguments into little hors d'oeuvres and then chews them slowly. The last third of the column gets sidetracked by the question of if the fact that he has Parkinson's disease should disqualify him from commenting on cloning. He put in a good seven innings, but really could have used a closer to finish it off.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Mallaby likes what Bush has been doing in foreign policy lately, and wastes a column trying to show that not only it good, it repudiates Bush's campaign promises. He argues that Bush abandoned pledges for a smaller, more focused ("humble") foreign policy by prosecuting the anti-terror war, and that he has fudged on the "you're with us or you're against us" bright line in his dealings with Israel. I mostly disagree, but I also don't care. This kind of scorekeeping lures only the naive types that believed Clinton and then Bush who both promised to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The US is in the process of moving the embassy, just ask Colin Powell. Whatever. Mallaby goes through this rigamarole because he wants the Bush administration to do some nation building. Egads, man! If that's what you want, come out and say it. Don't tell Bush - you gave up on two foreign policy principles, you might as well give up the third.

Unfortunately. two paragraphs into William Raspberry's latest column, Mallaby is looking pretty good. Raspberry should learn to trust his instincts. Go with your initial feeling William, which in this case was:

Considering the trouble comedian Bill Maher found himself in for giving voice to the self-evident, perhaps I should just shut up..

I don't dispute that the suicide bombings constitute terrorism (even while the United Nations struggles to define the term). A good-enough working definition is violence, particularly against civilians and innocents, in furtherance of political ends.

But isn't it reasonable to examine those political ends? Isn't it reasonable also to ask what moral distinctions there are between what the suicide bombers (and those who dispatch them) are doing and what the Israeli forces have been doing?

President Bush has described the latter as justified in retaliating for the suicide bombings. Those who see the suicide bombers as heroes naturally view their actions as retaliation for the latest humiliation visited upon them by the Israelis. What seems obvious to me is that every act of violence, by both sides, is both aggression and retaliation -- and that it does no good to try to separate one from the other. One might just as well hope to settle claims on the land variously called Israel and Palestine by hiring a title-search company to look it up.

Just as Sept. 11 has changed the way we think of our security, so should the wave of suicide bombers change the way Israelis think of theirs. What's the point in making clear to those who would attack you that they do so at peril of their lives if they knowingly do so by giving their lives?

Are they terrorists? Certainly. But is Israeli President Ariel Sharon any less a terrorist because he does his thing through a uniformed military, with tanks and machine guns? There's terror -- and intransigence and duplicity -- on both sides, and precious little value in trying to determine which side owns the preponderance of guilt.

For a long time, it seems to me, Israel preferred a stable strife to what it considered unpalatable concessions. The intifada, at first, and the suicide bombers now seem calculated to force serious negotiations and concessions by rendering the status quo intolerable.

Why is it so much easier for us in America to see Sharon's actions as in Israel's legitimate interest than to see the suicide bombers' as serving theirs?

Bias watchers

My non-blog reading brother who is now sending me more links than I can read, sends two links that point out biased reporting "on the matzav" and refutes them. The first is on Ambulance Obfuscation, and the second covers a number of stories, including the church hostage taking.

Back by popular demand

Comments are back. The voice of the people can be heard once again. Of course, that's if anyone reads this.

Forget Iran, start with Saudi Arabia

Whenever I pass the Rand Corporation building in Santa Monica I wonder what they were named after. I think now I know.

Expert shmexpert - find me someone that has good judgement

As I noted my post "Friedman vs Friedman," pundits will point to an "expert" on a subject that agrees with their thesis as if to say "the expert believes this, so you should too." I found it particularly funny that Friedman did so, because there are few Americans that have as much deep experience with the Middle East as Friedman does, so why does he bring in Stephen P. Cohen. I wonder why he didn't consult Daniel Pipes, one of those Americans more expert than he is? I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Pipes advocates a very different view from the one that Friedman does.

Obviously, Friedman is hardly alone in touting "expert opinion" to bolster an argument, I have been guilty of it myself. The trouble with this practice is that is confuses subject matter expertise with sound judgement. For example, I believe that Paul Wolfowitz is one of the foremost experts on things military, and he's up there in the rankings of experts in foreign policy in general. But as much as I respect his knowledge, and agree with him ideologically, I trust Donald Rumsfeld's judgement far more than I do Wolfowitz's. In fact, I'm happy to say I trust George W. Bush's judgement far more than Wolfowitz's. So why should I win more foreign policy arguments with statements like "defense expert Wolfowitz says...." than I would with statements like "defense policy expert George W. Bush says...?"

The proper use of expert opinion is the presentation of relevant facts upon which to base sound judgements. For example, when consulted about an action that might destabilize the regime of the Shah of Iran, a good foreign policy expert might have warned that the fundamentalist ayatollahs presented a real danger, and they could be much worse than the Shah, both for the Iranian people, and for the outside world. But on the question of what will actually happen if a given action is taken, the quality of the expert's advice is more a function of how good her judgement is in evaluating those facts than it is a function of how deep her knowledge is. Usually, the expert is no more prescient than anyone else is.

Bill Clinton's supporters often ascribe his success to his mastery of the facts, but I would argue that it was much more due to his shrewd political judgement. Even Paul Begala will admit that Clinton could be his own worst enemy when he showed poor judgement. Don't forget that George H.W. Bush was "an expert" with a sterling resume, as was the supposed brainiac Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan's good judgement trumped them both. Many readers may quarrel with my examples, thinking that Reagan's judgement was not that good, or that Bush 41 had better judgement than I give him credit for. That's fine, just don't fall into the trap of mistaking expertise for judgement.

Empire or Commonwealth?

Senior British diplomat Robert Cooper has a good think piece in the Guardian (I know, I know) called "The new liberal imperialism." I'm no fan of Labour, but pieces like this prove that Blair and company are indeed fit to govern. I may not agree with the approach Cooper is advocating, but it is fairly sound. His essay presents the clearest rationale for the EU that I have ever seen, mounting a convincing defense of the parts of the EU that offend me the most. His argument is too long to quote here, but perhaps his vision of the EU will give you a taste of what he is advocating:

The postmodern EU offers a vision of cooperative empire, a common liberty and a common security without the ethnic domination and centralised absolutism to which past empires have been subject, but also without the ethnic exclusiveness that is the hallmark of the nation state - inappropriate in an era without borders and unworkable in regions such as the Balkans. A cooperative empire might be the domestic political framework that best matches the altered substance of the postmodern state: a framework in which each has a share in the government, in which no single country dominates and in which the governing principles are not ethnic but legal. The lightest of touches will be required from the centre; the 'imperial bureaucracy' must be under control, accountable, and the servant, not the master, of the commonwealth. Such an institution must be as dedicated to liberty and democracy as its constituent parts. Like Rome, this commonwealth would provide its citizens with some of its laws, some coins and the occasional road.

A post from a Senior Pundit on the patio

I find the convention of reports "on background" that quote a "senior administration official" fascinating. As I understand the game, "senior" means cabinet level, "administration official" means someone you've heard of, "White House source" means either someone only news junkies have heard of, or someone more senior trying to keep their identity secret. Still, since they are not identified there is always some doubt in my mind that the quote is correct, or that it is really from someone as senior as they say. If you feel the same way, you'll find this report from Byron York speculating on the identity of a certain "senior administration official" rather amusing:

Then there was another clue. In the briefing, the "senior administration official" said he will soon be traveling to the Middle East to try to restart the peace process. "I have not yet put in place a schedule of who I'll be seeing," the official said. "But in my conversations earlier with the Crown Prince and King Abdullah and President Mubarak, they will all be on the schedule."

Finally, there was one more hint. Saying he will work with the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East, Anthony Zinni, the "senior administration official" added, "I think I can take it to a higher level of involvement as the Secretary of State and as the president's designee."

So who is the unnamed "senior administration official"? Revealing his identity would be against the rules.

Why live in Israel?

I just got this essay by Rebecca Rubinstein
emailed to me by friends in Israel:

We are living through very painful and dangerous times. Our Arab neighbors, from within and without, want to annihilate every Jew. They do not discriminate between Orthodox and secular, between Sephardi and Ashkenazi, new immigrant or veteran Israeli, soldier or 8-month-old baby, "settlers" or Tel Aviv night clubbers. We are all in the same boat. Let there be no illusion.

The Jewish people are one people. Anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric will remind us of this when we forget. When my family needs me most, I'm not going to slip out the back door. How could I imagine leaving my brother bleeding in the battlefield while I run home to watch a game of baseball?

Just in Times for Sunday morning

I don't understand what all the fuss is over Maureen Dowd. She is good with a turn of the phrase, but I've not found her very convincing over the length of a column. Today she muddles through a discussion best encapsulated by her lead:

Not long after Sept. 11, somebody scribbled these chillingly profound words on a wall in Washington: "Dear God, save us from the people who believe in you."

It is not news that religion has its ugly, tribalist and bellicose sides. What is news is that those sides are having a field day. Just when we wish to flee to religion for sanctuary, we find ourselves fleeing from religion for sanctuary.

With the Palestinian Authority in shambles, the Palestinians are likely to slide into a state of anarchy, with their leadership gravitating toward more extremist underground elements. In Israel, and especially among the Likud Party, more voices are likely to be heard advocating the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories. Arab resentment at America's apparent partiality will rise, placing in greater jeopardy regimes that are viewed as friendly to the United States.

In these circumstances, America cannot ignore world public opinion. There is a nearly unanimous global consensus that United States policy has become one-sided and morally hypocritical, with clear displays of sympathy for Israeli victims of terrorist violence and relative indifference to the (much more numerous) Palestinian civilian casualties. At risk is America's ability to maintain international support for the war on terrorism, and especially for plans to deal with Saddam Hussein.

The United States response, therefore, has to be guided by a strategic awareness of all the interests involved, and not by the claims of any single party. The course followed in recent times, with its largely procedural emphasis on cease-fires and confidence-building measures while waiting for the parties to agree on their own, has become a prescription for procrastination.

President Bush's speech last week was particularly important because he put America in exactly the role it should be playing: restoring clear lines. He drew a clear line for Israelis — that no matter how many settlements they've built, any peace deal has to be based on the 1967 lines. He drew a clear line for Palestinians — that suicide bombers are not "martyrs, they're murderers."

But Mr. Bush did not draw the line down the middle. He was more critical of Mr. Arafat than Mr. Sharon because he knows something the Arabs have consistently tried to ignore: Ariel Sharon did not come from outer space. He was elected only after Mr. Arafat walked away from the best opportunity ever for creating a Palestinian state: the Clinton plan. Mr. Arafat deliberately chose to use military pressure, instead of diplomacy or nonviolence, to extract more out of Israel, and Israelis turned to Mr. Sharon as their revenge. This context is critical, and Mr. Bush has refused to ignore it.

Saturday night stroll through the Post

Time for the Saturday evening look at the Washington Post Op-Ed page. Mary McGrory has the strongest effort I've ever seen her write (talk about damning someone with faint praise). McGrory takes a peek at the West Wing episode that Dee Dee Myers wrote that aired on Wednesday night. She doesn't seem to watch the show that carefully since she claims that "[t]here is, of course, no Dick Morris on President Bartlet's staff," while the character Bruno Gianelli, played by Ron Silver, seems to be modeled after Morris. McGrory doesn't do anything with the statement that "Aaron Sorkin says he has no political agenda." But I like the show too - if "Otter" can become the Vice President, how can I complain - so I'll give her a pass. No, I'm not obsessed with the show. Bloggers don't obsess.

Moving on, the overrated David Broder, dean of the Washington pundits, knocks the Dems for folding into the fetal position on taxes/budget issues:

If the Democrats want to reclaim their voice on the economy, they could do worse than to spend a couple of hours reading the just-published issue of Blueprint, the magazine of the Democratic Leadership Council and its Progressive Policy Institute. There, several of the leading lights of the Clinton administration make the argument that Bush essentially reversed Clinton's policy of fiscal restraint by pushing through his tax cut on the basis of projected budget surpluses, which now have largely disappeared.

And the CIA in one form or another became publicly involved in the grooming of Rajoub and other security commanders as potential leaders in the post-Arafat era. Instead of objectively sorting through and analyzing the looming succession struggle for Washington, agents on the ground have horses in the race.

Mixing espionage and political duties is always dangerous. It tends to produce short-term successes (providing intelligence to Saddam Hussein, obtaining funding for the contras) and long-term liabilities for U.S. foreign policy (ditto). CIA Director George Tenet presumably recognized the dangers when he initially resisted this role for his agency. Sharon's assault on the militias shows why Tenet should have stood his ground.

Shine the light

As Andrew Sullivan says, the Washington Post has clearly overtaken the New York Times as the paper of record. The Post is left of center, but they certainly do a much better job of keeping opinions on the Op-Ed pages than the Times does. So it is interesting that Michael Getler, the paper's ombudsman, does a survey of the Post's coverage of the suicide bombers and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in Sundays' edition. His approach is neutral, and in his conclusion seems to be making excuses for his colleagues:

This is a difficult war to report, with a lot of strain on correspondents. The Post has put in more resources, with five correspondents now in the area. It is a war in two countries, in two or three languages. It involves a democratic Israel with journalistic access to government. And it involves Palestinian territories with no real government, inaccessible leaders of militant groups, but lots of people who are suffering and whose stories need to be told.

Root causes and other plant parts

You can add Robert Wright to the list of people who think that angry people will literally explode. The Arab world funding of the bad faith Arafat terror factories somehow escaped his notice. His analysis in Slate? Bush is following Sharon's approach, and it will lead to the same suicidal terror problems for the USA that Israel is facing. He manages this by examining the "root causes" of terrorism while ignoring the actual causes:

This is a partly valid point. In fact, I predict that, in the short run, the current incursion will subdue the rate of suicide bombings. And this effect could last a long time if Sharon were allowed—and were willing—to enduringly turn the occupied territories into a police state.

But this would be slow-motion suicide for Israel. The Muslim world's hatred of Israel would only build until, sooner or later—in five, 10, 15 years—somebody managed to sneak a nuclear bomb into Tel Aviv. (The New York Times' Thomas Friedman has been virtually alone in noting that nuked Israeli cities is a nearly inevitable consequence of a long-run failure to solve the Palestinian issue.) Sharon's new policy of incursion won't ultimately defy the principle illustrated by the old policy of targeted assassination—that trying to stamp out terrorism can make it more contagious. The new policy, even if sustained, will at most drive the contagion underground, delaying the onset of symptoms even as it intensifies them.

Is Bush talking to Europe?

I'm still trying to understand what George W. Bush is up to. David Warren thinks it is a Call to Action:

The reality is that Europeans are increasingly afraid of their Muslim immigrants. They see what is happening now in the West Bank and Gaza, and they genuinely fear it may explode in Europe's face -- that the suicide bombers will soon be crashing into their coffee shops, their discos, their pizzerias. It is the fear that these attacks on Jews, by youth gangs from Europe's impoverished Muslim ghettoes, are the dreaded precursor of a far worse "clash of civilizations" to come. (The Islamist imams who continue to arrive with Saudi-financed mosques do, after all, cry "holy war" against Jews, Christians, and atheists alike.)

So it is not anti-Semitism, though some of the old "aristocratic" distaste for Jews certainly adds to the flavouring. Rather it is the old European instinct to appeasement.

The long lost Marx Brother

At his trial yesterday on corruption charges U.S. Rep. James Traficant did just about the only thing that could have surprised anyone - he kept his mouth shut.

"The defense rests," he said yesterday morning, his voice calm and even.

His announcement, which came at the beginning of yesterday's court session, was a surprise to many and hushed an already quiet courtroom.

Innocent until proven guilty

More tsuris for the Catholic church. Look for another hissy fight between Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan on this one:

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the head of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, said Friday he has been accused of molesting a female student at a Catholic high school in 1970.

The cardinal made the revelation in a three-page statement faxed to The Associated Press. He denied the woman's allegations, made last month to Fresno church officials, and said he has called for both church and law enforcement officials to investigate.

I can't wait until SNL covers the debate

Marc J. Ambinder, one of the Noteables at ABC challenges the conventional wisdom about Janet Reno's chances:

In prior election years, candidates needed to break 50 percent of the vote in the primary in order to win the nomination outright, without a run-off. That tended to force candidates to think big, tailoring their campaigns to attract a majority of voters and interests, rather than targeting a few, select interest groups. As of this cycle, however, there are no more-run-offs; the candidate who gets the most votes in the primary wins the nomination. And, with as many as six candidates on the September ballot, it's not inconceivable that the Democratic gubernatorial nominee could be elected by fewer than 40 percent of the party's voting pool, according to state political analysts.

via dolorosa - I think I had the pasta there once

Tony Blankley is waxing philosophical:

A people's passion can only be extinguished with a people's blood. Even the old warrior Mr. Sharon may not have the stomach for that magnitude of slaughter. And yet neither can he (nor any possible successor) accept the continuing bloody slaughter of his own people. So if events pull Israel deeper into its "war of existence," it may well force the Arab powers to engage Israel in conventional battle (or risk rebellion from their own inflamed masses). Yes, I know, the much-belittled "Arab street" may yet live up to its old reputation.

And just at that moment, we are probably planning to go into Iraq to "change the regime." What God has made crooked will not be easily straightened by man.

When in Rome?

David J. Scheffer makes a weak case for supporting the Rome treaty for the establishment of an international criminal court in the New York Times:

Some Americans fear the court's theoretical power to investigate United States citizens, particularly the officials who guide our foreign and military policies. But the Rome treaty regime is girded with safeguards that the United States successfully negotiated to protect Americans from politically motivated or unwarranted investigations; the most prominent is the court's duty to defer to national courts first to investigate and prosecute atrocities. Alarmist arguments about foreign judges and unconstitutional practices ignore reality. Our allies and friends, the court's strongest backers, are destined to populate the bench. The treaty regime protects due process rights of defendants

Delusions

William Cohen, the Cyrus Vance of Defense Secretaries, seems taken in by the Saudis:

Having just returned from extensive meetings with leaders throughout the Gulf region, I believe that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal could prove key in framing a political approach that not only makes sense but also actually makes progress. Though old in concept, the Saudi initiative is new in its unanimous Arab League endorsement of a vision intended to appeal to Israeli desires for a genuine peace. But that vision must be translated into specific proposals if it is not to join a long succession of forgotten efforts.

A natural starting point for such specific proposals is the most recent stopping point in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, the talks held in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001. This view was advocated strongly by Yasser Arafat after the Taba discussions, and equally strongly rejected by both then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon, the former on the grounds that Arafat had failed to seize the olive branch he had been offered and the latter because he opposed the substance of Taba.

Given that most of the substance of Taba was offered from the Israeli hand, with the Palestinians seeking to pocket it, the burden for responding to the Arab League resolution rests with the Palestinians. If, as Chairman Arafat stated so vehemently a year ago, Taba is the basis for resumed talks, then the Palestinians can offer Taba as the basis to negotiate implementation of the Arab League resolution -- and the Arab League can back that offer. Equally important, the Arab League countries, while eager to condemn Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, must be as eager to condemn suicide bombings as well, and take action to block support flowing to those intent on making the streets run red with more blood.

Bread and Circuses

First, Ellen Goodman genuflects, deploring suicide bombers:

If suicide attacks are the weapon of terrorist choice, it's because they shake the foundation of belief that -- at least -- we share a desire for life with our enemies. But in this conflict, a Hamas leader famously countered that belief by scornfully saying that Jews "love life more than any other people and they prefer not to die."

In the Middle East, it's said by everyone that the Israelis want security and the Palestinians want land. Two bitter old men, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat, who could make a deal, are locked in a death struggle that may take their people with them. I have no more respect for one than the other.

A little culture

I saw The Molière Comedies (The School for Husbands and The Imaginary Cuckold) at the Mark Taper Forum tonight. It starred (and was directed by) Tony award winner Brian Bedford and a host of other great actors and actresses. It was absolutely hilarious. Somewhow the translation sounded lovely to the English ear but managed to keep a French sensibility about it. But Bedford really stole the show.

Good fun, catch it if it comes to your area.

Nicky, your naivete is showing

When I was living in New York there was a series of funny commercials that Alphonse D'Amato ran against his challenger that ended with the tag line "Bob Abrams: Hopelessly Liberal." Nicholas Kristof's column today reminds me of that ad. Writing from the Jabaliya refugee camp Kristof writes a column that makes a compelling argument for Ariel Sharon's current military response. Unfortunately for Kristof, this is the opposite of what he was trying to do:

To understand why Ariel Sharon's harsh tactics are self-defeating, come here to this crowded refugee camp and talk to young Palestinians.

Kids here increasingly do not want to grow up to be firefighters, policemen or presidents. Instead, they aspire to become shahid, martyrs, and to die blowing up a few Israelis.

One cute 8-year-old boy showed me a portrait his family had taken of him clutching an AK-47 rifle. He initially lied and said that his older brother was a shahid — then he hung his head and admitted that no, his brother is alive and never did anything so grand.

President Bush made the right moves yesterday, calling for an end to the Israeli incursion into the West Bank, urging Arab leaders to denounce suicide attacks and sending Colin Powell to play midwife to a peace process that refuses to be born. Still, to travel in Gaza is to be reminded that people here react not so much to speeches by either American or Palestinian leaders, but rather to their own social dynamic and to Israeli actions.

After lots of surreal conversations with aspiring shahid, I believe they're living in a delusional universe shaped in part by the gutlessness of Palestinian leaders and in part by their own rage as Israeli tanks in the West Bank crunch through Palestinian cars, homes and hopes. Unless Mr. Sharon and Mr. Powell can outline steps that will lead the Palestinians to statehood, and thus sprinkle hope in the occupied territories, then I fear that popular support for shahid is so great among Palestinians that the parade of killings will continue.

One neighborhood here is celebrating — and that's the right word — the death of Mahmoud Saleh, 22. On Tuesday night, enraged by television images of Israeli forces in Ramallah, his family said, he sneaked into Israel and shot one soldier to death and injured three others before being killed himself.

"We're not sad at his death," said his elder brother, Adnan, a professor of water resources who earned a Ph.D. in Europe. "We're happy. We are eight brothers, and we will continue his way."

What about bombing an Israeli girls high school?

"Fine, fine," said Ibrahim Abudaya, 18. "God knows, the girls will become fighters."

What about the American Embassy?

"Excellent!"

What about bombing an Israeli nursery school?

"No, no, no." All the boys drew the line at infants. They beamed in pride at their humanitarianism, as I ached at their lack of it.

Who do you believe?

In many ways it is a blessing to hold political views that are very different from the ones held by major newspapers like the New York Times. It makes it much easier for me to remember that despite the "All the News That's Fit to Print" conceit there is no such thing as an official list of events that qualify as news, just as there there are no official factual accounts of the same events. Real live human beings do the writing, and make the editorial decisions. It is easy to say that a newspaper with whom I agree, like the Wall Street Journal, is objective, and the Los Angeles Times, which I abhor, is not. The fact is, they are each biased in their own way. I smile at the Journal's bias and I whine about the LA Times bias. But I read them every day.

I've discovered, the hard way, that I am wrong all the time. I make mistakes. I am unaware of important facts. I jump to conclusions. The reason I learn this is because I seek out opinions and news sources that disagree with my point of view. It turns out that I am right a whole lot too. It shocked me when I first discovered that I knew more about a given issue than the person who wrote the news report in some big important newspaper. Now I've gotten used to it. To experience that sensation for yourself try reading a collection of Richard Berke stories in the NYT. So when I hear that "the New York Times reports" something or other, I listen to the report, and given what I know about the Times I evaluate how much weight I assign to that perspective.

Given my views on the Middle East, Robert Novak infuriates me. But love him or hate him, he is a must read. (Heck, sometimes Ken Layne infuriates me, but I read him too.) That's why I read the New York Times and all the rest of the "establishment" media sources. Because if I am wrong, it ain't gonna be the Jerusalem Post that sets me straight. Rare are the blessed few, who are so scrupulously intellectually honest that they call attention to their biases before they try to seduce you into coming over to their views. As I read I am constantly asking questions: What is the writer's agenda? What is the newsmaker's agenda? Is there any attempt being made at disinformation? Why? Why? Why?

Perhaps it is as a result of all that time I spent studying Talmud, but I think that when you get into the habit of reading and watching the news in this way, you realize that the narrative of the newspaper headlines only scratches the surface of important events. As I remarked in an earlier post, when 10+ Arab leaders are last minute no shows to a long hyped conference, that is a significant event, and I want a good answer why. The official excuses that this leader or that leader was a no show because of some imagined slight just don't hold water. When I see the Passover timing of the homicide bombers, I see something beyond the spontaneous actions of a passionate few. I see a strategic move being played. When I see Clinton foreign policy officials suddenly appearing on all the talk shows, to talk up their foreign policy "achievements" in the Middle East, I want to know why. When I hear six different CNN and Reuters and France parrot the same lines about the homicide bombers and Israel's response, I want to know why. When world events don't make sense to me, I want answers, not the party line. They way I get those answers is by reading very widely and evaluating the credibility of each source and then make my own decisions about what I think is really going on.

The major news on the world stage that doesn't make sense to me right now is George W. Bush's Clintonian wobble. I have been relatively quiet about the subject, but not because it doesn't disturb me - it does. But the reason it bugs me is that Bush's actions don't fit the person I perceive him to be. While I am unhappy with the horrible steel tariffs and campaign finance decisions, they jibe with the facts I I've learned. They are the types of compromises that I can see George W. Bush making. On the other hand, equivocation on Israel don't fit. He believes the Bush Doctrine to his core, in my view. So when he makes "yes but" statements about Arafat being a terrorist, Bush does not sound like himself, no matter how hard dear Peggy tries to delude herself (and us). Pro-Israel hawks that supported Gore will be understandably suspicious of Bush, but I am not. The way I read the situation is that Bush is pro-Israel for moral reasons, and he out and out distrusts Arafat. I assure you he was every bit as upset at the Palestinians that danced in the streets on 9/11 as I was, and that the significance of it wss not lost on him. He knows he is fudging the Bush doctrine and it makes him very uncomfortable to be equivocating. The prattle about how he is compromising because he needs to keep Arab moderates in line does not ring true in my ears. He is a go it along type of guy when core principles are at stake. Yet he is making like a weeble, and I can't figure out why.

I grant you that my reading of this situation might be unconvincing to anyone who feels differently about Bush than I do, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I'm just telling you what is going on in my head, I'm not trying to convince you I'm right. Well, not yet.

Next up: how to choose a foreign policy for your car

As I was tidying up and about to throw out yesterday's LA Times, an item in the Highway 1 (cars) section caught my eye. Jeanne Wright's Your Wheels column starts out like this:

How ironic. As Washington lawmakers were complaining late last month that soccer moms would be deprived of minivans if the nation adopted tougher fuel economy standards for SUVs and other vehicles, chunks of ice the size of Delaware were breaking away and disintegrating in Antarctica.

The collapse of ice shelves as thick as 640 feet in the coldest continent on Earth is more evidence of global warming, scientists suggest. Many experts insist that to protect the environment and slow the warming trend, vehicle emissions of carbon monoxide--a gas linked to global warming--must be reduced.

What did you expect, a hatchet job?

John Ellis shares his thoughts about his famous cousin. (Link broken, scroll down)

No need to share

There are probably at least two reasons why Jeff Goldstein and his imaginary friends call their (his) blog Protein Wisdom. The first is probably some devilishly clever play on the Creatical.Com name, you know like creatin = Protein or something like that. At least that will probably be the cover story. I probably don't really want to know the second real (& probably filthy) reason for the name. I'm sure that the consumption of pizza was invloved, and perhaps a chance Lewinski sighting.

Yes, yes I know, he is one of those academic types that are all hung up on good speling and gramer and stuff. But he adds lot's of humor to make the medicine go down. Full of wisdom today.

Ooops

Whaddya mean? If this thing is on the Internet then anyone can read it? Uh Oh!

Bro writes in that while he has no time to read lesser blogs, he has been reading Patio Pundit. I guess I'd better watch what I say. He also tipped me off to an oh-so-cool new geek game - Photoshop Tennis. The point of the game is that you start with a graphics image and lob it to the other team. They make changes to the image and lob it back to the first team. The idea is for each side to change the image they receive enough to make it look like a different image, but to keep enough visual elements so that you can tell that it came from the first image. In true net fashion, web surfers vote on who wins the game.

Update: It turns out that blogger Photodude plays tennis. Quite well too, I'd say.

He's Back - I think

Vodka Pundit's site is back, though I don't see any new posts. Must be some Nicholas Kristof trick. We'll be watching.

Update: Mr. Green says it is part of the "moving" process. Oddly, Stephen does not blame tricky Nicky.

Brisk Speed Fisking

I just came back from a lovely evening. A nice dinner, quiet conversation. The lady I was with never even heard of weblogs. And you can be sure I didn't tell her about them. Do I look stupid? Wait, don't answer that.

So I get home, and debate - should I go to sleep, or check the Op-Eds first. Oh what the heck, let's see what's up. Big mistake! I forgot - today is stupid day at the Washington Post (Cohen and McGrory) and the NY Times is still on a hug-a-random-apologist-for-terrorism drive. Worse yet, Stephen Green is still on the DL, so I'm pulling extra shifts. Thank God Kristof didn't come out early, or it would be an all nighter! I'm getting to old for this. OK, let's go.

First, Richard Cohen, who is so stupid today he is approaching the Anna Quindlen/Alec Baldwin danger zone that Charles Austin will scourge him for sure. But I'd better give his column a light Fisking until Charles can clear his backlog. Also Charles is one of those misguided "I have a life" people. I'm digressing again. Cohen's column:

Let us just suppose that Zacarias Moussaoui's fondest wish was to die on Sept. 11. As it turned out, he was arrested a month earlier in Minnesota on immigration charges, and so he was in jail that day. If the Justice Department has its way, Moussaoui will get his wish no matter what. He will die for a crime he could not commit.

Officially, of course, he would be executed for participating in the conspiracy that caused the death of more than 3,000 people. He is the alleged 20th hijacker, the one who could not make the plane because he was in the clink. I do not trivialize either what he allegedly wanted to do or what was done. I only question why the government is so intent on making him the martyr he reportedly wanted to be.

Those of us who thought the madness in the Middle East might galvanize George Bush and cause him to dispatch Colin Powell to the scene on the double were startled by what happened. The leader of the free world lolled in a lounger in Crawford, Tex., and told Ariel Sharon to go to it.

"I think Chairman Arafat could do a lot more," he said.

More? Diminished, humiliated, cornered, with tanks at his feet and helicopter gunships over his head, Arafat is to take charge and lead his people? All that was needed, the president indicated, to stop the bloody invasion of the West Bank -- which was caused by the Palestinian suicide bombers, who were driving Sharon crazy -- was for Arafat to tell fanatical young Arabs who want to blow themselves up for glory and bonuses for their families to just say no -- in Arabic.

But if Arafat is not helping with deranged and despairing Palestinian teenagers, who blew up Jews at their Seder, what reason does anyone have for thinking Sharon's way will work any better?

Invading Bethlehem, surrounding the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square, blowing up people's homes or locking down their towns and demolishing police stations and municipal offices is not the way to win hearts and minds. National Public Radio had a story about a woman pregnant with a much-desired baby boy only to have him stillborn at a military checkpoint -- soldiers prevented her from going to a nearby hospital in time.

Obviously, a third party is needed. Bush doesn't mind sending troops into many countries, from the Philippines to Yemen, but he sees Israel as a loser. Bear down too hard and you lose the Jews; let things play out and Europe screams.

Bush may insist on the action, but if he's riding in the lead tank, he'll have only Sharon beside him. His hearty counselors have said we should go alone if need be. By yesterday, Bush had at least stopped repeating the mantra he has used throughout -- Tenet-Mitchell. Tenet is the plan named for CIA Director George, and mandates a cease-fire before talks. Mitchell, named for former senator George, mandates talks, particularly about the Palestinians' greatest grievance, the settlements. The fact that the president is willing to forgo a boost for his favorite agency suggests that finally he is taking the Mideast crisis seriously.

Suicide bombings thrive in anarchy. The absence of effective government is their primary source of power. They are antigovernment, the lethal weapon of individuals and small groups. While deterrence works against states, even against states like Iraq, it is ineffective against dispersed and shadowy groups that do not have significant infrastructures to target. And even when one knows whom to target, retaliation is not generally effective against those willing to die.

President Bush is right that suicide bombings cannot be tolerated or rewarded because the consequences to the international system could be devastating. But there is only one way to reduce these acts of terror: putting forth a better alternative, a peace plan that revives hope. Violent retaliation is unlikely to end suicide terror, and may even increase it by adding to the humiliation that hardens the hearts even of decent people.

Sue Saddam Echo Chamber (continued)

I've posted my reply to Jason Rylander on the sue Saddam debate as an update to the post below. If you are interested in that sort of thing, scroll down, or click here.

A Scientific Look at al Quaeda

My brother is the most incredible web surfer I know. He'd be a great blogger, but he doesn't read them (not even mine), because he is busy having a life. Screwed up priorities or what? But he does send me some great links. Like this one, a paper on Uncloaking Terrorist Networks by Valdis Krebs. It is a great example of the advantages an open society like ours has over repressive regimes that carefully screen out the contributions of ordinary citizens. Here's a small sample from this fascinating paper:

The hijacker's network had a hidden strength - massive redundancy through trusted prior contacts. These ties made the network very resilient. These ties were solidly in place as the hijackers made their way to America. These strong ties were rarely active - they were mostly invisible during their stay in America. It was only after the tragic event that intelligence from Germany and other countries, revealed the apparent center of this violent network. The dense connections of the 'Hamburg cell' are now obvious in Figure 4.

This dense under-layer of prior trusted relationships made the hijacker network both stealth and resilient. Although we do not know all of the internal ties of the hijackers' network it appears that many of the ties were concentrated around the pilots. This is a risky move for a covert network. Concentrating both unique skills and connectivity in the same nodes makes the network easier to disrupt - once it is discovered. Peter Klerks (Klerks, 2001) makes an excellent argument for targeting those nodes in the network that have unique skills. By removing those necessary skills from the project, we can inflict maximum damage to the project mission and goals. It is possible that those with unique skills would also have unique ties within the network. Because of their unique human capital and their high social capital the pilots were the richest targets for removal from the network. Unfortunately they were not discovered in time.

The Hardball Saga Continues

Check out this exchange between Chris Matthews and Daniel Pipes on Hardball:

We're joined by Daniel Pipes of the Mideast Forum, a pro-Israeli think tank. And Michael O'Hanlon is with the Brookings Institution.

Daniel, make the case for this strong, hard-nosed action by the prime minister of Israel on the West Bank.

Mr. DANIEL PIPES (Middle East Forum): Chris, let me start by resenting the fact that you'd label me and not my opponent. Could we try that one again?

MATTHEWS: Let's try it again. Is-does your-does your-what's the name of it again? The Mideast Forum. Are you pro-Israeli or pro-Arab?

Mr. PIPES: We're pro-American.

MATTHEWS: What does that mean in this context?

Mr. PIPES: Well, that means I'm trying to figure out what is best for American policy.

MATTHEWS: Has the Middle East Forum ever criticized Israeli policy?

Mr. PIPES: The Middle East Forum doesn't take positions, but I do.

MATTHEWS: Well, you're here to take a position.

Mr. PIPES: OK.

MATTHEWS: Have you ever criticized Israeli policy?

Mr. PIPES: Yes, I have.

MATTHEWS: When was that?

Mr. PIPES: Well, for example, when the Israelis bombed the electric installation in Lebanon, I criticized it.

MATTHEWS: OK. When was that? What year was that?

Mr. PIPES: It was two years ago.

MATTHEWS: OK. So it's fair to say you're generally pro-Israeli.

Mr. PIPES: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: OK. That's all I said.

Mr. PIPES: But I just don't like getting labeled, OK?

MATTHEWS: Well, you were and you are. So if you want to get out of that and say you're not pro-Israeli, just make your case. [Interview continues]

Adelman's Rules

Former arms control negotiator and Rumsfeld protege Kenneth Adelman has some suggestions to help break the gridlock of the Israel/Palestinian conflict:

— STOP calling these Palestinian kids "suicide bombers," and begin to call them "homicide bombers." Someone committing suicide does so alone, without any inkling to harm anyone else. Here, rather, the goal is not to kill oneself but rather to kill others. For a Palestinian kid to commit suicide, without killing Jews, is to be a failure.

— STOP maintaining that no evidence exists linking Iraq to terrorism. Gobs of evidence exist on this, and have since 1993. Recently Saddam Hussein began to praise Palestinian "homicide bombers" and to bestow $25,000 to each of their families. Is this not a clear link to terrorism?

— STOP considering Saudi Arabia as "a peacemaker" proposing a serious peace initiative. Remember that the Saudis have been funding hatred towards Jews, Christians, Israelis, and Americans. These ideas create the conditions that motivate kids to blow themselves up in order to kill as many Israelis as possible. Saudis, too, give grants to the families of the homicide bombers.

Temperatures Dropped in Hell Today

Ron Brownstein, a smart reporter who somehow snuck his way past the brain filters at the LA Times has a good "analysis" piece on the front page today. Among today's insights, Brownstein nails the reason why my parent's and I differed so sharply on the 2000 election:

Still, Bush's instinctive support of Israel places him at the center of a generational shift in Republican thinking about the Mideast. [...]

"Bush 41 just had a different view on this one," said the White House official sympathetic to the conservative critique. "I just think President Bush is closer to Reagan than his father in his instincts on many things, and Israel is one of them. When you listen to him, his instincts are more to be critical of Arafat than his father's were."

VodkaPundit Hung Over

Not not Stephen Green, his blog. It grieves me to report that the Vodka Pundit site is down. Stephen reports that his web host HostGo is the problem. He says that "my server shuts me down because they can't handle Moveable Type's perl scripts." He is very unhappy with HostGo (see comments), and therefore I am too (whoever they are). I hope that the booze is safe.

The current thinking is that it will be 24-48 hours before this is resolved! But keep clicking on his site just in case they are wrong.

I hope they hurry up. I need my fix. First Stephen takes an extended "break," and now this. My nerves are shot.

The Antidote

Michael Kelly remembers covering Arafat's arrival into Gaza as a reporter in 1994:

Arafat's entry into Gaza was an object lesson: a purposely uncaring display of brute power. He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevrolet Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns. The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed streets, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Arafat's bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader's way.

This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism. There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals. There was never any real government. No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets. There were only security forces -- many, many of these -- and villas by the sea for Arafat's cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda. And in the middle of it all: "President" Arafat sitting in a room -- surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press -- and complaining.

There he goes again..... Friedman vs. Friedman?

NY Times Secretary of State Thomas Friedman can't make up his mind. After a relatively clear-headed effort on March 31st, he contradicts himself in his very next column :

In the wake of repeated suicide bombings, it is no surprise that the Israeli Army has gone on the offensive in the West Bank. Any other nation would have done the same. But Ariel Sharon's operation will succeed only if it is designed to make the Israeli-occupied territories safe for Israel to leave as soon as possible. Israel's goal must be a withdrawal from these areas captured in the 1967 war; otherwise it will never know a day's peace, and it will undermine every legitimate U.S. effort to fight terrorism around the globe.

Let's be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation. This threatens all civilization because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire nations. That is why the whole world must see this Palestinian suicide strategy defeated.

President Bush needs to be careful that America doesn't get sucked into something very dangerous here. Mr. Bush has rightly condemned Palestinian suicide bombing as beyond the pale, but he is not making clear that Israel's war against this terrorism has to be accompanied by a real plan for getting out of the territories.

Palestinians who use suicide bombers to blow up Israelis at a Passover meal and then declare "Just end the occupation and everything will be fine" are not believable. No Israeli in his right mind would trust Yasir Arafat, who has used suicide bombers when it suited his purposes, not to do the same thing if he got the West Bank back and some of his people started demanding Tel Aviv.

"The only solution is a new U.N. mandate for U.S. and NATO troops to supervise the gradual emergence of a Palestinian state — after a phased Israeli withdrawal — and then to control its borders," says the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen.

People say that U.S. troops there would be shot at like U.S. troops in Beirut. I disagree. U.S. troops that are the midwife of a Palestinian state and supervise a return of Muslim sovereignty over the holy mosques in Jerusalem would be the key to solving all the contradictions of U.S. policy in the Middle East, not new targets.

The other people who have not wanted to face facts are the feckless American Jewish leaders, fundamentalist Christians and neoconservatives who together have helped make it impossible for anyone in the U.S. administration to talk seriously about halting Israeli settlement-building without being accused of being anti-Israel. Their collaboration has helped prolong a colonial Israeli occupation that now threatens the entire Zionist enterprise.

So there you have it. Either leaders of good will get together and acknowledge that Israel can't stay in the territories but can't just pick up and leave, without a U.S.-NATO force helping Palestinians oversee their state, or Osama wins — and the war of civilizations will be coming to a theater near you.

Why not?

I'm don't feel like finishing yet another long post that is in my drafts folder just yet. On the other hand Meg does seems to be in a writing mood. Lots and lots of goodies over in lower Manhattan. I just noticed she started posting as Jane Galt too. April Fool's? Or did my link shatter her fragile ego?

Speaking of Bam! Pow!

The Scourge of Richard Cohen has issued Volume 14! This has been a public service anouncement.

It May Get Crowded on the Patio

Thanks Bleatmeister!

Holy Blogger Batman! It's a Letter from Gotham City! It must be a BatBlog!

Diana runs a spicy joint over there in Gotham City. She doesn't think that she got her props from the prof. In any event, she'll tell you what's on her mind. Check her out. I mean her blog out. You know what I mean.

Diana, you may not get Instantman's 36,000 readers, but the seven Patio Pundit readers coming your way should more than make up for it. Think quality, not quantity.

(Via Tal G)

The Case for Indicting Saddam

Warning: Post Rated EC -The following post contains content that some viewers may find objectionable. Disorientation or dizziness due to echo chamber sensations may occur. Reader discretion advised

In an earlier post I scoffed at Nicholas Kristoff's suggestion that we sue Saddam. As a side point in an e-mail to me Jason Rylander remarked that he thought it was a good idea. In my reply I encouraged him to take up the banner and argue for it. He has bravely agreed. You can read his post here.

Jason puts in a good effort. He starts by putting some daylight between himself and Kristoff, always a good idea. He explains that there is a strong legal case to indict Saddam for war crimes, which can be pursued in three ways - International Criminal Tribunal, the International Court of Justice, or by the laws of any nation (such as Belgium) that gives parties standing to sue in such a case. He then makes the following arguments in favor of doing so:

1. It would de-legitimize Saddam to a greater degree than sanctions or verbal condemnation.

2. It would undermine support for Saddam in Iraq much as (Jason claims) the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic did in the former Yugoslovia.

3. The timing is right, given the precedent of Milosevic and Pinochet indictments.

4. Pursuing an indictment would strengthen the Geneva convention and the institutions of international justice generally.

5. Not pursuing Saddam weakens the previous indictments because it invites charges of selective enforcement.

6. It would show the world that the US is acting on the civil as well as military front.

7. We should do everything we can to end Saddam's rule. Why not indict him.

But here's the real issue. Martin writes: If you are in favor of international law, these arguments may make sense in support of that goal. Well, whaddya know! The real problem with indicting Saddam Hussein is that it might actually work!

The whole idea of a world court to which all nations (even the United States) must occasionally bow is an anathema to the Right. It conjures up images of a fleet of invading black helicopters swooping down on defenseless Montana ranchers. Let's face facts: The real reason the Right ridicules indicting Saddam Hussein is because it fears the development of international law.

DSL Problems? Help is on the Way

California residents that are having problems with DSL service can rejoice:

A California Public Utilities Commission judge ruled late last week that the agency has the authority to weigh in on a range of issues involving the Internet access technology known as digital subscriber line service, or DSL, including the quality of service provided, how it is marketed and a provider's DSL business practices.

Quick, Sell Before the Blog Bubble Bursts

Strapped for cash, "AOL Time Warner to Sell $4 Billion in Bonds." Must have been that blog buying spree! They should have known that the prof would drive a hard bargain.

(Via Drudge)

Beam me up

Yes, Alex Beam wrote a stupid report on blogs. You've read the big bloggers making fun of him. Not much sense in my piling on. The only observation I have is that slanted pieces like this are good for Bloggaritaville. I'll bet of the many Globe readers who read his report, at least 1,000 people got on the web and went looking for Sullivan, LILEKS™ and Instantman, if only to see how lame they really were. Except how can you read LILEKS™ take on this without laughing your head off? And click around Sullivan's site, or Instantman's? I'll bet 100 of those 1, 000 bookmarked one of those sites. Probably more.

So next time, Alex, please make fun of me. My site is really peculiar. Ask anyone. Who ever heard of a Patio Pundit? How can you take someone like that seriously? Just as long as you spell the link correctly http://www.patiopundit.com/. And it wouldn't hurt if you told them that when you drag a live link to your toolbar it bookmarks it for you.....

On the lighter side....

Mark Evanier is the voice of reason on the Speedy Gonzales issue (scroll down). Happily, I won't let the facts and a few cogent arguments get in my way. I love Speedy, so I there.

Pictures

Susanna and Stephen have linked to the Walk for Israel site that has the pictures all the Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks. I naturally looked for Hillel's picture. They've got the one that was in the a couple of news accounts, with a talit wrapped around him, wearing that goofy grin of his. I'd forgotten how Rabbi-like he wound up looking. The picture in my mind will always be the one of the thin, long-haired college buddy of my youth.

Since Arabic and Hebrew names sound similar to the untrained ear you may not notice this immediately, but all Israeli victims includes the Israeli Arabs who were killed. There is no way you can tell that unless you click on an individual victim and read between the lines. That's how it should be, and that's how it is. It doesn't fit the media's moral equivalence story line, but it is right there.

More than anything else, I am amazed that anyone could see those eight pages of smiling faces as the enemy. The cute pictures of little kids are the most heartbreaking, but the sheer number of ordinary looking folks, young and old just leaves me asking the same old questions. Why......

The Tap Dance

Here in Los Angeles those of us with Internet access are truly blessed, because without it, we'd be forced to rely on the dreadful LA Times. The Op-Ed pages are especially barren. We often get second rate columnists with half-baked ideas, no matter what the topic. For example, if you are looking for a first rate apologist for the appalling actions of Yasir Arafat and the Palestinians, skip the LA Times. When only the very best will do, there is nowhere better than the NY Times. Today we have the perfect example, a piece by Palestinian lawyer Raja Shehadeh:

To justify Israeli actions, two deliberate distortions of reality are being employed in Israel's war against Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. First, the government of Ariel Sharon is treating the Palestinian Authority as a full-fledged state when it is nothing of the sort. Second, perhaps more significant for the international community, Israel blames the Palestinian Authority for its failure to provide security for Israel's pursuit of territorial objectives that are clearly illegal under international law.

The Palestinian Authority was established by agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization and granted powers that fall far short of those of a state. It was not given sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, under Article VIII of the Declaration of Principles, commonly referred to as the Oslo accords, the authority was allowed to establish "a strong police force," while Israel would continue to carry "the responsibility for overall security of Israelis for the purpose of safeguarding their internal security and public order." The sharing of security responsibilities between Israel and the Palestinians has clearly not worked.

When the Oslo accords were signed, they had the support of a majority of the Palestinian people in the territories. This was because Palestinians were promised by their leaders that those agreements would be the first step toward the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied since 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

From the beginning, those who did not agree to the principle of the division of historical Palestine into two states, Israel and Palestine, were the mutual enemies of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. As long as there was the perception that the two sides agreed on the principle of division of the land, the Palestinian security forces had no compunction in fighting those who opposed the division.

According to the declaration of principles, the negotiations on permanent status would lead to the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which affirmed the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and called on Israel to withdraw its forces "from territories occupied" in 1967.

However, while the final status negotiations were being conducted, successive Israeli governments continued at a faster pace than ever with their policy, begun three decades earlier, of building Israeli settlements in the occupied lands. As a result, the number of Israeli settlers living in the territories almost doubled from 1993 to today.

This development strengthened the political power of those among the Palestinians who had rejected the Oslo accords. As opponents of the peace process increased, the work of the Palestinian security forces became more difficult and complicated. Israelis became increasingly frustrated. They expected Palestinian cooperation regardless of what policies their government was pursuing in the territories and what effect these policies were having on popular Palestinian support for the Palestinian Authority.

Finally, by declaring Yasir Arafat irrelevant, Prime Minister Sharon has made clear that the Oslo accords, which he had consistently opposed, were also irrelevant.

Throughout this crisis, he has confirmed his commitment to holding on to all the settlements and has not accepted any freezing of settlement activities. And as long as the Palestinian partner was not going to cooperate with Israel in allowing it to proceed with an illegal policy of settlement, the Sharon government had to find other ways to preserve its hold on the land. This has now led to the reoccupation of the cities and territories given over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo, a growing humanitarian crisis and disastrous consequences for both peoples, as well as the real possibility of regional conflagration.

Israel maintains that its recent actions are necessary to protect its citizens from attacks by its enemies. If Israel's concern is protecting Israelis living within Israel's 1967 borders, then surely it would be possible to achieve security through the withdrawal of Israeli forces to those borders and through appropriately strong measures. But the problem is that whenever Israel declares its right and duty to protect all its citizens, it is including the 380,000 living in East Jerusalem and in settlements scattered throughout the territories. These settlements are a central blockage to the peace process and the very reason that Israel cannot practically close off its borders. Had Israel not proceeded with its energetic pursuit of the settlement policy, political and security cooperation between the two sides could have successfully defeated the opponents of a two-state solution.

So long as Israel pursues a policy believed by Palestinians to be antithetical to the promise of the establishment of a state in all the territories occupied in 1967, it will not be possible to find a Palestinian partner to make and sustain peace. That is why there is now a retreat to the old relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, with Israel assuming full occupation of the territories and using its army to exercise direct control over a hostile population.

The Sharon government seems to believe that over time a more compliant Palestinian leadership will emerge, even without a change in its own policies. From the Palestinian perspective, however, only a quisling government would make peace with a country in full occupation of its land and which refuses to stop a colonizing program.

Yasir Arafat, in the Palestinian context, still represents the moderate national leadership.

Imprisoning him at his headquarters in Ramallah has made his popularity soar. If Israelis seek a durable peace, they have to elect a government willing and able to take decisive action to protect its citizens living within its borders.

But peace cannot be achieved with an Israeli government that is committed to pursuing expansionist policies aimed at depriving Palestinians of their legitimate claim under international law to a viable state in all the lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

Barbarians

Back in my liberal days (high school), I remember arguing with my father about the need to save the whales. Even after I joined the VRWC I never changed my view that hunting whales is wrong. I agree with Douglas Adams (in blessed memory) that Dolphins are the second smartest species on earth, even if I differ with him on the identity of the smartest species.

So you might think that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was my favorite Star Trek film because of the whole going back in time to save the whales plot. Well, no. It is my favorite, not because of the plot, but rather because it is a very playful movie that has a lot to tell us about human nature. It was funny.

People who hate Sci-Fi, bear with me a moment. The reason I bring up the movie is because of a memorable sequence in it when one of the guys, Chekov, was trying to elude capture and was seriously injured. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. The present day surgeons where about to operate on him as Dr. McCoy and the Star Trek gang from the future stormed in with phasers (guns) at the ready to rescue him. They stopped the 'barbaric' 20th century doctors before they could begin to operate. The surgeons complained that they needed to be released because if they didn't act right away their patient will die. McCoy rebuked them, saying "drilling holes in his head isn't the answer," and proceeded to wave a magic device from the future and cure Chekov. As they make their escape down the hospital corridor they encounter a woman with kidney disease. Dr. McCoy gives her some pills and says "Dialysis? What is this the dark ages. You take this, and if you have any problems, just call me." She was instantly cured.

What struck me about this scene was how true it is. Historians 300 years from now will laugh at our silly notions of medicine, much as we laugh at bloodletting and other tortures that "doctors" inflicted on their patients in the past. We scoff at Galileo's contemporaries for their narrow minds. We shake our heads at the horrible way in which most societies treated women. But we forget, we all are standing on the shoulders of giants.

Nowadays when we think of that famous quote by Sir Isaac Newton we apply it to the realm of science. But it applies equally well to all segments of our society, as we pile the advances of today on top of the successes of yesterday. From President George W. Bush to the president of my dysfunctional condominium board to the high school student council president, they all can rely on rules, traditions and processes that have been worked out by predecessors so that all they have to do is meet (sometimes formidable) new challenges. They don't have to"reinvent the wheel" every time they need to act. We often see how traditions can become outdated and no longer useful, but we are oblivious to how much we rely on the vast majority that work. I complain about our Byzantine condo bylaws, but when the elevators need to be upgraded, the hapless board has some guidance on how to go about it. I could go off on a tangent about how wonderful tradition is, but you can read Jonah Goldberg for that. My point today is that all these millions of pieces of accumulated wisdom operate without our slightest awareness. That is why we don't see the stupid things we do that our progeny will laugh at us for one day.

As an example, let me bore you for a moment with the history of my eating habits. I started out eating the traditional ashkenazi Jewish cuisine my mother prepared. As a young adult, for a while I stopped eating red meat, and fatty foods. Then I became a vegan. Then a low-carb vegan. Now I am a low carb meat eater. Some guy 300 years from now will be able to tell at which period of my life I ate healthfully. But I sure can't. I've read studies up the kazoo. You want scientific proof? Pick an approach, I'll give you proof of the approach and the refutation of it.

Right know I believe that a low-carb diet is best. The literature I've read convinced me, but more importantly, it is working for me. But if I'm right, Dick Cheney, with the best medical help money and conventional wisdom can buy, is torturing himself eating foods that will still keep him fat. Is he right? Am I? Neither of us? Who knows. In any case, some aspiring Doctor McCoy in medical school 300 years from now will laugh at Dick Cheney, torturing himself, forcing himself to exercise, eating low fat foods. "But professor, didn't they know that pistachio nuts cure heart disease? Why didn't he just eat a bag of those every day? Wasn't the landmark study done on this by Dr. Kaputnik in Brazil 1987?" he will ask. "Yes, but don't forget that Kaputnick labored in obscurity until his death in 2023, when Dr. Laserstein discovered his notes and popularized his work" the professor will reply.

What does any of this have to do with the war, blogging or punditry you ask? I'm getting there. I've had the realization that for all our advances, we are simultaneously beneficiaries and prisoners of our own time. That is why the search for intelligent dissent is so vital in the pursuit of the truth. I have no patience for moral equivalence or fuzzy thinking of any kind. But that means I have to keep testing my own assumptions, and my own position.

I've had the misfortune to test this out in real life a number of times. I'll give you one example. Like most of you, I've always felt very confident that terrorism is morally repugnant. This is an easy belief to hold, since we don't commit acts of terror, only our enemies the Barbarians do that. We are good, they are bad. Simple. Well. A few years ago, when a man living in Israel named Baruch Goldstein decided that he wanted to become a terrorist, and blow up some people that he decided were the enemy, it turned my world upside down He was a doctor who had studied at my alma matter, and I later discovered, was the brother of a beautiful, but painfully shy girl I went to summer camp with. I remember her deep blue eyes even today. I didn't really know her, let alone her brother, but it still shook me up. Hey, we're supposed to be the good guys! We don't commit atrocities. How can a guy with a background similar to mine make those kind of choices? None of the places I went to school or camp taught hatred to our fellow man. There was no indoctrination against Arabs. If anything, the schools I went to were a bit overboard the other way. So how can this guy become a terrorist? Because make no mistake, if you open fire on innocents, that's what you are, not matter what "team jersey" you are wearing.

In many ways I felt that the community reaction to this atrocity would tell me more about "my side" than how they react as a our extended family is the victim of an attack. In a weird way, I was gratified to find out that people in my circles were as horrified as I was. Not just in pronouncements to the "outside world," but "within the family." It was harshly condemned, and rightly so. But it got me to start thinking. If he could do such a thing, what did it mean about us and them. How did someone decide that the wholesale killing of innocent people was the thing to do? All these questions got me thinking about who exactly is us, and who precisely is them.

If I grew up as a Palestinian, who would I have become?. If I grew up as a German in Nazi Germany, who would I have been? Could I have been a suicide bomber? Could I be seduced? I would like to think that I would be a good person no matter what society I was born in. For the greatest among us, the Abraham Lincolns, the George Washingtons, perhaps that is true. But it obviously isn't true for everybody. I wonder if it is true for me.

I don't know who I would have become had I been born under in a different place or time. But at the risk of sounding like "W," I think I've figured out who us and them are. The reason that most people in our society grow up to be decent, hardworking, loving people is because we stand on the shoulders of the giants who said this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Delusions of Adequacy

Somewhere along the line the guy I was sitting next to at the UCLA Blogger lecture filed this report of the event. I think he summed up the event pretty well, but it was much more fun than the article makes it sound. Perhaps my perspective as a geeky blogger clouds my judgment on this and other matters. I was surprised that there were no pictures but apparently:

The DOA photographer isn't just behind the times by not having a blog, he does photography the old fashioned way - with film. Therefore, since photos of the UCLA event were on the beginning of a 36 exposure roll, it may be a while before those pictures appear in pixel form on DOA. [Old show biz adage say, "Keep 'em coming back for more."]

Brainy Brit Bestows Brilliant Bouquets

Michael Gove's column in tomorrow's (GMT) Times is so excellent that my thesaurus exploded trying to help me describe it. Here's a taste:

Arafat and his allies are willing to bear any human cost to secure political advances. Therefore, one cannot end Arafat’s terror simply by offering a way out of further bloodshed, as peace plans seek to do, or even through inflicting military losses on the enemy, as the Israeli Defence Force is doing, because the enemy ultimately does not care how much blood its people shed.

Terrorists care only about winning. To defeat terror one must prove that it will not secure political gains. Israel needs a government that can grasp that logic properly, which will tighten its security policy accordingly, explain fluently to the West that its struggle is democracy’s struggle, point out that there can be no peace in the Middle East while the regimes which sponsor terror survive, and then refuse to engage with peace plans until terrorist violence has ceased. The Israeli politician who best understands this is Binyamin Netanyahu.

California Politics

Dan Walters looks at the lack of oversight of California government services. He call Bob Hertzberg, finishing his term as speaker of the California state Assembly, to task for not following up on his promise to provide said oversight:

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that Hertzberg could have opened the state government phone book, closed his eyes, picked a state agency at random and found something worth pursuing.

Hertzberg, however, was a paper tiger. While the Assembly did conduct a bipartisan and ultimately fruitful investigation of wrongdoing by Republican Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, forcing him to resign, it balked when it came to exposing anything embarrassing to Democrats such as Gov. Gray Davis.

A much-vaunted Assembly probe of the state energy crisis stalled out when it approached the ticklish subject of how Davis' actions, or inactions, may have exacerbated the situation. And the many other topics worthy of examination were simply ignored.

Through the Looking Glass

Arutz 7 has a MEMRI style survey of Arabic language newspapers. Check out the advice Aberahman al-Shubaili, a member of Majlis a-Shoura (Consultative Council), had for US VP Dick Cheney in a letter to Saudi newspaper al-Hayat:

the message from this nation is that this region has spawned someone who surpasses Saddam Hussein in his brutality, terrorism and oppression… The premier terrorist is Sharon, then Sharon, then Sharon, then Saddam.”

Primary Document

The text of Ariel Sharon's address to the Israeli people on March 31st, 2002.

(via War in Context - minus the "quote marks")

What Went Wrong?

Stanley Kurtz does a long combination think piece/book review on Bernard Lewis' book What Went Wrong?

The field of “post-colonial studies” — the regnant academic paradigm for the study of non-Western cultures — was founded in 1978 by Edward Said’s book, Orientalism. That book condemned virtually all existing literature and scholarship on the Middle East as a series of disguised rationalizations for Western colonial ambition. Most of Said’s Orientalism was an elaborate tour of early, often highly distorted and bigoted attempts by Western travelers to make sense of the Muslim Middle East. But the body of the book was simply a setup for the all-important final chapter, which argued that even sophisticated contemporary scholarly accounts of the Middle East were infected by the distortions, biases, and imperial ambition so evident in the records of early Western travelers. The culminating moment of that critical chapter was Edward Said’s blistering critique of Bernard Lewis.

Since the inception of post-colonial theory, then, Bernard Lewis has been its chief villain. Lewis’s longstanding interest in Muslim misconceptions about a modernizing Europe, his insistence on stressing the relationship between Islam and contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, and his discussion of Muslim scapegoating of both Jews and Westerners were marked out by Said 24 years ago as proof of the bigotry and bankruptcy of the field of Middle Eastern studies itself.

Today, of course, Lewis appears to have been vindicated by events, while Said’s repeated condemnations of the West’s preoccupation with Islamic terrorism are an embarrassment to his supporters. If anything, it was America’s inability to honestly name and diagnose the terrorist threat — provoked in no small part by the chastisements of Said and his followers — that made us let our guard down. Would that we had listened more closely to Lewis.

Tsk, Tsk - No Quality Control

Every once in a while a sensible commentary slips into the LA Times Op-Ed page. Perhaps they are playing an April Fool's prank, but today they printed a piece by Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden called "Not Everyone Wants to Sail on Our Ship":

Ten years ago, when the Berlin Wall came down, for a brief time the global future seemed uncomplicated. For most of the 20th century, our government approached the world as the theater of a great showdown between personal freedom, capitalism and democracy and authoritarianism, communism and one-party rule. Less powerful nations were irrelevant, Third World, undeveloped and largely forgotten unless their location or resources gave them strategic importance. Then communism collapsed, and a "New World Order" began to take shape. The triumph of democracy and capitalism seemed inevitable. What drama remained concerned the pace at which rebuilding states could achieve economic and political parity. With only one successful model to choose from, the path of the Third World seemed set.

Hardly. In parts of the old Third World our fundamental values are under siege. Many people the world over, it seems, don't want to be like us. Our enemies see the rapid spread of the "American Way" as cultural aggression. In a way, they have a point. Our fast food, entertainment and lifestyles are invading more traditional societies. But this is not aggression. The U.S. doesn't impose McDonald's, "Baywatch," Puff Daddy and Britney Spears on other countries; they eagerly import them. Anyone who has ever traveled in Africa, Asia or the Middle East sees the near universal enthusiasm for pop culture.

Likewise, the concepts of human rights, equality of women, democracy, tolerance and free speech are infectious. They threaten traditional societies precisely because they are so seductive to their own people, particularly the young. Much of the upsurge in Islamic radicalism is a backlash against the ongoing story of American success. The ideals that we take for granted are in fact actively opposed by those who want to preserve more authoritarian states.

Let's Hope

This would be the first Top 5 figure to be captured:

US authorities are holding a man captured in Pakistan who is believed to be a senior member of the al-Qaeda terror network, a US official has said.

The man is thought to be Abu Zubaydah, a key deputy of Osama Bin Laden, the man suspected to have masterminded the 11 September attacks in America.

Like UN Diplomats need a reason to start a bar fight

Some chap by the name of Josh Parsons decided to grade the flags of the world according to his design principles:

Some time ago, browsing through my friend's atlas, I realised that there are significant differences in quality between the flags of different countries. Some are good, some are bad. Some countries have clearly taken care in the choice of colours, layout, and design. Others have been lazy, stolen the flags of their neighbours, or just designed flags that are clearly supposed to cause pain to those who look at them.

To my surprise, there is no international body responsible for upholding simple standards of vexillilic aesthetics. Nor do the UN or Interpol have the power to call in and punish those responsible for such atrocities as the Brazilian or Cypriot flags. I suppose there is probably a conspiracy of rich western nations (those with permanent seats on the UN security council, no doubt) to prevent such crimes from being brought to justice; however, in the meantime I am giving letter grades to the existing flags of the world.

Colin Powell is looking even better

If you'd like a chance to get a small window on the world we now would be living in if Al Gore had won the coin flip in Florida, you can read Richard Holbrooke's Op-Ed in today's Washington Post. You may recall that Holbrooke was widely touted to be Al Gore's Secratary of State had he prevailed. The column is a well written argument in support of nation building. He puts some points on the board taking Bush to task for pussyfooting around the nation building term, and makes a fair case that Clinton's interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo were humanitarian successes.

The piece unwittingly summarizes the best and worst of Clinton-era foreign policy - tactically competent execution of policies with little or no strategic importance. The humanitarian interventions can be justified morally, but they did not significantly further any U.S. strategic interests. Indeed, the experience in Somalia illustrates the greatest danger of having U.S. peacekeeping forces - that they become prime targets. Having missed the those key points, Holbrooke extends the argument to discuss future role for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan:

Having worked on both successful and unsuccessful nation-building efforts over 40 years on three continents, I'm under no illusion as to the immense difficulty of such a task in a country as remote, ethnically diverse and historically xenophobic as Afghanistan. I am not speaking of creating a modern free market democracy in Afghanistan, but of putting the country on a path toward stability and reconstruction. Nor am I remotely suggesting that the United States bear the burden alone. But it must take the lead. If it doesn't, others will not follow.

Let us therefore talk no longer of exit strategies or firm timetables (a mistake we made in Bosnia). As a retired four-star general replied recently when asked in a private meeting how long we should stay in Afghanistan: "As long as necessary, until we have finished the job."

It may be long and costly, but if Afghanistan is important enough to wage war over -- and it is -- it is equally important to stabilize and rebuild, not only as a humanitarian goal but in our own vital national interest, as an integral part of the war on terror.

How funny? Depends

There are probably many of you out there who have learned that when you need to read a bleat, only LILEKS™ brand bleats will do. But once you've read your bleat, you leave. Like the philistines that go to the Louvre, wait for half an hour, gawk at the Mona Lisa and then run off to see stuff your face with some chocolate eclairs (filled with cream, not custard). But did you know that the sugar high craving made you miss out on this? Or this? Or this? Don't feel so smug now, do you?

So today, once you've read your Daily Bleat™, don't click away, continue on. Because today LILEKS™ welcomes you to The Bank........ of Death.

Some Sunday afternoon culture

Unless you like comic books you may not have come across writer Mark Evanier's blog. Even though I still have some of the DNAgents comics that he created around here somewhere, I only ran across his site a couple of days ago. Here he talks about the updated Odd Couple play coming out:

Much to my amazement and probably yours, Neil Simon has rewritten The Odd Couple. A new, "updated" version will have a tryout at the Geffen Theater in Westwood, beginning June 19. The plot, Simon says, is the same but 70% of the dialogue has been altered to make the jokes less dated. I assume this means more than the removal of the automat line and the one about the Magic Chef. Word is that the Pigeon Sisters are now the Costazuela Sisters.

This strikes me as such a terrible idea that it may be a good idea. I mean that. If someone you know who's very smart and rational suddenly said to you, "I'm going to rub cream cheese in my hair," you'd think, "Hmm...that guy's always been very smart and rational in the past. He can't be as wrong as it seems. He may not be right about this cream cheese thing but it's at least possible he knows something I don't." Neil Simon has had some failures lately but his lifetime batting average is still way ahead of almost anyone else's. He must know what he's doing, right? Okay, I'm skeptical, too.

Sibling Rivalry

Susanna Cornett is no sissy, that's for sure.

Meanwhile

In France this weekend vandals attacked a synagogue in Lyon and gunmen opened fire on a kosher butcher shop in Toulouse before speeding away. Thankfully no one was hurt in the attacks.

Don't

David Carr has a great poem over at Sammy's Data. If this link doesn't work, just scroll down and look for the "Don't" poem.

Revelations

John Hawkins reflects on some comments he made over at Sarge's place. While the Hawkman doesn't retract his comments, he does think about how they sound now that they are "out there." There is something about Sarge's comments area that brings out long heartfelt comments, as I can attest. Must be all the Babylon 5 Episodes he uses as titles for his posts. But I digress. The comment in question that Mr. Hawkins made was "The Arabs aren't anywhere near as good at war as they are at fake diplomacy." He continues:

I said it in the context of arguing that a move towards active hostilities wouldn’t be a disaster, that in fact, it might be to our benefit. Frankly, our diplomats have been getting their butts handed to them by the Arab world for a couple of decades at least. It’s a pretty dismal record, and you wonder at people being out-maneuvered they entire career by the likes of Yassir Arafat. Well, you say, at least diplomatic failures don’t result in body bags.

Except they do. Sept. 11th was a diplomatic failure – a result of years of allowing an abomination called Wahabbiism to incubate in the fetid political swamps of the totalitarian Arab world. We’ve allowed the “Palestinian Question” to get progressively worse because our diplomats have kow-towed to thugs who use Palestinian misery as a permanent grievance and continuous recruiting gimmick. While the Cold War raged, you could at least assume the losses in the Middle East were the price we had to pay for more important victories elsewhere. But since the Fall of the Wall, there’s no excuse. The Middle East has been the most important diplomatic arena for twelve years, and the U.S. State Department has gotten it’s clock cleaned.

Sunday Morning News

I've been watching the TV coverage of today's atrocities. Flipped between news channels. Watched Sharon's speech, Bush's comments, various "wise men" and cable news hosts. All moral equivalence, all the time.

Our naive friend Dennis Ross was doing his best to teach terrorists everywhere that violence pays. No lesser light than Zbigniew Brzezinski was bleating on about the need to tie negotiations to a political process. If blowing up a paramedic station brings no sense of outrage to these people, I cannot imagine what would. Hamas and company have a greater imagination than I do, so I'm fearful that they will figure out where Mr. Ross and Mr. Brzezinski draw the line. If things keep deteriorating perhaps we could convince Mr. Ross to sue Arafat for violating the Oslo accords.

The other thing that struck me today is that James Zogby is the most effective apologist for Palestinian atrocities I have ever seen. If you only have a superficial knowledge about the Middle East I imagine that his spin on the facts must be tremendously effective. My goodness.

Let's see how the other side lives

Between them Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen Cohen manage to take a dubious premise, schmeer on some hallucinatory conjecture and come up with the wackiest "foreign policy think piece" I've seen in quite a while. The narrative is so light and airy that it is hopeless to try to summarize it. Here is a taste of the new and improved Nation, now with Nutrasweet for that great taste with no calories:

Indeed, the arrival of the two of us in Moscow in March coincided with the Los Angeles Times revelations about the Pentagon's new nuclear doctrines, which continue to include Russia as a possible target of a US attack. It was the lead story for days in Russia's media, and most of the headlines and commentary were angrily anti-American.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moscow's largest-circulation newspaper, featured a half-page illustration of a muscular Bush as Rambo, cradling a machine gun and flanked by his warriors--Rumsfeld (in a metal-studded headband, brandishing a bloody sword), Cheney, Powell and Rice. Protests against US policy and Bush himself reached such levels that the US ambassador called in Russian journalists to chastise them for being anti-American.

His lecture did nothing to squelch anti-US sentiments, which had diminished after September 11 but are now growing rapidly. Symptomatic was the view, widely expressed in media commentary and public opinion polls, that a US-led plot had deprived Russian athletes of gold medals at the Salt Lake City Olympics. Scarcely less resented was Bush's decision to impose tariffs on Russian steel, which increased belief in American hypocrisy about the virtue of "free markets."

More serious, however, is the opinion spreading across Moscow's political spectrum that the Bush Administration's war on terrorism now has less to do with helping Russia--or any other country--fight Islamic extremism on its borders than with establishing military outposts of a new (or expanded) American empire ("a New Rome," as a leading politician's aide remarked to us) with control over the region's enormous oil and gas reserves as its primary goal. Even Russians who consider themselves pro-American are understandably finding it increasingly difficult to counter this charge.

Everything you wanted to know about.....

.......Googlebombs, but were afraid to ask.

It...Was...Much...Better...Than...Cats

Coury Turczyn looks at the 5 movie critics who will shill anything. For example, take Shawn Edwards (please*):

Shawn Edwards is possibly the most enthusiastic man in the entire world. Everything is great! Destined to be a hit! Wow! No, Mr. Edwards does not hold back his joy when it comes to reviewing the amazing efforts of Hollywood's dream factory. He is a man with a lot of love to share. The Animal is "The comedy hit of the summer!" In Chris Rock's Down to Earth, "The funniest man in America will have you laughing until it hurts!" Tomb Raider is "The most stylish and entertaining action adventure movie in years!" Would you believe that Sweet November is "A movie that sizzles with charm. You'll have a renewed passion for life." Or that "Danny DeVito is terrific!" in What's the Worst That Could Happen? Ah, but it is Britney Spears who truly captured Edwards' heart, as he reveals in this impassioned, nearly novel-length tribute to the plastic wonder: "Crossroads is a perfect teen dream. It has everything that makes a movie totally cool: laughs, adventure, spirit, hot music, drama and of course BRITNEY! Britney rocks! She is like a comet. A talent of her magnitude only comes around once in a lifetime and you can't take your eyes off her when she is on screen in this totally cool and delightfully hip movie." Shawn, get a room.

Feeling Old

I remember when my wife first told me about these twins (we were still married back then). They were the daughters of her buddy at the kosher butcher. His little kids got a part in a TV show. You may have heard of them. Oy!

Thanks Dude!

When I wrote my very first post in this here blog, I decided to jump right in*. I pretended that I was addressing myself to an audience of 100 people who knew me and valued my opinion, and that I had been writing this blog for years. I could skip all the justification of why I was starting yet another blog, and why anyone else should care what I have to say. It made it easier for me to find my voice. But really, I didn't imagine that anyone would actually read it the thing in real life! So it is a bit jarring for me to find my blog being plugged by someone like Matt Welch, who I've been reading and enjoying for some time. Thanks Matt, it means a great deal to me.

In my 38 years I have held an eclectic mix of opinions. I used to joke that I'm a demographic of one - members of PETA and the NRA. The Orthodox-Jewish Vegans young Republican meetings were quiet affairs, I assure you. My meditation for corporate executives support group was not much bigger either. I get dueling junk mail - support/defeat the evil forces of corporate fat cats/welfare queens on proposition 92A, we are counting on you! So I have learned to be a bit careful with labels - one size does not fit all. Perhaps I was a bit hasty classifying Matt Welch as a lefty just because he voted for Nader. Well, whatever he is, he's my favorite one of those! Now if I could only get Stephanie Dupont to answer my emails, I'll know that I have arrived.

* Sorry, I can't link to my first post - it got swallowed in conversion somewhere. It is not the first link you see archived. That is probably for the best.

India and Israel: Both start with the letter "I"

In the midst of dissecting Nicholas Kristof's latest I realized that I have been paying less attention to India than I ought to be. So let's look at this article written in January by Yossi Klein Halevi in the New Republic entitled September's Children, about the increasing warmth in the Indian-Israeli realtionship:

Beyond the shared interests and fears, what energizes the new relationship is romance. As in the United States in the 1960s, a generation of young Israelis has fallen in love with India. Several times a year, tens of thousands of young Israelis gather in nature reserves for Indian-style festivals, with canvas-covered chai shops and stalls selling Indian clothes and music. Over the last decade, perhaps a quarter-million Israelis, most of them just out of the army, have visited India. When India's ambassador to Israel, Raminder S. Jassal, walks the streets in his Sikh turban, young Israelis often press their palms in the traditional greeting of Namaste; sometimes he is addressed by Israelis in Punjabi. "I haven't experienced this kind of love for India elsewhere," he says.

Even religious Jews and Hindus are discovering surprising parallels. Hinduism and Judaism are the "root faiths" from which most of the world's major religions have grown. Both are ritualistic, with complex mystical systems; both are confined to a specific people. "India is one of the few countries where my hosts immediately grasp my kosher needs," says Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. "I can ask them whether dairy food has been cooked in a pot used for meat, and they don't look at me like I've fallen from the moon."

In fact, the two nations don't only face common external challenges; they face common internal ones as well. They are both ancient civilizations uneasily reborn as secular democracies, struggling with religion's place in their national identities. "I don't know of any other countries besides India and Israel where [religious] myth is so alive, but also where the struggle is so intense to keep myth from turning into political fundamentalism," comments Melila Hellner-Eshed, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. In India, she says, "secular Israelis can relax and open themselves up to spirituality in a way that the politics of religion doesn't allow them to do at home."

Justice

Bill Garner makes me laugh.

So Bloggaritaville is an Echo Chamber. You got a problem with that?

Asparagirl is feeling thankful. Go read it.

I hope I'm mistaken but...

...this is the significant news story of the day. The border with Lebanon has been relatively quiet for some time.

Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets at Israeli posts in a disputed border region Saturday, prompting Israeli missile strikes in south Lebanon and raising worries of a new front heating up as Israel wages an assault against the Palestinians.

Israel evacuated 2,000 visitors from the Mt. Hermon ski resort in the Golan Heights because of the Hezbollah rocket fire, said an Israeli army spokesman, Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded cafe in Tel Aviv's entertainment district Saturday evening, killing himself and wounding at least 24 people, police and paramedics said.

The blast blew shards of glass across the sidewalk and overturned chairs and tables in Cafe Bialik on Allenby Street, a major thoroughfare in Tel Aviv.

When you put it that way...

John Cole makes a good point.

A boy named Sue

Nicholas Kristof's new column has appeared, and since Stephen is putting up some shelves, I will chip in and pick up the slack. Nicholas asks:

India's national tumult produced Gandhi and Nehru. America's nurtured Jefferson and Madison.

So why does the decades-long Arab crisis spawn the likes of Yasir Arafat and Saddam Hussein?

At a time when Arab countries face far-reaching choices — about economics, democracy, Israel, religion — the region needs most what it lacks most: great leaders. Most of those in power seem to "lead" by staying in the crowd, distracting it when possible, and running around in front of it when necessary.

I've just returned from Yemen, where a militant Islamist, Abdelmeguid al-Zindani, started his own university (where John Walker Lindh studied). Cassette tapes of his fiery sermons suggest that President Bush conspired with Jews to destroy the World Trade Center.

Some Arab thinkers, like Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel-Prize-winning writer and conscience of Egypt, have had the courage to stand up for their beliefs and against the militants. But Mr. Mahfouz was stabbed for his troubles, and so the educated often seethe in their salons rather than over the airwaves.

I began my career by learning Arabic in Cairo and thought I would focus on the Arab world. Instead, happenstance (a.k.a. editors) diverted me to East Asia, where I worked for most of the last 15 years. In retrospect, I feel lucky: the Arab world remains in the political and economic stasis in which I left it, while Asia has become one of the most vibrant places in the world.

The problem is not Islam, for other Muslim nations (like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia) have vigorous debates and genuine leaders. Part of the responsibility is the West's, for backing its own pet rulers. But ultimately it is Arabs themselves who must break their silence.

That defeatism hangs like a pall over the best and brightest of the Arab world. There are hints in the Arab press that 9/11 is beginning to prompt a greater reflectiveness, and it was encouraging that this week's Arab summit meeting included a parallel meeting of nongovernmental organizations.

As the Iraqi-born scholar Kanan Makiya writes in his book "Cruelty and Silence": "Change for the better will only come in the Arab world when a new generation of young Arabs become incensed at the unacceptably cruel state of their world."

Let's hope they get incensed soon.

Australian Pharmacology

They have a different focus down under.

Weird, but in a good way

Raymon laments.

Oprah Cronkite?

Graduate student Sean Smith, writing in the Washington Post, says that ABC news would have been right to replace Koppel with Letterman. He argues that pop shows are providing better political coverage than the news shows are:

Similarly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell went on MTV last month to answer questions from a worldwide audience, viewers were treated to a free-flowing, 90-minute presentation on the government's priorities. The Bush administration was given a chance to deliver its message, unfiltered by broadcasters and Washington journalists, to an audience that MTV estimated at 370 million.

Pop programs are giving people more of what they want. During the last election, when Oprah announced she would be having Gore and Bush on her show, she told her audience that her intention was to break through the "wall" of sound bites and "practiced answers" to reveal the real man. When sizing up potential presidents, or the current administration, these exchanges are far more important to the average American than listening to politicians repeat scripted statements on taxes or prescription drugs to Koppel or Tim Russert.

Context is always useful

While I'm not crazy about the color choices, the overall design of War in Context is pretty good. There is a clean visual style, well chosen article summaries, and many useful links for Warbloggers (in a blood in shark infested waters sort of way). Imagine what a blog written by Charles Johnson (of LGF fame) would look like in that anti-matter universe where Spock has a beard. Check it out.

Shameless Self-Promoters, this links for you!

As a tribute to the shameless among us, I've decided to add a link category called "Shameless." In order to get your blog linked there, all you have to do is send me an email and I'll (eventually) add your link to the Shameless category. Is there any blog I woudn't link to? I don't imagine there is, but I suppose it is possible. We'll see. If I have already linked to you, and want your link moved, I'll do that too, and perhaps mark it with an asterisk.

Call it an experiment....

If she were a tree she'd be a palm tree

Jeff Goldstein has been busy. His post on Babwa Wawa reminded of a dinner I had long forgotten. About ten or twelve years ago the owner of the small company I was working for invited me to his table at a fundraiser for a holocaust memorial (he is a survivor). The guest of honor was - you guessed it - Barbara Walters herself. Since I am the child of holocaust survivors (2nd Generation as we're known among the cognoscenti) he naturally invited me. I wouldn't have gone otherwise, because it was $250 dollars a plate, and I was not making that much money at the time.

There were a number of survivors who spoke at the event. They told stories about how they narrowly escaped death. Some got out via smuggling routes, others held on somehow in the death camps. The evening had a profound effect on me, as the stories brought home to me the terror of Hitler in a way that the familiar stories my parents told me (or didn't). That night was the first time that I really understood that my mother, who spent the war in hiding was a survivor just as much as my dad who was in the camps. Through someone else's story I really felt my mom's terror for the first time, and felt my father's awful pain just for a moment.

These brave speakers were not looking for sympathy. The did not want pity. The reason they spoke out was that they wanted desperately to teach us, their "children," something important. They spoke about the warning signs that they did not heed. They spoke about the gradualness of it all. They spoke about the disbelief they felt. When they say "Never Again" they are telling us - they are telling me - change your ways, open your eyes. It happened to us, it can happen to you. Learn from us. As I said, it was a profound and moving event. Never had I been to an event where the people being toasted were not looking to feed their own egos. They desperately wanted to reach us.

Next up was the famous intellectual herself, Barbara Walters, who proceeded to give the most inappropriate, clueless speech imaginable. It was jarringly self-congratulatory, focused on how important the work of the "memorializers" were, how important the fundraisers were. She said things along the lines of - as long as you give money to these memorials, the holocaust will never be repeated. The way it struck me was that she thought that printing history books was good enough, there was no need to read them or draw the right lessons from them.

She must have prepared her remarks beforehand, and was either to stupid or clueless to adjust them in light of what we all had heard that night. If she had given the same speech at a different event it might not had struck me the same way, but at this event, at this time no thinking human, let alone a prime time news anchor, should have been so oblivious.

Do you remember Dick Gephardt's tepid response to Bush's State of the Union? It was a forgettable speech, clearly written before he heard Bush talk, but I came away from it thinking better of Gephardt. Why? Because he clearly had heard Bush talk, had been moved in some way, and understood that the speech he was now reading was inadequate. That's fine - he did the best he could, and also proved he was human, living in the same world, was moved in at least some small way as the rest of us were. Now imagine if he had given the same speech, but instead had delivered as if he was ignorant of Bush's performance. That would have been jarring, wouldn't it? Multiply it by ten and you understand what Walters did.

I've never been able to look at her without shaking my head ever since.

VDH Headline News Network

I wish I would have had Victor Davis Hanson as a history teacher, but in a way he has been "Historian in Chief" since 9/11. Today's lesson is about how the pathetic bleatings about moral equivalence manage to find some purchase, at least in some segments of society:

Why do such bankrupt arguments find resonance? I think the causes have now permeated well beyond a few coffeehouse theorists blabbering away in Cambridge or Palo Alto. Rather it is because we live in a society in which playground fights in our schools are now often adjudicated by concepts such as "zero tolerance" and "equal culpability." Rather than exercising moral judgment — and investing time and energy in such investigation — our school principals simply expel any student caught fighting, as if the bully and his victim occupy the same moral ground.

Our schoolbooks devote more space to Hiroshima than to the far, far greater casualties on Okinawa. Students are not told that the two tragedies are connected — as if the American bombing to prevent an enormous bloodbath on the Japanese mainland is somehow not a direct result of the Japanese imperial military's efforts a few weeks earlier to unleash 2,000 kamikazes, and through suicide attacks and banzai charges kill every American (and tens of thousands of civilians) on the island rather than surrender.

Risk = Common Sense Risk - (Lawsuit Probablity x Depth of Pockets)

Michael Barone tackles American society's risk aversion and what can be done about it:

You don't see so many jungle gyms in playgrounds these days. Or old-fashioned seesaws. Or bare earth beneath them: One federal safety handbook advises, "Earth surface such as soils and hard-packed dirt are not recommended because they have poor shock-absorbing properties." We must eliminate risk, prevent all possibility of injury or pain.

Do you hear that? Is it a beagle or a poodle?

You've probably heard about Eric Alterman's exercise in columnist classification from Andrew Sullivan. Blech -- what ill-conceived mish-mash. I find I must concur with Asparagirl's assessment.

Update: I'd like to think that if I had been less tired I would have written something about Alterman along the lines that Mr. Simberg did. I'd like to think so, but that doesn't make it true.

Richard Cohen, you've been Fisked!

The Scourge of Richard Cohen strikes again! Volume XIII is here, and it is a doozy. This time Charles is as funny as Richard Cohen is stupid. I won't cherry pick and quote. Just go read it.

That's it!

I've been trying to figure out what set me (and so many others) off last night. When I read John Podhoretz in the NY Post it clicked:

Horrible as the suicide bombings have been, none of them struck at the very core of what it means to be a Jew. This one did. This one does.

Even for secular Jews, even for those Jews who are inclined to blame the policies of the government of Israel for the violence rained upon the heads of their co-religionists, the meaning of it is inescapable.

"In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us." These exact words have been spoken on Passover from medieval times until today, by Jews all over the world.

Method to the madness

I think I've just figured it out. The Washington Post is just being fair. They have "smart" days and "stupid" days. Sorry - no Michael Kelly, Michael Kinsley, Charles Krauthammer, Robert J. Samuelson, or George F. Will for you today. Thursday is "stupid" day, so it is Richard Cohen and Mary McGrory for you today. *Sigh*

I guess we'll have to see what Terry McAuliffe's soul mate is up to. Oh joy, she examines the next phase of the campaign finance fight:

Who says he's a sore loser? Who says he just couldn't give John McCain his moment in the Rose Garden, a ceremonial signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill? Who says he would rather look petty than go through the gripping and grinning and pen-handling that a White House ceremony entails?

Who? Just about everybody, after George Bush dashed off his signature between bouts on Iraq with Condoleezza Rice and the vice president. Then he dashed off to raise funds.

No wonder he needs a full-time scourge

Richard Cohen is whipping out idiotic columns faster than Charles Austin can scourge them. Cohen is racing Nick "sue Iraq" Kristof to see who can reach the nirvana of blissful ignorance first. But I'll let Mr. Cohen do the talking - he proves my point better than I ever could:

In truth, no one can say what would have happened had the Bush administration followed the Clinton pattern of engagement. The Arab-Israeli dispute is complicated, intensely emotional and downright durable. It's possible that Clinton did indeed get too engaged and was in too much of a hurry to add a Nobel Peace Prize to his honors. It's possible, maybe even probable, that Arafat was never going to accept any deal. His idea of a compromise is the whole ball of wax.

But it is the job, the obligation and the duty of any American administration to do the hard, often fruitless work of the Middle East. It is the responsibility of any White House to keep the secretary of state frequently in the region, if only to keep the two sides from tearing each other apart. This is particularly true at the moment, because, as Yeats would have it, the center has not held. Foggy Bottom is the only center left.

It has taken the campaign against Iraq to get Cheney on his airplane. As he has found out, though, the states of the region have a hard time supporting a war against a fellow Arab country when it is Israel that so preoccupies the minds of their people. First things first, they say. It could be that the administration finally is listening.

This email..

....from Osama bin Laden is false because he is dead. If he was alive it would have been a video.

Rambling into incoherence

Bear with me folks. I don't know where I am going with this post, but I think it may run on a bit. Tonight I'm leaving the spell checker off, and letting go of any semblance of good grammar, so I beg your indulgence. And curse words, lots and lots of curse words. If that bothers you please stare at last week's Marina sunset, and then go click on one of the fine blogs to your right. Please pick a link to a blog you haven't seen before. They are each a delight in their own way.

I've been reading Stephen, and LILIEKS™, and Asparagrrl. Thinking about the Talmud I've learned, and what it means to be a Jewish Taoist intellectual mystic in 2002. And what in God's name I'm going to talk to my daughters about in tomorrow night's seder. And I've been thinking about Tom Friedman and Nick Kristof. Especially Kristof. Andrew Sullivan says he's a decent chap. Go click on his bio. He sounds like a good father and a loving husband. And he must be fucking brilliant. As my friends will attest, I may be pretty arrogant, but I'm no slouch in the brains department. But no matter how hard I would have applied myself I could not have achieved what he did. Don't kid yourself - look at his resume. There may be liberal bias in all the elite institutions, but there is no way he could have done what he has without being fucking brilliant. And he's got guts. Shit - report on Tiannamen Square - I wouldn't have had the balls - would you? And yet. And yet.... And yet he is so hopelessly naive it makes me cry. We all make fun of him, but dammit he really and truly believes that suing Saddam is a great idea. I'm sure he does. I'm trying to understand my fellow man. Get inside their heads. And damn it, I wish I lived in the world that is in his head. In his world there is hope. Maybe Saddam's heart can be changed. In the parrallel Kristof earth Arafat wants justice for his people. In that world Arafat can be turned. Like Luke Skywalker, Kristof sees the good in Vader/Arafat - he can feel it.

But my martial arts training tells me otherwise. We are all children of the light. Perhaps Arafat will be reborn and in a future life and balance all he has done in this one. But not in this life I'm afraid.

On my last birthday I stopped being vegan after 11+ years. I grieve for the chicken I ate today. My heart aches. But I ate it. Tomorrow I will eat some cow parts and some chicken parts and some fish parts. I will hate it but I will eat it. The time came when I had to choose. And choose I did.

As a Jew, as a person, as a being of light I do not want to be a butcher. I don't want to take life. But there are bad men that want to kill me. Worse, they want to kill my daughters. They killed my Hillel. They want to kill Mark, and Chava, and all of their kids. They want to kill Aunts Pessi, Blimi, and exploded a seder in Aunt Tziri's Netanya, where my parents lived before I was born, all of whom Hitler didn't get around to. They want to kill Cousins Motty and Mordechai and Reevi and Naomi and all the other first cousins too numerous to mention. And all of their of kids. They want to kill you too.

God damn it - I don't want to kill them. Why must they make me choose between them and me? Why do they fear the light? Is it as simple as Yin and Yang? Please God - help me understand. Lucas picked the right myths. Fear leads anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Yes it does. But I don't fear Arafat. I don't hate Saddam, or Assad or any of those tin can motherfuckers. I fear myself. I fear what I could become.

Maybe I am projecting, but I think I know why Sharon and Israel in general has been restrained. But I'll just speak for myself. I don't want to kill Palestinians. I don't want to drive them from their homes. I don't want them to suffer. I want them to be happy. I want them to dance at their kid's weddings. I want them to pray to Allah. I want them to feel love in their hearts. I want them to worry about how they are going to pay the mortgage. I want them to lament the fact that there are only 13 brands of Tahini in their super/shuk/mall. By Kristof I want to believe. But I cannot. If they force me to choose, I will choose. I choose my children. I choose my family. I choose life.

My mom doesn't understand why I own a gun. She doesn't understand why I belong to the NRA or go to the range. What does a good Jewish boy need with that. It will only bring trouble. Mommy, trouble is already here. It has always been here. If I don't choose, it is still a choice. THEY have chosen. They choose death. They send their best and their brightest. "My son the martyr." They fear failure more than they fear death. They choose, mommy, they choose. I cannot close my eyes. I will not.

God bless you Nick Kristof. God bless you Shalom Achshav (Peace Now). God bless you Sabrina. What a world it would be if we could live where you live. Maybe one day we will. I fear that God didn't build it that way. But we do not live there today. Today we live here. Today we live here. And because we do I'm afraid you will have to get the fuck out of the way. In your ignorance you would choose our deaths over theirs. You will never see the bullet coming. But I see it. And they are my children too. And this I cannot allow. You will blame us later. You will sue Sharon. You will call him names. You will surely sue him. But we will live. Our children will live. Perhaps they will live to despise their Daddy for his hard choices. If they heed your teachings they surely will. But they will live.

If Arafat forces me to choose to kill them, I will. If the bad men force me to drive off "their people", drive them off, I will. If they force me to choose to kill them, then kill them I must. We must. Heap on me your scorn, your fear, your anger, your hatred, your suffering. I will bear them all if I must. But I will choose.

I choose the light. I choose life.

Peace

May all who are now enslaved, be it by the hand of another or by the chains of their own making, find freedom, happiness and peace in the coming year. Though we may be enslaved in one fashion or another this year, next year may we all be free. Le Shana Ha'ba-a Be Yerushalyim Ha'bnuya!
Peace to you all.

I don't know women's fashions, but I know what I like...

Mac Thomason gives out his own Golden Hanger awards, Oscar's Edition, to Gwyneth and Uma.

The Note

After getting annoyed at the "dead links" in the Note for the umpteenth time I decided to send them a note:

Guys,

As I'm sure you know, the "dead links" thing is a disaster. Your Note is the ONLY thing I go to the ABC site for, because the anti-web ethos of ABC makes visiting your page like handling plutonium - sometimes you need to do it, but you want to make sure that you get the contact over with as quickly as possible. Speaking as one blogger among many (http://www.patiopundit.com/), the main reason I don't generally link to you is because I think it will annoy my readers as much as it annoys me. Check how much your readership spiked when Glenn Reynolds or Mickey Kaus linked to you. Active links will only help your get substantially more traffic. And don't forget, Google loves Blogs.

Naturally anyone savvy enough to write a column like yours already knows this. Because of insight gleaned from many years spent in Corporate America I can only assume that the "dead links" idea is a policy from your "pointy haired" boss ("Is there any way we can harness the power of the web to lure them here, and then trap them somehow?" he said as Dilbert looked on helplessly). I'm sending this email to you so you can show it to "the powers that be" when you think the time is right to challenge them. Good Luck.

Regards,

Martin

Arafat's Passover Peace Offering

Early reports are that there are 15 dead, and over 100 wounded in the latest suicide attack, this time on a big Seder going on in the dining hall of the Park Hotel in Netanya:

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a hotel dining room in the Israeli coastal resort of Netanya on Wednesday evening as guests gathered for a Passover Seder, the ritual meal ushering in the Jewish holiday. Police said 15 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

The blast went off Wednesday evening, as the dining hall of the Park Hotel along Netanya’s boardwalk was crowded with guests marking the Passover Seder. A suicide bomber entered the hotel, crossed the lobby and reached the dining hall where he blew himself up, said a local police chief, Aharon Franko.

If you're not with us... then you are the Saudis

Rich Lowry follows the money:

It is impossible to account for all the ways in which Saudi cash has influenced the Islamic world. Consider just the people from other countries who went to Saudi Arabia to work, and sent money back home, creating an indirect dependence on Saudi society. Kepel reports that: "In Pakistan in the single year 1983, the money sent home by Gulf emigrants amounted to $3 billion, compared with a total of $735 million given to the nation in foreign aid."

All of this is why Saudi Arabia is at the root of the problem in the war on terrorism. Toppling the dangerous Saddam Hussein is important — especially in the way it may change the strategic balance in the Middle East — but in some respects it is beside the point.

Saddam Hussein hasn't spread a poisonous radicalism around the globe. He doesn't fund terrorist-tainted organizations in the United States. It wasn't — to pick just one example — his relief mission in Bosnia that was discovered with suspicious photographs of U.S. military missions.

No, for all that we have to look to the Saudis.

Vincent

One of the best things about having a job that required extensive travel was the chance to visit museums around the globe. If you ever get the chance to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, don't miss it. While many museums have fine examples of Van Gogh's work, the Van Gogh Museum has a staggering number of them. The irony, of course, is that any one of them would now sell for millions, while the artist died penniless.

If the experts are right, it turns out that Vincent painted one more masterpiece than they previously believed.

Insert Catfight Joke Here

Who could make this up? John Tesh, asked about Bob Costas opined:

"I think Bob Costas needs a spanking," the former newsman told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I have nothing nasty to say about most people, but just the unbridled drubbing that he drummed up for me, it was just unnecessary. ... I'm not a big fan."

Tesh, 49, is still bitter about comments he said Costas made about his much-panned stint as a gymnastics commentator during the 1996 Summer Olympics on NBC.

Not Tariffs Again

A different angle on tariffs and trade from Brink Lindsey in two posts. First he explains the Bush administration strategy more clearly than I've seen elsewhere.

Zoellick is a sincere free trader, and he's pursuing tried-and-true methods to advance the cause of open markets. He has plotted out an ambitious agenda of trade negotiations at the global (WTO), regional (Free Trade Area of the Americas), and bilateral (Chile first, more to follow) levels. But to conduct those negotiations, he needs "trade promotion authority" from Congress. Congress, however, is presently beholden to a number of protectionist interests. Zoellick is seeking to overcome that protectionist opposition with measured appeasement -- most notably, on steel and lumber.

So if you hate what Zoellick’s been doing, you're wasting your breath when you scream and shout that protectionism stinks. He knows that already. He just thinks that taking one step back now and again is the key to taking several steps forward later on. To get him to change his ways, you have to convince him, not that protectionism is bad, but that his strategy of achieving freer trade is wrong. He'll tell you that this is the way things have always been done, and he’s right.

Bush signed it

The AP reports:

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said Mr. Bush signed the bill with no fanfare in the Oval Office before leaving for his first fund-raiser here. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were present at the signing but the principal sponsors of the legislation were not.

Ms. Buchan said Mr. Bush planned to issue a statement later Wednesday reiterating his view that the bill "reforms the system in significant ways but also has flaws."

Funny Girl

John McCaslin passes on this story about Beaufort, S.C where Prince of Tides was filmed, from reader Marc Beauchamp. It seems that Barbra Streisand had her troubles there:

"She rented one of the historic homes and promptly erected a 10-foot-high black fence, to deter the curious. Then, according to my carriage driver, around (6 a.m.) one morning she was awakened by the sounds of jets flying overhead from the nearby Marine air station (this being during the Gulf War).

"According to my guide ... Streisand then complained by phone to the local commanding officer and told him she didn't want it to happen again. He reportedly responded, 'I'll see what I can do about it.' The next morning the jets roared over at 5 a.m."

Robert Samuelson: Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

I'm glad that I'm not the only one that tilts at windmills. When Robert Samuelson argues against the new Campaign Finance bill awaiting Bush's signature he cites specifics:

Let's list just a few of McCain-Feingold's speech restrictions:

• Title I, Section 323(f), limits the right of state officeholders and candidates to run ads that "promote or attack a clearly identified candidate for federal office."

• Title II, Section 203, prohibits unions and companies from spending their money on "electioneering communications" -- defined as TV, cable and satellite ads that mention federal candidates -- within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary.

• Title II, Section 204, applies the same prohibition to nonprofit groups, such as the NAACP and the National Right to Life Committee.

The last two sections could eliminate many outside TV ads, which span the political spectrum. In 2000, estimated the Brennan Center, about 44 percent were from business groups, 27 percent from groups favoring women's right to abortion and 14 percent from the AFL-CIO. Contrast the complex rules with the First Amendment's clarity: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, or to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Strangely, no western journalists protested

Earlier I meant to link to this bit that Howard Fienberg posted about the world's most overrated reporter Christianne Amanpour's visit with some terrorists. I was preoccupied.

Boy Genius Strikes Yet Again!

He just keeps articulating my viewpoints better than I can. This time he tackles abortion. I wish there was some way to get the hard-core pro-lifer's to read it. If you haven't read it yet - you really got to go read it now. (And Patrick, posts like this are why I said the other thing.)

Lileks muscles in on VodkaPundit territory

Maybe he felt like Stephen didn't Fisk him thoroughly enough - who knows? But Lileks' new screed diembowels the latest feckless Nick Kristof column. I really needed to laugh too.

Back from the edge of the ledge

That was a nice little adventure. Almost did a major site conversion on top of the blog move. Modest but fearless tech genius brother did not like the additional software that Movable Type had as a prerequisite to load on the server. Tried GreyMatter, which he liked better, but couldn't get the conversion from Blogger to work. Looked at PHP-Nuke, Geeklog, phpWeblog until MEGO and we decided to cool it for a couple of days. Whew. Feel free to e-mail me with any bright ideas....

Meanwhile, I'll troll around and see if the world stopped turning while I was off in GeekLand.

The Surprise was on me...

Note to self: Redirect only on one template or else you cause infinite loop. Apologies to any readers that were trapped.
Note to self #2: How many other people have you lectured on the stupidity of making untested changes to a live environment?
Note to self #3: Always wait 24 hours prior to sending smug "see how easy it is" emails.

Surprise

Thanks to the help of my dear brother the tech genius, Patio Pundit has a new home - "http://patiopundit.com/" ! If you change your bookmarks it will save you the redirect off the Blogspot site, and allow you to visit on those rare occasions when BlogSpot is down. Next project, migrating to Movable Type...

Knowing your enemy

Two new items at MEMRI are worth looking at. The first is an interview of Ja’far Omar Taleb, the leader of the Indonesian group Lashkar Jihad in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat. The second item is a strategic analysis of Iran's military aspirations by Ayelet Savyon, Director of the Iranian Media Project:

Iran is also developing medium and long-range missiles, which are perceived as strategic weapons. In 1985, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani signed an agreement with North Korea for the delivery of North Korean missiles at a value of $500 million. Iran is also engaged in indigenous development of engines and other components for the Shihab missile.(23) The Shihab missile is considered by Iran as a means of deterrence and defense primarily against Iraq. In an interview with the London Arabic Daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Iranian Defense Minister Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani, underlined that Iran is working on development of its ballistic capabilities, especially the Shihab 3, with an 800 mile range: "We focus now on making this missile extremely accurate and extremely fast from a tactical perspective, [we also try to] shorten its pre-launching time, [as well as] its destructive and explosive capability in accordance with the internationally accepted standard for defense weapons."

Would you buy a new book from this man?

I think that Ralph Nader is an incorruptible man that (ironically) works for the forces of darkness. After the close Bush victory, many Democrats came to the same conclusion, albeit for vastly different reasons (I did remember to thank my ex-wife and her husband for supporting Nader). Now I hear that Matt Welch is writing a book about Ralph Nader and his 2000 presidential campaign from the perspective of someone that voted for him. I can't help Matt with his book proposal, but I will buy the book. Matt is my favorite lefty because he is honest, fair and his positions are well thought through. Whenever he sees an issue differently than I do, he makes me stop to think. Don't let that straw hat fool you, he is smart as well as funny.

I'll bet that Nader comes off looking worse in Matt's book than George W. Bush came out in Frank Bruni's book. Anyone want to to take that bet? We can let Andrew Sullivan be the judge ;-> (Heck I'd let Matt be the judge, even if he took the other side of the bet. OK, maybe he's not that fair...)

Shallow reporting

Check out this uninformative AP report that Hosni Mubarak and 10 other Arab leaders decided not to attend the Arab summit:

Ten heads of state from the 22-member Arab League are not attending the two-day summit, but Mubarak's cancelation is the most significant. It could undermine chances for a strong voice on the Saudi proposals, which had been praised by the United States and which the Arab leaders had been expected to adopt.

Underlining the animosities, Al-Jazeera television – the Arab world's best-known broadcaster – canceled plans to air a live interview with Sharon. Arab journalists covering the summit had objected to the interview, with more than 100 staging a protest outside Al Jazeera's studio at the press center.

Dispatch from the Land of the CESM

Canadian must read columnist Mark Steyn travelling through France:

And on and on, round the clock. The following point was made to me twice within the space of 24 hours, so I assume it's the current sophistry doing the rounds. "Ah, Mark," said the first, with a wry self-congratulatory twinkle, "the British and Americans, they go on all the time about democracy. But you do realize there are six billion people in this world and that, if you gave them the opportunity to vote for Mr. Bush or Mr. bin Laden, why, one billion would vote for Bush and five billion for bin Laden." Pause for stunned reaction from boneheaded North American, and then, with a sardonic courtly nod: "I myself would, of course, vote for Bush."

The second time I heard this observation the speaker gave a slightly different tag: "I myself would, of course, probably vote for Bush." Take Two sounds about right. Leaving aside the precision of the math, this droll jest neatly encapsulates the French world view: Naive Washington thinks all will be well if you liberate the will of the people, the European elite knows that civilization depends on restraining it. At heart, they believe the opposite of the American tourist on the train: There are no good peoples, just different groups of bad peoples whose baser urges have to be adroitly managed -- as Western Europe failed to do between the wars but which it has done with some success since. That's why the EU likes the Emirs and the Ayatollahs, old Arafat and Boy Assad. They feel those fellows are engaged in the same project as theirs: Holding the excesses of the people in check.

Negotiation 101

Charles Krauthammer today:

We have failed, however, to see how a similar campaign of hate has laid the groundwork for the orgy of murder-suicide the Palestinians are now engaged in. A mother appears on videotape proudly sending her 18-year-old to his death just so he can kill as many Jews as possible. This is unprecedented. Before the Oslo peace accords of 1993, suicide bombing was a practice almost unheard of among Palestinians.

And it is not as if they had no grievances before 1993. On the contrary. The advent of suicide bombing coincides precisely with the era of Israeli conciliation and peacemaking: recognition of the PLO, repeated concessions of territory, establishment of the Palestinian Authority, acceptance of an armed Palestinian police -- all culminating in the unprecedented offer of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in a shared Jerusalem. It is precisely in the context of the most accommodating, most conciliatory, most dovish Israeli policy in history that the suicide bombings took hold.

What about cameras at Blogger parties?

UberBlogger Instantman's pal UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh advocates the use of cameras to catch traffic rule violators in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed today:

While we should be concerned with protecting our liberty and dignity from intrusive government actions, the red light cameras are less intrusive than traditional traffic policing. The law recognizes that even a brief police stop is a "seizure," a temporary deprivation of liberty. When I was caught on the camera, I avoided that. I avoided coming even briefly within a police officer's physical power, a power that unfortunately is sometimes abused.

I avoided the usual demeaning pressure to be especially submissive to the policeman in the hope that he might let me off the hook. I avoided any possibility of being pulled out and frisked, or my car being searched. I didn't have to wonder if I had been stopped because of my sex or race or age. And while cameras aren't perfectly reliable, I suspect that they can be made more reliable than fallibly human officers -- so I may even have avoided a higher risk of being wrongly ticketed. (It helps that the photos mailed with the ticket showed me in the driver's seat, plus my car's license plate and the precise place my car supposedly was when the light turned red.)

I wish I could write like him....

Another great Bleat/Screed from Lileks. Careful -- this one kinda sneaks up on you. I'm starting to really appreciate the little mini-table of contents thing he does:

Today: Czerny writing; Target altruism; sugar-blasted choco-Gnat; miserable mood shift leading to mild screedism

More on Gogglebombing

Writing in Slate, John Hiller asks "Will Weblogs ruin Google's search engine?"

Last April, Stanford University student Adam Mathes played a joke on his friend Andy Pressman. Mathes' goal: Make Pressman's Web site the No. 1 Google search result for "talentless hack." The method: Encourage as many people with Web sites as possible to link to Pressman's site using those words. (Like this: Andy "talentless hack" Pressman.) The prank worked. A year later, Pressman's Web site is still Google's No.1 search result for the phrase. Mathes even invented a name for his joke: "Google Bombing."

The Odd Couple

I'm not the biggest Rosie O'Donnell fan, but she's doing well on the O'Reilly Factor. She scored big points in my book by coming on the show, admitting she was wrong for some of her past statements and generally mixing it up. Bravo.

Problem Solving

Long time readers of Patio Pundit both know that I am a hawk. Furthermore my Orthodox Jewish education gives me special appreciation for Holy places in Israel. I bridle when I see Judea and Samaria referred to as the "West Bank." It is hard for many people of good will around the world to understand that part of the problem with giving land away in Israel goes beyond security concerns. We fear the desecration of irreplaceable artifacts as well. When Palestinian militants murdered my friend Hillel Lieberman he was trying to salvage artifacts and a Torah from Joseph's tomb. Two days later, everything he vainly tried to save was gone.

Do people who read the biased press accounts about those "crazy settlers" in Hebron realize that the Cave of the Patriarch's (Makhpelah Cave), the final resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah is in Hebron. (Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin in what is now called Bethlehem) The fact that Muslims are also the children of Abraham gives one scant comfort that they would not destroy places and things dear to Jews. How comfortable can devout Christians be with Jerusalem and Bethlehem under the sole control of Arafat?

While the Intifada has radicalized some of the settlers, the majority of Israelis, even the hawks, would be willing to allow a democratic Palesinian state, with control over Judea and Samaria, if it was commited to being a peaceful, productive nation that respected the holy places of other religions. Most Israelis have better things to do than kill Palestinians. They have software to write, families to build, money to make, and prayers to pray. They have lives. Strangely enough they even would like to see Palestinians flourish. I would. I don't hate them, even though they killed one of my dear friends.

On the Israeli side, there is room for a deal. Not one that would be fair, in my opinion, but one that Israel can live with. What does the Palestinian side want? While the Oslo accords did not give them everything they asked for, it gave them enough to make a start on building a flourishing nation. They had substantial self-rule, including all the basic services, a boatload of foreign aid, and a continuing revenue stream. They built a thugocracy. Israel is still the largest constant source of revenue the Palestinian authority has. Imagine the US fighting the Taliban while continuing to write them checks that they could spend on ammunition? What would Arafat do if he won his ulimate prize? Build a glorious new Libya where Israel once stood?

As bloody as this fight is, it is just a simple negotiation. The most Israel is willing to give up is the deal Barak offered minus Jerusalem. The least that Arafat will accept is the destruction of Israel. The status quo is just fine for Arafat. As my negotiation teacher would say "there doesn't seem to be a deal on the table." So the big question for Israel is - what do you do next when the other side will not make a deal, and they kill your civilians each day. I'm afraid the only answer is - you kill them, and keep killing them until they decide that killing you isn't such a good idea after all. If you accept the negotiation premise I've just spelled out there is no other choice. This would mean killing Arafat and his terror lieutenants. If the next Palestinian leadership that emerges after that wants to deal - great. If not, repeat the process until a leader emerges that actually wants a flourishing Palestine, or hand the neutered Palestinian authority to Jordan for administration. It is no different than what we have to do to al Quaeda. You can't negotiate with al Quaeda, you can only kill them. It felt horrible to type this paragraph. But just because it is horrible doesn't mean it isn't true.

It does not seem t