Somehow I knew more of this would emerge. The Associated Press is reporting that “Muhammad also is linked to a shooting last spring at a Tacoma synagogue in which no one was injured, Tacoma police said.” So he was a terrorist, a Muslim, a member of the fanatical anti-Semitic group the Nation of Islam and someone who shot up a synagogue. Who’d have thought it? As I’ve been saying for days now, connect the dots… Because the mainstream media will do all they can to avoid it.
IN DEFENSE OF PUTIN: Maybe he’ll stop prevaricating on the Security Council now, especially since the weapons inspectors have put themselves behind the U.S-U.K. position. The loss of civilian life in the Moscow theater is, of course, a terrible event. But Putin’s gut instinct – to fight the terrorists with all the means at his disposal – was and is the right one. We don’t yet know the type of gas used, and clearly something went badly, badly wrong. But the idea of using such a device to stun and paralyze hostage-taking terrorists is not a crazy one. This is a war, guys. Above all, it must be stressed that the people really responsible for these civilian deaths are the terrorists themselves. And their global reach is widening. We’ve had outbreaks of terrorism in Bali, Jordan, Moscow and Washington, D.C. in the last couple of weeks. Every single one has some kind of Islamic extremist connection. Although the nuances differ, and the groups may not be identical and the specific motives diverse, Islamism is the thread that connects them all.
THE ANTIDOTE TO MSN: Yep, the parodies were inevitable.
THE NATION’S SMEAR ATTEMPT: I don’t think I’ve read such a thorough demolition of a hatchet job in a very long time. It’s about the Nation’s Jon Wiener’s attempt to smear critics of the work of “historian” Michael Bellesiles. If you’ve been following this controversy, this is a must-read.
CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: This from Friday’s Yale Daily News:
In a mind-boggling act of vandalism, the posterboard memorial to 14 Israelis killed in a car bomb explosion displayed during a Yale Friends of Israel vigil Tuesday night was torn and scattered across the lawn early the next morning.
This is not a sign that dissent has devolved to graffiti on campus – that was last week’s defamation of an anti-divestment petition in the Law School. This is not a political objection to the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians gone awry – that was the removal of most of the signs advertising former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s visit two weeks ago.
This is anti-Semitism. Plain and simple.
Amen. But how deeply disturbing that anyone on a campus today, let alone one the most distinguished in the country, would behave in this manner. How depraved have we become?
LEFTWING NEGATIVISM WATCH: Check out Salon’s Michelle Goldberg on the anti-war rally in D.C. Goldberg is more than wobbly about the war but she is at least prepared to wrestle with the fact that refusing to disarm Saddam means sustaining a vicious dictator in power. She saw little such intellectual honesty in the crowds:
[I]t was hard to find a coherent ethical worldview to back that [anti-war] position up, save for a kind of masochistic isolationism. At its worst, the lack of a clear message gave way to moral emptiness, demonstrated in sickening exchanges between the handful of pro-war Iraqi dissidents who held their own rally near the Washington Monument and the antiwar marchers who responded to their tales of murder, torture and oppression with glib slogans and, occasionally, outright mockery.
That’s what some on the left are now reduced to: mocking people whose relatives were murdered in a gulag.
CHIRAC’S GAME: A terrific piece blasting Chirac in the Times of London. The best line is as follows:
The notion that a struggle with Iraq represents some sort of “distraction” from the War on Terror is almost comical. It is like asserting that the search for a cure for cancer diverts energy from the search for perfect cosmetic surgery.
Take that, Al Gore.
VIDAL, BUSH, AND FDR: How adolescent is Gore Vidal? It is, of course, obscene that his opposition to the war on terror should now invoke the loopiest of conspiracy theories. But it is also completely predictable. This is his M.O. He has long believed, for example, that FDR was aware of Pearl Harbor ahead of time. His loopy, paranoid hatred of the American government isn’t therefore restricted to Republicans. He’s one of those literary dinosaurs whose audience is composed mainly of foreign America-haters, Guardian-readers and writers who puff his stature up in order to enjoy the alleged “shock” of his remarks even more. But these remarks aren’t shocking. They’re stale, exhausted, paranoid, bitter cliches. The only appropriate thing to do with regard to Vidal at this point is: ignore him. (For my review of Vidal’s most recent novel, where he accuses FDR of treason, click here.)
MICKEY’S CHALLENGE: My friend Mickey Kaus called on his readers last week to flush out my alleged “hypocrisy” on the matter of racial profiling. He now tells me the pickings turned out to be slim. I once criticized the New York Times for not reporting on a study that showed that racial profiling in New Jersey was based on valid statistical inferences. And that’s about it. My point in that instance was that newspapers shouldn’t be protecting their readers from the facts of race and crime for political reasons. My position on the broader matter of racial profiling is a little tortured, I confess. I think I’d be a fool not to acknowledge that in certain crimes, for example, racial disparities abound. That’s simply an empirical and statistical matter. Ditto the fact that most Islamist terrorists are not, by and large, over 60, female and a member of a religious order. At the same time, I feel pretty horrified by the notion of the state using its police power to detain or arrest (or let go) someone on the grounds of race. I think the government should be as color-blind as it possibly can. That’s why I’m against affirmative action. It seems a little difficult – although not impossible – to be against affirmative action and in favor of racial profiling by the cops. But I’m against both. It’s not hard to see why. If I were black and suspected in this way, I’d be mad as hell. And my basic solidarity has to go with those law-abiding African-American citizens who are subjected to this kind of scrutiny day after day. It saps the very democratic basis of the republic. It’s humiliating, enraging and wrong. In fact, the inference of possible guilt on the grounds merely of skin color is ab
out as close as you can get to a definition of injustice. So is it crazy to believe that racial profiling may be statistically valid but not morally defensible? I hope not, although I concede that as a practical matter it’s not always that easy.
P.S.: In the Washington terror-sniper case, there wasn’t even a statistical basis for the profiling. It was statistically invalid and morally wrong.
P.P.S. In the case of a credible eye-witness report of a suspect’s race, my objections are obviously diluted.
P.P.P.S.: Even if I were guilty as charged, the word “hypocrisy” would still not be applicable. I’m not saying one thing and doing another, which is what hypocrisy is. The right word for what I’m charged with is inconsistency. But I hope I’ve been able to explain that I’m also reasonably consistent on this. I say “reasonably” because no writer or honest person is always and everywhere consistent. But you can try and apply basic principles (of, say, color-blindness) as far as possible.
The Dish 