Month: February 2003

The emergence of solid support for freedom from terror and support for the United States among so many Eastern European countries has clearly rattled some elements of the European left. It has taken a while for them to come up with some way to undermine this development, to smear it, or simply sneer at it, but we now have the new line. Here it is:

After all, eastern Europe’s elites had spent 40 years accommodating themselves to superior power. Neither the reform movement in Czechoslovakia in 1968 nor Solidarity in Poland in 1981 challenged their countries’ links with Moscow. It was only when Mikhail Gorbachev told them in 1987 that they need not follow the Soviet lead that they began to break loose. It was therefore inevitable that after the USSR collapsed these countries would sense the new reality that Europe belongs to the US. The fact that ex-communist leaders such as Aleksander Kwasniewski, Gyula Horn and Ion Iliescu led the way is not a paradox so much as proof that the survival instinct usually trumps vision or principle.

This is as historically inaccurate as it is morally foul. The writer, a Guardian columnist called Jonathan Steele, seems to forget that the reason that Eastern European countries were vassals of the Soviets is because such subservience was enforced by tanks in the streets. No such tanks now exist. And maybe – just maybe – the Eastern Europeans have a better appreciation of what tyranny is and therefore a deeper loathing for Saddam than, say, columnists for the Guardian.

“Just imagine if every potential cheating husband in the world had to consider facing such consequences for their actions. Do you think it might change their behavior? Do you think more husbands might forgo a few moments of pleasure for the sake of their own lives? Do you think more families might actually stay together? That’s why I say: Free Clara Harris now and let her rebuild a life with her poor children – who have been victimized enough by the trauma instigated by the dead creep. Free her and let her be an example to every cheating husband and wife in America. Send a message far and wide – no cheating husband is safe from the wrath of his angry wife. And, vice versa, no cheating wife is safe from the wrath of an angry husband. There is a price to pay. Sometimes it’s the ultimate price.” – Joseph Farah, celebrating the murder of an adulterous husband.

NOT EVERYONE IN HOLLYWOOD IS PRO-SADDAM: Just most.

SOULLESS ROBOT BLOWFISH: Yep, that’s how someone just described Bob Kuttner. And it wasn’t even written by Mickey Kaus.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “A nation grieves because it is trying to put out of its mind the fact that it is about to be involved in the killing of up to 80,000 civilians in Iraq. This is an occasion that allows people to contemplate this in a displaced way.” – Professor Jacqueline Rose, the Guardian.

Another just mind-blowing development. Here is the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, coming out against the war against terror. Not just war against Saddam, but against the entire panoply of brutally homophobic tyrannies in the Middle East that actively support terrorism and just as actively persecute gays. Again, this is a gay group concerned with human rights. Here’s part of their rationale:

Our position is guided by our sense of solidarity with and accountability to the activists we work with all over the world, and especially those in regions which are greatly impacted by US foreign policies. The US policies of military aggression have served to render those who deviate from sexual and gender norms and people living with HIV/AIDS especially vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence and discrimination.

Better, in other words, for gay people in, say, Afghanistan to be punished by being crushed under rocks than to be liberated by the evil of America. These gay activists are simply depraved.

SECULAR SADDAM VERSUS FANATICAL ISLAMISM?: One more email delineating why this alliance is not implausible:

Note also that Kaiser Wilhelm was positive that reactionary absolutist Russia could not possibly ally itself with regicide-honoring, radical post-Dreyfus France. Wrong. Note also that his Catholic Majesty of France found it easy enough to ally himself with Suleiman the Magnficent against the Catholic Habsburgs. Note also that Cardinal Richelieu found it expedient to aid Protestant Gustavus Adolphus against Catholic Ferdinand. Note also that Adolf Hitler was positive that the capitalist powers’ alliance with Josef Stalin could not positively endure.

Well, it endured long enough, didn’t it? And why do none of these epxerts mention the explicitly Islamist rhetoric that Saddam now constantly uses and has deployed for more than a decade? Oh, and one more word of reader wisdom:

If an accountant is sent to scrutinize the books of someone believed to be involved in fiscal highjinx, and finds $80,000 in an account that the books say has $100,000 in it, said accountant is not then asked to go find the other 20 grand. The discrepancy ITSELF is the “smoking gun”. So, too, with the glaring omissions between Iraq’s last document dump, and the inventory of prohibited material already in hand from past inspections.

More sharp feedback – including a complaint that I was far too nice to Mary McGrory – on the Letters Page, edited by the one and only Reihan Salam.

That’s TNR’s view. Now they tell us? This is the guy who recently said that if Bush remained president, girls would soon be barred from going to school.

Is his unremitting hatred of the president now infecting the International Herald Tribune?

“You would think that the possibility of such an unholy alliance would be considered too likely to ignore. But then you hear some “genius” with a Ph.D. who is supposedly an expert saying that Saddam is a secular Arab and Al Qaeda is a fanatical religious group – how could they have any dealing with each other? Haven’t they heard of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939?” – more on the Letters Page.

She goes where others aren’t so honest to tread.

Take a hard look at their editorial this morning. It acknowledges that Colin Powell made an overwhelming case that Saddam is in material breach of Resolution 1441. But the Times then concludes:

As the crisis builds, [president Bush] should make every possible effort to let the council take the lead. The Security Council, the American people and the rest of the world have an obligation to study Mr. Powell’s presentation very closely and very seriously. Because the consequences of war are so terrible, and the cost of rebuilding Iraq so great, the United States cannot afford to confront Iraq without broad international support.

Meaning what, exactly? How broad? And what, precisely does the Security Council “taking the lead” mean? Leading us where? We usually look to the editorials of major papers for answers to certain difficult questions. If you want such a synthesis – of history, argument, consistency and principle – you have to go to a serious editorial paper like the Washington Post. Methinks the Times has already decided against war (largely because Mr Bush is president), now realizes how dumb its position seems, and is slowly turning back toward something like coherence. One of the consequences of that is today’s utterly empty editorial. It’s a platitude in search of a principle. Let’s hope Mr Raines finds one before M Chirac does.

I suppose the true hardliners on the left and right would never be persuaded by actual evidence. When you read the arguments of Joe Conason, say, you wonder what would actually convince him of the need for war. Here is a statement that beggars belief:

What was most noticeably absent from Powell’s presentation, however, was any evidence that Iraq is a present threat to its neighbors or any other nation – and thus must be invaded and subdued immediately.

Unaccounted for tons of biological and chemical weapons? Rockets and unmanned airplanes to deliver them? A history of using such weapons in warfare? A record of invading other countries at will? Evidence of deliberate attempts to deceive inspectors? Clear evidence of a huge cover-up? Did Conason even listen or read Powell’s address or did he simply write this response, like the French did, beforehand? He believes that the onus for discovering the weapons of mass destruction is on the U.N., not Saddam, despite the explicit wording of U.N. Resolution 1441. Actually Conason believes that 1441 is meaningless; and that its demands that Saddam actually cooperate should be ignored, while the inspectors try vainly to find mobile factories in a country the size of France. He actually writes the following sentence:

What [Powell] did prove is that inspections ought to continue and intensify – and if Iraq tries to frustrate them as the regime did in 1998, there will still be plenty of time for military action.

If Iraq continues to frustrate them? By “frustrate,” I suppose Conason means actually expelling the inspectors, as in 1998. Anything else is just fine and dandy for him. Isn’t this precisely Saddam’s gambit? Use the U.N. inspections, which will find nothing under the current circumstances, as a cover for a continued program for WMDs. Keep the charade going indefinitely. Demoralize our troops by keeping them waiting for months on end while Swedes and Dutch scurry around deserts looking for chemical and biological facilities already well-concealed. Perfect. And if a major anthrax attack hits New York or L.A. in the next few months while inspectors continue their fruitless cat-and-mouse game with Saddam, whom do you think Conason will blame? Conason has got his bases covered. And, whatever his intentions, those bases are objectively indistinguishable from Saddam’s.

EBAY FOR POWELL: More nations sign on to doing something about Saddam. What do Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia have in common? They know what tyranny is like and they know who saved them from it. Doesn’t this confluence of countries who actually love freedom tell you something about the real issue here? (For my own take on what Robert Scheer decried as the alliance of nations “you can buy on Ebay,” check out my latest column, posted opposite.)

The Qataris are also in league with al Qaeda. In fact, a member of the Qatari royal family actually gave a 9/11 conspirator safe haven and cash. Do we have any reliable allies in that region? Nevertheless, the intelligence in this story is damning proof of a Saddam-al Qaeda link.

PROOF THAT KINSLEY IS GONE: Slate unveils a multi-part series on media bias. The first installment is the first time I’ve found Jack Shafer unreadable. Will Mickey please do a series skipper at the end of it all?

HARVARD’S COURSE IN CHOMSKYISM: Take a look at this course that Harvard University is offering. If this isn’t indoctrination disguised as learning, what is?

IN DEFENSE OF COWBOYS: A letter from Kansas takes issue with the French.