Month: February 2003

Is the Bush administration serious about democracy and reconstruction in a post-Saddam Iraq? If they are, they’d better get a better grip on the country’s finances. So far, their war budgeting and domestic spending plans are a scandal. My latest column opposite.

THE FUTURE OF I.Q.: Fascinating new research from some Washington University researchers into the nature of general intelligence. We’re beginning to be able to measure such intelligence not simply from the results of written or practical tests but from live imaging of actual brain activity. Egalitarian ideologues have long resisted the notion that there is such a thing as general intelligence and that it is at least partly hard-wired and inherited. But as science advances, and our understanding of working memory and intelligence deepens, the evidence for such intelligence could become irrefutable. Imagine at some distant date going into an exam room and getting hooked up to brain monitors. No need for grad students grading papers. No need for SAT results. Just a brain scan to check how smart you are. Fantasy now. But you can already see the implications of current research. Blank slaters, be afraid. Your time is running out.

Another reader anecdote of NPR on leftist steroids:

Two Sundays ago, as my wife and I were traveling, I tuned into BBC America on my XM Satellite Radio. It was indeed a love-fest for the anti-war movement. They interviewed an Anglican Bishop who found it appropriate to single-handedly changed the tenets of just war theory without any indication that it was, in fact, a very new interpretation. For instance, the tenet of ‘right authority’ was changed to ‘highest authority’ in an effort to remove a sovereign nation as a proper decision-maker in security matters and make those decisions exclusive to the UN. He also said that the tenet of ‘proportionality’ prevents ANY war at all in modern warfare, because the brutality of modern warfare was so ‘indiscriminate’ that any use of force would automatically fail the test of proportionality. The reporter did ask, ‘Well, doesn’t that invalidate just war theory as a whole?’ The Bishop replied, ‘Not at all. It validates it.’ The only just war, it now appears, is the one that is not fought. Augustine and Aquinas, I’m sure, are very upset to hear that their theory has been co-opted in such a way. The host then turned to America ‘for another view’ and interviewed an employee of ‘The Nation,’ who then decried the use of force in Iraq as imperialism, an attack for oil, etc. Yes, that’s right, ‘The Nation,’ is now the view from America. They never introduced a single person with a differing viewpoint.

Here’s yet another email from someone forced to watch the Beeb as their only source of information:

I have a suggestion that affects me personally but I’m sure applies to millions of others. Please, please, do a proper and systematic fisking of the BBC. Do the world a favor – get readers to help by sending in examples, line up influential people who support you, anything. I can’t bear it any longer – I am now based in China and the BBC is somehow the only English news channel I can receive. I see now how they can manipulate British public opinion. This is hell!

Herewith an appeal to British readers, or anyone who watches the BBC closely. Please send me details of any ludicrously biased BBC report, show, program, discussion. If there’s a webpage, please send me the URL. Aux armes, confreres, bloggeurs, and so on.

THE SCHRODER-SMALLPOX COVER-UP: This link should work.

Astonishing piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung today. Just before the German elections last year, German intelligence found very serious evidence of Iraq’s stockpiling of smallpox bioweapons. The report came with a “high degree of confidence.” The piece alleges that Schroder helped bury the report, so as not to get him off-message during his anti-American campaign. I’m afraid I can’t seem to find the story in the English language edition of the FAZ. But here’s the German version.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “There was, I thought, one slogan which was missing. There were quite a number which called for ‘Freedom for Palestine’; I looked in vain for one which called for “Freedom for Iraq”. I did not hear all of the speeches, though I watched Jesse Jackson on television. From what I did hear, none of the speakers expressed any wish to free Iraq, let alone proposing any policy which might help to achieve that.” – William Rees Mogg, the Times.

An email from a traveling reader gives you the picture:

We headed to the Alps, me shaken by the simplicity and vacuousness of the “arguments”. There, I had my first chance to truly experience the BBC – the only English-speaking channel that we got.
“Shocking” is one adjective that comes to mind. I now understand your reference to “Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation”. Every reporter, every desk anchor, every clip – and I mean every – pleaded the case not to bring military force to enforce the resolutions against Iraq. At times, the desperation to find someone to support this position bordered on a piece from “the Onion”: “we are here in Pennsylvania with Quaker school children who are against the war”… – really.
Even more offensive than the position that simply defy logic is the arrogance of the reporting. I saw an open forum involving the Prime Minister and some reporter from the BBC named “Jeremy”. I have never witnessed less respect for a nation’s leader than that which I saw during this forum. “Jeremy’s” disdain for Blair was palpable as he spit idiotic questions/statements at the Prime Minister: “we were told where the weapons were, we sent the inspectors there, and they found nothing: how do you explain that?”

Abolition of the BBC is essential to any serious political reform in Britain.

Fascinating account in the times of the story of a Qaeda operative turned informant in Germany. The twist to me was that this Jordanian originally fled his own country because he was gay. Then he was caught up in the ex-patriate fundamentalist-terrorist world, trained in Afghanistan, and deployed in Europe to manufacture false passports in order to import more terrorists into the West. So a man who left tyranny for freedom ended up attempting to import it back to the West. And now, in a weird denouement, he has become a critical element in foiling new Qaeda operations. Just like the 9/11 murderers who seemed as much drawn to the West as repelled by it, we have a psychological profile that’s highly conflicted and repressed, wreaking havoc on the world. And when you think of what Islamist culture does to the healthy psychological development of men and women, its sex-phobia and misogyny, it’s no surprise that we have some characters this disturbed. Another reason why we will have no real peace until the fundamental culture of the Middle Eastern Islamic world is shifted.

THE BBC’S TRIUMPH: Last Saturday’s march in London was in part a triumph for the BBC. This enormously influential network – PBS on steroids – has been churning out relentless anti-war polemics for months now. They make Howell Raines seem positively objective. No doubt they had a receptive audience. But it is still quite an achievement. To give you an idea of how it’s done, check out this transcript of a major television show, Panorama. Look at the content of the questions. See how the show, which is ostensibly a “debate”, is in fact a kind of show trial, with the pro-war party represented by a tiny fringe, and given almost no time to make anything like a serious case.

Several things are worth noting after the weekend’s spasm of outrage and protest at the thought of deposing Saddam with American and British arms. The first is that the NATO crisis seems to have eased. The second is that France has still not ruled out supporting the use of military force although Chirac is sailing very close to the German position. The third is that editorials in the New York Times and even the Guardian/Observer have reasserted the need to keep a military option on the table. I think some reason for this new-found sobriety is based on the weekend’s marches. There is little doubt that they represent something absolutely real in European public opinion: an aversion to any war for any cause except in urgent self-defense. But what, one is forced to ask, were these marches actually for? And if these people’s representatives were actually in power, how safe would we be?

THE ADOLESCENT MOMENT: The British march was a negative one: against conflict. But its positive goals were and are opaque: they range from Islamism to workers revolutionary socialism to pacifism to anti-Americanism. Lesbian avengers marched next to people who would stone them to death. None of the marches addressed an answer to the problem of what to do about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the premise of the marches was that there is no problem. Saddam is evil but harmless, they seem to say (although the avoidance of any mention of Saddam, in words or pictures, was the most stunning aspect of the spectacle). Or they think that the terrifying prospect of a Blixkrieg will cow Saddam into compliance. Very few concede that “inspections” are only happening at all because Bush and Blair played the military card and meant it. And few seem to understand that the threat of military force is useless if the premise is that it will never be exercised. Their marches this weekend, by making exactly that no-war-ever argument, paradoxically undermined the likelihood of a peaceful settlement being reached. Not that they seem to care.

SAVING BLAIR: When you think about it, this is the behavior of adolescents. Leaders, in contrast, have to take responsibility. No marcher will be held accountable if Lyons or Manchester or Chicago endures a dirty bomb, procured from Saddam. No protestor will be held responsible for a nerve gas attack on the London tube. But Bush and Blair will be. And they should be. That’s why, after this mother of all teenage tantrums, the grown-ups will have to reiterate the process, restart the inspections, redouble the threat, and, if necessary, launch the invasion. But this weekend changes one thing, I think. Blair may not survive politically if we go to war with no further attempt to bring the U.N. around, and the war is in any way complicated or prolonged. It makes no logical sense to go back to the U.N. But it makes a lot of political sense – if only to show the world American reluctance to go to war and to shore up an absolutely critical ally. (Imagine losing Blair to his party’s left-wing wolves at a critical moment in the military campaign.) Here’s one option: take Villepin’s date of March 14 and make it a final deadline. Say that by that date, Saddam must provide an accounting for the anthrax, nerve gas and other missing and unaccounted for materials cited by Blix; and also by that date, Iraq must destroy all its al Samoud missiles, which are banned under existing resolutions. We need a deadline. We had one – “immediate compliance” – I know. But we lose nothing by giving the world a final one. It would put the onus back on Saddam, help Blair, show a little flexibility on the part of the U.S., maybe bring around a few more Security Council members and not lose any significant time. Again, this isn’t logical from the point of view of 1441. But it is a reflection of the political pressures on a key U.S. ally. Recognizing that political pressure is not surrendering to it. But ignoring it when we can still offer an alternative would be foolish. We can afford to be a little flexible. So let’s be.

I hope Kanan Makiya is wrong when he says that the forces in the administration least friendly to Iraqi democracy are now calling the shots on the question of a post-Saddam settlement. It seems to me that, after some kind of authoritarian-military rule to avoid chaos in the wake of victory, the U.S. really does have an obligation to find a way to bring real democratic institutions to Iraq. Yes, this is a war largely designed to protect the West and others from Saddam’s menace. But no, that doesn’t mean repeating the mistakes of the past in propping up failed and illegitimate Arab autocracies in the wake of victory. Makiya has a vested interest, of course. But he’s right nonetheless. Liberation without democracy would render this war unjust and unAmerican.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ II: Here’s the email from an Iraqi exile the prime minister quoted in his extraordinary speech on Saturday. Money quote:

I remember when I was around 8 I went along with my father to a demonstration against the French embassy when the French were selling Saddam weapons. I know of the numerous occasions my father and many, many others haves attended various meetings, protests and exhibitions that call for the end of Saddam’s reign. I have attended the permanent rally against Saddam that has been held every Saturday in Trafalgar Square for the past 5 years. The Iraqi people have been protesting for YEARS against the war – the war that Saddam has waged against them. Where have you been? Why is it now that you deem it appropriate to voice your disillusions with America’s policy in Iraq, when it is actually right now that the Iraqi people are being given real hope, however slight and precarious, that they can live in an Iraq that is free of the horrors partly described in this email?

But in some ways, the most important part of the letter is the following:

If you want to make your disillusions heard then do speak out, put pressure on Blair, Bush & Co to keep to their promises of restoring democracy to Iraq. Make sure they do put back in financial aid what they have taken over the years, and make sure that they don’t betray the Iraqis again. March for democracy in Iraq. If you say that we can’t trust the Americans then make sure that you are a part of ensuring they do fulfil their promises to the Iraqis.

Absolutely. We must hold insist that Bush fulfill this promise (and I think he will). There must be no attempt to placate the Arab autocracies in the region with just another pliant pro-American strongman in Baghdad. Once order is restored and enforced, we need a real attempt at some sort of democracy in Iraq. Nothing else will suffice.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy is now in full spin behind Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. It was truly sickening to see Tariq Aziz, the instrument of one of the most murderous regimes on earth, using the shrine of St Francis for a photo-op. It’s even more sickening to read the comments of Cardinal Etchegaray, informing the world that

Saddam Hussein had been relieved by Friday’s report to the United Nations by the chief weapons inspectors. “He [Saddam Hussein] is doing everything to avoid war,” the Cardinal told Italian television, according to French news agency AFP.

I know these aren’t matters of faith and doctrine to which all Catholics are supposed to assent. But after the child-abuse scandals, we now have to deal with a Catholic hierarchy that is actively supporting genocidal dictators and their malevolent agendas. When the world needs moral clarity, the Vatican gives us the spin from Baghdad. It really is 1933 again, isn’t it?

British lefty, Nick Cohen, assails the anti-war movement’s collaboration with oppression and terror:

The Iraqis must now accept that they will have to fight for democracy without the support of the British Left. Disgraceful though our failure to hear them has been, I can’t help thinking that they’ll be better off without us.

Read the whole thing – about Harold Pinter’s hypocrisy over Kurdish autonomy and democracy, of the way in which European socialists, gripped by anti-Americanism, now back a genocidal dictator against the democratic aspirations of his own people. I think yesterday’s massive marches represent something deeply, deeply corrupt in the soul of the left: a form of Western self-loathing that, unless it is resisted, will lead not just to tyranny for more people in the Middle East, but for the slow erosion of Western freedom itself in the face of terror. The only response is resistance. Not from the governments in Washington and London; but from the rest of us. The lies must be challenged day by day, hour by hour. The self-hatred must be countered with calm recitation of the West’s proud history; the excuses for tyranny opposed by a growing demand that the Arab world not be tool in the Western left’s attempt to destroy Western freedom, but seen as a part of humanity that deserves the freedom that the rest of us enjoy. No justice. No peace. As the left used to say.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “This is a president who uses the death penalty with complete abandon and disregard for any respect for life. This is no example. So let everyone recognise what has happened here today: that Britain does not support this war for oil. The British people will not tolerate being used to prop up the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years.” – Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, accusing Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice of being racists.

Another superb grown-up piece from John F. Burns today in the New York Times. Smart, isn’t it, to interview Iraqis not in the midst of their own police state, but just over the border in Jordan, where they have some modicum of freedom. As often, it’s hard to summarize Burns’ peerless reporting. But if this piece doesn’t remind you of Kipling, I’d be surprised. The critical thing now, to my mind, is less the diplomatic pirouettes than the execution of the coming war. The question is not whether we win, but how we win. Without jeopardizing victory, we have to be extremely careful to avoid excessive civilian casualties and to keep the battle as short as possible. I have no idea how this can be done. But I do think that the war will be politically successful if it can bring these two objectives into play. (P.S. Tom Friedman has an excellent take today as well.)

A WASTE OF SPACE: Reading Maureen Dowd’s characteristically inane column today, I asked myself once again why, at this moment of gravity and importance, a major American columnist has simply nothing to say, except occasional lame pop-cultural associations and a superficial account of the views of others. I’m not the only one. Here’s the Washingtonian’s verdict on the Dowd decline:

Complaints about Dowd have moved beyond her flashy reporting style and water-beetle habit of skimming the surface. Her crimes against readers now fall into three main categories – formulaic nuttiness, posturing, and condescension.

Even worse, the Dowd schtick seems to me to be a bad thing for women in journalism. It implies that women op-ed writers, opinion journalists, and pundits are at their best parlaying gossip, small-talk and chit-chat. So odd that Dowd, who views herself as a feminist pioneer, unwittingly reinforces certain stereotypes. At least McGrory tells us what she thinks, rather than what she buys.