Year: 2003

“Who, you may be asking incredulously, would want their country to be bombed? What would make people want to risk their children being blown to pieces? I thought this too until, last October, I spent a month as a journalist seeing the reality of life under Saddam Hussein.

Strangely, it’s the small details which remain in the memory, even now, three months later. It’s the pale, sickly look that would come over people’s faces when I mentioned Saddam. It’s the fact that the Marsh Arabs – a proud, independent people who have seen their marshes drained and been “relocated” to tiny desert shacks – are forced to hang a small, menacing picture of Saddam in their new “homes”. It’s the child wearing a T-shirt saying “Yes, yes, yes to Daddy Saddam”.

If Britain were governed by such a man, I would welcome friendly bombs – a concept I once thought absurd. I might be prepared to risk my own life to bring my country’s living death to an end. Most of the Iraqi people I encountered clearly felt the same. The moment they established that I was British, people would hug me and offer coded support (they would be even more effusive towards the Americans I travelled with). They would explain how much they ‘admire Britain – British democracy, yes? You understand?'” Well, some people understand. And we’ll be coming to rescue you soon. There are some egregious bits of left-wing credentializing in this piece first published in the In dependent. But then that makes its moral clarity all the more impressive.

THE LEFT FOR WAR II: “The United States finds itself at war with the forces of reaction. Do I have to demonstrate this? The Taliban’s annihilation of music and culture? The enslavement of women? The massacre of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan? Or what about the latest boast of al Qaeda – that the bomb in Bali, massacring so many Australian holidaymakers, was a deliberate revenge for Australia’s belated help in securing independence for East Timor? (Never forget that the Muslim fundamentalists are not against “empire.” They fight proudly for the restoration of their own lost caliphate.) To these people, the concept of a civilian casualty is meaningless if the civilian is an unbeliever or a heretic.” – Hitch in fine form tackling the potluck peaceniks of Seattle.

“Bush’s effort [on affirmative action] is so special that this may very well be the first Martin Luther King. Jr. birthday during which the loudest celebrations come not from black churches and integrated downtown breakfasts but from the hallways of segregated suburbia to the romantic enclaves of the Confederacy. Finally for them, this is the day to shout ”We Have Overcome.” This is the day that a lot of God’s white people – Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – are holding hands and singing in the words of their new spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!'” – Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe today. (Via Winderkinder.)

This is the only question worth asking about the chemical warheads discovered by U.N. inspectors in Iraq. The U.N. resolution is quite clear. If Saddam did not specifically declare the existence of these missile warheads capable of delivering chemical weapons, then this entire charade is now over. I presume the administration is downplaying this find so that it can continue to build up forces for an attack, and so that it can also guide inspectors to more substantive finds. But if there was no accounting of these missiles, as the U.N. inspectors have argued, the line has surely been crossed. There can be no further excuses. Saddam had one absolutely last chance and he lied. If we do not go to war now, then Bush, in turn, will have been shown to have lied in his countless statements declaring zero tolerance for future violations. The timing can be calibrated. But the removal of Saddam – by force if necessary – seems to me now to be necessary, urgent, inevitable.

THE VATICAN STRIKES BACK: In advance of what I predict will be a purging of all gay priests and seminarians from the Catholic church, the men who now control the Vatican (it’s not clear if John Paul II is one of them) are now moving toward a tighter control of the Catholic press. No Catholic publication will henceforth be allowed to publish a variety of viewpoints on such critical matters as church governance, women priests, clerical celibacy or gay priests. Equally, no Catholic politician will be allowed to deviate from Vatican orthodoxy. At least that’s the clear inference of this latest 17-page document from Cardinal Ratzinger’s department. I wonder if this is in part a response to the Jesuit magazine America’s recent special issue defending the dignity and worth of homosexual priests. I’m beginning to think we’ll soon find that the late twentieth century was an historical aberration in Roman Catholicism. It’s back to the nineteenth, pronto.

POSEUR ALERT: “No one has inspired more blacks for hope in America than I have.” – Jesse Jackson, MSNBC.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “There is on the one hand the America of the New Deal, of Jimmy Carter, and even, more or less, of George Herbert Bush [sic] … But there exists today as well … a second America… a troubled and disturbing America, where pluralism is above all a mask for special interests, a Christian America (Ashcroft), bursting with revolvers (Cheney), arrogant (Rumsfeld), imperial (William Kristol), racist (Trent Lott), opportunist (Condi Rice), partisan (Karl Rove), the America of spying and denunciation (Poindexter), of conspiracy (Elliot Abrams) … of a rotten Enron-style capitalism, of the unlimited death penalty – the America, in a word, of George W. Bush. This symbolically Texan and overweeningly aggressive America wants war, cheap oil, and, incidentally, the crushing and total humiliation of the Palestinians: in a word imperial domination in its purest form. A short-sighted nationalism and capitalism, which scorn the have-nots, are its raison d’xeatre … Europe, sooner or later, will have to separate itself from the new America … The fact that America, the eldest daughter of the Enlightenment, has become ‘a threat to itself and the entire world,’ as Anatol Lieven explained a few weeks ago in an article for The London Review of Books, is a very worrisome reversal of affairs.” – Patrice Higgonet, professor of French history at Harvard University, quoted in the French paper, Liberation, January 3.

EVEN BETTER PUT: “Florida’s programs, and the principles that they advance, are more than just “another” way of accomplishing true diversity. They provide a better way. Florida’s plan is better in that it no longer accepts the lack of quality in the public schools that serve our underprivileged children; better because it recognizes the need to provide mentoring, tutoring, and other extra attention to those underprivileged children and their teachers; better because it encourages all students regardless of race or economic status to aspire to post-secondary education; better because it no longer accepts a separate standard on the basis of race; better because it focuses on providing all races with the opportunity to meet common standards; and finally, better because it looks forward to a day when racial classifications and separate standards are no longer deemed necessary by anyone.” – from the amicus brief to the Michigan affirmative action case, submitted by governor Jeb Bush of Florida.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I praised Susan Sontag in two of my books, and her decline pains me. Now she says Europe was her “California” and she grew up dreaming of being European? Impossible. She knows that in Europe she can only be a Jew. A Jew can become a Californian, but not French: when push comes to shove, you are only “the Jew Sontag.” Only in America can she be a full cultural citizen; or even just “Susan,” an individual who likes photos and French philosophy, and who was, in her youth, more beautiful than you young people can imagine – Wynona Ryder with a brain. The Dark Lady of New York’s sonnets. If America loses that power she so hates, her life won’t be worth a franc anywhere in the world. Wherever America’s power ebbs today, her life is already in danger. Even she, if she thinks of it, would have to grudgingly agree. I respected her once. She does have a mind. In the late sixties, a New York intellectual of my generation read the provocative, high-strung essays in Against Interpretation; paused to look at her face on the cover; and thought: Perfect. If you don’t understand that, Mr. Sullivan, you can’t understand the grief over her now.”

Warheads capable of delivering chemical weapons. If verified, and if not accounted for in Iraq’s declaration, case for war closed.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

– Wallace Stevens.

Ramesh Ponnuru is concerned that Orrin Hatch is going to produce a new and tough-as-nails hate crimes statute to appease the Congressional Black Caucus. Ramesh is right to be dismayed. The idiot-right actually believes that the way to win over minorities is not to rid itself of prejudice and promote good conservative principles for all Americans. It believes that you have to adopt left-liberal panaceas to brandish as innoculation against the charge of bigotry. This was Lott’s farewell gambit. Now it’s Hatch’s. But this particular ploy won’t even achieve the results Hatch wants. Why? Because Hatch’s proposal will go out of its way to exclude gays from federal hate crimes protection. Here’s a simple question to those conservatives who support hate-crime laws for blacks but not for gays. (That includes the president.) What’s your rationale? Let’s say you’re an orthodox fundamentalist who believes that gay sex is immoral. I don’t agree with you (gay sex can be moral and immoral, like all sex), but let’s concede that this can be a sincere moral position. How do you get from that to saying that gays – uniquely – should be excluded from protection from hate crimes? Isn’t your official position that you hate the sin, not the sinner? Isn’t it wrong – on Christian grounds – to say that somehow violence against one group is less worrisome than against another? Isn’t it a violation of Biblical principles to condone any bigotry accompanied by violence – bigotry not based on a position on a sexual act but on a person’s simple identity? Gays, after all, are one of the social groups most vulnerable to hate-filled physical attacks in our society. By saying that every other group deserves protection, except this one, is, to my mind, prima facie evidence of anti-gay animus. Again, this has nothing to do with the morality of gay sex. The average thug doesn’t walk down the street, see a lonely homo and think, “I need to reassert the importance of procreation as essential to an ordered society.” He thinks: “Fucking faggot. Let’s kick some pansy-ass.” Hatch wants to say that someone motivated in this fashion is somehow less reprehensible than someone who wants to attack someone because he’s Jewish or black or white. I want to say: is Hatch kidding? How low does he think gay people are in the social order that it’s okay to send a signal that demonizing and loathing them is somehow less problematic than demonizing and loathing other groups?

PRINCIPLES, INDEED: It seems to me there are two defensible positions on hate crimes laws. One is that they are all pernicious, illiberal, incoherent and should be abolished (that would be mine). The other is that they have merit and should protect any minority from being physically attacked. (A third is to oppose them all in principle, but if they’re are practically unavoidable, to make sure they are fairly applied. That’s my default position.) The one stance that makes no sense – a stance that can only be explained by pure prejudice – is that some beleaguered groups deserve protection but that others – gays – somehow don’t. Hatch’s proposal – and president Bush’s current position – is therefore text-book prejudice. You can’t be a compassionate conservative and send a public message that you think gay-bashing is not as big a deal as black-bashing or Jew-bashing. Or you can – and show yourself to be barely indistinguishable from a man, Trent Lott, you just spent a great deal of effort condemning.

Can you imagine the fuss if an art exhibit removed a controversial work because it offended Christians? But if it might offend Muslims, they pull the plug. The threat of violence works, you see. And some liberal art-curators are only too keen to buckle under.

ANOTHER BLOGGER GETS THE BOOT: Awful news from England’s Sword, Iain Murray. He just got fired from his day job for blogging. And that’s his sole source of income. (All I got was an entry on the Raines blacklist.) You can give him moral or other support here.

“ANTI-CHOICE”: “You complain about the “constant use of the term ‘anti-choice'” by the pro-choice left. Well, you are anti-choice when you take choice away from people, that’s just basic English. That you have a moral (or legal) basis for taking those choices away doesn’t get you out from under that basic description; that’s part of where the rhetorical power of the term comes from, i.e., truth. In contrast, the left is correct to chafe against the term “pro-abortion” assigned to them by the right, because the left’s efforts do not have an increasing abortion rate as their goal, but rather the widest possible protection of an person’s autonomy as embodied in law. We can all disagree about how broad those protections should be, but the pro-choice movement is quite improperly labeled “pro-abortion.” – more dissent on the Letters Page.

“Our Constitution makes it clear that people of all races must be treated equally under the law. Yet we know that our society has not fully achieved that ideal. Racial prejudice is a reality in America. It hurts many of our citizens. As a nation, as a government, as individuals, we must be vigilant in responding to prejudice wherever we find it. Yet, as we work to address the wrong of racial prejudice, we must not use means that create another wrong, and thus perpetuate our divisions.” – president Bush today. Another defining moment separating his conservatism from his father’s. Now to find a way to improve high-school education to make real diversity, based on true merit, a possibility.

A terrific pro-war liberal blog.

FROM THE ID OF THE LEFT: Just a selection from the dozens of emails I’ve gotten outraged at my criticism of Sheryl Crow. Here’s one:

Who the hell are you? NOBODY!!!!! Never heard of you. And I am sure the only way you can get any attention is by insulting someone who stands up for what she believes in. She, on the other hand, has everything on the line by speaking up for what she believes. I admire her so much for her courage and was a fan before, but now I am an enormous fan and you can go back to the rock you crawled out from, probably never to be heard from again (hopefully) and look for someone else to attack. Bye Bye!!! – A Proud Democrat who is Ashamed of the United States of America.

There you have it. Ashamed of the U.S.A. And proudly a Democrat! Then there’s:

Stop using your paleolithic brain dead labels to attempt a smear job on everybody who doesn’t adhere to your own knee jerk, fascist, fanatical vision of a Jew World Order.

Jew World Order. From the progressive movement, no less. And it’s a meme:

The people you are supporting don’t fight for the American way. Your republican party has been hijacked by extreme Zionists and Oil murderers. If your writing copy for murders then you have no soul. Have fun in hell.

Proof that homophobia is also alive and well on the left is one of my daily lessons (you should read the intray on a regular basis). But here are a couple of missives in the last few hours:

You sound like an elitist old queen gossiping in a tea circle.

And my favorite:

Keep up the good work, you are disgracing and discrediting yourself, no need for anyone else to, it’s as obvious as the stretchmarks on your anus as you’re bent over in a bathhouse, dumbass.

And then, of course:

AIDS dementia striking again??

Yep, the internet is full of nutcases and hatemongers. And I’m not saying these emails tell you anything that significant about the left in general. But its pretense at being morally superior – while it harbors anti-Semites, homophobes and hate-mongers who would be just as at home on the far right – is wearing a little thin, don’t you think?

From Berkeley no less:

Here’s how some liberals reason: The US has no right to defend itself, because the Republicans, and most Americans, are just so tacky and vulgar, not at all like us. I got news for Joan Didion. In politics irony is the first principle. Those tacky middle Americans are right on subjects like welfare and education and national defense, and the hip and the chic and the stylish are utterly clueless. For years I, like the Didiot, assumed that being a liberal just comes with being a cultured and educated person. It took the deaths of 4 thousand Americans for me to see just how wrong that assumption was. Liberals? Hello? Those bastards are trying to kill us! Andrew, the whole dance of white guilt and victimologist whining that dominates liberal politics just makes me physically ill. I live in the world capital of that syndrome and I grow more angry and disgusted every day.

Don’t worry, bud. They’re sinking.