Month: January 2006

"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations," – Edmund Burke. It’s cited in George Will’s superb column today.

It seems to me clear that the attorney-general lied under oath to the Senate. In his confirmation hearings, he described warrantless wire-tapping of Americans as a "hypothetical situation," when he was fully aware that such wire-tapping was already in place. We impeached a president for perjury about a civil sexual harassment suit. And Gonzales gets to perjure himself in front of the Senate on a basic matter of national security … and the world yawns?

What to make of this nugget in the latest Dexter Filkins piece from Iraq:

"Mr. Rubaie said he was encouraged by tentative signs that the insurgency has been weakening. The number of insurgent attacks against American and Iraqi forces and civilians has fluctuated in recent weeks, but the general trend line is down. In the first week of October last year, there were about 100 attacks a day, according to the American command in Baghdad. Last week, there were about 83 a day.

Still, those numbers do not take into account sectarian violence, which has risen sharply in recent months. Many mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in and around Baghdad have been the scene of intense sectarian violence, with people expelled from their homes or killed."

On the one hand, the news appears to be encouraging. Attacks on forces are down. On the other, do we have some incipient signs of low-level civil war? Meanwhile, the Bush strategy seems to be something along the lines of "Cut and Walk": somewhere between the official line of waiting to see if Iraqi forces are fully capable and getting the hell out of there.

"Okay, I understand what these people are trying to say here, but you talk about insensitivity. The idea that this makes it real. This is a news organization which participated in the happy count-up to a thousand soldier deaths, 1,500 soldier deaths, 2,000 soldier deaths, that didn’t make it real. This makes it real, Bob Woodruff and the ABC cameraman being hurt. This makes it real," – Rush Limbaugh scoring anti-media political points while two men are in serious condition in a hospital.

… in the state of Denmark. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) There’s a real struggle here – between the non-negotiable right of people to write or portray what they think or believe, and the refusal of some religious fanatics to allow them. Here are some of the cartoons depicting Mohammed that have caused so many Islamists to go nuts. I see nothing wrong with them. Yes, they’re blasphemous to strict Muslims. So what? Free countries do not ban blasphemy. Compared to the real blasphemy of extremist Muslims murdering innocent civilians, these cartoons are pitifully tame. The Danish government so far has refused to get involved, but has made unnervingly soothing noises to appease extremist Muslims. The BBC, meanwhile, gives space to Muslim intolerance, including this classic quote from a Jordanian paper:

"Nobody has the right to ask us to respect "freedom of expression" when the matter concerns our Prophet and the Prophet of all humanity, and the essence of our religious belief. They cannot cry "democracy and human rights" when the matters concerns us, us alone, while they ignore democracy and human rights when someone talks about the Jews, their religion and beliefs, or what is called the Holocaust."

Er, yes, we do have a right to ask Muslims in the West to respect freedom of expression, especially about religion. It’s called Western civilization. Maybe not in Jordan. But in the free world, blasphemy is not a crime. In the free world, you are also free to be an anti-Semite. Meanwhile, Gazans are rioting and there’s an effective boycott of Danish goods in the Muslim world – that seems to be having a real impact. Now, Bill Clinton intervenes to say that the major problem in Europe is rising anti-Islamic prejudice. How many times has Clinton decried Islamist intolerance of Jews, gays, women and freedom of speech? Has he raised his voice to condemn the hanging of gay teenagers in Iran? Not that I’ve noticed. Here’s his appalling quote:

"None of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions … there was this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark … these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam."

Go look at the cartoons. They are not against Islam, although they understandably bristle at the intolerance of some contemporary Muslims in Europe. They are against what has been done in the name of Islam. They are about, in the words of the editor who published them, the way in which Islamist thugs have intimidated free speech in Europe:

"These were not directed against Muslims, but against people in cultural life in Europe who are submitting themselves to self-censorship when dealing with Islam. I wanted these cartoonists to appear under their own names. That was the point of the whole journalistic exercise."

Get it now, Bill? These cartoons help expose the brutalization of women, the use of violence in defense of faith, the idiocy of suicide bombers allegedly going to heaven, and so on. If we cannot speak of these things without giving offense, then we have lost our ability to discuss freely the most significant cultural shift of our time: the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism. While I’m still steaming, let me ask another question: How can Clinton glibly speak of historical anti-Semitism in Europe without noting that the most unrestrained anti-Semitism is now parlayed by the Islamic religious right? Where does he get off lecturing free people about their right of free expression, while remaining silent about the pathological anti-Semitism now manifested in Islamo-fascism and its adherents across the globe? Here’s one option: buy Danish.

The world has long waited for the ideal blogger. Time for some Wookie web action.

I’m not sure how good a guide this is, but I found this search engine fascinating and, if you’re as big a gov dweeb as I am, you might too. Check out which senators and congressmen sponsored which bills. One way to measure how meddling politicians are is to check how many new laws or resolutions they sponsor. Right now, Senator Rick Santorum is waaay in the lead, with 158 bills or resolutions with his name on them. No one else comes close. Once upon a time, conservatives were inactivists. Now, they are the flipside of the old left: taxing and spending and regulating and monitoring until they’re red in the face. Whatever else the new GOP believes in, it isn’t leaving people alone. Maybe some of you can investigate further and find out if this holds true for Republicans in general, or if there’s any solid connection between the number of bills and resolutions a congressman or senator sponsors, and how big a busy-body he is.

Tom Elia wants to know. The answer is relatively simple: George W. Bush is one of the luckiest men alive. And in no department is he luckier than in his choice of opponents at home and enemies abroad.

"Some said that it was too early to push the region to do elections because elections would bring fundamentalists … but if we don’t start now, then when?! The wheel of change has to take its course and delaying it in my opinion won‚Äôt do us any good. What happened was a natural outcome of our war with ourselves; we have to learn from this and develop the way we think and interact with the variables and we will certainly figure out what our mistakes were. This takes time but democracy is still the one and only solution and we need to go through all its stages, even if we make wrong choices, what matters is that these would be our choices, not someone else’s," – the wisdom of Mohammed at Iraq the Model. I agree, but it’s sure turning out to be a very bumpy ride.