Month: January 2006

I HAVE IN MY HANDS THE NAMES OF 57 TERRORISTS

Here’s a question I found myself batting around with Yglesias last week: How many committed al Qaeda operatives, people willing to kill and perhaps die for the cause, do we think there are in the U.S. right now? The initial New York Times piece on the NSA wiretap story suggested that about 500 people were being tapped at any given time. How many do we think were full-blown al Qaeda terrorists? One in ten? One in twenty?

I wonder, because if you’ve ever engaged in the rather morbid thought experiment of contemplating what it would take to stage some catastrophic and deadly attack, it actually seems terrifyingly easy. It would take a fair amount of work and planning, of course, but 9/11 was pulled off by a relatively small team on a relatively small budget, and it certainly seems like you could do a sub-9/11 scale but still highly destructive attack with a lot less—a couple guys, a rented truck, and some explosives, say. And if you were an al Qaeda member in the U.S. in the years following 9/11, mightn’t it seem as though the newly aggressive efforts to track folk like you down meant it was advisable to get anything you were planning executed as quickly as possible?

Maybe we’ve just been that effective at catching these folk—or maybe we managed to deport a big chunk on visa violations—and I’m certainly not implying there aren’t any U.S.-based al Qaeda. But if they’ve got even a fraction of 500 people here involved in their plots, why hasn’t one of them managed to pull anything off?

—posted by Julian

MORE FROM BREMER

The Weekly Standard has a great summary of some of the juicier bits from the Bremer memoir (and by ‘memoir,’ I don’t mean the current publishing view that this includes complete fiction). Both Bremer and Powell – let’s call them the Sanity Chorus – were insistent that an occupation that couldn’t even control Baghdad was woefully under-manned. Powell emerges as a real hawk in arguing to take out Moqtada al-Sadr. Rumsfeld seems absolutely indifferent to reality on the ground, contemptuously unresponsive to Bremer, and eager to downsize the mission at every moment. The evidence is beginning to mount, it seems to me, that Rumsfeld ran this war. His arrogance, pig-headedness, ideological fixations, and sheer incompetence are what have led us into our current knife-edge position, and are indirectly responsible for the deaths of the 30,000 innocent civilians who died because the occupying power decided – yes, consciously decided – to let mayhem rule. In this, Bush is responsible. He appointed Rumsfeld. And he has kept him on. I don’t see how anyone can have much confidence in war-management until he is removed.

IN RESPONSE TO ROSS: I’m aware of the Christian doctrine of the Fall implies that continued human suffering is ultimately a consequence of original sin. I was unaware that this doctrine included the notion that original sin caused the weather.

– posted by Andrew.

A PAIR OF QUIBBLES

A reader cites Albert Mohler as an example of a religious right leader who doesn’t think that God intervenes directly to punish sin – via hurricane, for instance – and Andrew replies:

Mohler differs from Robertson in not seeing a specific weather event as God-induced. But he shares with him the notion that all bad things in the universe stem in part from human sin.

Well, of course he does – because that’s one of the basic tenets of Christianity, no? Not that your sin or mine causes Hurricane Katrina, but that death and suffering are a result, ultimately, of the Fall of Man, and that this primordial catastrophe is responsible for the wounded quality of the world. It would be pretty odd if Mohler, or any Christian leader – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, whatever – didn’t think that human sin, understood generally, has a strong relationship to human suffering and death.

Also, I think that Andrew’s last Malkin Award nominee – a pastor named Herbert Lusk who said, “my friends, don’t fool with the church because the church has buried a million critics” – probably wasn’t threatening to actually kill or do violence to his critics. It’s a pretty commonplace piece of Christian rhetoric to point out that the faith has outlasted most of its critics over the last two thousand years, and that this is perhaps a sign of God’s favor and ought to give would-be opponents pause. (Here’s how Chesterton put this line of argument, rather more eloquently.) But I admit Lusk’s comments are open to Andrew’s interpretation as well.

– posted by Ross

ISRAEL POLLING

Here’s the best I can find:

Fully 44% of Americans believe that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people while a substantial minority (36%) thinks that “the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus.” White evangelical Protestants and, to a lesser degree, African-Americans accept both of these propositions. Significantly fewer white Catholics and mainline Protestants believe Israel was granted to the Jews by God or think that Israel represents a fulfillment of the Bible’s prophecy of a second coming.

When a poll of all adults finds over a third holding the view that the state of Israel is fulfilling the prophecy of the imminent Second Coming, you can see that pre-millenarianism is not some fringe idea, touted by Robertson. It’s fundamentalist orthodoxy. Robertson is cruel and tactless, and many evangelicals would agree. Their compassion forbids them from making personal attacks as Robertson does. But he didn’t make up his theology. And it’s mainstream.

– posted by Andrew.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II

“Man: All together now: Death to America! Death to Israel!

Crowd: Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!

Speaker: Today, the impure world Zionism, in the modern Age of ignorance, has emerged with the same (polytheistic) ideology, but with new methods. It wants to take over the fields of economy, of culture, and politics, as well as the military, throughout the world.

We, the pilgrims who have come to the house of God, condemn the plots and the measures taken by the international Zionism – the deceitful Satan who spreads heresy, polytheism, and idolatry, enslaving human beings with a new method. It abuses the divine religion of Moses. It takes Satanic measures, and arouses the world’s hatred towards this divine religion, and its true followers. We denounce these criminal acts. We call upon the world of Islam and the free peoples to take significant measures to thwart the Satanic policy of this camp.

Crowd: Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar.” – a mullah from an Islamo-fascist rally in Mecca. This is the religion fueling global terror. Its pathological anti-Semitism is indistinguishable in most respects from Hitler’s. (Hat tip: Justin.

– posted by Andrew.

CORRUPTION AND CONSERVATISM

In one sense, the current bout of corruption in Washington is explicable enough: politicians, Democrat or Republican, who hold power long anough succumb to its temptations. But in another, it’s a function of the degeneracy of Bush-DeLay conservatism. When conservatives have embraced big government, massive increases in spending, huge new entitlements, a blizzard of earmarks, and an increasingly complex tax code, they have merely increased the incentives for sleaze. As David Broder also points out, some states – Texas stands out, as do many other parts of the South – have a very long history of federal government largess, cronyism and back-door quid pro quos. All we’re seeing is a shameless political culture being nationalized. That used to be LBJ’s mojo. Now, it’s DeLay’s.

QUOTES FOR THE DAY: “Bremer also said he raised his concerns with Bush at a lunch that month and again in June 2003 in a video link with a National Security Council meeting chaired by Bush. ‘I was trying to reach the president’s ear, because I had the impression that the armed services, and possibly Rumsfeld himself, were in a hurry to get our troops home,’ he writes in the book, ‘My Year in Iraq,” … In a memo dated May 18, 2004, Bremer urged Rumsfeld to send more troops. ‘We were trying to cover too many fronts with too few resources,’ attempting to control borders, secure convoy routes and protect Iraq’s infrastructure, Bremer states in his book. ‘We’ve become the worst of all things – an ineffective occupier,’ he says he told Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser.” – Washington Post, yesterday.

“The president said at a National Security Council meeting that he depended on Bremer for a candid assessment of the state of affairs in Iraq. ‘If Bremer’s happy, I’m happy,’ Bush said. ‘If Bremer’s nervous, I’m nervous. If Bremer’s uneasy, I’m uneasy. If Bremer’s optimistic, I’m optimistic.'” – Fred Barnes, in his forthcoming hagiography of the president, “Rebel-In-Chief,” page 100.

What are the odds that Fred’s source for the NSA meeting was not Bremer?

MOHLER AND ROBERTSON: I asked readers to prove me wrong about a major religious right leader dissenting from Pat Robertson’s view that the End-Time will lead to a rapture of the faithful and destruction of the unfaithful; and that God intervenes directly in our lives ot punish sin. Here’s Albert Mohler with a more nuanced position:

God created the world as the theater of His own glory. It is a world of great beauty and wonder; a world that allows crops to grow and provides everything that we physically need. Yet, it is also a world of terrible storms and natural disasters. In part, all this is the result of the devastating effects of human sin. As the Apostle Paul makes clear, the whole creation anticipates the redemption that is to come. But, as we experience the reality of weather after the Fall, we should not trace any particular weather pattern to contemporary human sins. Jesus explained that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The weather is not fair.

Mohler differs from Robertson in not seeing a specific weather event as God-induced. But he shares with him the notion that all bad things in the universe stem in part from human sin.

– posted by Andrew.

DIVIDING ISRAEL

A reader writes:

To quote David Barry, I swear, I am not making this up.

A few years ago, I was sitting in the galley of the Naval Training Center in Illinois. There was a television playing CNN headline news. The program gave the results of a poll about Americans’ views regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I forget the exact numbers as to which side people supported, but what struck me was a second poll – if you support Israel, why? As I recall, the plurality said they supported Israel because of terrorism, but a pretty substantial majority said they supported Israel because of its “biblical claim to the land”. Perhaps inadvertently, I scoffed slightly. Another sailor asked me what I was thinking, and when I told him, he said something to the effect of, “What’s wrong with that? Unless you don’t believe in the Bible …”

Mr. Sullivan, I had a fairly decent Christian education. So I retorted something like, “Why do they have a claim? Because God promised the land to Abraham? Well, Abraham had 8 sons. Why are you going with the second son? Okay, fine, let’s take Isaac. He had two sons – why do you give the whole land to the second son? Well, fine, let’s take Jacob. There were 13 tribes of Israel (everyone forgets Levi) – why are you only counting Judah for the whole land? Surely Tel Aviv wasn’t part of the original tribe of Judah. But, okay, let’s take Judah. Well, didn’t the Babylonian captivity pretty much end the Jewish claim to the land? Didn’t Jesus say that he could raise children of Abraham from the stones, that being a child of Abraham didn’t count for much?” The guy I was talking to paused for a second, then said, “Wow. You’re gay, aren’t you?”

Yes, I probably was playing a bit fast and loose with those biblical references. It was 5:30 am – what do you want from me?

I wonder if there is a poll out there explaining American attitudes toward Israel along these lines. Let me know.