The Dish

A useful flash video presentation of al Qaeda’s attacks in the last decade. Here’s more context for those who still believe we would not be targeted if we never retaliated:

What does all this tell us? First, that if they aren’t blowing us up, then they’ll be blowing up someone else. And you don’t get to choose who. Secondly, who or what they blow up is largely a matter of what’s available. Jews anywhere, Americans after that, Shia next and Brits probably a distant fourth. Africans for fun.

And Australians, Indians, Hindus, Balinese, Saudis, Iraqis, and on and on. We will be bombed and murdered, whatever we do. So why not do all we can to stay on the offensive?

YES, YES, I KNOW: Many reasonable people argue that the Iraq invasion made matters worse, not better in the short term. Let’s concede that, for the sake of argument. But deep down, how do we drain the swamp of Islamo-fascism? For all my criticisms of the conduct of the Iraq war, the reason I’m still glad we did it and still want us to get it right is that I see no fundamental solution to this unless we give the Muslim Arab world an alternative apart from Jihadism or the autocracy that fosters it. Democracy is the only cure; the only way for the silent majority of Muslims to regain power from the fanatics, to undermine this pathology and evil from within. I wrote the following before the London attacks for the Stranger in Seattle and I stand by every word:

The way ahead is undoubtedly brutal and unsure. But let’s not delude ourselves that the alternative was that much better: an Iraq pulverized by still more sanctions, poverty and tyranny or one in which Saddam lived to see another day and gave aid and comfort to al Qaeda. We chose the better of two options. Both were and are still hellish. But this war is young and was always going to last a generation. We owe our government sturdy, even fierce, criticism but we also owe our civilization support. That civilization – one in which people live free from tyranny and suffocating theocracy – is being fought over in Iraq today; and I have not the slightest hesitation in knowing whose side I am on. Our enemy is targeting innocents daily; while we are doing our best to advance their freedom. The Iraqi people told us what they want last January – peace with democracy. We cannot afford to betray either them or our principles now.

So we must fight on. Especially in Iraq, where innocent civilians are experiencing the London bombings on an almost daily basis.

An emailer prods my pop-cultural hypothalamus:

“Double super secret background” … actually is a joking wink reference to the movie “Animal House”. The fraternity had been placed on ‘double super secret probation’ by the evil Dean. Cooper probably just used that as joking slang (or Turd Blossom did :-).

Since Matt is one of the funniest and kindest men in D.C., I’ll bet it was his joke. But my point stands. This leak wasn’t a minor one, according to Rove. So why did he think it was major and didn’t want his fingerprints anywhere near it? Another emailer asks who told Rove:

How did Karl Rove know that Ms. Plame was a CIA operative? I cannot imagine that the WH keeps a list of CIA personnel. If in fact Ms. Plame was an undercover CIA operative, her employment with the CIA should have been known by a relatively small number of people within the agency. Everyone else should have know her as her cover profession. I’m assuming undercover CIA operatives do not use a CIA desk job as their cover. Somewhere along this information trail someone knowingly released the identity of Ms. Plame as a covert employee. Was this at the request of Karl Rove or others within the WH? Did he have clearance? Should he have had clearance?

I don’t know. But Fitzgerald may.

A new phase in the war on the West might just have been launched.

An emailer puts it as well as I could:

Two points, briefly:
1. People need to stop hiding behind Clintonian semantics here and understand that even if no actual technical violation of the law is found in the Rove/Plame case it will still be true, based on what we know now from the Time emails, that White House actions compromised a CIA asset during a time of war. What would Hannity, Limbaugh, Scarborough and all the cable loudmouths be saying if it had been Sidney Blumenthal?

2. Scott McClellan once told the American people that Karl Rove was not involved in any way, and that the President would remove anyone found to be involved. During the Lewinsky scandal many people insisted that it was not the sex that bothered them, but it was the lying, spinning, parsing, and direct misleading of the American people that offended them, and that came to define the Clinton White House. What would the cable loudmouths be saying if instead of McClellan it had been McCurry?

This isn’t about technical violations or a game of gotcha. It’s about character, and George Bush needs to show some.

I’m leery of saying anything yet about a case that is still so murky. But it does seem to me that doing what Rove seems to have done would, in peace-time, be sleazy. In wartime, it shows a contempt for our national security – or a willingness to put petty partisan sniping ahead of national security. No, I’m not shocked. But I’m also struck by one detail in Matt Cooper’s email to his editors:

“Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …”

“Double super secret background” for just some guidance about a developing story? That sounds a little excessive to me. Why would Rove have insisted on such a super-tight confidentiality standard if he was not aware that he was divulging something he truly shouldn’t divulge? Again, I don’t know enough to say anything that definitive right now. But it seems clear to me that Rove leaked the CIA role of Wilson’s wife (whether he named her or knew that she was under-cover is another matter). The president has said he would fire anyone who did such a thing. Ergo: the president must fire Rove or break his word. It’s going to be an interesting few weeks.

Ready to hear it? Here’s the murderer of Theo van Gogh:

[T]ranscripts of recorded statements allegedly made by Mr. Bouyeri and introduced in the trial offered a window into his way of thinking. “I knew what I was doing,” Mr. Bouyeri told his brother in a phone conversation shortly after the killing, according to the transcript. “I slaughtered him.” Then Mr. Bouyeri laughed, said Judge Udo Willem Bentinck, who was reading the transcript aloud.

Then there’s this, Bouyeri’s address to van Gogh’s mother in court:

He argued that he did not kill her son, “but I have chopped off his head according to the law that orders me to do so to everyone who offends Allah. I do not not feel your pain as I do not know what it is to suffer the loss of a child.”

Can anyone seriously believe that not invading Iraq would have changed the mindset of this fanatic? Or leaving Afghanistan alone? What we’re learning, especially from the home-grown bombings in London, is that our fundamental enemy is a medievalist theological fascism, buried in the recesses of a legitimate religious faith. It would be nice if we could talk these people out of it, or hand them concessions to buy them off, or hug them till they saw the joys of the New Age. Until then, we have to bring them to justice – on the battlefield or court-room. And the people who are most able to bring them to justice are Western Muslims; and the democratically-inclined Muslims in Iraq.

In a word: condescension.

“Where are the country singers threatening to put boots up peoples’ asses? … Who grieves this privately? This American likes his sorrow in t-shirt form” – Rob Corddry, from the Daily Show, in reference to London. We don’t have TV up here on the beach. It’s good to detoxify for a couple of months. But I sure miss Jon Stewart.

Yes, there are some good posts on Huffington Post. In my cranky diss of the place, I cited one such by Irshad Manji. Anywhere Eugene Volokh contributes has something worthwhile in it. But even Rich B. has to concede that the place is dominated by paranoid Hollywood liberalism; and maybe it was reading guff like this, and this, and this on the day terrorists murdered dozens of Londoners that made me cranky. My claim that the blog is full of people in favor of “withdrawing from Iraq, and generally laying the blame for the mass murder of innocents on George Bush and Tony Blair” is fully documented by those posts. As for negotiating with al Qaeda operatives, I concede hyperbole. Deepak Chopra just wants us to give them a hug.

A pretty devastating expose by Tom Gross. The Orwellian fixing of language – by going in and changing online wordage after the fact – is particularly amusing:

Early on Friday morning another BBC webpage headlined “Testing the underground mood,” spoke of “the worst terrorist atrocity Britain has seen.” But at 12:08 GMT, while the rest of the article was left untouched, those words were replaced by “the worst peacetime bomb attacks Britain has seen.”… In its round-up of world reactions, BBC online was also quick to highlight the views of conspiracy theorists. The very first article listed by the BBC started by quoting Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani saying Israel was behind the London attacks. It was followed by a commentary on Iranian state radio explicitly blaming the Mossad.

I guess we should be grateful that for around 24 hours, the BBC saw reality, called it terrorism, and reported it accurately. Then the p.c. police took over.

They’re a pragmatic bunch, but they’re not natural appeasers. The latest YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph finds that 72 percent blieve that Britain’s role in Iraq helped make the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. But that’s statistically unchanged from before 7/7. The change has been in the following question: “Do you think that Britain should retain its close alliance wth the United States in the war on terror or should it distance itself to a much greater extent from US policy?” Last March, 44 percent said stick with the US; 47 percent said: more distance. Today, 52 percent say stick with America; and only 36 percent say distancing would be a good idea. Al Qaeda’s stupidity is revealed again. You don’t bully Brits.