The Dish

The sophisticated form of anthrax delivered to Tom Daschle’s office forces us to ask a simple question. What are these people trying to do? I think they’re testing the waters. They want to know how we will respond to what is still a minor biological threat, as a softener to a major biological threat in the coming weeks. They must be encouraged by the panic-mongering of the tabloids, Hollywood and hoaxsters. They must also be encouraged by the fact that some elements in the administration already seem to be saying we need to keep our coalition together rather than destroy the many-headed enemy. So the terrorists are pondering their next move. The chilling aspect of the news in the New York Times today is that the terrorists clearly have access to the kind of anthrax that could be used against large numbers of civilians. My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly naxefve in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us. At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn’t dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat. I know that this means that this conflict is deepening and widening beyond its initial phony stage. But what choice do we have? Inaction in the face of biological warfare is an invitation for more in a world where that is now thinkable. Appropriate response will no doubt inflame an already inflamed region, as people seek solace through the usual ideological fire. Either way the war will grow and I feel nothing but dread in my heart. But we didn’t seek this conflict. It has sought us. If we do not wage war now, we may have to wage an even bloodier war in the very near future. These are bleak choices, but what else do we have?

LETTERS: In defense of Maggie Gallagher, Stanley Fish’s reading list, etc.

MCCAIN’S CLARITY: Take a moment to read John McCain’s extraordinary speech October 9 to the U.S. Naval Academy. It’s as good a speech about this war as one can imagine – and its greatness lies in McCain’s intuitive sense that we are now in a truly epic struggle, and one that will truly test the limits of our faith and our endurance. I’m sure he’s right, and he is also on the mark about the importance of ruthlessness. Even now, we are squeamish about minor civilian casualties; even now, voices quibbling, worrying, panicking are urging us to down-size the war, avoid a direct confrontation, buy off peace or placate the enemy with palliatives. That might have worked ten years ago. It’s quite clear it won’t work now. As McCain clearly says, “Our goal is to vanquish terrorism, not reduce it, not change its operations, not temporarily subdue it, but vanquish it. All other concerns are secondary. It is a difficult, demanding task we have undertaken. We must expect and prepare for our enemies to strike us again before they are vanquished. Some of this war will be fought at home. And the casualties that we will suffer may again include civilians. We must keep our nerve at all costs. We should use no more force than necessary, but no less than necessary. Fighting this war in half measures will only give our enemies time and opportunity to strike us again. We must change and change permanently the mindset of terrorists, those who give them sanctuary and support, and those parts of Islamic populations who believe the terrorist conceit that they will ultimately prevail in a conflict with the West, that America has not the stomach to wage a relentless, long term, and, at times, ruthless war to destroy them.” Yes, that is the message. We must destroy them.

MOVE OVER, CHOMSKY: “Since September 11 my imam has extended Friday prayers with a special supplication reserved for times of affliction, imploring God to annihilate Islam’s enemies, to “rock the ground underneath their feet” … Operation Enduring Freedom is in fact a war against liberty, a war against those Muslims who cling to the hope that, just like their counterparts in the west, they too will one day be able to determine and direct their own fate. Ever since independence, Muslim societies from Marakesh to Mindanao have had their aspirations for self-rule repressed by western-backed elites and dictators.” – Faisal Bodi, calling for the defeat of his own country in a war against fundamentalist Islam, in – where else? – the Guardian.

I’m indebted to Jeffrey Isaac of the American Prospect for noticing the following sentences in a recent book by Noam Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West. Chomsky, with a moral relativism straight out of Stanley Fish’s playbook, argues that there is no difference between the actions of NATO countries attempting to stop the genocide in Bosnia and terrorists seeking their own violent solution to various problems. And he makes a crazy logical leap to assert that Britain and the U.S. are as responsible for the oppression in East Timor as the rulers in Jakarta. Then this obscenity: “If proponents of the “repetition of Bosnia” thesis intend it seriously, they should certainly have been calling for the bombing of Jakarta – indeed Washington and London – in early 1999 so as not to allow in East Timor a repetition of the crimes that Indonesia, the U.S., and the UK, had perpetrated there for a quarter-century. And when the new generation of leaders [i.e. Clinton and Blair] refused to pursue this honorable course, they should have been leading honest citizens to do so themselves, perhaps joining the Bin Laden network. These conclusions follow straightforwardly, if we assume that the thesis is intended as something more than apologetics for state violence.” Thus the nihilism that fuels Chomsky and Fish and others leads inexorably to a call for individuals to join the bin Laden network and bomb Washington and London. Chomsky wrote this before September 11. In the wake of the fact that terrorists took his cynical, rhetorical advice and actually killed thousands of people in Washington and New York, is it too much to ask that Chomsky take responsibility for his words, disown them, and apologize?

I’ll be debating the “war among the intellectuals” with Katha Pollitt tonight on NPR’s Special Coverage of the war, broadcast from WBUR in Boston, from 8 – 9 pm EST tonight.

Maggie Gallagher sympathizes with Islam over contemporary American culture for the following reasons: “Islam remains a successful civilization because it fulfills the two minimum functions any culture must: It channels intense social energy of individuals into the two great sacrifices of self: war and babies. The children in Islamic societies suffer, and the women even more. But though individuals suffer, the family system itself works. The society perpetuates itself. It even finds new adherents in our country, primarily among those who have suffered most deeply from our current sexual disorder, African-Americans.” Thus the far right’s loathing of recreational, non-procreative sex (a major achievement of a free society in my book) leads her into a qualified defense of Muslim abuse of women and of children (girls are ignored, boys are routinely sodomized by adult males), and of a militarism which is truly primitive. Once again, the Fundamentalist American right seems as conflicted about this war as the postmodern left. How clarifying this conflict is becoming.

“While we loudly and consistently condemn Israel for its ill treatment of Palestinians we are silent when Muslim regimes abuse the rights of Muslims and slaughter thousands of them. Remember Saddam and his use of chemical weapons against Muslims (Kurds)?. Remember Pakistani army’s excesses against Muslims (Bengalis)?. Remember the Mujahideen of Afghanistan and their mutual slaughter? Have we ever condemned them for their excesses? Have we demanded international intervention or retribution against them? Do you know how the Saudis treat their minority Shiis? Have we protested the violation of their rights? But we all are eager to condemn Israel; not because we care for rights and lives of the Palestinians, we don’t. We condemn Israel because we hate “them”.” Couldn’t put it better myself. Check out the rest of Muqtedar Khan’s brave and interesting essay on the position of America’s Muslims today.

FEAR ITSELF: If you haven’t already, check out my latest column on Americans’ difficulty with stoicism opposite.

Judith Miller is a great and courageous journalist. In the current circumstances, when she is clearly a target for terrorist attack, her candor is truly remarkable. Here’s her terrific interchange with Dana Suyyagh from the al Jazeera cable network on Larry King last night:

“MILLER: Do you call a people who blow themselves up on the West
Bank and in Gaza and in Israel martyrs, because that’s another thing we
have heard about your network?

SUYYAGH: Yes, we do. We do. Only since…

MILLER: And do you think that’s objective or…

SUYYAGH: Yes.

MILLER: And do you think that’s objective reporting? Did you call the
people who blew the Twin Towers up martyrs?

SUYYAGH: No. We never called them martyrs. That is an act of terror.
We go with international opinion on that one, yes.

MILLER: I see…

SUYYAGH: The West Bank is a different issue altogether.

MILLER: So terrorists who kill people, civilians in Israel, are martyrs, and terrorists who kill Americans are terrorists? Is that your news standard?

SUYYAGH: I’m sorry I didn’t hear the last sentence.

MILLER: I said is that your news standard — to distinguish between the
people who kill Americans and people who kill Israelis — one are martyrs
and the other is terrorists?

SUYYAGH: No. We have a standing policy that people who are martyrs
are people who give themselves for a cause.

What happened in New York and Washington, we believe, was causeless.”

The reason I bring this up is because it truly does reflect a hatred of Israel and of Jews in general that is so embedded in the region that we almost don’t notice it. Killing Americans is wrong. Killing Israelis is an act of martyrdom. And this is a moderate voice! Yes, some Arabs and Muslims may object to some Israeli policies in the West Bank. That may give them a cause. But the murder of innocent civilians is not martyrdom, even if the killer dies in the process. It’s mass murder outside of any moral rules of conventional war. If it isn’t terrorism, nothing is. But Larry King will happily give time and space to an individual who celebrates the difference on American cable television. Good for Miller for penetrating through this moral fog.

I read today that a Newsweek poll in Pakistan found that 48 percent of Pakistanis believe that Israel was behind the September 11 massacre. Reports from around the Middle East also show this to be a widespread belief among Arabs and Muslims. It is also echoed by the defeatist factions on the far left and the far right in this country. Prince Alaweed responded yesterday to Rudy Giuliani’s heroic return of the Saudi prince’s blood money in these words: “The whole issue is that I spoke about their position [on the Middle East conflict] and they didn’t like it because there are Jewish pressures and they were afraid of them.” This quote was to the newspaper Okaz, according to the New York Post. Alaweed knew exactly how to explain the affront to his native audience. There is only one word for this sickness and it is anti-Semitism. Somehow, we have not yet named the psychosis that affects large numbers of Muslims. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, whatever Tony Blair naively believes. The overwhelming majority of Arab Muslims do not want an accommodation with Israel. They want its obliteration and the expulsion or murder of every Jew that lives there. This anti-Semitism is openly fostered and fomented by many of the “moderate” Arab regimes we are now busy cozying up to. It is widely believed across the Muslim world – from the Philippines to Morocco to the denizens of our own native Muslim, Mr. Farrakhan. One of our greatest mistakes in the past few years has been to avoid calling this what it is: a sickness that only half a century ago was responsible for the greatest crime in the history of mankind. Why, one wonders, have no Western leaders confronted this ugly truth and condemned it? Why hasn’t the Pope? The rhetoric of bin Laden is not simply fundamentalist. In its structure and paranoia, it is not so different from the doctrines propagated by Hitler. These bin Laden-supporting Muslims want non-Muslims expelled from a wide swathe of Arab territory. They want Lebensraum, and the primary victim of such Lebensraum will once again be the Jews. Israel may not be the first cause cited by bin Laden but it surely is a critical one. It seems to me that our squeamishness in naming and recognizing this phenomenon is blunting our ability to confront it. Once again, we are faced with an expansionist, terrorist ideology that uses the demonization of Jews as one of its major rallying cries. What more do we need to know?

FISH RISES TO THE BAIT: Post-modernist Stanley Fish doesn’t believe that relativism prevents us from condemning terrorism or indeed Islamo-fascism. “If by relativism one means a cast of mind that renders you unable to prefer your own convictions to those of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began,” he argues. “Our convictions are by definition preferred; that’s what makes them our convictions. Relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger. But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary’s shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end, because it is simply another name for serious thought.” Well, if relativism is simply a synonym for serious thought, of course it doesn’t prevent us from making moral judgments. Many, many of us who regard this war as a moral necessity have indeed attempted to understand the arguments of the enemy and have found them for the most part repugnant and evil. But this is a semantic dodge. What relativism forbids is being able to state that something is actually evil as an objective truth. It’s just our conception of truth. And our truth is no more objectively valid than bin Laden’s truth, or Pol Pot’s or Stalin’s. So we fight this war simply as a function of our own will to power. Think about this for a minute and you realize that it’s a version of “my country, right or wrong,” a belief divorced from any attempt to subject ourselves and our enemy to neutral judgment or inspection. Jingoism from the left! And it’s this lazy jingoism, this worship of power for its own solipsistic sake, that led great philosophers like Heidegger to embrace the Nazis. It’s also this philosophical lassitude that leads Western “intellectuals” into the moral dead-end which this crisis has exposed like a flash-light and from which they are belatedly trying to rescue themselves. Fish’s op-ed is a worthy attempt to do just that. But he still doesn’t get it, does he?

ANTHRAX HYSTERIA: I feel a bit bad, as I was one of the first to say that biological warfare was clearly the next phase of the attack. But the current wave of anthrax hysteria is getting absurd. Don’t get me wrong. Only the F.B.I. could have taken this long to recognize this wave of attacks as an obvious coordinated act of terrorism. According to the New York Times today, they’re beginning to contemplate the possibility. Way to go, guys! I also believe we need far more government action to get a smallpox vaccine developed and distributed, and a far more proactive policy with regard to Iraq’s intent to use chemical and biological weapons against the U.S. and Israel. But beneath all this, there’s a silver lining to the latest attack. If this is the best they’ve got, it’s truly pathetic. I always thought that bin Laden must have planned a second strike to back up his first one. I cannot believe he wouldn’t have launched it by now if he could. Perhaps intelligence and law enforcement here and in Europe have stymied larger attacks. Perhaps anthrax is a horrifying intro to worse horrors. But if not, we have reason to be glad. This wave could kill at most a handful of people. It’s a truly puny weapon. Its main purpose (which is why the terrorists have targeted media types) is to spread chaos and alarm, which we are in danger of letting them get away with. Looked at objectively, the campaign is risible. One thing we have to guard against, I think, is over-estimating the enemy. Look how swiftly we have crippled the Taliban regime. It’s only our own caution that is preventing their complete collapse. With this biological attack, we have incurred very very few casualties and have been given a classic casus belli for extending the war. Advantage: America. So buck up and stop the freak-outs.

KINGSOLVER’S GAFFE: In the piece of drivel I linked to yesterday by Barbara Kingsolver, the following sentences appeared: “I would like us to sign the Kyoto agreement today, and reduce our fossil-fuel emissions with legislation that will ease us into safer, less gluttonous, sensibly reorganized lives. If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland’s.” A reader helpfully points out that Iceland has no defense budget whatsoever. Its entire defense structure is provided by the United States, and has been since 1951. Always nice to see the arguments of peaceniks not just exposed but demolished.

MATH: It never was my strong point. The proportion of the American population killed on September 11 was not 0.02 percent, but 0.002 percent. Actually, the correct number strengthens my point about the tiny risk of being killed by terrorists.

I guess we’ve all been having some nervous attacks about this war. My own amount to a nagging fear that the administration is not as serious as it says it is and that Americans may get faint-hearted when the going gets tougher. The president’s constant reiteration of the importance of this war and his crystal-clear moral understanding of the stakes involved have more than allayed my worries on the former front. I’m also cheered by Time Magazine’s poll, showing increasing support for military action, rising levels of approval for the president’s conduct, and only mild panic about anthrax. “Seventy-one percent of those polled October 12th favor the use of U.S. ground troops versus the 64 percent who favored the idea on September 27th,” reports Time. Better still, over half of Americans support ground troops even if it means 1000 casualties. A full third are happy to see ground troop action, even if it means 10,000 casualties. So long, Vietnam Syndrome, I hope. The only thing as heart-warming as these numbers is the heart-burn they are giving Barbara Kingsolver.

IRAQ AGAIN: No-one seems to know whether Iraq is involved in the anthrax outbreaks. But here’s what we do know. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, “It is known that Iraq obtained anthrax cultures, for example — quite legally — from the American Type Culture Centre (ATCC) in the 1980s at a time when the West tacitly supported the regime. No questions were asked.” And someone’s been leaking to the Guardian that some in the administration suspect an Iraqi link. I don’t trust everything in the Guardian’s story, but the possibility of some state sponsorship of this operation has to be considered. The Wall Street Journal has an eminently sensible editorial making this point today. It seems to me this doesn’t have to lead to a conventional war against Iraq. But couldn’t it lead to a war-like inspection regime for Saddam’s biological and chemical warfare plants? As one reader has suggested, why couldn’t we cite our suspicions about biological warfare to demand immediate access to Saddam’s suspicious bio-cehmical installations? If he refuses, why not destroy them from the air? Give him 48 hours notice and then annihilate them, rather as Israel did to prevent his earlier attempt at nuclear capability. It would be better if we could get hard evidence. But even without it, it’s justifiable. In my view, it’s self-defense. Do we have to wait for the worst to happen in a major U.S. city before we take action?

Q & A: Who said the following: “We Americans have every right to be bitterly angry against the terrorists. But we also must go one step beyond our anger, for when something goes terribly wrong in an individual’s life or even in the life of a nation; it is time for introspection. We must courageously ask ourselves what we might have done that has made us vulnerable to such ferocious attacks. That kind of thinking sometimes takes courage.” Edward Said? Susan Sontag? Alice Walker? Nah. It’s our old friend, David Duke. And who says there isn’t a political realignment?

LETTERS: From a former attack pilot on bomb-messages, white-washing Islam, nasty atheists, etc.

RUDY’S GOOD CALL: Rudy Giuliani’s disgusted return of Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal blood money donation to New York City is another sign of his sanity. It’s clearer than ever that the extremist Wahhabist form of Islam that fuels Osama bin Laden’s terror has been aided, abetted, and appeased by the Saudis for years. They haven’t given us their bases; they haven’t shut down bin Laden’s finances; the prince even voiced a belief that the United States played a part in inviting the attacks. The Saudis’ only purpose right now is to prevent Wahhabist forces taking over their satrapy completely and providing a fig-leaf for further U.S. action. Why we need to suck up to them beyond that defeats me. They are a central part of this problem, and they refuse to be an active part of the solution. In fact, a firm sign of our seriousness might help bring about a better outcome in the succession struggle now underway in the Saudi royal family. A further sign of Rudy’s justified outrage is the response of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. McKinney sucks up to bin Talal by criticizing Israel and then not-so-subtly makes a pitch for some of the money for her own causes. McKinney watchers have known her to be biased against Jews for years, but this piece of opportunism is breath-taking even for her.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“DOC HOLLIDAY: What do you want, Wyatt?
WYATT EARP: Just to live a normal life.
DOC HOLLIDAY: There is no normal life, there’s just life.”

– Kevin Jarre, Screenplay for “Tombstone” (1993).

KUMBAYA WATCH: The Unitarian Universalists have managed to put together a war aim: write to Barbara Lee to tell her how much you support her. I prefer the peacenik approach outlined in this amusing web-cartoon (be aware you need a macromedia plug-in).

FAGS AND ATHEISTS: Some of you have taken issue with my statement that I trust an atheist more than a religious fundamentalist in matters of politics. I should have been clearer that I meant this in the context of American domestic politics at this particular time. Stalin wasn’t a nice fellow and he sure was an atheist. Point taken. As for writing “fags” on missiles, I’m aware that this kind of bravado is not exactly absent among the manly culture beloved of Peggy Noonan et al. If it didn’t also lead to the murder of American soldiers in their beds, and the vicious waste of resources of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I’d be less squeamish. And I’m not reassured by the notion that “fags” doesn’t simply refer to homosexuals but to any low-lifes. Stand in a gay man’s shoes for a second and you’ll see why. In the last resort, it’s hardly good propaganda to photograph this obscenity and send it around the world. Not exactly on message. I might also point out that no-one’s tougher on fags than the people we’re attacking. And part of the reason we’re attacking is a defense of freedom which includes a defense of the freedom of sexual minorities. The military’s message is about as appropriate as a bomb dropped on Berlin during the Second World War with, “Screw You, Kikes,” written on it.

For some reason, the link I posted for this photograph (see “YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK” below) was changed soon after I posted it. Sorry.

But were afraid to ask. One response to terror is information. Here’s some.