Much of the world's response is a false moral equivalence that simply encourages the terrorists.
By Alan M. Dershowitz
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Cambridge, Mass. - Israel's decision to take military action against Hamas rocket attacks targeting its civilian population has been long in coming. I vividly recall a visit my wife and I took to the Israeli city of Sderot on March 20 of this year. Over the past four years, Palestinian terrorists – in particular, Hamas and Islamic Jihad – have fired more than 2,000 rockets at this civilian area, which is home to mostly poor and working-class people.
The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others hit their targets, killing more than a dozen civilians since 2001, including in February 2008 a father of four who had been studying at the local university. These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children.
The residents of Sderot were demanding that their nation take action to protect them. But Israel's postoccupation military options were limited, since Hamas deliberately fires its deadly rockets from densely populated urban areas, and the Israeli army has a strict policy of trying to avoid civilian casualties.
The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life. The terrorists have learned how to exploit the morality of democracies against those who do not want to kill civilians, even enemy civilians.
The attacks on Israeli citizens have little to do with what Israel does or does not do. They have everything to do with an ideology that despises – and openly seeks to destroy – the Jewish state. Consider that rocket attacks increased substantially after Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, and they accelerated further after Hamas seized control last year.
In the past months, a shaky cease-fire, organized by Egypt, was in effect. Hamas agreed to stop the rockets and Israel agreed to stop taking military action against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. The cease-fire itself was morally dubious and legally asymmetrical.
Israel, in effect, was saying to Hamas: If you stop engaging in the war crime of targeting our innocent civilians, we will stop engaging in the entirely lawful military acts of targeting your terrorists. Under the cease-fire, Israel reserved the right to engage in self-defense actions such as attacking terrorists who were in the course of firing rockets at its civilians.
Just before the hostilities began, Israel reopened a checkpoint to allow humanitarian aid to reenter Gaza. It had closed the point of entry after it had been targeted by Gazan rockets. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, also issued a stern, final warning to Hamas that unless it stopped the rockets, there would be a full-scale military response. The Hamas rockets continued and Israel kept its word, implementing a carefully prepared targeted air attack against Hamas targets.
On Sunday, I spoke to the air force general, now retired, who worked on the planning of the attack. He told me of the intelligence and planning that had gone into preparing for the contingency that the military option might become necessary. The Israeli air force had pinpointed with precision the exact locations of Hamas structures in an effort to minimize civilian casualties.
Even Hamas sources have acknowledged that the vast majority of those killed have been Hamas terrorists, though some civilian casualties are inevitable when, as BBC's Rushdi Abou Alouf – who is certainly not pro-Israel – reported, "The Hamas security compounds are in the middle of the city." Indeed, his home balcony was just 20 meters away from a compound he saw bombed.
There have been three types of international response to the Israeli military actions against the Hamas rockets. Not surprisingly, Iran, Hamas, and other knee-jerk Israeli-bashers have argued that the Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians are entirely legitimate and that the Israeli counterattacks are war crimes.
Equally unsurprising is the response of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and others who, at least when it comes to Israel, see a moral and legal equivalence between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that responds by targeting the terrorists.
And finally, there is the United States and a few other nations that place the blame squarely on Hamas for its unlawful and immoral policy of using its own civilians as human shields, behind whom they fire rockets at Israeli civilians.
The most dangerous of the three responses is not the Iranian-Hamas absurdity, which is largely ignored by thinking and moral people, but the United Nations and European Union response, which equates the willful murder of civilians with legitimate self-defense pursuant to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
This false moral equivalence only encourages terrorists to persist in their unlawful actions against civilians. The US has it exactly right by placing the blame on Hamas, while urging Israel to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sweet on Caroline
Brent Bozell III
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
One sign the liberal news media live in a plastic Manhattan bubble is their undying ardor for the Kennedy Myth, best known by that public-relations construct "Camelot." Instead of a president and First Lady, they believe, we had the King and Queen of Glamour. Never mind if their marriage was a joke and his list of presidential accomplishments was short. Never mind if the Republican half of the country feels sickened by the obsession. The media preferred the myth -- and they still do to this day. It is why they are promoting the anointment of unaccomplished Caroline Kennedy for the U.S. Senate in New York.
The very same media which spent months dismissing former mayor and Gov. Sarah Palin as too inexperienced for national office is now championing a woman whose primary qualification -- her only qualification -- is her last name. The very same media which still mock Palin's folksy "you betcha" or her interview with Katie Couric don't seem to notice when John Fund reports that in one 30-minute interview on the cable news channel New York One, Caroline Kennedy used the slang "you know" a total of 168 times.
How will Caroline Kennedy be expected to cast votes in the Senate when she's cared so little about voting as a citizen? Faced with reports that she had missed voting in several New York elections, including the 1994 re-election effort of Sen. Daniel Moynihan (the Senate seat she now expects to be handed like royalty), Kennedy told the Associated Press, "I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record. I'm glad it's been brought to my attention."
What?
There's a long line of New York politicians who are more qualified and more deserving of a Senate seat than this dippy heiress -- even liberal ones. Yet they have to watch this wannabe sound like one of her limo drivers just handed her the dismaying news of her own voting history? You know?
But the Kennedy-worshiping media elite just can't stop scratching their Camelot itch, showing those ridiculously over-broadcasted home movies of the Kennedy kids and marveling over Caroline Kennedy's life story. From "Nightline," here's ABC high-fructose syrup specialist John Donvan: "She would be the fourth Kennedy to be called senator. Surely a new dynastic record. And her return to Washington would close a circle after nearly half a century. For this is where, when her dad was the president, we first came to know the little girl, riding his shoulders, saddled up on ponies."
Riding ponies in your playground years somehow qualifies you for federal office, at least if your last name is Kennedy.
Donvan set the bar of qualifications incredibly low, for Caroline Kennedy had no drug arrests or overdoses, and no rape trials, unlike her cousins: "Other Kennedys of her generation ran afoul of the law, but Caroline Kennedy raised her kids and did work for charity and did the family name proud." Never mind that she admitted doing drugs in the 1970s "like a typical member of that generation."
Caroline is also allegedly qualified because she had no Chappaquiddick: "Consider this, Ted Kennedy, same name, but it took him years to figure out how to become the Lion of the Senate, with multiple missteps along the way, not always doing the name proud. ... At least she has kept it the way it was remembered, as part of a story that so many wanted to believe in."
Back in August, this same network treated John McCain's choice of Palin with nothing less than contempt. They "looked a little like father and daughter out for an ice cream," said ABC's David Wright. This is the same David Wright who swooned when Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama last January. Obama became the "adopted son of Camelot ... blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, but by JFK's daughter."
McCain aide Mike DuHaime attempted to tout Palin's "incredible life story" when she was first picked, but ABC anchor Bill Weir told him that in the "brutality of a national campaign," Palin was neglecting her duties as a mother: "She has an infant with special needs. Will that affect her campaigning?" This is the same Bill Weir who found the first whispers of Caroline Kennedy for Senate "exciting to talk about."
Reporters are incredibly transparent in their biases these days. Experience is a huge issue -- unless a Kennedy is running. Motherhood isn't a qualification for office -- unless a Kennedy is running. Smarts are important -- unless a Kennedy is running.
In short, the media have a slight possibility of being fair -- unless a Kennedy is running. You know?
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
One sign the liberal news media live in a plastic Manhattan bubble is their undying ardor for the Kennedy Myth, best known by that public-relations construct "Camelot." Instead of a president and First Lady, they believe, we had the King and Queen of Glamour. Never mind if their marriage was a joke and his list of presidential accomplishments was short. Never mind if the Republican half of the country feels sickened by the obsession. The media preferred the myth -- and they still do to this day. It is why they are promoting the anointment of unaccomplished Caroline Kennedy for the U.S. Senate in New York.
The very same media which spent months dismissing former mayor and Gov. Sarah Palin as too inexperienced for national office is now championing a woman whose primary qualification -- her only qualification -- is her last name. The very same media which still mock Palin's folksy "you betcha" or her interview with Katie Couric don't seem to notice when John Fund reports that in one 30-minute interview on the cable news channel New York One, Caroline Kennedy used the slang "you know" a total of 168 times.
How will Caroline Kennedy be expected to cast votes in the Senate when she's cared so little about voting as a citizen? Faced with reports that she had missed voting in several New York elections, including the 1994 re-election effort of Sen. Daniel Moynihan (the Senate seat she now expects to be handed like royalty), Kennedy told the Associated Press, "I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record. I'm glad it's been brought to my attention."
What?
There's a long line of New York politicians who are more qualified and more deserving of a Senate seat than this dippy heiress -- even liberal ones. Yet they have to watch this wannabe sound like one of her limo drivers just handed her the dismaying news of her own voting history? You know?
But the Kennedy-worshiping media elite just can't stop scratching their Camelot itch, showing those ridiculously over-broadcasted home movies of the Kennedy kids and marveling over Caroline Kennedy's life story. From "Nightline," here's ABC high-fructose syrup specialist John Donvan: "She would be the fourth Kennedy to be called senator. Surely a new dynastic record. And her return to Washington would close a circle after nearly half a century. For this is where, when her dad was the president, we first came to know the little girl, riding his shoulders, saddled up on ponies."
Riding ponies in your playground years somehow qualifies you for federal office, at least if your last name is Kennedy.
Donvan set the bar of qualifications incredibly low, for Caroline Kennedy had no drug arrests or overdoses, and no rape trials, unlike her cousins: "Other Kennedys of her generation ran afoul of the law, but Caroline Kennedy raised her kids and did work for charity and did the family name proud." Never mind that she admitted doing drugs in the 1970s "like a typical member of that generation."
Caroline is also allegedly qualified because she had no Chappaquiddick: "Consider this, Ted Kennedy, same name, but it took him years to figure out how to become the Lion of the Senate, with multiple missteps along the way, not always doing the name proud. ... At least she has kept it the way it was remembered, as part of a story that so many wanted to believe in."
Back in August, this same network treated John McCain's choice of Palin with nothing less than contempt. They "looked a little like father and daughter out for an ice cream," said ABC's David Wright. This is the same David Wright who swooned when Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama last January. Obama became the "adopted son of Camelot ... blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, but by JFK's daughter."
McCain aide Mike DuHaime attempted to tout Palin's "incredible life story" when she was first picked, but ABC anchor Bill Weir told him that in the "brutality of a national campaign," Palin was neglecting her duties as a mother: "She has an infant with special needs. Will that affect her campaigning?" This is the same Bill Weir who found the first whispers of Caroline Kennedy for Senate "exciting to talk about."
Reporters are incredibly transparent in their biases these days. Experience is a huge issue -- unless a Kennedy is running. Motherhood isn't a qualification for office -- unless a Kennedy is running. Smarts are important -- unless a Kennedy is running.
In short, the media have a slight possibility of being fair -- unless a Kennedy is running. You know?
Teaching Economics
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Many professors, mostly on the liberal side of the political spectrum, use their classrooms to proselytize students. I have taught economics for the past 40 years and challenge anyone to find even one student, among the thousands who went through my classes, who can say, "Professor Williams used his class to proselytize students." While acceptable at most universities, it is nothing less than academic dishonesty to do so. Like others I have my own values and opinions, such as those expressed in some of my nationally syndicated columns, but they never become a part of classroom discussion.
Learning how to think straight, as opposed to what values and opinions to hold, is the crucial part of education. Part of that learning is to be able to understand the distinction between subjective statements, for which there are no commonly accepted standards of proof, and positive statements for which there are. For example, the statement "Scientists cannot split the atom" is a positive statement because if there's any disagreement, there are facts to which we can appeal to settle the disagreement. Just visit Stanford's linear accelerator and watch them do it. By contrast, the statement "Scientists should not split the atom" is a subjective statement. There are no facts to which we can appeal to settle any disagreement. Disagreement can go on forever. A fairly good proxy for whether a statement is subjective is the presence of words such as should and ought. This lesson is closed by telling students that it is not being suggested that they purge their vocabulary of subjective terms such as should and ought because they are excellent tools to trick others into doing what you want them to do. However, in the process of tricking others, one need not trick himself.
A related lesson is dealing with terms such as better and best and worse. This lesson might be approached by my asking students which is the best system for resource allocation: capitalist, socialist or communist? After several fall for my bait, I tell them that the correct response is to tell me it's a nonsense question. It is akin to asking their physics professor: Which is the best state: a liquid, gaseous, solid or plasma state? However, if the physics professor were asked: Which is the cheapest state to nail a nail into a board? He could answer the question and probably say that it is the solid state. Going back to the question about capitalism versus socialism and communism, asking which system maximizes personal liberty and societal wealth, the answer would be capitalism, at least here on Earth.
Another pitfall to straight thinking is sometimes called the cause and effect fallacy. That fallacy is made when a person sees event B coming on the heels of event A and then says A caused B. There may no causal relationship at all. Such is the case when the rooster crows and shortly thereafter the sun rises. That is easy to see but many historians assert that the 1929 stock market crash caused the 1930s Great Depression. Little is further from the truth. Instead, it was caused by inept fiscal, monetary and regulatory policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations.
There are a number of other pitfalls to straight thinking that I lecture on as introductory material before we begin to explore economic theory. I tell students that if they hear me say something subjective, without my having prefaced it with "in my opinion," they are to raise their hand and tell me that they took my class to learn economics and not to be indoctrinated with my values. Personally, I want students to share my values that personal liberty, along with free markets, is morally superior to other forms of human organization. The most effective means to accomplish that goal is to give them the tools to be tough, rigorous, hard-minded thinkers and they will probably reach the same conclusions as I have.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Many professors, mostly on the liberal side of the political spectrum, use their classrooms to proselytize students. I have taught economics for the past 40 years and challenge anyone to find even one student, among the thousands who went through my classes, who can say, "Professor Williams used his class to proselytize students." While acceptable at most universities, it is nothing less than academic dishonesty to do so. Like others I have my own values and opinions, such as those expressed in some of my nationally syndicated columns, but they never become a part of classroom discussion.
Learning how to think straight, as opposed to what values and opinions to hold, is the crucial part of education. Part of that learning is to be able to understand the distinction between subjective statements, for which there are no commonly accepted standards of proof, and positive statements for which there are. For example, the statement "Scientists cannot split the atom" is a positive statement because if there's any disagreement, there are facts to which we can appeal to settle the disagreement. Just visit Stanford's linear accelerator and watch them do it. By contrast, the statement "Scientists should not split the atom" is a subjective statement. There are no facts to which we can appeal to settle any disagreement. Disagreement can go on forever. A fairly good proxy for whether a statement is subjective is the presence of words such as should and ought. This lesson is closed by telling students that it is not being suggested that they purge their vocabulary of subjective terms such as should and ought because they are excellent tools to trick others into doing what you want them to do. However, in the process of tricking others, one need not trick himself.
A related lesson is dealing with terms such as better and best and worse. This lesson might be approached by my asking students which is the best system for resource allocation: capitalist, socialist or communist? After several fall for my bait, I tell them that the correct response is to tell me it's a nonsense question. It is akin to asking their physics professor: Which is the best state: a liquid, gaseous, solid or plasma state? However, if the physics professor were asked: Which is the cheapest state to nail a nail into a board? He could answer the question and probably say that it is the solid state. Going back to the question about capitalism versus socialism and communism, asking which system maximizes personal liberty and societal wealth, the answer would be capitalism, at least here on Earth.
Another pitfall to straight thinking is sometimes called the cause and effect fallacy. That fallacy is made when a person sees event B coming on the heels of event A and then says A caused B. There may no causal relationship at all. Such is the case when the rooster crows and shortly thereafter the sun rises. That is easy to see but many historians assert that the 1929 stock market crash caused the 1930s Great Depression. Little is further from the truth. Instead, it was caused by inept fiscal, monetary and regulatory policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations.
There are a number of other pitfalls to straight thinking that I lecture on as introductory material before we begin to explore economic theory. I tell students that if they hear me say something subjective, without my having prefaced it with "in my opinion," they are to raise their hand and tell me that they took my class to learn economics and not to be indoctrinated with my values. Personally, I want students to share my values that personal liberty, along with free markets, is morally superior to other forms of human organization. The most effective means to accomplish that goal is to give them the tools to be tough, rigorous, hard-minded thinkers and they will probably reach the same conclusions as I have.
The UAW's Money-Squandering Corruptocracy
Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The UAW golfed. While carmakers soak up $17 billion in taxpayer bailout funds and demand more for their ailing industry, United Auto Workers bosses have wasted tens of millions of their workers' dues on gold-plated resorts and rotten investments. The labor organization's money-losing golf compound is just the tip of the iceberg.
Last week on my blog, I noted that the UAW owns and operates Black Lake Golf Course -- a "championship caliber" course opened in 2000 that's part of a larger "family education center" and retreat nestled in 1,000 acres of property in Onaway, Mich. Spearheaded by former UAW president Steve Yokich, the resort also includes "a beautiful gym with two full-sized basketball courts, an Olympic-size indoor pool, exercise and weight room, table-tennis and pool tables, a sauna, beaches, walking and bike trails, softball and soccer fields and a boat launch ramp." Like everything else we're subsidizing these days, the UAW's playground is a money pit. The Detroit Free Press reported earlier this year that the golf course (valued at $6 million) and education center (valued at $27 million) have together lost $23 million over the past five years. While membership in the union has plummeted, the UAW retains assets worth $1.2 billion.
Curious about how the UAW will be spending my money and yours, I sifted through the union's most recent annual report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor (which you can find at unionreports.gov). Who knew hitting the links was so central to the business of making cars?
In May and November 2007, the UAW forked over nearly $53,000 for union staff meetings at the Thousand Hills Golf Resort in Branson, Mo. In September 2007, the UAW dropped another $5,000 at the Lakes of Taylor Golf Club in Taylor, Mich., and another $9,000 at the Thunderbird Hills Golf Club in Huron, Ohio. Another bill for $5,772 showed up for the Branson, Mo., golf resort. On Oct. 26, 2007, the union spent $5,000 on another "golf outing" in Detroit. In May and June 2007, UAW bosses spent nearly $11,000 on a golf tournament and related expenses at the Hawthorne Hill Country Club in Lima, Ohio. And in April 2007, the UAW spent $12,000 for a charity golf sponsorship in Dearborn, Mich. In August 2007, the UAW paid nearly $10,000 to its for-profit Black Lake golf course operator, UBG, for something itemized as "Golf 2007 Summer School." UBG had nearly $4.4 million worth of outstanding loans from the union. Another for-profit entity that runs the education center, UBE, had nearly $20 million in outstanding loans from the union.
Perhaps, the union bosses might argue, they need all this fresh air and exercise to clear their heads in order to make wise financial decisions on behalf of their workers. If only. UAW management has proven to be a money-squandering corruptocracy with faux blue-collar trim. Former UAW head Yokich, who built the Black Lake black hole, is also responsible for bidding $9.75 million of workers' funds in a botched bid to purchase the gated La Mancha Resort Village in Palm Springs. The 100-room walled resort with spas, poolside massages and a "croquet lawn lit for night use" was on the verge of bankruptcy with $5.2 million in debt. Despite outrage from rank-and-file union members who thought one gold-plated golf resort was quite enough, leaders defended the La Mancha bid because, as union spokesman Paul Krell put it, "'You can never tell if you are going to become snowbound." Always putting the workers first!
That deal didn't go through, but the UAW's quixotic dalliance with a failed airline did. In February 2000, the union poured $14.7 million into Pro Air, a Detroit start-up airline that, well, didn't get off the ground. Plagued by safety problems, the feds shuttered the company less than a year later. The union didn't fare much better in its venture with a liberal radio network. In 1996, union heavies got the bright idea to invest $5 million in United Broadcasting Network, a left-wing precursor to Air America that the UAW hoped to use to spread its corporate-bashing propaganda. They shelled out for a $2 million, state-of-the-art studio in Detroit and incurred years of losses of a reported $75,000 a month before closing the network down in 2003.
And while the UAW and carmakers cry poor, they've operated massive joint funds for years that have paid for lavish items such as multi-million-dollar NASCAR racer sponsorships and Las Vegas junkets. The dire economic downturn hasn't changed the behavior of profligate union bigs at the front office or the shop floor. Local Detroit TV station WDIV recently caught local UAW bosses Ron Seroka and Jim Modzelewski -- both of whom make six-figure salaries -- on tape squandering thousands of hours of overtime on such important labor security matters as on-the-clock beer runs and bowling tournaments.
At least the groveling Big Three CEOs gave up their corporate jets. Where's the public flogging for the greed-infested UAW fat cats reaching into our pockets to keep them afloat?
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The UAW golfed. While carmakers soak up $17 billion in taxpayer bailout funds and demand more for their ailing industry, United Auto Workers bosses have wasted tens of millions of their workers' dues on gold-plated resorts and rotten investments. The labor organization's money-losing golf compound is just the tip of the iceberg.
Last week on my blog, I noted that the UAW owns and operates Black Lake Golf Course -- a "championship caliber" course opened in 2000 that's part of a larger "family education center" and retreat nestled in 1,000 acres of property in Onaway, Mich. Spearheaded by former UAW president Steve Yokich, the resort also includes "a beautiful gym with two full-sized basketball courts, an Olympic-size indoor pool, exercise and weight room, table-tennis and pool tables, a sauna, beaches, walking and bike trails, softball and soccer fields and a boat launch ramp." Like everything else we're subsidizing these days, the UAW's playground is a money pit. The Detroit Free Press reported earlier this year that the golf course (valued at $6 million) and education center (valued at $27 million) have together lost $23 million over the past five years. While membership in the union has plummeted, the UAW retains assets worth $1.2 billion.
Curious about how the UAW will be spending my money and yours, I sifted through the union's most recent annual report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor (which you can find at unionreports.gov). Who knew hitting the links was so central to the business of making cars?
In May and November 2007, the UAW forked over nearly $53,000 for union staff meetings at the Thousand Hills Golf Resort in Branson, Mo. In September 2007, the UAW dropped another $5,000 at the Lakes of Taylor Golf Club in Taylor, Mich., and another $9,000 at the Thunderbird Hills Golf Club in Huron, Ohio. Another bill for $5,772 showed up for the Branson, Mo., golf resort. On Oct. 26, 2007, the union spent $5,000 on another "golf outing" in Detroit. In May and June 2007, UAW bosses spent nearly $11,000 on a golf tournament and related expenses at the Hawthorne Hill Country Club in Lima, Ohio. And in April 2007, the UAW spent $12,000 for a charity golf sponsorship in Dearborn, Mich. In August 2007, the UAW paid nearly $10,000 to its for-profit Black Lake golf course operator, UBG, for something itemized as "Golf 2007 Summer School." UBG had nearly $4.4 million worth of outstanding loans from the union. Another for-profit entity that runs the education center, UBE, had nearly $20 million in outstanding loans from the union.
Perhaps, the union bosses might argue, they need all this fresh air and exercise to clear their heads in order to make wise financial decisions on behalf of their workers. If only. UAW management has proven to be a money-squandering corruptocracy with faux blue-collar trim. Former UAW head Yokich, who built the Black Lake black hole, is also responsible for bidding $9.75 million of workers' funds in a botched bid to purchase the gated La Mancha Resort Village in Palm Springs. The 100-room walled resort with spas, poolside massages and a "croquet lawn lit for night use" was on the verge of bankruptcy with $5.2 million in debt. Despite outrage from rank-and-file union members who thought one gold-plated golf resort was quite enough, leaders defended the La Mancha bid because, as union spokesman Paul Krell put it, "'You can never tell if you are going to become snowbound." Always putting the workers first!
That deal didn't go through, but the UAW's quixotic dalliance with a failed airline did. In February 2000, the union poured $14.7 million into Pro Air, a Detroit start-up airline that, well, didn't get off the ground. Plagued by safety problems, the feds shuttered the company less than a year later. The union didn't fare much better in its venture with a liberal radio network. In 1996, union heavies got the bright idea to invest $5 million in United Broadcasting Network, a left-wing precursor to Air America that the UAW hoped to use to spread its corporate-bashing propaganda. They shelled out for a $2 million, state-of-the-art studio in Detroit and incurred years of losses of a reported $75,000 a month before closing the network down in 2003.
And while the UAW and carmakers cry poor, they've operated massive joint funds for years that have paid for lavish items such as multi-million-dollar NASCAR racer sponsorships and Las Vegas junkets. The dire economic downturn hasn't changed the behavior of profligate union bigs at the front office or the shop floor. Local Detroit TV station WDIV recently caught local UAW bosses Ron Seroka and Jim Modzelewski -- both of whom make six-figure salaries -- on tape squandering thousands of hours of overtime on such important labor security matters as on-the-clock beer runs and bowling tournaments.
At least the groveling Big Three CEOs gave up their corporate jets. Where's the public flogging for the greed-infested UAW fat cats reaching into our pockets to keep them afloat?
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Excessive Force?
Who says?
By James S. Robbins
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
It’s clear what caused the renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. On June 19 of this year, a six-month ceasefire agreement went into effect after several months of escalating conflict. On December 19, Hamas announced it would not renew the agreement and resumed rocket attacks on southern Israel. In response, and after repeated warnings, Israel launched a long-planned operation to remove the source of the problem: the entire Hamas infrastructure.
One would think that Hamas’s decision to resume large-scale armed conflict would place the burden of responsibility for what has followed on them. Instead, two alternative story lines have developed: One is that Hamas and Israel are equally to blame for the situation, and both must stand down immediately; the other that the crisis is Israel’s fault for responding to the Hamas's provocations with “excessive force.”
The first story goes like this. Both sides use force. Both sides kill civilians. Both sides must cease this unacceptable behavior and sit down and negotiate. The first problem with this formulation is that Hamas will not ever truly talk to Israel, a state it does not recognize and seeks to destroy. With respect to civilians, when civilians die from Israeli bombs, it is an unintended and unwanted circumstance, whereas Hamas kills civilians by design. The only way for Hamas to “take all necessary measures to avoid civilian casualties,” as U.N. Gen. Sec. Ban Ki-Moon has directed both sides to do, is to stop, well, targeting civilians. (There’s a thought.)
Hamas supporters counter that the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in 2007 is the equivalent of violence against civilians, since it is they who suffer. But the blockade is in fact an alternative to violence, the very kind of thing that those who object to the use of force suggest.
It is also worth noting that the blockade could not work without Egypt’s cooperation. Egypt has been critical of Hamas for renouncing the ceasefire and resuming offensive operations, and sees Gaza as a refugee crisis in the making. (In January 2008, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, and not all returned.) Egypt also openly fears the spread of Iranian influence in the region, and Hamas is increasingly a creature of Tehran. Thus it makes strategic sense for Egypt to try to keep Hamas in a box. It will be interesting to see what the Egyptian representatives have to say at a prospective Arab summit on the crisis, if one even happens.
Regarding Israel’s excessive use of force (which Gen. Sec. Ban Ki-moon, and others, have alleged), one might ask for a definition of "excessive." If the definition is "more than necessary to be effective," then Israel has actually used insufficient force, since Hamas is still launching rockets (though nowhere near the “thousands” they threatened).
One gathers that these critics are relying on the principle of proportionality. While this is an established principle in just-war circles, it is a bit suspect. If all uses of force were proportional, how could one side gain a decisive advantage? Would not such conflicts drag on indefinitely, compounding the needless death and destruction? If a country is able to prevail in a conflict quickly, doesn’t that country owe it to its own people to do so? Besides, what is a proportional response to Hamas’s policy of firing rockets and mortars into populated areas? Should Israel respond in kind, killing civilians purposefully and gaining no military benefit? Those who object to Israel’s target list should be required to suggest which Hamas installations should be left standing — and why.
Also, even if proportionality is the standard, there is proportionality in objectives: Hamas seeks to destroy Israel, and Israel’s current offensive (as explained by several of the country's leading officials) is designed to destroy Hamas. If the war is back on, it makes sense for Israel to fight to win. The Hamas leadership should have considered that possibility before deciding not to renew the ceasefire.
And regardless of how Israel goes about fighting Hamas, the results could bring real change to the region. The Fatah faction is watching the destruction of the Hamas infrastructure in Gaza with some interest. Palestinian Authority officials have indicated they are ready to take over in Gaza should Israel “finish the job” and oust the Hamas regime. The top Hamas leaders in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, Mahmoud Zahar, and Said Siam, who said they would be “honored” to become martyrs for the cause when the offensive commenced, have seemingly had a change of heart and gone into hiding. Some reports say that there is a sense that the Hamas infrastructure is starting to crumble.
It is unclear whether Israel will mount a major ground offensive. It is hard to see how the gains from the air campaign can be solidified without some type of ground action. This will entail some casualties, but if anything was learned from the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is that Israel must move swiftly and decisively.
The country should not enter into a ground war lightly, especially one that will involve much fighting in difficult urban areas: Halting half-measures will play into the hands of Hamas, which will attempt to replicate Hezbollah’s brand of asymmetric warfare. Moreover, the political ends of such an incursion should be kept in mind at all times. Go in if needed, hand over power to another group (if Fatah, so be it), then get out and declare victory. If it can be wrapped up before the U.S. changes governments on January 20, so much the better. Just get it done.
By James S. Robbins
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
It’s clear what caused the renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. On June 19 of this year, a six-month ceasefire agreement went into effect after several months of escalating conflict. On December 19, Hamas announced it would not renew the agreement and resumed rocket attacks on southern Israel. In response, and after repeated warnings, Israel launched a long-planned operation to remove the source of the problem: the entire Hamas infrastructure.
One would think that Hamas’s decision to resume large-scale armed conflict would place the burden of responsibility for what has followed on them. Instead, two alternative story lines have developed: One is that Hamas and Israel are equally to blame for the situation, and both must stand down immediately; the other that the crisis is Israel’s fault for responding to the Hamas's provocations with “excessive force.”
The first story goes like this. Both sides use force. Both sides kill civilians. Both sides must cease this unacceptable behavior and sit down and negotiate. The first problem with this formulation is that Hamas will not ever truly talk to Israel, a state it does not recognize and seeks to destroy. With respect to civilians, when civilians die from Israeli bombs, it is an unintended and unwanted circumstance, whereas Hamas kills civilians by design. The only way for Hamas to “take all necessary measures to avoid civilian casualties,” as U.N. Gen. Sec. Ban Ki-Moon has directed both sides to do, is to stop, well, targeting civilians. (There’s a thought.)
Hamas supporters counter that the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in 2007 is the equivalent of violence against civilians, since it is they who suffer. But the blockade is in fact an alternative to violence, the very kind of thing that those who object to the use of force suggest.
It is also worth noting that the blockade could not work without Egypt’s cooperation. Egypt has been critical of Hamas for renouncing the ceasefire and resuming offensive operations, and sees Gaza as a refugee crisis in the making. (In January 2008, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, and not all returned.) Egypt also openly fears the spread of Iranian influence in the region, and Hamas is increasingly a creature of Tehran. Thus it makes strategic sense for Egypt to try to keep Hamas in a box. It will be interesting to see what the Egyptian representatives have to say at a prospective Arab summit on the crisis, if one even happens.
Regarding Israel’s excessive use of force (which Gen. Sec. Ban Ki-moon, and others, have alleged), one might ask for a definition of "excessive." If the definition is "more than necessary to be effective," then Israel has actually used insufficient force, since Hamas is still launching rockets (though nowhere near the “thousands” they threatened).
One gathers that these critics are relying on the principle of proportionality. While this is an established principle in just-war circles, it is a bit suspect. If all uses of force were proportional, how could one side gain a decisive advantage? Would not such conflicts drag on indefinitely, compounding the needless death and destruction? If a country is able to prevail in a conflict quickly, doesn’t that country owe it to its own people to do so? Besides, what is a proportional response to Hamas’s policy of firing rockets and mortars into populated areas? Should Israel respond in kind, killing civilians purposefully and gaining no military benefit? Those who object to Israel’s target list should be required to suggest which Hamas installations should be left standing — and why.
Also, even if proportionality is the standard, there is proportionality in objectives: Hamas seeks to destroy Israel, and Israel’s current offensive (as explained by several of the country's leading officials) is designed to destroy Hamas. If the war is back on, it makes sense for Israel to fight to win. The Hamas leadership should have considered that possibility before deciding not to renew the ceasefire.
And regardless of how Israel goes about fighting Hamas, the results could bring real change to the region. The Fatah faction is watching the destruction of the Hamas infrastructure in Gaza with some interest. Palestinian Authority officials have indicated they are ready to take over in Gaza should Israel “finish the job” and oust the Hamas regime. The top Hamas leaders in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, Mahmoud Zahar, and Said Siam, who said they would be “honored” to become martyrs for the cause when the offensive commenced, have seemingly had a change of heart and gone into hiding. Some reports say that there is a sense that the Hamas infrastructure is starting to crumble.
It is unclear whether Israel will mount a major ground offensive. It is hard to see how the gains from the air campaign can be solidified without some type of ground action. This will entail some casualties, but if anything was learned from the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is that Israel must move swiftly and decisively.
The country should not enter into a ground war lightly, especially one that will involve much fighting in difficult urban areas: Halting half-measures will play into the hands of Hamas, which will attempt to replicate Hezbollah’s brand of asymmetric warfare. Moreover, the political ends of such an incursion should be kept in mind at all times. Go in if needed, hand over power to another group (if Fatah, so be it), then get out and declare victory. If it can be wrapped up before the U.S. changes governments on January 20, so much the better. Just get it done.
Hamas Fantasy Rules
National Review Online
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Israel has been extremely dilatory in responding to the aggression of Hamas, but nobody doubted that the day of reckoning would come. Hamas is never going to change its belief that it has a God-given mission to destroy Israel, and the capacity to do so.
Since 2001, something on the order of 4,000 missiles, and the same number of mortar shells, have been fired from Gaza at civilian targets miles into Israel. Since taking power in Gaza, Hamas has split the Palestinians into two irreconcilable camps, with themselves as Islamists and Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas as putative nationalists (albeit with their own jihadist elements). While the latter camp has been negotiating for a peace settlement, Hamas has been preparing openly for the final war its leaders envision, asserting at every opportunity that it will never under any circumstances settle for the two-state solution that most of the world hopes for. The truce Hamas offered was an opportunity to stockpile weapons and undergo training. Hamas interpreted Israeli restraint as evidence that Israel was unable to defend its sovereignty and was therefore actually on the path to defeat and national dissolution.
For Hamas, the decision to resume hostilities carries no political risk. At best, they will kill some Israelis, boast of their heroic stature, and crow that Fatah can no longer claim to represent Palestinians. At worst, they will suffer a mass of casualties and make propaganda out of that, as though they themselves were not responsible for these horrors. Hamas is already cashing in on opportunistic pronouncements by the likes of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that the Israeli measures are “disproportionate,” or the burbling of Ban Ki-Moon, the ineffable United Nations secretary general, that “violence” is “unacceptable” — as though Israel and Hamas were moral equivalents.
An essential factor in this tragic situation is the readiness of Arabs and Muslims everywhere to take the Hamas fantasy for reality. In Cairo, Damascus, or Tehran, many evidently think it right and proper and normal for Hamas to keep up a barrage of missiles and rockets while Israelis are supposed to accept the punishment, while measures of self-defense on the part of Israel are to be considered criminal. The 2006 spell of fighting between Israel and Lebanon ended without a sufficiently clear-cut resolution, and this has led to the widespread delusion in the Arab and Muslim world that the destruction of Israel is indeed a real prospect.
Israel wants there to be no mistake about that again. At present, its ground forces are in position to complete any mopping up of Hamas military equipment that the air force has not dealt with. The disarmament of Hamas is an essential prerequisite of peace, for unless and until that happens, the Palestinian state must remain stillborn. The Israelis are fighting to free themselves from an unscrupulous opponent, but over and above that, the great hope is that they eventually will be able also to free the Palestinians — not only from leaders who are terrorizing them, but from the delusion that choosing such leaders can lead to anything but ruin.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Israel has been extremely dilatory in responding to the aggression of Hamas, but nobody doubted that the day of reckoning would come. Hamas is never going to change its belief that it has a God-given mission to destroy Israel, and the capacity to do so.
Since 2001, something on the order of 4,000 missiles, and the same number of mortar shells, have been fired from Gaza at civilian targets miles into Israel. Since taking power in Gaza, Hamas has split the Palestinians into two irreconcilable camps, with themselves as Islamists and Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas as putative nationalists (albeit with their own jihadist elements). While the latter camp has been negotiating for a peace settlement, Hamas has been preparing openly for the final war its leaders envision, asserting at every opportunity that it will never under any circumstances settle for the two-state solution that most of the world hopes for. The truce Hamas offered was an opportunity to stockpile weapons and undergo training. Hamas interpreted Israeli restraint as evidence that Israel was unable to defend its sovereignty and was therefore actually on the path to defeat and national dissolution.
For Hamas, the decision to resume hostilities carries no political risk. At best, they will kill some Israelis, boast of their heroic stature, and crow that Fatah can no longer claim to represent Palestinians. At worst, they will suffer a mass of casualties and make propaganda out of that, as though they themselves were not responsible for these horrors. Hamas is already cashing in on opportunistic pronouncements by the likes of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that the Israeli measures are “disproportionate,” or the burbling of Ban Ki-Moon, the ineffable United Nations secretary general, that “violence” is “unacceptable” — as though Israel and Hamas were moral equivalents.
An essential factor in this tragic situation is the readiness of Arabs and Muslims everywhere to take the Hamas fantasy for reality. In Cairo, Damascus, or Tehran, many evidently think it right and proper and normal for Hamas to keep up a barrage of missiles and rockets while Israelis are supposed to accept the punishment, while measures of self-defense on the part of Israel are to be considered criminal. The 2006 spell of fighting between Israel and Lebanon ended without a sufficiently clear-cut resolution, and this has led to the widespread delusion in the Arab and Muslim world that the destruction of Israel is indeed a real prospect.
Israel wants there to be no mistake about that again. At present, its ground forces are in position to complete any mopping up of Hamas military equipment that the air force has not dealt with. The disarmament of Hamas is an essential prerequisite of peace, for unless and until that happens, the Palestinian state must remain stillborn. The Israelis are fighting to free themselves from an unscrupulous opponent, but over and above that, the great hope is that they eventually will be able also to free the Palestinians — not only from leaders who are terrorizing them, but from the delusion that choosing such leaders can lead to anything but ruin.
Bush and the Firing Squad
Bill Murchison
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
So in a matter of days it's bye-bye, Bush. Then it's bye-bye, gradually, to the cottage industry dedicated to ridiculing, castigating, smearing and trashing the 43rd president of the United States, who couldn't have pleased this surly gang save by expiring in office (even if his expiry would have vaulted Dick Cheney to the White House).
One of the gang, indeed, worked out his obvious frustrations by making a movie depicting Bush as victim of an assassin's bullet. Not a few have proclaimed "W" the worst president in American history, in spite of Jimmy Carter's longstanding and tenacious claim to that honor.
What are such folks going to do without Bush to kick around? Maybe cultivate nasturtiums, watch Mark Phelps exercise tapes, or learn to play the contra bassoon. I wouldn't give long odds on the survival rate for nasturtiums whose color or progress displeases the gang. Bush-despisers (think Joy Behar, Keith Olbermann, Frank Rich, etc.,) aren't famous for patience with viewpoints different from their own.
A popular clich has it that "history will judge" whatever at a given moment requires judging. On that expectation the whole flap about Bush and his merits may impress the next generation as just plain weird. Bush hasn't by any means been the greatest chief executive since Washington, but then Keith OIbermann isn't the most astute commentator since Socrates.
In assessing the Bush stewardship we need to calm down -- get a grip. As president, as commander in chief, Bush might have performed better. So might Ronald Reagan. So might John Kennedy. Errare humanum est.
Where did Bush err? Well, clearly, in the weighting of causes to invade Iraq. There weren't any "weapons of mass destruction." On the other hand, 1) nearly everyone else thought there were, and that Saddam was willing to use them, 2) Saddam sealed his own doom by refusing cooperation with inspectors, and 3) Saddamite Iraq was a moral and political cesspool urgently requiring cleanup by someone some time.
Then anger over Iraq led to the silly but oft-repeated charge that Bush's anti-terror policies amounted somehow to a secret war on civil liberties.
Federal confusion when Katrina inundated New Orleans further diminished Bush's popularity ratings. Just why it did is hard to say in objective terms. America hadn't seen such a storm since Galveston, 1900. Both city and state officials behaved incompetently. The federal response might have been more immediate and energetic, but hindsight, as we know, is always perfect. Moreover, Bush directed to New Orleans vast amounts of money and supplies. The worst I can see he deserves, on Katrina, is a B minus.
So what is the deal with the Bush-despisers? Here's my own theory, preliminary in the way theories ought to be: All the malice and unforgivingness directed Bush's way grew from the Florida vote count, and from the persistent feeling among liberals and Gore partisans that "We wuz robbed," on account of which larcenous act the Bush administration was somehow illegitimate.
Defeat (adjudicated in the end by five conservative Supreme Court justices) stuck in the losers' craws, and they hadn't the desire to dislodge it. Revenge was what they wanted. They were the political equivalent of the baleful Confederate veteran on the cigarette lighter of some decades ago: "Forget Hell."
I don't say the lynch party set out to take down the president. I say they cut him no slack when stuff happened, demanded of him a perfection to which no politician could rise or aspire. On such terms the Bush presidency was doomed from the start: not least because the talking heads and writing hands of today belong largely to Democrats and other nonconservatives.
Maybe "W" wasn't the right man to start with, even for the GOP nomination. Still, he wasn't half as bad as his enemies seem to think. Question: How many terrorist attacks has America sustained since September 2001? Right, and yet there's more to offer in extenuation of "W" -- more that will be offered when the tumult and shouting die, as in time they always do.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
So in a matter of days it's bye-bye, Bush. Then it's bye-bye, gradually, to the cottage industry dedicated to ridiculing, castigating, smearing and trashing the 43rd president of the United States, who couldn't have pleased this surly gang save by expiring in office (even if his expiry would have vaulted Dick Cheney to the White House).
One of the gang, indeed, worked out his obvious frustrations by making a movie depicting Bush as victim of an assassin's bullet. Not a few have proclaimed "W" the worst president in American history, in spite of Jimmy Carter's longstanding and tenacious claim to that honor.
What are such folks going to do without Bush to kick around? Maybe cultivate nasturtiums, watch Mark Phelps exercise tapes, or learn to play the contra bassoon. I wouldn't give long odds on the survival rate for nasturtiums whose color or progress displeases the gang. Bush-despisers (think Joy Behar, Keith Olbermann, Frank Rich, etc.,) aren't famous for patience with viewpoints different from their own.
A popular clich has it that "history will judge" whatever at a given moment requires judging. On that expectation the whole flap about Bush and his merits may impress the next generation as just plain weird. Bush hasn't by any means been the greatest chief executive since Washington, but then Keith OIbermann isn't the most astute commentator since Socrates.
In assessing the Bush stewardship we need to calm down -- get a grip. As president, as commander in chief, Bush might have performed better. So might Ronald Reagan. So might John Kennedy. Errare humanum est.
Where did Bush err? Well, clearly, in the weighting of causes to invade Iraq. There weren't any "weapons of mass destruction." On the other hand, 1) nearly everyone else thought there were, and that Saddam was willing to use them, 2) Saddam sealed his own doom by refusing cooperation with inspectors, and 3) Saddamite Iraq was a moral and political cesspool urgently requiring cleanup by someone some time.
Then anger over Iraq led to the silly but oft-repeated charge that Bush's anti-terror policies amounted somehow to a secret war on civil liberties.
Federal confusion when Katrina inundated New Orleans further diminished Bush's popularity ratings. Just why it did is hard to say in objective terms. America hadn't seen such a storm since Galveston, 1900. Both city and state officials behaved incompetently. The federal response might have been more immediate and energetic, but hindsight, as we know, is always perfect. Moreover, Bush directed to New Orleans vast amounts of money and supplies. The worst I can see he deserves, on Katrina, is a B minus.
So what is the deal with the Bush-despisers? Here's my own theory, preliminary in the way theories ought to be: All the malice and unforgivingness directed Bush's way grew from the Florida vote count, and from the persistent feeling among liberals and Gore partisans that "We wuz robbed," on account of which larcenous act the Bush administration was somehow illegitimate.
Defeat (adjudicated in the end by five conservative Supreme Court justices) stuck in the losers' craws, and they hadn't the desire to dislodge it. Revenge was what they wanted. They were the political equivalent of the baleful Confederate veteran on the cigarette lighter of some decades ago: "Forget Hell."
I don't say the lynch party set out to take down the president. I say they cut him no slack when stuff happened, demanded of him a perfection to which no politician could rise or aspire. On such terms the Bush presidency was doomed from the start: not least because the talking heads and writing hands of today belong largely to Democrats and other nonconservatives.
Maybe "W" wasn't the right man to start with, even for the GOP nomination. Still, he wasn't half as bad as his enemies seem to think. Question: How many terrorist attacks has America sustained since September 2001? Right, and yet there's more to offer in extenuation of "W" -- more that will be offered when the tumult and shouting die, as in time they always do.
Dead Wrong?
After 30 years, it may be time to take Iran’s threats seriously.
By Clifford D. May
Monday, December 29, 2008
A few months ago, I was listening to an interview with a public-television producer who had been on assignment in Iran. He was saying that, despite almost 30 years under a revolutionary Islamist regime, Iran remains a surprisingly normal country. For example, visiting a mosque, he was reminded of “Lutherans worshipping in the Midwest.” Except that “Death to Israel!” was scrawled along one of the walls of the house of worship — something you don’t often see in Sioux City. But his “guide” told him not to take that seriously. “That’s just the way we Iranians talk,” he explained. “Like if we’re stuck in traffic, we say: “Death to traffic!”
The producer found that reassuring — and consistent with the view of many diplomats, academics, and journalists. The genocidal statements articulated by Iran’s ruling elites, they believe, are only rhetoric — not statements of goals that Iran is slowly but surely developing the capacity to realize. According to this narrative, all Iran really wants is respect and, eventually, rapprochement with the West.
Ze’ev Maghen, a senior lecturer in Islamic history and Persian language, and chair of the department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is convinced this view is dead wrong. In a policy paper (now also boiled down into an essay for Commentary magazine) he argues that “Iranian-Islamist threats to Israel’s existence are sincere, and they signal the determined pursuit of tenaciously-held ends.”
It was 30 years ago next month that Iran’s constitutional monarchy collapsed. The Shah fled and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to declare in Iran the establishment of “God’s government” on Earth. Henceforth, any opposition or dissent would be regarded as “a revolt against God.”
As a young foreign correspondent, I was sent to Iran to cover the transition. And while chants of “Death to America!” were common, it was not until October of 1979 — after I and most other reporters had departed — that student supporters of Khomeini seized the U.S. embassy and took its occupants hostage.
Over the years since, anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans have become as ubiquitous in Iran as the easy-listening music pumped into shopping malls in the U.S. Maghen notes that these slogans are yelled by fans when goals are scored at soccer matches, and in response to bravura sitar solos in concert halls.
“Even during the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca,” he writes, “Iranian participants have replaced their traditionally pious ejaculations of ‘I am at your service, O Lord, there is none like unto You!’ with responsive Persian cursing sessions aimed at the Hebrew- and English-speaking enemies of everything that is holy. Like the daily ‘Two-Minutes Hate’ in George Orwell’s 1984, this venom-spewing is the mantra upon which an entire generation of Iranians has been raised.”
Conventional wisdom has held that such relentless repetition drains words of significance, and that most Iranians harbor no “heartfelt hatred” for Jews, Israelis, or Americans.
However, Maghen says, anyone familiar with mass psychology knows that “the truly horrific atrocities in human history — the enslavements, the inquisitions, the terrorisms, the genocides — have been perpetrated not in hot blood but in cold: not as a result of urgent and immanent feeling but in the name of a transcendent ideology and as a result of painstaking indoctrination.”
He adds that, “by casting an entire people as a parasitic infestation, by demonizing, de-legitimizing, and dehumanizing them at home, in school, in the mosque, and in the media [the Iranian regime] has prepared in the minds of Iranians and their neighboring coreligionists the moral ground for the eradication of the state of Israel.”
In the short-run, Maghen believes, Iran’s rulers will continue their efforts to “create an atmosphere in which the massacre of large numbers of Jews and the destruction of their independent polity will be considered a tolerable if not indeed a legitimate eventuality.” In the long-run, they will work for Islamist dominance well beyond the Middle East. Khomeini intended the Islamic Revolution to spread — regionally at first, globally over time.
A new American administration is likely to engage in a new round of talks with Tehran. Maghen expects that Iran’s negotiators will ask the U.S. to “offer up the Western imperialist enclave or outpost known as Israel” in exchange for a promise of reconciliation. The deal needn’t be as blatant as was Hitler’s demand, at Munich in 1938, for Czechoslovakia. Instead, America may be asked only to pressure Israel to agree to concessions perilous to its security. That may be all Iran’s rulers need to make progress toward the genocidal goals they explicitly and outspokenly seek.
By Clifford D. May
Monday, December 29, 2008
A few months ago, I was listening to an interview with a public-television producer who had been on assignment in Iran. He was saying that, despite almost 30 years under a revolutionary Islamist regime, Iran remains a surprisingly normal country. For example, visiting a mosque, he was reminded of “Lutherans worshipping in the Midwest.” Except that “Death to Israel!” was scrawled along one of the walls of the house of worship — something you don’t often see in Sioux City. But his “guide” told him not to take that seriously. “That’s just the way we Iranians talk,” he explained. “Like if we’re stuck in traffic, we say: “Death to traffic!”
The producer found that reassuring — and consistent with the view of many diplomats, academics, and journalists. The genocidal statements articulated by Iran’s ruling elites, they believe, are only rhetoric — not statements of goals that Iran is slowly but surely developing the capacity to realize. According to this narrative, all Iran really wants is respect and, eventually, rapprochement with the West.
Ze’ev Maghen, a senior lecturer in Islamic history and Persian language, and chair of the department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is convinced this view is dead wrong. In a policy paper (now also boiled down into an essay for Commentary magazine) he argues that “Iranian-Islamist threats to Israel’s existence are sincere, and they signal the determined pursuit of tenaciously-held ends.”
It was 30 years ago next month that Iran’s constitutional monarchy collapsed. The Shah fled and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to declare in Iran the establishment of “God’s government” on Earth. Henceforth, any opposition or dissent would be regarded as “a revolt against God.”
As a young foreign correspondent, I was sent to Iran to cover the transition. And while chants of “Death to America!” were common, it was not until October of 1979 — after I and most other reporters had departed — that student supporters of Khomeini seized the U.S. embassy and took its occupants hostage.
Over the years since, anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans have become as ubiquitous in Iran as the easy-listening music pumped into shopping malls in the U.S. Maghen notes that these slogans are yelled by fans when goals are scored at soccer matches, and in response to bravura sitar solos in concert halls.
“Even during the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca,” he writes, “Iranian participants have replaced their traditionally pious ejaculations of ‘I am at your service, O Lord, there is none like unto You!’ with responsive Persian cursing sessions aimed at the Hebrew- and English-speaking enemies of everything that is holy. Like the daily ‘Two-Minutes Hate’ in George Orwell’s 1984, this venom-spewing is the mantra upon which an entire generation of Iranians has been raised.”
Conventional wisdom has held that such relentless repetition drains words of significance, and that most Iranians harbor no “heartfelt hatred” for Jews, Israelis, or Americans.
However, Maghen says, anyone familiar with mass psychology knows that “the truly horrific atrocities in human history — the enslavements, the inquisitions, the terrorisms, the genocides — have been perpetrated not in hot blood but in cold: not as a result of urgent and immanent feeling but in the name of a transcendent ideology and as a result of painstaking indoctrination.”
He adds that, “by casting an entire people as a parasitic infestation, by demonizing, de-legitimizing, and dehumanizing them at home, in school, in the mosque, and in the media [the Iranian regime] has prepared in the minds of Iranians and their neighboring coreligionists the moral ground for the eradication of the state of Israel.”
In the short-run, Maghen believes, Iran’s rulers will continue their efforts to “create an atmosphere in which the massacre of large numbers of Jews and the destruction of their independent polity will be considered a tolerable if not indeed a legitimate eventuality.” In the long-run, they will work for Islamist dominance well beyond the Middle East. Khomeini intended the Islamic Revolution to spread — regionally at first, globally over time.
A new American administration is likely to engage in a new round of talks with Tehran. Maghen expects that Iran’s negotiators will ask the U.S. to “offer up the Western imperialist enclave or outpost known as Israel” in exchange for a promise of reconciliation. The deal needn’t be as blatant as was Hitler’s demand, at Munich in 1938, for Czechoslovakia. Instead, America may be asked only to pressure Israel to agree to concessions perilous to its security. That may be all Iran’s rulers need to make progress toward the genocidal goals they explicitly and outspokenly seek.
Monday, December 29, 2008
What I Saw At McCain Headquarters On Election Night 2008
Austin Hill
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Viewing the United States through the eyes of a foreign national is one thing. And viewing the United States through the eyes of foreign media professionals is another thing.
So as we close-out 2008, and begin a new year with the soon-to-be President Obama, the view from the “foreign news desk” may shed some light on some of the ways in which the world misunderstands both our country, and our President-elect.
I don’t have any “McCain scandal” to tell. No tabloid-style inside scoop about John McCain and Sarah Palin squabbling behind the scenes on election night, or Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mom doing drugs, or “marital tension” boiling-over between celebrity Sarah and jealous husband Todd.
But on November 4, I was at McCain-Palin headquarters in John McCain’s hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. The headquarters were set-up at the luxurious Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Resort, a facility where Mr. McCain has spent election day for every one of his previous Senate campaigns, relaxing and watching the returns being reported.
I was hunkered-down in the “central media center,“ which was, essentially, a very large banquet facility packed with electronic equipment, and journalists and technicians from, literally, all over the world.
By 1pm Mountain Time, having watched multiple reports on the Fox Newschannel and CNN about “exit interviews” at polling centers on the east coast, there was a bit of a “lull in the action.” That’s when Ian, a reporter from Dublin, Ireland seated at the work station next to me, asked me to join him for lunch. And after some shop talk over food and beverages, the conversation got really interesting.
“You realize Europe wants Obama to win this thing, don’t you?” he asked.
“I know that’s a widely-held perception” I replied.
“You don’t think the polls are accurate?” he asked.
“I’m skeptical of them."
“The problem with McCain,” Ian explained, “is that he is perceived as being another war monger, just like Bush, and Europe is fed-up with Bush.”
“Yes, that is another widely-held perception” I told him. “But I’m even skeptical of this supposed hatred of Bush.”
“What’s to be skeptical about?” he asked.
“Well, consider this” I told him. “During the Bush presidency, no less that four heads-of-state have campaigned on Bush-like themes of cutting taxes, and taking a strong stance against Islamic-driven terrorism, and also promised to their countrymen closer ties with the United States and the Bush Administration itself. Stephen Harper of Canada, Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and Tony Blair of England all campaigned on these platforms, in one fashion or another, and they all won their respective elections. So while the opinion polls may reflect Bush hatred, ballot boxes have conveyed something different, and I take the election outcomes more seriously than I do opinion polls.”
Ian seemed a bit surprised by this analysis, yet he didn’t try to argue about it. Changing the topic, he then asked me “so is Fox Newschannel really the most popular cable tv news outlet in the U.S.?”
“Yes, it is consistently ranked the highest in viewer ship” I told him.
“I find that ‘fair and balanced’ moniker to be very amusing” he said. “Seems to me that much of what I see there is anything but balanced.”
“I think you need to separate the news from the talk shows” I told him. “Fair and balanced is meant to describe the news product, while the talk shows are opinion and editorial-based.”
“But do you even agree that the news is either fair, or balanced?” he asked.
“I do” I told him. “Juxtaposed with the liberal bias that is inbred within other news organizations, Fox is refreshingly un-biased.”
“That’s interesting” he said with a smirk on his face. I could tell he was skeptical, but was politely choosing not to argue.
Later that night, when the clock struck 9pm on the West Coast, and California was “called” for Obama, and Obama was thus declared the winner of the election, several American journalists began cheering, “high-fiving” each other, and dancing about in the McCain media center. A shot of staffers jumping and hugging on the set at CNN in Atlanta appeared on our big screen monitors, as well. “Oh dear God,” Ian exclaimed in his thick Irish brogue. “You weren’t jokin about the bias.”
“Pardon me” I replied, not quite understanding his point.
“I said you weren’t jokin about bias in American media” he said. “What’s with all this celebration for one candidate over the other?”
“It’s real” I told him. “You’re seeing some American media professionals in a rare moment of candor. Usually the bias is more subtle, but it’s always present. That’s why you can’t believe all the wonderful things told to you by the American press about Obama and other liberal politicians, nor can you believe everything terrible told to you about Bush and other conservatives.”
Conservative Americans have developed a healthy skepticism of our nation’s dominant, mainstream media. It’s time, now, to develop a skepticism of how our nation is being portrayed in the foreign media, as well. This will be especially important as we enter into the era of Obama.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Viewing the United States through the eyes of a foreign national is one thing. And viewing the United States through the eyes of foreign media professionals is another thing.
So as we close-out 2008, and begin a new year with the soon-to-be President Obama, the view from the “foreign news desk” may shed some light on some of the ways in which the world misunderstands both our country, and our President-elect.
I don’t have any “McCain scandal” to tell. No tabloid-style inside scoop about John McCain and Sarah Palin squabbling behind the scenes on election night, or Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mom doing drugs, or “marital tension” boiling-over between celebrity Sarah and jealous husband Todd.
But on November 4, I was at McCain-Palin headquarters in John McCain’s hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. The headquarters were set-up at the luxurious Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Resort, a facility where Mr. McCain has spent election day for every one of his previous Senate campaigns, relaxing and watching the returns being reported.
I was hunkered-down in the “central media center,“ which was, essentially, a very large banquet facility packed with electronic equipment, and journalists and technicians from, literally, all over the world.
By 1pm Mountain Time, having watched multiple reports on the Fox Newschannel and CNN about “exit interviews” at polling centers on the east coast, there was a bit of a “lull in the action.” That’s when Ian, a reporter from Dublin, Ireland seated at the work station next to me, asked me to join him for lunch. And after some shop talk over food and beverages, the conversation got really interesting.
“You realize Europe wants Obama to win this thing, don’t you?” he asked.
“I know that’s a widely-held perception” I replied.
“You don’t think the polls are accurate?” he asked.
“I’m skeptical of them."
“The problem with McCain,” Ian explained, “is that he is perceived as being another war monger, just like Bush, and Europe is fed-up with Bush.”
“Yes, that is another widely-held perception” I told him. “But I’m even skeptical of this supposed hatred of Bush.”
“What’s to be skeptical about?” he asked.
“Well, consider this” I told him. “During the Bush presidency, no less that four heads-of-state have campaigned on Bush-like themes of cutting taxes, and taking a strong stance against Islamic-driven terrorism, and also promised to their countrymen closer ties with the United States and the Bush Administration itself. Stephen Harper of Canada, Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and Tony Blair of England all campaigned on these platforms, in one fashion or another, and they all won their respective elections. So while the opinion polls may reflect Bush hatred, ballot boxes have conveyed something different, and I take the election outcomes more seriously than I do opinion polls.”
Ian seemed a bit surprised by this analysis, yet he didn’t try to argue about it. Changing the topic, he then asked me “so is Fox Newschannel really the most popular cable tv news outlet in the U.S.?”
“Yes, it is consistently ranked the highest in viewer ship” I told him.
“I find that ‘fair and balanced’ moniker to be very amusing” he said. “Seems to me that much of what I see there is anything but balanced.”
“I think you need to separate the news from the talk shows” I told him. “Fair and balanced is meant to describe the news product, while the talk shows are opinion and editorial-based.”
“But do you even agree that the news is either fair, or balanced?” he asked.
“I do” I told him. “Juxtaposed with the liberal bias that is inbred within other news organizations, Fox is refreshingly un-biased.”
“That’s interesting” he said with a smirk on his face. I could tell he was skeptical, but was politely choosing not to argue.
Later that night, when the clock struck 9pm on the West Coast, and California was “called” for Obama, and Obama was thus declared the winner of the election, several American journalists began cheering, “high-fiving” each other, and dancing about in the McCain media center. A shot of staffers jumping and hugging on the set at CNN in Atlanta appeared on our big screen monitors, as well. “Oh dear God,” Ian exclaimed in his thick Irish brogue. “You weren’t jokin about the bias.”
“Pardon me” I replied, not quite understanding his point.
“I said you weren’t jokin about bias in American media” he said. “What’s with all this celebration for one candidate over the other?”
“It’s real” I told him. “You’re seeing some American media professionals in a rare moment of candor. Usually the bias is more subtle, but it’s always present. That’s why you can’t believe all the wonderful things told to you by the American press about Obama and other liberal politicians, nor can you believe everything terrible told to you about Bush and other conservatives.”
Conservative Americans have developed a healthy skepticism of our nation’s dominant, mainstream media. It’s time, now, to develop a skepticism of how our nation is being portrayed in the foreign media, as well. This will be especially important as we enter into the era of Obama.
The awkward co-dependence of blacks and liberal Democrats
Star Parker
Monday, December 29, 2008
What does Caroline Kennedy have in common with black America? If your answer is not much, I'd tend to agree with you.
When I think of Caroline, I think of Manhattan and Park Avenue, not the Bronx and Brooklyn. I think of Brentwood and Beverly Hills, not Watts and South Central Los Angeles.
But there is something that Caroline and black America do have in common. The Democratic Party.
Whether Kennedy succeeds in her effort to slide into Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat will have little to do with her Democratic Party bona fides. Per her policy positions ticked off the other day, she is in perfect and predictable liberal alignment with party boilerplate. If she fails, it will be for reasons other than her views.
So what exactly is the common political ground that Kennedy bluebloods share with the 90 percent of America's blacks who vote for Democrats?
A careful look shows the deep internal contradictions of the Democratic Party and the complexity of the political psyche of black Americans.
Ironically, despite Democratic Party rhetoric about economic inequities and wealth and income gaps in America, those gaps are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one.
According to exit polls from November's election, Barack Obama captured the vote of America' richest and America's poorest. Fifty-two percent of those with incomes over $200,000 voted for Obama and more than 60 percent of those earning under $30,000 did.
Our wealthiest senator, John Kerry, is a Democrat, as is our wealthiest House member, Jane Harman.
The nation's two wealthiest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are both, by all indication, Democrats.
What political aspirations can black Americans, whose median income lags the nation's share with these multimillionaires and billionaires?
There is little common ground regarding values.
Church attendance correlates reliably over time with party affiliation, and this remained true in this last election. Those who attend church frequently vote Republican. Those who don't usually vote Democratic. Except blacks.
Blacks, in fact, have the highest church attendance in the country. Seventy-six percent of black Democrats attend church at least monthly. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans do and 50 percent of white Democrats do.
A recent Gallup poll shows blacks more aligned with Republicans than Democrats on social issues -- moral acceptability of homosexuality, abortion, and sexual promiscuity.
On energy and environmental issues, blacks poll more closely with conservatives than with liberals. It's because these are pocketbook issues. Working blacks have little interest in paying the higher taxes and bearing the higher costs that will result from chasing global warming windmills and displacing cheap hydrocarbon energy with exotic government-subsidized alternatives. Lower energy costs also put blacks on the side of offshore drilling for oil and gas.
How about education? Wealthy liberals, despite having their own kids in private schools, oppose school choice. When a black family is given the opportunity to pull its child out of a failing public school and send him or her to a church school or another alternative, they are grateful.
So where's the common ground? Income redistribution. A recent Zogby poll shows 80 percent of Democrats, 90 percent of liberals, and 76 percent of blacks supporting taxing the wealthy to give money back to low-income Americans.
Despite everything else, blacks vote to stay on the liberal plantation. Pop psychologists would call the relationship between wealthy liberals and blacks co-dependence.
Republicans are wrong if they think they'll win blacks on social issues alone. They need to help blacks understand that limited government provides the economic mobility and opportunity they need and that the welfare, redistribution state does the opposite. They must help blacks gain self-confidence so that they can enjoy the benefits that can only come from freedom.
So far, Republicans have failed to do this. Which is another reason why they now sit on the outside looking in.
Monday, December 29, 2008
What does Caroline Kennedy have in common with black America? If your answer is not much, I'd tend to agree with you.
When I think of Caroline, I think of Manhattan and Park Avenue, not the Bronx and Brooklyn. I think of Brentwood and Beverly Hills, not Watts and South Central Los Angeles.
But there is something that Caroline and black America do have in common. The Democratic Party.
Whether Kennedy succeeds in her effort to slide into Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat will have little to do with her Democratic Party bona fides. Per her policy positions ticked off the other day, she is in perfect and predictable liberal alignment with party boilerplate. If she fails, it will be for reasons other than her views.
So what exactly is the common political ground that Kennedy bluebloods share with the 90 percent of America's blacks who vote for Democrats?
A careful look shows the deep internal contradictions of the Democratic Party and the complexity of the political psyche of black Americans.
Ironically, despite Democratic Party rhetoric about economic inequities and wealth and income gaps in America, those gaps are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one.
According to exit polls from November's election, Barack Obama captured the vote of America' richest and America's poorest. Fifty-two percent of those with incomes over $200,000 voted for Obama and more than 60 percent of those earning under $30,000 did.
Our wealthiest senator, John Kerry, is a Democrat, as is our wealthiest House member, Jane Harman.
The nation's two wealthiest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are both, by all indication, Democrats.
What political aspirations can black Americans, whose median income lags the nation's share with these multimillionaires and billionaires?
There is little common ground regarding values.
Church attendance correlates reliably over time with party affiliation, and this remained true in this last election. Those who attend church frequently vote Republican. Those who don't usually vote Democratic. Except blacks.
Blacks, in fact, have the highest church attendance in the country. Seventy-six percent of black Democrats attend church at least monthly. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans do and 50 percent of white Democrats do.
A recent Gallup poll shows blacks more aligned with Republicans than Democrats on social issues -- moral acceptability of homosexuality, abortion, and sexual promiscuity.
On energy and environmental issues, blacks poll more closely with conservatives than with liberals. It's because these are pocketbook issues. Working blacks have little interest in paying the higher taxes and bearing the higher costs that will result from chasing global warming windmills and displacing cheap hydrocarbon energy with exotic government-subsidized alternatives. Lower energy costs also put blacks on the side of offshore drilling for oil and gas.
How about education? Wealthy liberals, despite having their own kids in private schools, oppose school choice. When a black family is given the opportunity to pull its child out of a failing public school and send him or her to a church school or another alternative, they are grateful.
So where's the common ground? Income redistribution. A recent Zogby poll shows 80 percent of Democrats, 90 percent of liberals, and 76 percent of blacks supporting taxing the wealthy to give money back to low-income Americans.
Despite everything else, blacks vote to stay on the liberal plantation. Pop psychologists would call the relationship between wealthy liberals and blacks co-dependence.
Republicans are wrong if they think they'll win blacks on social issues alone. They need to help blacks understand that limited government provides the economic mobility and opportunity they need and that the welfare, redistribution state does the opposite. They must help blacks gain self-confidence so that they can enjoy the benefits that can only come from freedom.
So far, Republicans have failed to do this. Which is another reason why they now sit on the outside looking in.
Wit And Wisdom Through The Ages
Burt Prelutsky
Monday, December 29, 2008
Today, while making my way through a supermarket parking lot, I nearly got clipped when I didn’t hear a car backing out from its space. I assume it was one of those silent hybrids. Once I got done thanking God for providing me with my cat-like reflexes, it occurred to me to wonder why every vehicle doesn’t come equipped with those back-up beepers one finds on trucks.
That, in turn, reminded me that a friend recently informed me that she and her husband had just purchased a hybrid and that it ran as silent as a tomb. When I commented that such cars must be particularly dangerous for blind people, she said, “Well, they shouldn’t be driving in the first place.”
It’s not often these days that I laugh out loud except at my own remarks, but that one got a full-fledged chuckle. This being the season for gift-giving, and few gifts being as precious or as inexpensive as laughter, I will take this opportunity to share a number of time-honored witticisms which should at least warrant a grin, if not necessarily a guffaw.
Among Mark Twain’s numerous sage observations: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” “The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.” “There is no distinctly Native American criminal class save Congress.” And, my personal favorite, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
Winston Churchill, when he wasn’t otherwise occupied trying to warn the world about Hitler and Stalin, and doing what he could to defeat both, found the time to declare “For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle” and “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings, while the inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
George Bernard Shaw, although an avowed Socialist, was bright enough to acknowledge “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
G. Gordon Liddy, probably the only person to emerge from the Watergate scandal with his manhood intact, described a liberal as “someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”
Douglas Casey, an economics guru and one-time college classmate of Bill Clinton, described foreign aid as “a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”
P.J. O’Rourke, the American who’s probably done the most to promote the cause of booze, cigars and political cynicism, is the fellow who said “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys” and “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free!”
Ronald Reagan, the last first-rate president we’ve had and very possibly, at the rate we’re going, the last one we’ll ever have, wasn’t called the Great Communicator for nothing. Among his many memorable comments: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” And the even more graphic “The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”
It was Thomas Jefferson who warned that “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have,” while it was Pericles who, nearly 2500 years ago, uttered these rather blood-chilling words: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
But you needn’t go back quite that far for honest, pithy words of wisdom. It was Steve Downs, of Wisconsin, who, in a recent e-mail to Townhall magazine, struck a resounding blow against the corrupting influence of politically correct speech when he insisted that “Words have meanings! Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented worker’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist.’”
Monday, December 29, 2008
Today, while making my way through a supermarket parking lot, I nearly got clipped when I didn’t hear a car backing out from its space. I assume it was one of those silent hybrids. Once I got done thanking God for providing me with my cat-like reflexes, it occurred to me to wonder why every vehicle doesn’t come equipped with those back-up beepers one finds on trucks.
That, in turn, reminded me that a friend recently informed me that she and her husband had just purchased a hybrid and that it ran as silent as a tomb. When I commented that such cars must be particularly dangerous for blind people, she said, “Well, they shouldn’t be driving in the first place.”
It’s not often these days that I laugh out loud except at my own remarks, but that one got a full-fledged chuckle. This being the season for gift-giving, and few gifts being as precious or as inexpensive as laughter, I will take this opportunity to share a number of time-honored witticisms which should at least warrant a grin, if not necessarily a guffaw.
Among Mark Twain’s numerous sage observations: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” “The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.” “There is no distinctly Native American criminal class save Congress.” And, my personal favorite, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
Winston Churchill, when he wasn’t otherwise occupied trying to warn the world about Hitler and Stalin, and doing what he could to defeat both, found the time to declare “For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle” and “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings, while the inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
George Bernard Shaw, although an avowed Socialist, was bright enough to acknowledge “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
G. Gordon Liddy, probably the only person to emerge from the Watergate scandal with his manhood intact, described a liberal as “someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”
Douglas Casey, an economics guru and one-time college classmate of Bill Clinton, described foreign aid as “a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”
P.J. O’Rourke, the American who’s probably done the most to promote the cause of booze, cigars and political cynicism, is the fellow who said “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys” and “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free!”
Ronald Reagan, the last first-rate president we’ve had and very possibly, at the rate we’re going, the last one we’ll ever have, wasn’t called the Great Communicator for nothing. Among his many memorable comments: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” And the even more graphic “The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”
It was Thomas Jefferson who warned that “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have,” while it was Pericles who, nearly 2500 years ago, uttered these rather blood-chilling words: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
But you needn’t go back quite that far for honest, pithy words of wisdom. It was Steve Downs, of Wisconsin, who, in a recent e-mail to Townhall magazine, struck a resounding blow against the corrupting influence of politically correct speech when he insisted that “Words have meanings! Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented worker’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist.’”
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Grow Up!
An Obamafied American Idol Christmas.
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I was at the mall two days before Christmas, and it was strangely quiet. So quiet that, sadly, I was able to hear every word of Kelly Clarkson bellowing over the sound system “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” Don’t get me wrong — I love seasonal songs. “Winter Wonderland” — I dig it. “Rudolph” — man, he’s cool, albeit not as literally as Frosty. But “Grown-Up Christmas List” is one of those overwrought ballads of melismatic bombast made for the American Idol crowd. It’s all about how the singer now eschews asking Santa for materialist goodies — beribboned trinkets and gaudy novelties — in favor of selfless grown-up stuff like world peace.
Which is an odd sentiment to hear at a shopping mall.
But it seems to have done the trick. “Retail Sales Plummet,” read the Christmas headline in the Wall Street Journal. “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”
Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we’ll be fine.”
And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these last few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.
And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.
And how does the rest of the world, of whose tender sensibilities then Senator Obama was so mindful, feel about the collapse of American consumer excess? They’re aghast, they’re terrified, they’re on a one-way express elevator down to Sub-Basement Level 37 of the abyss with no hope of putting on the brakes unless the global economy can restore aggregate demand. What does all that mumbo-jumbo about “aggregate demand” mean? Well, that’s a fancy term for you — yes, you, Joe Lardbutt, the bloated disgusting embodiment of American excess, driving around in your Chevy Behemoth, getting two blocks to the gallon as you shear the roof off the drive-thru lane to pick up your $7.93 decaf gingersnap-mocha-pepperoni-zebra mussel frappuccino, which makes for a wonderful cool refreshing thirst-quencher after you’ve been working up a sweat watching the plasma TV in your rec room all morning with the thermostat set to 87. The message from the European political class couldn’t be more straightforward: If you crass, vulgar Americans don’t ramp up the demand, we’re kaput. Unless you get back to previous levels of planet-devastating consumption, the planet is screwed.
“Much of the load will fall on the US,” wrote Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, “largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak.” The European Union has 500 million people, compared with America’s 300 million. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are advanced economies whose combined population adds up to that of the United States. Many EU members have enjoyed for decades the enlightened progressive policies Americans won’t be getting until January 20th. Why then are they so “inert” that their economic fortunes depend on the despised moronic Yanks?
Ah, well. To return to Kelly Clarkson — and Barbra Streisand and Michael Buble and Amy Grant — the striking thing about their “Grown-Up Christmas List” is how childish it is. The concerned vocalist tells Santa that what she wants for Christmas is:
“No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start…”
Whether wars start depends on the intended target’s ability to deter. As to “lives torn apart,” that, too, is a matter of being on the receiving end. If you’re in an African dictatorship, your life can be torn apart. If you’re in a society that values individual liberty, you’ll at least get a shot at tearing your own life apart — you’ll make bad choices, marry a ne’er-do-well, blow your savings, lose your job — but these are ultimately within your power to correct. The passivity of the lyric — the “lives” that get “torn apart” is very revealing. A state in which lives aren’t torn apart will be, by definition, totalitarian: As in The Stepford Wives or The Invasion Of the Body Snatchers, we’ll all be wandering around in glassy-eyed conformity. “Lives” will no longer be “torn apart” because they’re no longer lives, but simply the husks of a centrally controlled tyranny. To live is messy but liberating: Free societies enable the citizenry to fulfill their potential — to innovate, to create, to accumulate — while recognizing that some of their number will fail. But to attempt to insulate free peoples from moral hazard is debilitating and ultimately fatal. To Martin Wolf’s list of a Europe “too inert, too complacent, too weak,” we might add “too old”: Healthy societies recharge their batteries by the aged and wealthy lending their savings to the young and eager. But Germany is a population of prosperous seniors with no grandchildren to lend to. Japan is a society of great invention with insufficient youth to provide a domestic market. That’s why if you’re Sony or Ikea or any other great global brand, you want access to America for your product. That’s why economic recovery will be driven by the U.S., and not by Euro-Japanese entities long marinated in Obamanomics.
One final thought on “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” The first two lines always give me a chuckle:
“Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee…”
When was the last time you saw a child sit upon a Santa’s knee? Rod Liddle in the British Spectator reports that at a top London department store Santa sits at one end of the bench while a large “X” directs the moppet to a place down the other end, well out of arm’s reach. For even Santa Claus is just another pedophile in waiting. Naughty or nice? Who really knows? Best not to take any chances. That’s another way societies seize up — by obsessing on phantom threats rather than real ones.
Are free peoples now merely vulnerable infants in need of protection from the pedophile Santa of global capitalism? This is the issue that will determine the future: Euro-style state-directed protectionist sclerosis vs. individual liberty in all its messiness. I know what I want on my “Grown-Up Christmas List.”
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I was at the mall two days before Christmas, and it was strangely quiet. So quiet that, sadly, I was able to hear every word of Kelly Clarkson bellowing over the sound system “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” Don’t get me wrong — I love seasonal songs. “Winter Wonderland” — I dig it. “Rudolph” — man, he’s cool, albeit not as literally as Frosty. But “Grown-Up Christmas List” is one of those overwrought ballads of melismatic bombast made for the American Idol crowd. It’s all about how the singer now eschews asking Santa for materialist goodies — beribboned trinkets and gaudy novelties — in favor of selfless grown-up stuff like world peace.
Which is an odd sentiment to hear at a shopping mall.
But it seems to have done the trick. “Retail Sales Plummet,” read the Christmas headline in the Wall Street Journal. “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”
Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we’ll be fine.”
And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these last few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.
And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.
And how does the rest of the world, of whose tender sensibilities then Senator Obama was so mindful, feel about the collapse of American consumer excess? They’re aghast, they’re terrified, they’re on a one-way express elevator down to Sub-Basement Level 37 of the abyss with no hope of putting on the brakes unless the global economy can restore aggregate demand. What does all that mumbo-jumbo about “aggregate demand” mean? Well, that’s a fancy term for you — yes, you, Joe Lardbutt, the bloated disgusting embodiment of American excess, driving around in your Chevy Behemoth, getting two blocks to the gallon as you shear the roof off the drive-thru lane to pick up your $7.93 decaf gingersnap-mocha-pepperoni-zebra mussel frappuccino, which makes for a wonderful cool refreshing thirst-quencher after you’ve been working up a sweat watching the plasma TV in your rec room all morning with the thermostat set to 87. The message from the European political class couldn’t be more straightforward: If you crass, vulgar Americans don’t ramp up the demand, we’re kaput. Unless you get back to previous levels of planet-devastating consumption, the planet is screwed.
“Much of the load will fall on the US,” wrote Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, “largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak.” The European Union has 500 million people, compared with America’s 300 million. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are advanced economies whose combined population adds up to that of the United States. Many EU members have enjoyed for decades the enlightened progressive policies Americans won’t be getting until January 20th. Why then are they so “inert” that their economic fortunes depend on the despised moronic Yanks?
Ah, well. To return to Kelly Clarkson — and Barbra Streisand and Michael Buble and Amy Grant — the striking thing about their “Grown-Up Christmas List” is how childish it is. The concerned vocalist tells Santa that what she wants for Christmas is:
“No more lives torn apart,
That wars would never start…”
Whether wars start depends on the intended target’s ability to deter. As to “lives torn apart,” that, too, is a matter of being on the receiving end. If you’re in an African dictatorship, your life can be torn apart. If you’re in a society that values individual liberty, you’ll at least get a shot at tearing your own life apart — you’ll make bad choices, marry a ne’er-do-well, blow your savings, lose your job — but these are ultimately within your power to correct. The passivity of the lyric — the “lives” that get “torn apart” is very revealing. A state in which lives aren’t torn apart will be, by definition, totalitarian: As in The Stepford Wives or The Invasion Of the Body Snatchers, we’ll all be wandering around in glassy-eyed conformity. “Lives” will no longer be “torn apart” because they’re no longer lives, but simply the husks of a centrally controlled tyranny. To live is messy but liberating: Free societies enable the citizenry to fulfill their potential — to innovate, to create, to accumulate — while recognizing that some of their number will fail. But to attempt to insulate free peoples from moral hazard is debilitating and ultimately fatal. To Martin Wolf’s list of a Europe “too inert, too complacent, too weak,” we might add “too old”: Healthy societies recharge their batteries by the aged and wealthy lending their savings to the young and eager. But Germany is a population of prosperous seniors with no grandchildren to lend to. Japan is a society of great invention with insufficient youth to provide a domestic market. That’s why if you’re Sony or Ikea or any other great global brand, you want access to America for your product. That’s why economic recovery will be driven by the U.S., and not by Euro-Japanese entities long marinated in Obamanomics.
One final thought on “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” The first two lines always give me a chuckle:
“Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee…”
When was the last time you saw a child sit upon a Santa’s knee? Rod Liddle in the British Spectator reports that at a top London department store Santa sits at one end of the bench while a large “X” directs the moppet to a place down the other end, well out of arm’s reach. For even Santa Claus is just another pedophile in waiting. Naughty or nice? Who really knows? Best not to take any chances. That’s another way societies seize up — by obsessing on phantom threats rather than real ones.
Are free peoples now merely vulnerable infants in need of protection from the pedophile Santa of global capitalism? This is the issue that will determine the future: Euro-style state-directed protectionist sclerosis vs. individual liberty in all its messiness. I know what I want on my “Grown-Up Christmas List.”
Tale of Two Presidential Workout Fanatics
Michelle Malkin
Friday, December 26, 2008
Ah, the perks of media affection. On Christmas Day, the Washington Post delivered a front-page paean to Barack Obama's workout habits. The 1,233-word ode to O's physical fitness read more like a Harlequin romance novel than an A-1 news article.
Sighed smitten reporter Eli Zaslow, "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games." Drool cup to the newsroom, stat.
Zaslow imparted us with vital information about buff Bam's regimen: "Obama has gone to the gym for about 90 minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row." The Washington Post enlightened us with more gushing commentary from Obama friends and associates, who explain how, as the subtitle of Zaslow's opus put it, "Gym Workouts Help Obama Carry the Weight of His Position."
For adoring journalists, you see, Obama's workout fanaticism demonstrates the discipline and balance in his life. Apparently, what's good for Obama's glistening pecs is good for the country. Zaslow quoted Obama Chicago crony Marty Nesbitt, who offered this diagnosis: "He doesn't think of it as something he has to do -- it's his time for himself, a chance for him to reflect. It's his break. He feels better and more revved up after he gets in his workout."
And when Obama feels better, the skies will part, the sun will shine (in moderate, environmentally correct, non-global warming-inducing amounts, of course), and peace will reign worldwide!
Too bad the doughy, McDonald's-chomping, coffee-guzzling members of the White House press corps couldn't see the merits of White House exercise over the past eight years. After giggling about his out-of-shape colleagues in the media, Zaslow mentioned in passing that President George W. Bush shares Obama's commitment to health. What he failed to acknowledge is that the same reporters who so greatly admire Obama's lithe figure derided Bush for his training schedule.
Former Washington Post writer Jonathan Chait famously attacked Bush three years ago in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined "The (over)exercise of power." Recounting how President Bush ran 3.5 miles a day and preached more cross-training to a federal judge, Chait fumed, "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? ... What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy."
Chait argued that Bush's passionate devotion to exercise was a dereliction of duty. "Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement?" he jeered. "It's nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does."
Can you imagine any member of the Obamedia mocking the incoming gym rat-in-chief this way?
Chait was not alone. Reuters journalist Caron Bohan weaved the same unhinged themes into a piece on Bush's two-hour, 17-mile bike ride with cycling champ Lance Armstrong in Crawford, Texas, in 2005. After noting his six-day-a-week workout schedule, Bohan steered the piece into an anti-war screed:
"Bush says exercise helps sharpen his thinking. But some of his critics view his exercise obsession as an indulgence that takes time away from other priorities. Among them is Cindy Sheehan, the Vacaville, Calif., mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who until late last week was camped out down the road from Bush's ranch seeking a meeting with him to discuss her opposition to the war. Sheehan, who left her vigil on Thursday to tend to her sick mother, has said she believes Bush should take fewer bike rides to have more time to focus on the 'the nation's work.'"
Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist.
Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.
The good news: In just a few short weeks, W. will be able to exercise in peace, free from the disapproving glares of journalists now rushing to mop the sweat -- er, the glisten -- from Barack Obama's hallowed brow.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Ah, the perks of media affection. On Christmas Day, the Washington Post delivered a front-page paean to Barack Obama's workout habits. The 1,233-word ode to O's physical fitness read more like a Harlequin romance novel than an A-1 news article.
Sighed smitten reporter Eli Zaslow, "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games." Drool cup to the newsroom, stat.
Zaslow imparted us with vital information about buff Bam's regimen: "Obama has gone to the gym for about 90 minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row." The Washington Post enlightened us with more gushing commentary from Obama friends and associates, who explain how, as the subtitle of Zaslow's opus put it, "Gym Workouts Help Obama Carry the Weight of His Position."
For adoring journalists, you see, Obama's workout fanaticism demonstrates the discipline and balance in his life. Apparently, what's good for Obama's glistening pecs is good for the country. Zaslow quoted Obama Chicago crony Marty Nesbitt, who offered this diagnosis: "He doesn't think of it as something he has to do -- it's his time for himself, a chance for him to reflect. It's his break. He feels better and more revved up after he gets in his workout."
And when Obama feels better, the skies will part, the sun will shine (in moderate, environmentally correct, non-global warming-inducing amounts, of course), and peace will reign worldwide!
Too bad the doughy, McDonald's-chomping, coffee-guzzling members of the White House press corps couldn't see the merits of White House exercise over the past eight years. After giggling about his out-of-shape colleagues in the media, Zaslow mentioned in passing that President George W. Bush shares Obama's commitment to health. What he failed to acknowledge is that the same reporters who so greatly admire Obama's lithe figure derided Bush for his training schedule.
Former Washington Post writer Jonathan Chait famously attacked Bush three years ago in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined "The (over)exercise of power." Recounting how President Bush ran 3.5 miles a day and preached more cross-training to a federal judge, Chait fumed, "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? ... What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy."
Chait argued that Bush's passionate devotion to exercise was a dereliction of duty. "Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement?" he jeered. "It's nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does."
Can you imagine any member of the Obamedia mocking the incoming gym rat-in-chief this way?
Chait was not alone. Reuters journalist Caron Bohan weaved the same unhinged themes into a piece on Bush's two-hour, 17-mile bike ride with cycling champ Lance Armstrong in Crawford, Texas, in 2005. After noting his six-day-a-week workout schedule, Bohan steered the piece into an anti-war screed:
"Bush says exercise helps sharpen his thinking. But some of his critics view his exercise obsession as an indulgence that takes time away from other priorities. Among them is Cindy Sheehan, the Vacaville, Calif., mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who until late last week was camped out down the road from Bush's ranch seeking a meeting with him to discuss her opposition to the war. Sheehan, who left her vigil on Thursday to tend to her sick mother, has said she believes Bush should take fewer bike rides to have more time to focus on the 'the nation's work.'"
Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist.
Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.
The good news: In just a few short weeks, W. will be able to exercise in peace, free from the disapproving glares of journalists now rushing to mop the sweat -- er, the glisten -- from Barack Obama's hallowed brow.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
A Disturbing Book Worth Reading
Tony Blankley
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
I recently read a book that deserves the widest possible readership: "The Trouble with Textbooks -- Distorting History and Religion," by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra. I never have met or talked with either of these gentlemen, but I can't say enough good things about this book. For all who believe that there is a fairly objective rendition of history that we are obliged to teach our children, this book reveals how shockingly far from that objective American education -- particularly in schools' textbooks -- has fallen.
In their conclusion, the authors quote the great historian of Islam Bernard Lewis' observation concerning the willful bending of history: "We live in a time when great efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to falsify the record of the past and to make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties, and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was."
I discuss some of the findings of Tobin and Ybarra's study in my latest book ("American Grit -- What It Will Take To Survive and Win in the 21st Century"), which will be released Jan. 12. "The Trouble with Textbooks" identifies a system of self-censorship and cultural equivalence that "celebrates everybody and omits many unpleasant historic facts."
The grievance group that has become particularly adept at influencing textbook publishing is the organized Muslim lobby. The founder of the Council on Islamic Education, the chief Islamic group for vetting textbooks in the United States, refers to his work as a "bloodless revolution inside American junior high and high school classrooms."
He is, regrettably, right. While these days one may expect "sensitive deference" to Muslim sensitivities, the authors show how American textbooks have gone so far as to outright proselytize Islam.
As "The Trouble with Textbooks" shows, textbooks relate Christian and Jewish religious traditions as stories attributed to some source (for example, "According to the New Testament "), while Islamic traditions are related as indisputable historical facts. The authors cite the textbook "Holt World History," where one can read that Moses "claimed to receive the Ten Commandments from god," but "Mohammed simply 'received' the Koran from God." The textbook "Pearson's World Civilizations" instructs that Jesus of Nazareth is "believed by Christians to be the Messiah" -- which would be a fine comparative religion study observation if the book didn't also disclose that Muhammad "received revelations from Allah."
"The Trouble with Textbooks" is filled with such shocking examples. It also reports on a textbook ("McDougal Littell World Cultures and Geography") that relates that "Judaism is a story of exile" and that "Christians believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah" but that the Quran "is the collection of God's revelations to Muhammad." As "The Trouble with Textbooks" makes only too clear, one instance perhaps could be overlooked, but in fact, there is a consistent malicious practice of Islam -- and only Islam -- being described as historical truth in numerous prominent public-school textbooks. In those textbooks, Christianity and Judaism equally as consistently are described as mere notions of their believers.
I have no problem with religions being taught in public-school textbooks on a comparative basis. But to see Islam alone taught as the "truth" is an outrage. This is only one small part of the assault on truth in textbooks by organized Muslim special pleaders that is analyzed in the book "The Trouble with Textbooks." As you might expect, there are constant examples of American textbooks describing recent Israeli/Palestinian history in a manner consistent with the late Yasser Arafat's version rather than anything approaching honest and accurate history.
I understand that perfect objectivity in the study of history is never possible. And it would not surprise anyone that each country tends to teach its children its history -- and the history of the world -- in a manner that makes the country look better than it perhaps is. What is particularly galling in this report on American textbooks is that a fraction of the 5 million or so Muslims in America are winning the battle for textbook writing against the interest and tradition of the 275 million or so Judeo-Christian Americans.
"The Trouble with Textbooks" is a wake-up call to the parents of America to fight back to reinsert the truth of our history in our children's textbooks and classrooms. Is it too much to ask that in American schools our traditions and faith not be denigrated but rather get equal treatment with other faiths and traditions?
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
I recently read a book that deserves the widest possible readership: "The Trouble with Textbooks -- Distorting History and Religion," by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra. I never have met or talked with either of these gentlemen, but I can't say enough good things about this book. For all who believe that there is a fairly objective rendition of history that we are obliged to teach our children, this book reveals how shockingly far from that objective American education -- particularly in schools' textbooks -- has fallen.
In their conclusion, the authors quote the great historian of Islam Bernard Lewis' observation concerning the willful bending of history: "We live in a time when great efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to falsify the record of the past and to make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties, and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was."
I discuss some of the findings of Tobin and Ybarra's study in my latest book ("American Grit -- What It Will Take To Survive and Win in the 21st Century"), which will be released Jan. 12. "The Trouble with Textbooks" identifies a system of self-censorship and cultural equivalence that "celebrates everybody and omits many unpleasant historic facts."
The grievance group that has become particularly adept at influencing textbook publishing is the organized Muslim lobby. The founder of the Council on Islamic Education, the chief Islamic group for vetting textbooks in the United States, refers to his work as a "bloodless revolution inside American junior high and high school classrooms."
He is, regrettably, right. While these days one may expect "sensitive deference" to Muslim sensitivities, the authors show how American textbooks have gone so far as to outright proselytize Islam.
As "The Trouble with Textbooks" shows, textbooks relate Christian and Jewish religious traditions as stories attributed to some source (for example, "According to the New Testament "), while Islamic traditions are related as indisputable historical facts. The authors cite the textbook "Holt World History," where one can read that Moses "claimed to receive the Ten Commandments from god," but "Mohammed simply 'received' the Koran from God." The textbook "Pearson's World Civilizations" instructs that Jesus of Nazareth is "believed by Christians to be the Messiah" -- which would be a fine comparative religion study observation if the book didn't also disclose that Muhammad "received revelations from Allah."
"The Trouble with Textbooks" is filled with such shocking examples. It also reports on a textbook ("McDougal Littell World Cultures and Geography") that relates that "Judaism is a story of exile" and that "Christians believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah" but that the Quran "is the collection of God's revelations to Muhammad." As "The Trouble with Textbooks" makes only too clear, one instance perhaps could be overlooked, but in fact, there is a consistent malicious practice of Islam -- and only Islam -- being described as historical truth in numerous prominent public-school textbooks. In those textbooks, Christianity and Judaism equally as consistently are described as mere notions of their believers.
I have no problem with religions being taught in public-school textbooks on a comparative basis. But to see Islam alone taught as the "truth" is an outrage. This is only one small part of the assault on truth in textbooks by organized Muslim special pleaders that is analyzed in the book "The Trouble with Textbooks." As you might expect, there are constant examples of American textbooks describing recent Israeli/Palestinian history in a manner consistent with the late Yasser Arafat's version rather than anything approaching honest and accurate history.
I understand that perfect objectivity in the study of history is never possible. And it would not surprise anyone that each country tends to teach its children its history -- and the history of the world -- in a manner that makes the country look better than it perhaps is. What is particularly galling in this report on American textbooks is that a fraction of the 5 million or so Muslims in America are winning the battle for textbook writing against the interest and tradition of the 275 million or so Judeo-Christian Americans.
"The Trouble with Textbooks" is a wake-up call to the parents of America to fight back to reinsert the truth of our history in our children's textbooks and classrooms. Is it too much to ask that in American schools our traditions and faith not be denigrated but rather get equal treatment with other faiths and traditions?
Global Warming Rope-a-Dope
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy our planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil. The Washington Post asserted on May 28, 2006 that there were only "a handful of skeptics" of manmade climate fears. Bill Blakemore on Aug. 30, 2006 said, "After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such (scientific) debate on global warming." U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said it was "criminally irresponsible" to ignore the urgency of global warming. U.N. special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland on May 10, 2007 declared the climate debate "over" and added "it's completely immoral, even, to question" the U.N.'s scientific "consensus." In July 23, 2007, CNN's Miles O'Brien said, "The scientific debate is over." Earlier he said that scientific skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming "are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually."
The global warming scare has provided a field day for politicians and others who wish to control our lives. After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet. Recently, more and more scientists are summoning up the courage to speak out and present evidence against the global warming rope-a-dope. Atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming."
Dr. Goldenberg has the company of at least 650 noted scientists documented in the recently released U.S. Senate Minority Report: "More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims: Scientists Continue to Debunk 'Consensus' in 2008." The scientists, not environmental activists, include Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in physics, who said, "I am a skeptic … Global warming has become a new religion." Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an environmental physical chemist, said warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history … When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." "So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming," said Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member. Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, said, "Many (scientists) are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined."
The fact of the matter is an increasing amount of climate research suggests a possibility of global cooling. Geologist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University says, "Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely." Geologist Dr. David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, currently at Uppsala University in Sweden asks, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?"
That's a vital question for Americans to ask. Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it's not inconceivable that Congress, caught in the grip of the global warming zealots, would keep all the laws on the books they wrote in the name of fighting global warming. Personally, I would not put it past them to write more.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy our planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil. The Washington Post asserted on May 28, 2006 that there were only "a handful of skeptics" of manmade climate fears. Bill Blakemore on Aug. 30, 2006 said, "After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such (scientific) debate on global warming." U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said it was "criminally irresponsible" to ignore the urgency of global warming. U.N. special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland on May 10, 2007 declared the climate debate "over" and added "it's completely immoral, even, to question" the U.N.'s scientific "consensus." In July 23, 2007, CNN's Miles O'Brien said, "The scientific debate is over." Earlier he said that scientific skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming "are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually."
The global warming scare has provided a field day for politicians and others who wish to control our lives. After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet. Recently, more and more scientists are summoning up the courage to speak out and present evidence against the global warming rope-a-dope. Atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming."
Dr. Goldenberg has the company of at least 650 noted scientists documented in the recently released U.S. Senate Minority Report: "More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims: Scientists Continue to Debunk 'Consensus' in 2008." The scientists, not environmental activists, include Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in physics, who said, "I am a skeptic … Global warming has become a new religion." Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an environmental physical chemist, said warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history … When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." "So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming," said Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member. Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, said, "Many (scientists) are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined."
The fact of the matter is an increasing amount of climate research suggests a possibility of global cooling. Geologist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University says, "Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely." Geologist Dr. David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, currently at Uppsala University in Sweden asks, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?"
That's a vital question for Americans to ask. Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it's not inconceivable that Congress, caught in the grip of the global warming zealots, would keep all the laws on the books they wrote in the name of fighting global warming. Personally, I would not put it past them to write more.
The Dumbing Down of Academe
Burt Prelutsky
Monday, December 22, 2008
Just when you think the folks on the left can't get any goofier, they go and surpass themselves. If silliness were an Olympic event, these lunkheads could be counted on to bring home the gold. The fool's gold, that is.
Actually, they could probably excel in the sprints, seeing as how they're not weighed down with a whole lot of common sense. In case you haven't gotten the word, the religious left, as I like to think of them, seeing as how they live their lives by a certain dogma, have now determined that poor people are terribly under-represented on America's college campuses. It was, I suppose, only a matter of time. After all, if no institute of higher education can justify its existence unless its student population is composed of X-percent of women, Hispanics, blacks, gays and the physically handicapped, some Democrat was bound to notice that there still remained an untapped source of future votes; namely, poor, young whites.
Diversity in the student body is the catch phrase. But, as you may have noticed, there is no parallel diversity along the faculties. In the humanities departments of most American colleges, professors run the gamut from liberal to radical. Given a choice between Ahmadinejad and a Republican, a large majority would vote for the little schmuck in the windbreaker.
Frankly, I see no reason to give preferential treatment to students for no better reason than that their parents are poor. If a mix of humanity is what they're really seeking, I say they should throw open the doors to idiots. And, no, I'm not referring to those aforementioned professors in the liberal arts who get paid a lot of money for doing nothing more than foisting their half-baked politics on a bunch of highly impressionable 18-year-olds. No, I'm talking about the genuine article -- people with subterranean I.Q.s.
I mean, if diversity is of such monumental importance, why limit it to race, gender and national origin? Obviously, members of these groups have far more in common with each other than they have with the intellectually- challenged -- or whatever it is that the P.C. crowd is calling dumb people this week.
Honestly, I haven't a clue why college would be a more exalting experience just because the student in the next seat has different pigmentation or hails from a country where indoor plumbing is optional.
Admittedly, it's been many years since I was a collegian. Still, as I recall, the real value of the four years, aside from learning how to drink and how to talk to women without stuttering, was the enforced proximity to the minds and works of Socrates, Newton, Freud, Shakespeare, Plato, Milton, Michelangelo, Einstein, Da Vinci and Jefferson, and was neither enhanced nor diminished by the color or creed of the other students.
The truth of the matter was that my interest in my fellow scholars, and I don't think my attitude was at all atypical, was limited to wanting to date the more attractive coeds and wanting to eviscerate those brainiacs most likely to raise the class curve.
Inasmuch as smart, poor kids already receive academic scholarships, one can only assume that it's the stupid ones whom the social engineers are trying to cram through the ivied portals. But, inasmuch as once in, they're destined to flunk out, I have a better solution. I suggest we take our lead from "The Wizard of Oz." The Scarecrow, as you may recall, didn't waste four years boning up for final exams. The great and powerful Oz merely handed him a diploma, and just like that, Ray Bolger was squaring the hypotenuse and jabbering away like a young William F. Buckley, Jr.
Why not give diplomas to anybody who wants one? In a day and age when people are wasting their parents' hard-earned money majoring in things like Gay Studies, Sit Coms of the 60's, and Comic Books as Literature, why not do the decent thing and just hand out sheepskins to anyone who says, "Please"? A built-in bonus of my plan is that with all those goobers off the campuses, there would be additional parking spaces for the people studying to be doctors, mathematicians, and scientists.
After all, when all is said and done, most college graduates aren't really smarter than other people. They just think they are.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Just when you think the folks on the left can't get any goofier, they go and surpass themselves. If silliness were an Olympic event, these lunkheads could be counted on to bring home the gold. The fool's gold, that is.
Actually, they could probably excel in the sprints, seeing as how they're not weighed down with a whole lot of common sense. In case you haven't gotten the word, the religious left, as I like to think of them, seeing as how they live their lives by a certain dogma, have now determined that poor people are terribly under-represented on America's college campuses. It was, I suppose, only a matter of time. After all, if no institute of higher education can justify its existence unless its student population is composed of X-percent of women, Hispanics, blacks, gays and the physically handicapped, some Democrat was bound to notice that there still remained an untapped source of future votes; namely, poor, young whites.
Diversity in the student body is the catch phrase. But, as you may have noticed, there is no parallel diversity along the faculties. In the humanities departments of most American colleges, professors run the gamut from liberal to radical. Given a choice between Ahmadinejad and a Republican, a large majority would vote for the little schmuck in the windbreaker.
Frankly, I see no reason to give preferential treatment to students for no better reason than that their parents are poor. If a mix of humanity is what they're really seeking, I say they should throw open the doors to idiots. And, no, I'm not referring to those aforementioned professors in the liberal arts who get paid a lot of money for doing nothing more than foisting their half-baked politics on a bunch of highly impressionable 18-year-olds. No, I'm talking about the genuine article -- people with subterranean I.Q.s.
I mean, if diversity is of such monumental importance, why limit it to race, gender and national origin? Obviously, members of these groups have far more in common with each other than they have with the intellectually- challenged -- or whatever it is that the P.C. crowd is calling dumb people this week.
Honestly, I haven't a clue why college would be a more exalting experience just because the student in the next seat has different pigmentation or hails from a country where indoor plumbing is optional.
Admittedly, it's been many years since I was a collegian. Still, as I recall, the real value of the four years, aside from learning how to drink and how to talk to women without stuttering, was the enforced proximity to the minds and works of Socrates, Newton, Freud, Shakespeare, Plato, Milton, Michelangelo, Einstein, Da Vinci and Jefferson, and was neither enhanced nor diminished by the color or creed of the other students.
The truth of the matter was that my interest in my fellow scholars, and I don't think my attitude was at all atypical, was limited to wanting to date the more attractive coeds and wanting to eviscerate those brainiacs most likely to raise the class curve.
Inasmuch as smart, poor kids already receive academic scholarships, one can only assume that it's the stupid ones whom the social engineers are trying to cram through the ivied portals. But, inasmuch as once in, they're destined to flunk out, I have a better solution. I suggest we take our lead from "The Wizard of Oz." The Scarecrow, as you may recall, didn't waste four years boning up for final exams. The great and powerful Oz merely handed him a diploma, and just like that, Ray Bolger was squaring the hypotenuse and jabbering away like a young William F. Buckley, Jr.
Why not give diplomas to anybody who wants one? In a day and age when people are wasting their parents' hard-earned money majoring in things like Gay Studies, Sit Coms of the 60's, and Comic Books as Literature, why not do the decent thing and just hand out sheepskins to anyone who says, "Please"? A built-in bonus of my plan is that with all those goobers off the campuses, there would be additional parking spaces for the people studying to be doctors, mathematicians, and scientists.
After all, when all is said and done, most college graduates aren't really smarter than other people. They just think they are.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Liberals Under the Microscope
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, December 19, 2008
If I had a bigger ego, I could easily imagine that liberals say and do the things they say and do simply to perplex or annoy me. But I know I shouldn’t take it personally. All sane and sensible people are equally dismayed.
For instance, Rep. Charlie Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has been accused of failing to report income on a rental house he owns in a Dominican Republic resort, used one of his four rent-control New York apartments for campaign activities, mailed letters on official congressional stationery soliciting funds for an educational center to be named after himself, and used government property to store his Mercedes.
In response to the accusations, the congressman said, “I don’t believe making mistakes means you have to give up your career.” I agree. When a congressman makes these many “mistakes,” he should go to jail.
Even the New York Times called Rangel an embarrassment. House Speaker Pelosi, who vowed to rid Capitol Hill of corruption -- bringing to mind a picture of someone trying to drain the Pacific Ocean of water using a teaspoon -- said that she “saw no reason why Mr. Rangel should step down.” Of course not, Nancy. It’s not as if he’s a Republican.
Whatever you might say about Democrats, you can’t deny that they’re often good for a laugh. Back when he was the crack-smoking mayor, Marion Berry proudly announced, “Outside of the killings, Washington, D.C., has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” Now that’s what I call a half-full glass kind of guy.
Apparently nobody is immune to the financial meltdown. In return for endorsing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton got him to promise to help pay off her campaign debt. Towards that end, Joe Biden recently sent an e-mail to three million of Obama’s donors, nagging them for contributions. What’s more, this is the second time the suckers were being hit up on Hillary’s behalf. Of course it’s not for me to say how people spend their hard-earned money, but the last I heard, the Clintons were worth upwards of a hundred million dollars. Are they saving it all for a rainy day? Do these people even pay for their lunches?
It’s said that cynics know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Look up “cynic” in the dictionary and you’ll find a photo of the Clintons.
A while ago, I observed that sometimes it seemed to me that the people most anxious to get married were homosexuals. But I was conned. We now see by the low number of marriages that have actually taken place that the entire campaign was more an excuse to stage demonstrations and whine about inequality than a sincere desire to tie the knot that motivated them to make an issue of the issue.
It’s worth noting that Hollywood, as you would expect, is filled with people who believe fervently in same-sex marriages, but not so much in opposite-sex marriages. Even when there are kids involved. Just a few of the parent couples who have decided that marriage didn’t fit in with their plans are Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, Chris Noth and Tara Wilson, and, of course, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
I must confess I got a kick out of Pitt’s excuse for not proposing to the mother of his children. He said that until all the gays in America were given the right to marry, he wouldn’t marry Angelina. I mean, I’ve heard of guys using wars, the economy and even the nuclear bomb, as an excuse not to march down the aisle, but this one takes the cake. Just not the wedding cake.
Friday, December 19, 2008
If I had a bigger ego, I could easily imagine that liberals say and do the things they say and do simply to perplex or annoy me. But I know I shouldn’t take it personally. All sane and sensible people are equally dismayed.
For instance, Rep. Charlie Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has been accused of failing to report income on a rental house he owns in a Dominican Republic resort, used one of his four rent-control New York apartments for campaign activities, mailed letters on official congressional stationery soliciting funds for an educational center to be named after himself, and used government property to store his Mercedes.
In response to the accusations, the congressman said, “I don’t believe making mistakes means you have to give up your career.” I agree. When a congressman makes these many “mistakes,” he should go to jail.
Even the New York Times called Rangel an embarrassment. House Speaker Pelosi, who vowed to rid Capitol Hill of corruption -- bringing to mind a picture of someone trying to drain the Pacific Ocean of water using a teaspoon -- said that she “saw no reason why Mr. Rangel should step down.” Of course not, Nancy. It’s not as if he’s a Republican.
Whatever you might say about Democrats, you can’t deny that they’re often good for a laugh. Back when he was the crack-smoking mayor, Marion Berry proudly announced, “Outside of the killings, Washington, D.C., has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” Now that’s what I call a half-full glass kind of guy.
Apparently nobody is immune to the financial meltdown. In return for endorsing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton got him to promise to help pay off her campaign debt. Towards that end, Joe Biden recently sent an e-mail to three million of Obama’s donors, nagging them for contributions. What’s more, this is the second time the suckers were being hit up on Hillary’s behalf. Of course it’s not for me to say how people spend their hard-earned money, but the last I heard, the Clintons were worth upwards of a hundred million dollars. Are they saving it all for a rainy day? Do these people even pay for their lunches?
It’s said that cynics know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Look up “cynic” in the dictionary and you’ll find a photo of the Clintons.
A while ago, I observed that sometimes it seemed to me that the people most anxious to get married were homosexuals. But I was conned. We now see by the low number of marriages that have actually taken place that the entire campaign was more an excuse to stage demonstrations and whine about inequality than a sincere desire to tie the knot that motivated them to make an issue of the issue.
It’s worth noting that Hollywood, as you would expect, is filled with people who believe fervently in same-sex marriages, but not so much in opposite-sex marriages. Even when there are kids involved. Just a few of the parent couples who have decided that marriage didn’t fit in with their plans are Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, Chris Noth and Tara Wilson, and, of course, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
I must confess I got a kick out of Pitt’s excuse for not proposing to the mother of his children. He said that until all the gays in America were given the right to marry, he wouldn’t marry Angelina. I mean, I’ve heard of guys using wars, the economy and even the nuclear bomb, as an excuse not to march down the aisle, but this one takes the cake. Just not the wedding cake.
Whatever Happened to Global Warming?
Because we could sure use some of it right about now.
By Deroy Murdock
Wednesday, December 23, 2008
Winter officially arrived with Sunday’s solstice. But for many Americans, frigid January-like conditions have prevailed for weeks.
Christmas and Hanukkah travelers are delayed if not stranded at airports on the northwest and northeast coasts. Snow clogs runways, and ice coats airplane wing flaps as Americans wait extra hours and days to reach their loved ones.
New Englanders still lack electricity after a December 11 ice storm snapped power lines. Some 3,900 Granite State customers remain in the dark after what PSNH, the local utility, called “the most devastating natural disaster to hit New Hampshire in recent history.” Over the weekend, snow similarly knocked out the lights in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.
Meanwhile, up to eight inches of snow struck New Orleans and southern Louisiana on December 11 and didn’t melt for 48 hours in some neighborhoods.
“I’ve lived in south Louisiana my entire life and had never seen the amount of snow we saw in many parts of the parish that day,” Tammany Parish resident Andrew Canulette wrote in December 17’s New Orleans Times-Picayune.
"That sort of thing just doesn’t happen around here.”
In southern California last Wednesday, half an inch of snow brightened Malibu’s hills while a half-foot barricaded highways and marooned commuters in desert towns east of Los Angeles. Snow barred soldiers at Barstow’s Fort Irwin from deploying to Iraq. In Las Vegas, 3.6 inches of the white stuff — the most seen in 19 years — shuttered McCarren Airport Wednesday and dusted the Strip’s hotels and casinos.
What are the odds of that?
Actually, the odds are rising that snow, ice, and cold will grow increasingly common. As serious scientists repeatedly explain, global cooling is here. It is chilling temperatures — if not the climate alarmists’ fevered expectations of so-called “global warming.”
According to the National Climatic Data Center, 2008 will be America’s coldest year since 1997, thanks to La Niña and precipitation in the central and eastern states. Solar quietude also may underlie global cooling. This year’s sunspots and solar radiation approach the minimum in the Sun’s cycle, corresponding with lower Earth temperatures. This echoes Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas’ belief that solar variability, much more than CO2, sways global temperatures.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service reports that last summer was Anchorage’s third coldest on record. “Not since 1980 has there been a summer less reflective of global warming,” Craig Medred wrote in the Anchorage Daily News. Consequently, Alaska’s glaciers are thickening in the middle. “It’s been a long time on most glaciers where they’ve actually had positive mass balance,” U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia told Medred October 13. Similarly, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has found that the extent of Arctic sea ice has expanded by 13.2 percent over last year. This 270,000 square-mile growth in Arctic sea ice is just slightly larger than Texas’s 268,820 square miles.
Across the equator, Brazil endured an especially cold September. Snow graced its southern provinces that month.
Marc Morano, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Republican Communications Director, collects global-cooling incidents as others pin exotic moths to cork boards. Here are just a few of his latest specimens:
- Just before Halloween, southwestern Florida’s temperatures plunged to 47 degrees, October’s coldest readings since 1902. October 29 saw 120 new record-cold measurements and 63 new record-snow figures across America.
- The next day brought record cold to Havana, Cuba, where the mercury reached 48 degrees.
- The most snow ever to hit Tibet killed seven people October 30, stranded 1,300 others in damaged buildings, and took the lives of 144,000 head of livestock.
- Record snowfalls hit Switzerland the same day. Snow blocked rail lines between Interlaken and Spiez, forcing travelers onto buses. Snow-damaged fences in the Bernese Oberland helped cows slip away without adult supervision.
- Mother Nature lampooned a speech on so-called “global warming” by its highest priest, former vice president Albert Gore Jr. Bracing temperatures greeted his October 22 remarks at Harvard University. “Starting at 3 p.m., we will be serving hot cider and soup to keep everyone warm,” read a letter to the Harvard Community from the school’s Sustainability Celebration Committee. “Please dress for our changeable New England weather.”
“Global Warming is over, and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change,” Imperial College London astrophysicist and long-range forecaster Piers Corbyn wrote British Members of Parliament on October 28. “According to official data in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been colder than that year, yet CO2 has been rising rapidly.” That evening, as the House of Commons debated legislation on so-called “global-warming,” October snow fell in London for the first time since 1922.
These observations parallel those of five German researchers led by Professor Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences. “Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade,” they concluded in last May’s Nature, “as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [man-made] warming.” This “lull” should doom the 0.54 degree Fahrenheit average global temperature rise predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Vatican of so-called “global warming.” Incidentally, the IPCC’s computer models factor in neither El Niño nor the Gulf Stream. Excluding such major climate variables would be like ESPN ignoring baseball and basketball.
America’s biased, pro-“warming” media holistically overlooked this paper in one of Earth’s most serious and respected scientific journals. Had these researchers forecast the years of higher temperatures, you would have heard about it, ad infinitum.
So, is this all just propaganda concocted by Chevron-funded, right-wing, flat-Earthers? Ask Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a physical chemist and retired Navy meteorologist.
“As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science,” Hertzberg wrote in September 26’s USA Today. “From the El Niño year of 1998 until Jan., 2007, the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere near its surface decreased some 0.25 C [0.45 F]. From Jan., 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C [1.35 F].”
As global cooling becomes more widely recognized, Americans from Maine to Malibu should feel confident in dreaming of a white Christmas.
By Deroy Murdock
Wednesday, December 23, 2008
Winter officially arrived with Sunday’s solstice. But for many Americans, frigid January-like conditions have prevailed for weeks.
Christmas and Hanukkah travelers are delayed if not stranded at airports on the northwest and northeast coasts. Snow clogs runways, and ice coats airplane wing flaps as Americans wait extra hours and days to reach their loved ones.
New Englanders still lack electricity after a December 11 ice storm snapped power lines. Some 3,900 Granite State customers remain in the dark after what PSNH, the local utility, called “the most devastating natural disaster to hit New Hampshire in recent history.” Over the weekend, snow similarly knocked out the lights in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.
Meanwhile, up to eight inches of snow struck New Orleans and southern Louisiana on December 11 and didn’t melt for 48 hours in some neighborhoods.
“I’ve lived in south Louisiana my entire life and had never seen the amount of snow we saw in many parts of the parish that day,” Tammany Parish resident Andrew Canulette wrote in December 17’s New Orleans Times-Picayune.
"That sort of thing just doesn’t happen around here.”
In southern California last Wednesday, half an inch of snow brightened Malibu’s hills while a half-foot barricaded highways and marooned commuters in desert towns east of Los Angeles. Snow barred soldiers at Barstow’s Fort Irwin from deploying to Iraq. In Las Vegas, 3.6 inches of the white stuff — the most seen in 19 years — shuttered McCarren Airport Wednesday and dusted the Strip’s hotels and casinos.
What are the odds of that?
Actually, the odds are rising that snow, ice, and cold will grow increasingly common. As serious scientists repeatedly explain, global cooling is here. It is chilling temperatures — if not the climate alarmists’ fevered expectations of so-called “global warming.”
According to the National Climatic Data Center, 2008 will be America’s coldest year since 1997, thanks to La Niña and precipitation in the central and eastern states. Solar quietude also may underlie global cooling. This year’s sunspots and solar radiation approach the minimum in the Sun’s cycle, corresponding with lower Earth temperatures. This echoes Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas’ belief that solar variability, much more than CO2, sways global temperatures.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service reports that last summer was Anchorage’s third coldest on record. “Not since 1980 has there been a summer less reflective of global warming,” Craig Medred wrote in the Anchorage Daily News. Consequently, Alaska’s glaciers are thickening in the middle. “It’s been a long time on most glaciers where they’ve actually had positive mass balance,” U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia told Medred October 13. Similarly, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has found that the extent of Arctic sea ice has expanded by 13.2 percent over last year. This 270,000 square-mile growth in Arctic sea ice is just slightly larger than Texas’s 268,820 square miles.
Across the equator, Brazil endured an especially cold September. Snow graced its southern provinces that month.
Marc Morano, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Republican Communications Director, collects global-cooling incidents as others pin exotic moths to cork boards. Here are just a few of his latest specimens:
- Just before Halloween, southwestern Florida’s temperatures plunged to 47 degrees, October’s coldest readings since 1902. October 29 saw 120 new record-cold measurements and 63 new record-snow figures across America.
- The next day brought record cold to Havana, Cuba, where the mercury reached 48 degrees.
- The most snow ever to hit Tibet killed seven people October 30, stranded 1,300 others in damaged buildings, and took the lives of 144,000 head of livestock.
- Record snowfalls hit Switzerland the same day. Snow blocked rail lines between Interlaken and Spiez, forcing travelers onto buses. Snow-damaged fences in the Bernese Oberland helped cows slip away without adult supervision.
- Mother Nature lampooned a speech on so-called “global warming” by its highest priest, former vice president Albert Gore Jr. Bracing temperatures greeted his October 22 remarks at Harvard University. “Starting at 3 p.m., we will be serving hot cider and soup to keep everyone warm,” read a letter to the Harvard Community from the school’s Sustainability Celebration Committee. “Please dress for our changeable New England weather.”
“Global Warming is over, and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change,” Imperial College London astrophysicist and long-range forecaster Piers Corbyn wrote British Members of Parliament on October 28. “According to official data in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been colder than that year, yet CO2 has been rising rapidly.” That evening, as the House of Commons debated legislation on so-called “global-warming,” October snow fell in London for the first time since 1922.
These observations parallel those of five German researchers led by Professor Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences. “Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade,” they concluded in last May’s Nature, “as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [man-made] warming.” This “lull” should doom the 0.54 degree Fahrenheit average global temperature rise predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Vatican of so-called “global warming.” Incidentally, the IPCC’s computer models factor in neither El Niño nor the Gulf Stream. Excluding such major climate variables would be like ESPN ignoring baseball and basketball.
America’s biased, pro-“warming” media holistically overlooked this paper in one of Earth’s most serious and respected scientific journals. Had these researchers forecast the years of higher temperatures, you would have heard about it, ad infinitum.
So, is this all just propaganda concocted by Chevron-funded, right-wing, flat-Earthers? Ask Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a physical chemist and retired Navy meteorologist.
“As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science,” Hertzberg wrote in September 26’s USA Today. “From the El Niño year of 1998 until Jan., 2007, the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere near its surface decreased some 0.25 C [0.45 F]. From Jan., 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C [1.35 F].”
As global cooling becomes more widely recognized, Americans from Maine to Malibu should feel confident in dreaming of a white Christmas.
No Mercy for Jihad Johnny
Michelle Malkin
Friday, December 19, 2008
If it's December, it's time for the left to throw another shameless pity party for convicted American jihadist John Walker Lindh (aka Suleyman al-Faris, aka Abdul Hamid). Every Christmas season for the past four years, the Taliban accomplice and his parents have asked President Bush to pardon him. This country should save its tears and mercy for the defenders of freedom.
The farther we move from the September 11 attacks, the cloudier our collective memory of Lindh's case becomes. Sympathetic journalists have rewritten the history, embracing him as a naive young hippie-dippie from Marin County, Calif., who was just caught in the "wrong place at the wrong time."
Others, like Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod, have proclaimed him "innocent" and lamented his life behind bars in a federal medium-security facility. Junod criticized the government for forbidding Lindh to speak Arabic -- human rights atrocity! Meanwhile, he enjoys the privilege of cooking meals for himself and fellow inmates, working in the library, and praying to Mecca. Junod insisted that Lindh deserves more "credit for his sense of purpose or his vast reserves of will" and more "credit for what it took to get to Afghanistan, much less what it took for him to get back to America."
In Afghanistan, I remind you, Jihad Johnny took up arms with the terrorists. His purpose was to kill Americans, and his "reserves of will" accomplished the goal. He told the feds he trained with al-Qaida before the September 11 attacks and fought alongside them after Osama bin Laden's henchmen murdered 3,000 of Lindh's fellow citizens on American soil. He wrote a letter to his mother expressing support for the U.S.S. Cole bombing that took 17 sailors' lives, and despite an emphatic denial by Lindh's father that Jihad Johnny took up arms against his country, he recounted how his rifle malfunctioned on the front lines in Takar.
Finally, on Nov. 25, 2001, upon being captured and taken to the Qala-i Jangi fortress outside Mazar-e Sharif for interrogation, Suleyman al-Faris/Abdul Hamid/John Walker Lindh sat silent -- and deliberately and defiantly chose not to tell American CIA officer and former Marine Corps artillery specialist Mike Spann about a planned Taliban prison revolt. Spann was killed in the riot.
Asked by journalist Robert Pelton at the prison if this was "the right cause or the right place," Lindh replied unequivocally: "It is exactly what I thought it would be."
Who deserves the credit for "sense of purpose" and "reserve of will"? The saboteur of American freedom or the guardian?
Mike Spann's family visited the fortress after his murder. They talked to Afghan doctors who will never forget his bravery. "They said they thought Mike might run and retreat, but he held his position and fought using his AK rifle until out of ammo, and then drew and began firing his pistol," Spann's father said. "While watching Mike fight they were able to jump up and run to safety.
"They said the only reason that they and several others were able to live was because Mike stood his position and fought off the prisoners while enabling them the time to run to safety. The doctors stated that as they fled toward a safe haven they saw Mike run out of ammo and then witnessed him fighting hand to hand until he was overcome by the numerous al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners."
American hero Mike Spann will not get to cook dinner for his widow, Shannon, and their three young children. Mike Spann cannot curl up with a good book or go to church with his family. Pray for Mike Spann, show his family the compassion and gratitude they deserve -- and may American traitor John Walker Lindh rot in hell.
Friday, December 19, 2008
If it's December, it's time for the left to throw another shameless pity party for convicted American jihadist John Walker Lindh (aka Suleyman al-Faris, aka Abdul Hamid). Every Christmas season for the past four years, the Taliban accomplice and his parents have asked President Bush to pardon him. This country should save its tears and mercy for the defenders of freedom.
The farther we move from the September 11 attacks, the cloudier our collective memory of Lindh's case becomes. Sympathetic journalists have rewritten the history, embracing him as a naive young hippie-dippie from Marin County, Calif., who was just caught in the "wrong place at the wrong time."
Others, like Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod, have proclaimed him "innocent" and lamented his life behind bars in a federal medium-security facility. Junod criticized the government for forbidding Lindh to speak Arabic -- human rights atrocity! Meanwhile, he enjoys the privilege of cooking meals for himself and fellow inmates, working in the library, and praying to Mecca. Junod insisted that Lindh deserves more "credit for his sense of purpose or his vast reserves of will" and more "credit for what it took to get to Afghanistan, much less what it took for him to get back to America."
In Afghanistan, I remind you, Jihad Johnny took up arms with the terrorists. His purpose was to kill Americans, and his "reserves of will" accomplished the goal. He told the feds he trained with al-Qaida before the September 11 attacks and fought alongside them after Osama bin Laden's henchmen murdered 3,000 of Lindh's fellow citizens on American soil. He wrote a letter to his mother expressing support for the U.S.S. Cole bombing that took 17 sailors' lives, and despite an emphatic denial by Lindh's father that Jihad Johnny took up arms against his country, he recounted how his rifle malfunctioned on the front lines in Takar.
Finally, on Nov. 25, 2001, upon being captured and taken to the Qala-i Jangi fortress outside Mazar-e Sharif for interrogation, Suleyman al-Faris/Abdul Hamid/John Walker Lindh sat silent -- and deliberately and defiantly chose not to tell American CIA officer and former Marine Corps artillery specialist Mike Spann about a planned Taliban prison revolt. Spann was killed in the riot.
Asked by journalist Robert Pelton at the prison if this was "the right cause or the right place," Lindh replied unequivocally: "It is exactly what I thought it would be."
Who deserves the credit for "sense of purpose" and "reserve of will"? The saboteur of American freedom or the guardian?
Mike Spann's family visited the fortress after his murder. They talked to Afghan doctors who will never forget his bravery. "They said they thought Mike might run and retreat, but he held his position and fought using his AK rifle until out of ammo, and then drew and began firing his pistol," Spann's father said. "While watching Mike fight they were able to jump up and run to safety.
"They said the only reason that they and several others were able to live was because Mike stood his position and fought off the prisoners while enabling them the time to run to safety. The doctors stated that as they fled toward a safe haven they saw Mike run out of ammo and then witnessed him fighting hand to hand until he was overcome by the numerous al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners."
American hero Mike Spann will not get to cook dinner for his widow, Shannon, and their three young children. Mike Spann cannot curl up with a good book or go to church with his family. Pray for Mike Spann, show his family the compassion and gratitude they deserve -- and may American traitor John Walker Lindh rot in hell.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Torturing the Evidence
National Review Online
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
In September 2002, senior leaders on the Senate and House intelligence committees — Democrats and Republicans — began receiving briefings on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program,” including the use of waterboarding on top al-Qaeda operatives. Among the leaders briefed was Nancy Pelosi, now speaker of the House.
The lawmakers raised no objections. According to Porter Goss, a congressman at that time and later head of the CIA, their chief concern was whether “the methods were tough enough.” But Carl Levin, the Democrat who runs the Senate Armed Services Committee, managed to suppress any mention of Speaker Pelosi and her congressional colleagues last week when his committee released its misleading and relentlessly partisan report, titled “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.”
This document is the latest chapter in the Democrats’ torture narrative — a warped tale that trivializes true torture by confounding it with less extreme forms of interrogation. The committee thoroughly misrepresents the legal standards that govern detainee treatment and ignores non-partisan investigations that have found no evidence of a systematic program of abuse. Perhaps most significant, the Democrats ignore the fact that those rare episodes of abuse that have been uncovered have resulted in prosecutions.
According to the Levin report, the Bush administration reacted to 9/11 by “redefining” the law to permit aggressive interrogation tactics. Thus, the fable goes, in early 2002 the president determined that neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban fighters were entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment, in effect blocking application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the “well established military doctrine” of “legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions.” The administration then covertly set about having its Justice Department alter the legal definition of torture, the story goes, while its interrogators were schooled in illegal tactics by experts at the Defense Department. These techniques were employed by the CIA on important captives and became elements of a new warfare culture that spread to military interrogators at Gitmo and led, eventually, to the Abu Ghraib scandal.
That narrative is flawed in its fundamental assumptions and fictional in its sweeping conclusions. The Bush administration did not “redefine” detainee treatment law; it undertook to determine what the law says and whom it covers. The intent of the Geneva Conventions, the principal law on the subject, is to civilize warfare by affording benefits, including an absolute bar against abusive treatment, to eligible prisoners of war — i.e., to captured soldiers who adhere to the laws of armed conflict, meaning, among other things, that they forgo intentionally endangering civilians. By definition, al-Qaeda is not qualified for Geneva protections because it is a terrorist organization: It is not one of the sovereign nations that signed the 1949 pacts, and it specifically targets civilians. Though the Taliban was the de facto government of Afghanistan, its fighters also target civilians and hide among them, and consequently they do not qualify for Geneva protections.
The Bush administration did not negate the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article 3, which requires that captives be “treated humanely.” CA3 simply did not apply — or at least it did not until the 2006 Hamdan case, in which five Supreme Court justices ignored its terms. As the plain language of the law makes clear, CA3 governs civil wars: “armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties.” The war on terror is a global conflict, not a civil war. True, U.S. military doctrine recommends the observation of Geneva protections even for non-qualified captives, but that is a policy choice — it is not, as the Levin committee disingenuously asserts, a legal requirement.
It was natural that the administration should seek advice from the experts who know the most about coercive tactics — namely, from the military agency that oversees “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape” (SERE) training. The committee portrays this as sinister, claiming that SERE training is based on illegal exploitation of POWs over the last half-century. Again, the legal issue is misrepresented: The principal legal problem was not the interrogation methods themselves, but the fact that the prisoners in question were Geneva-qualified POWs. Geneva doesn’t protect qualified POWs only from torture — it protects them from any and all penalties for resisting interrogation.
Torture is illegal. And because torture is such a serious concern, our law has always defined it in such a way as to cover only truly heinous practices. In this we are not alone; foreign tribunals including the European Court of Human Rights and Israel’s Supreme Court have concluded that such tactics as the use of stress positions, hooding, diet manipulation, sleep deprivation, loud noises, and forceful shaking may be abusive but do not amount to torture. Those practices would, however, violate Geneva, under which those POWs eligible for protection may not be subjected to any penalties or inconveniences whatsoever for refusing to disclose more than name, rank, and serial number. Senator Levin may think we should be similarly constrained in questioning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but Geneva does not require it. Nor does any other law.
Congress has declined to criminalize waterboarding despite many opportunities to do so, and international law leaves a great deal of flexibility in interrogations. Even so, President Bush’s February 2007 directive required that all prisoners be treated “humanely.” Waterboarding, the most extreme tactic employed by the CIA, was limited to three top al-Qaeda captives (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and hasn’t been used since 2003. At the Pentagon in 2002, Donald Rumsfeld echoed the president’s insistence on humane treatment and declined to approve waterboarding and other aggressive tactics, such as exposure to temperature extremes. When military lawyers objected to his approval of mildly coercive techniques, such as grabbing, poking, and pushing, Rumsfeld withdrew the authorization, ordered a study, and issued spring 2003 guidelines that rejected all tactics involving physical contact. Repeat: No physical contact. Hardly the stuff of torture.
Those guidelines were in effect long before Abu Ghraib. From the beginning of operations in Iraq, the president insisted that the Geneva Conventions be observed there. When the abuse scandal surfaced, it was the military that reported and investigated it, aggressively prosecuting the offending soldiers. Multiple investigations, including the bipartisan panel chaired by former Nixon, Ford, and Carter cabinet member James Schlesinger, have rejected the outlandish claim that President Bush installed a program of systematic prisoner abuse, much less a torture regime.
To be sure, the Schlesinger investigation also documented the exportation of interrogation tactics from Afghanistan to Gitmo to Iraq. This migration was attributable both to rotating personnel and to confusion about whether tactics approved for Gitmo had been approved for non-Iraqi detainees in Iraq. But this exportation in fact ran counter to official policy and, in any event, did not involve torture. The Schlesinger report also recounted that while U.S. forces had detained some 50,000 persons in the war on terror, there had been only 300 allegations of abuse, half of which had been investigated by late 2004. Those investigations produced 66 findings of abuse — and, significantly, only a third of those had anything to do with interrogations. There have been instances of abuse affecting about one-tenth of one percent of all detainees. This falls short of the standard of perfection but holds up well in any real-world comparison. President-elect Obama must be aware that the Cook County jail doesn’t have as good a record.
Prisoner abuse should not be taken lightly. There have been nearly two dozen detainee deaths reported, five of which are believed to have occurred during interrogations. But these episodes are endemic to warfare, not peculiar to the Bush era or a result of the president’s policies. Abuse is not to be tolerated — and it isn’t: dozens of U.S. military personnel have been disciplined and a number tried in courts-martial. There is a world of difference between relatively rare wrongdoing at the hands of a miniscule number of soldiers and a government program of torture.
The torture narrative is at odds with the facts. The U.S. does not have a policy of torturing captives, nor does it fail to abide by its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. When abuse has occurred, steps have been taken to punish the wrongdoers and rectify military practices. Those efforts will continue. A sober study would have made that clear. Congressional Democrats have instead found it expedient to smear the administration, the military, and the intelligence community for political purposes.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
In September 2002, senior leaders on the Senate and House intelligence committees — Democrats and Republicans — began receiving briefings on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program,” including the use of waterboarding on top al-Qaeda operatives. Among the leaders briefed was Nancy Pelosi, now speaker of the House.
The lawmakers raised no objections. According to Porter Goss, a congressman at that time and later head of the CIA, their chief concern was whether “the methods were tough enough.” But Carl Levin, the Democrat who runs the Senate Armed Services Committee, managed to suppress any mention of Speaker Pelosi and her congressional colleagues last week when his committee released its misleading and relentlessly partisan report, titled “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.”
This document is the latest chapter in the Democrats’ torture narrative — a warped tale that trivializes true torture by confounding it with less extreme forms of interrogation. The committee thoroughly misrepresents the legal standards that govern detainee treatment and ignores non-partisan investigations that have found no evidence of a systematic program of abuse. Perhaps most significant, the Democrats ignore the fact that those rare episodes of abuse that have been uncovered have resulted in prosecutions.
According to the Levin report, the Bush administration reacted to 9/11 by “redefining” the law to permit aggressive interrogation tactics. Thus, the fable goes, in early 2002 the president determined that neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban fighters were entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment, in effect blocking application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the “well established military doctrine” of “legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions.” The administration then covertly set about having its Justice Department alter the legal definition of torture, the story goes, while its interrogators were schooled in illegal tactics by experts at the Defense Department. These techniques were employed by the CIA on important captives and became elements of a new warfare culture that spread to military interrogators at Gitmo and led, eventually, to the Abu Ghraib scandal.
That narrative is flawed in its fundamental assumptions and fictional in its sweeping conclusions. The Bush administration did not “redefine” detainee treatment law; it undertook to determine what the law says and whom it covers. The intent of the Geneva Conventions, the principal law on the subject, is to civilize warfare by affording benefits, including an absolute bar against abusive treatment, to eligible prisoners of war — i.e., to captured soldiers who adhere to the laws of armed conflict, meaning, among other things, that they forgo intentionally endangering civilians. By definition, al-Qaeda is not qualified for Geneva protections because it is a terrorist organization: It is not one of the sovereign nations that signed the 1949 pacts, and it specifically targets civilians. Though the Taliban was the de facto government of Afghanistan, its fighters also target civilians and hide among them, and consequently they do not qualify for Geneva protections.
The Bush administration did not negate the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article 3, which requires that captives be “treated humanely.” CA3 simply did not apply — or at least it did not until the 2006 Hamdan case, in which five Supreme Court justices ignored its terms. As the plain language of the law makes clear, CA3 governs civil wars: “armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties.” The war on terror is a global conflict, not a civil war. True, U.S. military doctrine recommends the observation of Geneva protections even for non-qualified captives, but that is a policy choice — it is not, as the Levin committee disingenuously asserts, a legal requirement.
It was natural that the administration should seek advice from the experts who know the most about coercive tactics — namely, from the military agency that oversees “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape” (SERE) training. The committee portrays this as sinister, claiming that SERE training is based on illegal exploitation of POWs over the last half-century. Again, the legal issue is misrepresented: The principal legal problem was not the interrogation methods themselves, but the fact that the prisoners in question were Geneva-qualified POWs. Geneva doesn’t protect qualified POWs only from torture — it protects them from any and all penalties for resisting interrogation.
Torture is illegal. And because torture is such a serious concern, our law has always defined it in such a way as to cover only truly heinous practices. In this we are not alone; foreign tribunals including the European Court of Human Rights and Israel’s Supreme Court have concluded that such tactics as the use of stress positions, hooding, diet manipulation, sleep deprivation, loud noises, and forceful shaking may be abusive but do not amount to torture. Those practices would, however, violate Geneva, under which those POWs eligible for protection may not be subjected to any penalties or inconveniences whatsoever for refusing to disclose more than name, rank, and serial number. Senator Levin may think we should be similarly constrained in questioning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but Geneva does not require it. Nor does any other law.
Congress has declined to criminalize waterboarding despite many opportunities to do so, and international law leaves a great deal of flexibility in interrogations. Even so, President Bush’s February 2007 directive required that all prisoners be treated “humanely.” Waterboarding, the most extreme tactic employed by the CIA, was limited to three top al-Qaeda captives (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and hasn’t been used since 2003. At the Pentagon in 2002, Donald Rumsfeld echoed the president’s insistence on humane treatment and declined to approve waterboarding and other aggressive tactics, such as exposure to temperature extremes. When military lawyers objected to his approval of mildly coercive techniques, such as grabbing, poking, and pushing, Rumsfeld withdrew the authorization, ordered a study, and issued spring 2003 guidelines that rejected all tactics involving physical contact. Repeat: No physical contact. Hardly the stuff of torture.
Those guidelines were in effect long before Abu Ghraib. From the beginning of operations in Iraq, the president insisted that the Geneva Conventions be observed there. When the abuse scandal surfaced, it was the military that reported and investigated it, aggressively prosecuting the offending soldiers. Multiple investigations, including the bipartisan panel chaired by former Nixon, Ford, and Carter cabinet member James Schlesinger, have rejected the outlandish claim that President Bush installed a program of systematic prisoner abuse, much less a torture regime.
To be sure, the Schlesinger investigation also documented the exportation of interrogation tactics from Afghanistan to Gitmo to Iraq. This migration was attributable both to rotating personnel and to confusion about whether tactics approved for Gitmo had been approved for non-Iraqi detainees in Iraq. But this exportation in fact ran counter to official policy and, in any event, did not involve torture. The Schlesinger report also recounted that while U.S. forces had detained some 50,000 persons in the war on terror, there had been only 300 allegations of abuse, half of which had been investigated by late 2004. Those investigations produced 66 findings of abuse — and, significantly, only a third of those had anything to do with interrogations. There have been instances of abuse affecting about one-tenth of one percent of all detainees. This falls short of the standard of perfection but holds up well in any real-world comparison. President-elect Obama must be aware that the Cook County jail doesn’t have as good a record.
Prisoner abuse should not be taken lightly. There have been nearly two dozen detainee deaths reported, five of which are believed to have occurred during interrogations. But these episodes are endemic to warfare, not peculiar to the Bush era or a result of the president’s policies. Abuse is not to be tolerated — and it isn’t: dozens of U.S. military personnel have been disciplined and a number tried in courts-martial. There is a world of difference between relatively rare wrongdoing at the hands of a miniscule number of soldiers and a government program of torture.
The torture narrative is at odds with the facts. The U.S. does not have a policy of torturing captives, nor does it fail to abide by its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. When abuse has occurred, steps have been taken to punish the wrongdoers and rectify military practices. Those efforts will continue. A sober study would have made that clear. Congressional Democrats have instead found it expedient to smear the administration, the military, and the intelligence community for political purposes.
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