Yep, the whole hate speech thing (puke). More unneccesary laws creating unintended consequences from folks who can't see down the street. Thus filling jails w/harmless morons & slowly eroding personal liberties. Way to go Europe, way to go Canada. Some idiot wants to deny the holocaust & that harms people how? Somebody disapproves of the gay life style and that affects gays how? Even folks in our country are starting to forget that the government was set up for the people, not the other way around. Our founders wanted to limit the powers of the government not the government limiting the liberties of the people. I'm surprised more of our idiot senators haven't jumped on this hate speech band wagon, I mean it's a perfect touchy feely smoke screen instead of dealing w/a hard job, for instance like securing a border.
#2
This "hate speech" issue will soon take care of itself. With the influx of foreign people and languages (legal or otherwise) into the US over the past 10 years, it is difficult to understand what most people are talking about on the metro or the 7-11 even now!
When President Bush arrived in Vienna last week, protestors bore "World's No. 1 Terrorist" signs while chanting "We will, we will fight Bush." A Harris Poll conducted prior to the president's visit revealed that the European public thinks America is a greater global threat than either North Korea or Iran.
Apparently, our terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay is the most recent open sore. When, European ministers have been persisting, will the United States close down this Neanderthal embarrassment to liberal Western values?
This European anger, however, doesn't seem to be based on evidence of systematic American abuse. Despite Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's claim that Guantanamo was akin to Nazi camps, the few reported regrettable, isolated cases of sleep deprivation and harassment seem no worse than what we read about in most prisons. The roughly 450 prisoners still there - many of them killers - are probably treated as well as inmates in either Europe or the U.S.
Further, Guantanamo exists to fill a vacuum in an undeclared and unprecedented postmodern war of few good choices in which the enemy does not wear uniforms, adhere to the Geneva Convention or distinguish civilians from soldiers.
If the U.S. were to close down Guantanamo and send the detainees back to their home countries, some returnees would be freed and treated as heroes - and then rejoin the global jihad. Other released terrorists, or so the Europeans no doubt would whine, might be executed by the autocratic Middle Eastern governments in their homelands that are as afraid of Islamic terrorists as we are.
So, should we instead try all of the Guantanamo detainees inside the U.S.?
No. By doing that, we would be inviting thousands of lawyers and public defenders to argue, on behalf of their clients, that we are not in a real war but simply prosecuting common criminals. Numerous trials and appeals as costly and circus-like as the drawn-out spectacle of Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called 20th hijacker) would likely follow. And, in the end, Europeans would still object, since the U.S. would be exposing foreign nationals to possible death-penalty sentences.
The real problem is that Guantanamo Bay, like Bush himself, has become a symbol of sorts. It is an easy scapegoat through which Europeans can vent their much larger love-hate frustrations with their protector and rival, the hyper-power America.
The pacifism of the European Union was supposed to be a post-Cold War model of liberal reason for the rest of the world. Instead, Islamic fascists have either ignored Europe's human-rights advocacy or considered it a sign of weakness to be exploited. An impotent E.U. is embarrassed and needs cheap targets like Guantanamo to transfer attention away from its past naivete about the dangers of Islamic fascism.
By ankle-biting America on Guantanamo, the Europeans sound moral and tough while ignoring the real dangers for which they have absolutely no solutions - unassimilated and angry Muslims, the Dutch and Danes under assault by radical Islamic censors and a defenseless Europe potentially soon in range of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear-tipped missiles.
Note also that the U.S. has been mostly quiet about Europe's own ethical lapses in this war. Americans are in a quandary with Iran in large part because the Europeans - for whom profits trump idealism - sold the theocracy technology needed for the bomb. Nothing new there: Saddam once got his nuclear reactor from the French and his bombproof bunkers from the Germans.
We also hear a lot about the three suicides at Guantanamo but almost nothing about the still-unexplained death of Slobodan Milosevic while being held in Europe. When was the last time Americans chided the Germans that Mohammed Atta conspired to murder thousands of Americans while in their country?
Have we forgotten that Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the killer of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber, at one time fit in well with the radical Islamic culture that thrives in London. And how about Abu Hamza al-Masri, who plotted against the U.S. - he's wanted by American authorities on charges of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon - from his sanctuary in a London mosque?
Yet if the Eiffel Tower topples to a jihadist suicide bomber who assembled his team in Los Angeles or Miami, or if an Iranian missile soars over the Brandenburg Gate, expect the Europeans to drop their present high talk about the "gulag" at Guantanamo - and start whispering about the need for more American terrorist detention centers, classical deterrence and their own missile defense.
But until the Europeans' dream world is shattered, we will hear nonstop screeching about American barbarity. Such outrage says far more about them than us.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."
#1
"Yet if the Eiffel Tower topples to a jihadist suicide bomber who assembled his team in Los Angeles or Miami, or if an Iranian missile soars over the Brandenburg Gate, expect the Europeans to"... say the shehada. I am not as optimistic as VDH.
Bushs farewell summit with the Japanese prime minister will include beef, barbecue and Graceland. What their trip tells us about the U.S. presidents style of diplomacy.
It is by far the most bizarre session with any foreign leader during the presidency of George W. Bush. For a commander in chief who dislikes foreign travel and rarely hosts state dinners, this weeks trip to Graceland with the Japanese prime minister is an extraordinary event.
In theory, the Elvis pilgrimage is something of a parting gift for Junichiro Koizumi, who steps down in the fall. Koizumi is such a big Presley fan that he selected his own favorite tracks for a Japanese CD. For his part, President Bush cares so little about music that he entrusts his iPod selections to his old friend, music junkie Mark McKinnon.
But even more important than the journey to Memphis is what the trip says about Bushs exceptionally personal form of diplomacy. Bushs foreign policy aides insist that the idea for a Graceland visit came from the president himself, not from Koizumi. About a year ago, the president started saying to us as staff, I would like to take him to Graceland, and we all thought he might be joking, said one senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity in talking about Bushs foreign-policy discussions. But as he repeated it several times to us, we realized he indeed thought it was a great thing to do.
The result is an Elvis-themed day on Friday, complete with Elvis movies on Air Force One and a strategic opportunity for Koizumi to go karaoke. I imagine that Koizumi may pick up a mike somewhere along the way, the senior Bush aide said. He does sing Elvis songs.
Of course the White House would like you to know that its not all play. There will be extensive talks about North Korea, Iran and Iraq. And even the fun stuff can have a greater meaning: in Memphis, the two leaders will eat some of the citys finest barbecue. Given the Japanese ban on U.S. beef because of concerns about mad-cow disease, the mere sight of Koizumi eating American meat is a symbolic stamp of approval.
As trivial as it sounds, there are certain strengths to this kind of one-on-one diplomacy. Theres little doubt among Japan analysts that the close relationship between Bush and Koizumi has been critical in improving relations between the United States and Japan. After the economic rivalries of the 1980s and the Japanese stagnation of the 1990s, the Koizumi-Bush era looks like a golden one.
It didnt always look like their relationship would be a surefire success. In June 2001, as Koizumi prepared to meet Bush for the first time, the Kyoto global-warming treaty seemed to be a big stumbling block between the two new leaders. Koizumi promised to try to change Bushs mind on Kyoto as the American prepared to leave Tokyo. Instead, it was the Japanese leader who changed his mind: he left Camp David saying that he would not proceed with Kyoto without American cooperation. As if to underscore their friendship, the two leaders played catch in front of the cameras, throwing a baseball that Bush had just given to Koizumi.
After 9/11, the payoff was clear. Japan passed new laws to allow it to support American antiterrorist operations in Afghanistana turning point in Japans postwar history, given that its Constitution renounces war and the use of force. Today it has a small presence in Iraq and is a firm supporter of Bushs approach to Iran.
Koizumis special relationship with President Bush stands alongside a handful of others: Britains Tony Blair, Australias John Howard and Denmarks Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The president sees all four as leaders in his own self-imageas bold, historic figures who are reshaping their own countries and the world, and as no-nonsense leaders who can be trusted to follow through on their commitments. As a result, Bush has gone out of his way to lavish attention and special treatment on all of them: trips to Camp David, official dinners, marching bands, special gifts.
Of course, President Bush can decide whom he wants to treat as his best friends among the worlds leaders. But what is surprising is how small and steady that circle of friends has been. Some, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, have fallen out of favor. Only one, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seems to have joined the shortlist. Bush will travel to her hometown in former East Germany next month, en route to the G8 summit hosted by his ex-friend Putin.
There are other limits to this kind of diplomacy: a surprising reluctance to delve into sensitive problems. Given the nature of their friendship, its remarkable to note that Bush and Koizumi dont talk much about Japans precarious diplomatic position in its own region. Even as Koizumi has grown closer to Bush, Japans relations with China and South Korea have deteriorated. At the heart of those tensions are Japans limited steps to acknowledge its wartime atrocities, as well as Koizumis visits to the Yasakuni shrine that honors the military, including war criminals. To this day, the White House prefers to leave such delicate issues to the Japanese and suggests that China has been stoking nationalist feelings against Japan for purely political reasons.
The way Bush tells it, his close relationship with Koizumi is the product of a postwar transformation. Speaking at a GOP fund-raiser in Albuquerque, N.M., earlier this month, Bush set the stage for his Graceland trip. Think about the American president traveling to Graceland with the prime minister of Japan, he said to fits of laughter. Let me ask you something: 60 years ago, would you have thought that would be possible? Think about it. See, my dad, and I bet your relatives, toosome of you had relatives who fought the Japanese. They were the sworn enemy of the United States of America in a bloody, bloody conflict What happened? What happened was Japan adopted a Japanese-style democracy.
Democracy was clearly important to Japans postwar relationship with the United States, but so was a shared vision of security in Asia. And so was the close bond established by individual leaders like Bush and Koizumi. For that, they deserve a large degree of personal credit. Other democracies have drifted away from their alliance with the United States during the Bush years. Given the enduring worldwide controversy over Iraq, a trip to Graceland seems like a relatively small thank you to the Japanese leader.
#1
"And even the fun stuff can have a greater meaning: in Memphis, the two leaders will eat some of the citys finest barbecue.= Rendezvous. And remember for all you non-Southerners, barbecue is always a noun and never a verb. Given the Japanese ban on U.S. beef because of concerns about mad-cow disease, the mere sight of Koizumi eating American meat is a symbolic stamp of approval."Also remember that barbecue, used in the generic form, is always PORK, not beef. Only explicitly using the phrase 'Beef BBQ' or 'Beef Ribs' means bovine mammal flesh.
Lt. Tom Cotton writes this morning from Baghdad with a word for the New York Times:
Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:
Congratulations on disclosing our government's highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)
Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato's guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months' salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.
Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion -- or next time I feel it -- I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.
And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others -- laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.
#1
I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others -- laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law... I also hope the DOJ grows a set and prosecutes the NYTs.
#2
Dead on target, Lt. This letter should be an Op-Ed in a major newspaper - to begin getting the opposing message to the crowd that swills the major paper Kool Aid. I doubt that many of them have the first clue that there is opposition.
#3
What the MSM and the west really dont understand is that the basic Arab/Muslim Jihadi wannabe aint that smart or sophisticated. Yes some are college educated, but most are very plain-vanilla that have undergone some whack-job religious experience. Examine the 9/11 job, they left a trail of clues and even their applications for Visas were full of errors. They were on the FBIs radar screen only we didnt realize what they were up to until it was too late. We can pretty much guarantee that they cant pull that off again, but they were a not the best and brightest of the Arab world. Programs like the phone and bank monitoring programs are successful because our enemy is really naïve enough to think that nobody can listen to their conversations or track their bank actions. The capture of Al Qaidas #2 9and others) guy show you just how susceptible these guys are to a good surveillance program. The NYT didnt do anybody any favors by showing just how good those programs.
Once the New York Times was extremely important, and often destructive. Now it is less important, and often destructive. This is not a change for the worse.
The Times is important still because of its influence on other parts of the media: . . . But it's not what it was. Once it was such a force that it controlled the intellectual climate. Now it's just part of it. Seventy years ago its depiction of Stalin's benignity left a generation confused, or confounded. Fifty years ago, when the Times became enamored of a romantic young revolutionary named Fidel, the American decision-making establishment believed what it read and observed in comfort as an angry communist dictatorship was established 90 miles off our shore. The Times' wrongheadedness had huge implications for American statecraft.
. . . It was hurt by its own limits--a paper of and from an island off the continent, awkward in its relationship with and understanding of the continent. It was and is hurt by its longtime and predictable liberalism. Predictable isn't fun. It doesn't make you want to get up in the morning, tear the paper off the mat and open it with a hungry snap. It was hurt by technology--it lost its share of what was, essentially, a monopoly. And it's been hurt by its own scandals and misjudgments. The Times rarely seems driven by an agenda to get the news first, fast and clear; to get the story and let the chips fall. It often seems driven by a search for information that might support its suppositions. Which, again, gets boring. The Times never knows what's becoming a huge national issue. It's always surprised by what Americans are thinking.
In a way the modern Times is playing to a base, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and the redoubts of the Upper West Side throughout America: affluent urban neighborhoods and suburbs. The paper plays not to a region but a class.
But one senses the people who run the Times now are not so much living as re-enacting. They're lost on the big new playing field of American media, and they're reenacting their great moments--the Pentagon papers, the Watergate days. They're locked in a pose: We speak truth to (bad Republican) power. Frank Rich is running around with his antiwar screeds as if it's 1968 and he's an idealist with a beard, as opposed to what he is, a guy who if he pierced his ears gravy would come out.
This is the imagery that comes to you when you ponder the Times. It's the imagery that comes unbidden when you ponder the national security stories they've been doing. They're all re-enacting. They're acting out their own private drama in which they bravely stand up to a secretive and all-powerful American government.
I think it's personal drama in part because there's no common sense in it. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
06/29/2006 07:25 ||
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#2
and this from a woman who saw fit to ridicule and deride President Bush's inaguration speech that championed promoting democracy to reduce terroism.
oh sure... I agree with what she's saying here, but I think she's really missing a main point and that is that the papers are preaching instead of providing the product that they profess to sell - news.
You can sell fake cures for weight reduction and small breasts until someone else provides one that really works and then you are screwed. The NYT hasn't provided news in quite a long time.
The U.S.-India nuclear agreement before Congress is good for America on five grounds: It enhances safeguards, benefits U.S. geopolitical interests, protects the environment, boosts the American economy and rewards good international citizenship and international compliance.
Countries perched under protective nuclear-guarantee umbrellas (such as Japan or Australia), or those facing no nuclear threats, are more sanctimonious in voicing their concerns. The reality is that India is surrounded by two nondemocratic nuclear powers, sometimes unstable, often dictatorial, both having engaged in wars with India. And a cursory knowledge of Indian politics would dictate that there is zero possibility of India submitting all its nuclear reactors to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime without it being recognized as a nuclear power. Democratically elected politicians in India would be committing political suicide were they to do otherwise.
Safeguards: Mohammed ElBaradei, Nobel laureate and director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has endorsed the U.S.-India agreement because he believes it increases safeguards and brings India closer to international nonproliferation standards. Full compliance is great but, pragmatically, "more" compliance is better than "less" compliance, as Mr. ElBaradei has recognized.
This treaty places two-thirds of existing, and all future, Indian civilian reactors under safeguards. On this basis alone the pact increases international respect for the IAEA program. India has also agreed to develop an Additional Protocol with the IAEA, implement a WMD Act, implement a robust national export-control system, and to adhere to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines -- all proactive steps. Further, India's nonproliferation record is superlative, better than that of many signatories to the NPT. Can we really ask India to forgo nuclear defense in the face of nuclear-armed neighbors on the dubious grounds that the cutoff date to be recognized as a nuclear power under the NPT was 1967, seven years before India's first nuclear test (in 1974)?
We cannot afford India drifting away from America. Russia has already agreed to supply fuel for Indian reactors despite its NPT obligations, and Iran helps slake the Indian thirst for oil. Congressional ratification would encourage India to continue support for U.S. policy on Iranian nuclear ambitions. Let's get real about world politics.
Geopolitics: India is a unique counterbalance in the Asian region and shares America's two major geopolitical challenges -- Islam and the rise of China. It has the GDP growth, population, democratic norms and technical expertise to counter any Chinese onslaught. Also unique is India's lack of wider foreign or extra-regional ambitions. The country is a steady hand in an Asian region growing at a rate that will dwarf Europe in the next 50 years. We need friends in India.
Environment: Economics rules governance in poor economies. If India does not build nuclear plants, it will build 60,000 MW of coal plants using its dirty coal -- an environmental disaster that will spew greenhouse gases and pollutants for the next 50 years.
Nuclear power will reduce India's emissions by millions of tons per year. Should India choose coal, carbon emission and acid rain issues would encounter a dramatic setback. No third choice exists for India -- at least none with any possibility of domestic acceptance. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts naively speaks of India using clean coal. In reality, clean-coal economics don't work. They haven't worked in the U.S., so why will they work in a poor country?
Good economics: This agreement is unambiguously good for America's economy, and is widely viewed as critical to fortifying mutual trust, at least by the people of India. Rejecting this agreement would conceivably set back that trust by 20 years, irreparably damaging American interests in the region.
Congressional ratification will leave India needing to import around 60,000 MW of coal plants or nuclear-power generating capacity. American companies would get a major part of this multibillion dollar business. Imports could exceed $50 billion, creating an estimated 50,000 jobs in America. A secondary effect would be continued economic growth in India. The Indian market's demand for capital and consumer goods would expand rapidly, creating further opportunities for American companies.
Principle and precedent: As a vigorous democracy, political realities ensure no Indian government can relinquish its right to nuclear power in the face of China and Pakistan. India has an exemplary nonproliferation record, despite operating outside the global nonproliferation regime for over 30 years, and has never violated any NPT terms -- unlike China, which supplied nuclear technology to Pakistan; and France, that supplied fuel to India. Pedantic interpretations of the NPT aside, this agreement dramatically extends the reach of the NPT into India.
This agreement implicitly recognizes states like India and Israel who never signed the NPT, seeking to extend as many of the provisions of the NPT to such states as is possible. As Mr. ElBaradei said, this agreement brings India's civilian nuclear program into the NPT mainstream.
We should establish a norm of encouraging and rewarding good international citizenship and increased compliance. Americans have always been pragmatists first, not viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses, and there is no reason to start to do so now. We must recognize that India, like Israel, has very good regional and national defense reasons for not signing the current form of the NPT. Membership of the nuclear club should not hang on the arbitrary test of India having to have conducted the nuclear tests prior to 1967. This agreement provides an elegant solution to bring important global powers like India within the international framework.
Mr. Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a former partner of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, is a partner of Khosla Ventures.
Posted by: john ||
06/29/2006 18:41 ||
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From Jewish World Review on line.
By Yossi Klein Halevi
JERUSALEM What's the news?" we ask each other, and everyone understands that the question refers to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Though the old socialist Israel is barely a memory, in times of crisis we again become collectivized.
Nothing unites Israelis in outrage more than the seizure of hostages. Next week, on July 4, Israel will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Entebbe operation that freed over a hundred Israeli hostages, and little has changed since then in the national ethos of rescue. The last Zionist ideal still shared by most Israelis is the determination to fight back. An Israeli soldier held hostage is a taunt against the Zionist promise of self-defense, an unbearable reminder of Jewish helplessness.
Our obsession with hostages is a tactical weakness but a strategic strength. It allows terrorists a stunning psychological advantage: With a single random kidnapping, they hold an entire society emotionally hostage. Strategically, though, hostage-taking only strengthens Israeli resolve.
And resolve is precisely what the public now expects of its government. So far, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has responded well. He began by issuing two policy guidelines in dealing with the hostage crisis. The first is that Israel won't negotiate over Gilad's release and won't exchange prisoners. The second is that Hamas leaders "political" as well as "military" will be held personally accountable for the fate of Gilad.
If Olmert's government hopes to retain its credibility among Israelis, it needs to maintain those two principles.
In recent months, the public has become increasingly disillusioned with the government's failure to adequately respond to the almost daily rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages, especially Sderot. No Israeli town within the 1967 borders has experienced the kind of relentless attacks that Sderot has suffered. Even Hizbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks on the northern town of Kiryat Shmona in the early 1980s occurred in waves, with periods of reprieve between them. In the ten months since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, though, Sderot has barely known a day of peace.
After the withdrawal, Israelis expected the government to enforce a policy of zero-tolerance for Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza, even for attacks that didn't cause fatalities. Instead, the government responded unevenly, often ignoring rocket attacks that caused no damage.
Many Israelis see Hamas's raid on an Israeli military post within the 1967 borders as a result of the weakness Israel has projected. In yesterday's letters column in the daily Maariv, for example, the hardline consensus was almost unanimous. "We told you so," wrote one reader who identified himself as "right wing." "Why doesn't Israel shut off electricity and water to Gaza?" demanded another reader. "Enough words, it's time to act," insisted a third.
That perception of weakness could have far-reaching domestic consequences. The premise of Olmert's centrist party, Kadima, is that only a hawkish approach on security will convince Israelis to implement a dovish policy on territory. Given the Sderot precedent, though, Olmert is failing to uphold that centrist doctrine. For Olmert to win the public's agreement for another unilateral withdrawal, he needs to begin proving that he is capable of defending Tel Aviv from Palestinian rockets. And the place to begin convincing Israelis is Gaza.
The military invasion of Gaza that began last night, and whose purpose is to surround the area where Gilad is presumably being held, must only be the first step. A brief invasion, a "show of force," is hardly adequate. Instead, Israel needs to resume its policy of systematically targeting Hamas leaders, just as it did several years ago, culminating in the assassination of Sheik Yassin. That policy drove most of Hamas deep underground and led to the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Resuming assassinations against Hamas's political echelon is, of course, a declaration of war against the Hamas regime. But given its official sanctioning of kidnapping, Hamas has already declared war against Israel. Hamas's adoption of the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq comes as no surprise. After the killing of Zarqawi, Hamas issued a statement mourning his death and urging continued "resistance," thereby making the Hamas regime the world's only openly pro-Al Qaeda government. Unfortunately, the international media missed the significance of that moment.
That lapse in media judgment is worth recalling in the coming days, when much of the media will be presenting the "prisoners' document" a set of demands drawn up by Hamas and Fatah members imprisoned in Israel as a historic Hamas concession, offering "tacit" recognition of Israel. In fact, the document does nothing of the sort. Nowhere does the document recognize the right of Israel to exist. Instead, it calls for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, followed by the "right" of Palestinian refugees to resettle in Israel and demographically overwhelm the Jewish state. The prisoners' document, in other words, is a plan for the phased destruction of Israel precisely why Hamas can endorse it.
Driving on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, I saw this graffiti: "Olmert, gadol alecha" which roughly translates as, "Olmert, the job is bigger than you are." For Olmert to disprove that growing suspicion among Israelis, he must commit himself to the destruction of the Hamas regime. Sooner or later, Israel will have no choice but to adopt that policy. The only question is whether Olmert will still be prime minister when that happens. I hope that Israel gets the job done this time. The so-called world will howl in protest, but they will not do jack sh!t to stop Israel if she does the job needed to insure her survival. Listening to the Weenies will just accelerate Israel's demise. Mr. Olmert, I hope you have what it takes to get the job done, and done right this time. And my sentiments are on the same line for the US.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/29/2006 13:21 ||
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Unless he is extraordinarily lucky, Israeli Army Corporal Gilad Shalit won't live to see his twentieth birthday. The Sunday raid by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip succeeded in wounding and kidnapping Shalit, killing two of his comrades and wounding two more. Israel has begun a sizeable military penetration into Gaza which aims to recover Shalit - alive or dead - and punish the Palestinians for their raid. As the Israeli incursion began early Wednesday, America and Egypt were counseling calm and - if he's still alive -- a scared teenage boy was sitting in some lightless room in Gaza praying for rescue.
Like every soldier, Shalit was trained to understand that hostages are expendable but - in the rough confidence of youth - understood that idea only in terms of people he would someday try to rescue. By now the unimaginable has occurred. Shalit's mind must be focused on the soldiers' dilemma his comrades face. They will do anything to rescue him, but nothing to trade for him. He knows he is the expendable hostage in this episode like so many have been before him and so many will be after. This is the definition of stability in the Middle East.
The kidnapping of Shalit, the Palestinian political maneuvering around it, and the Israeli counter-strike are tactical exchanges. But in war a tactical event sometimes has strategic effects. A tactical defeat, such as the one Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson suffered at Kernstown on 23 March 1862, was a strategic victory for the Confederates because it resulted in stalling 50,000 Federal troops in Maryland that would have otherwise reinforced McClellan's peninsula campaign. Shalit's kidnapping can be turned into a strategic defeat for the Palestinians. It should be used to destabilize the relationship between the Palestinians and the nations that use them as cannon fodder in a perpetual war against Israel.
Palestinians are the only people apparently incapable of acting in their own self-interest. For generations they have been willfully ignorant of the fact that their refusal to make peace with Israel serves only their enemies. Since Israel was created by UN mandate, the Palestinians have been rejected by Jordan (itself 60% Palestinian), Egypt and Syria. Saudi Arabia and Lebanon don't want them. But for decades under Arafat, the Palestinians did the bidding of the same countries that rejected them. Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others bought Arafat's regime for the price of terrorist campaigns against Israel. They fund and provide sanctuary for Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups for two reasons: first, to keep alive the Palestinians' hope of erasing Israel from the map; and second to absorb the casualties in the terror war against Israel that those nations don't wish to suffer. In the Middle East, the stability that we have helped nurture is the stability of terrorist states.
Last year's Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was a council of despair. Ungovernable and with a deeply-embedded terrorist infrastructure, Gaza was only a source of casualties for Israel. Withdrawal - accompanied by sealing the borders to prevent terrorist incursions - appeared the last best hope. Maybe Ariel Sharon could have brought off the idea of withdrawing and sealing off Gaza as a terrorist base. But Ehud Olmert is no Sharon, and as Olmert watched Gaza became Hamastan.
Terrorist, anarchic Hamastan proved a jar that couldn't be sealed. This year alone about eight hundred rockets were fired from it into Israel and though dozens of terrorist incursions were foiled, more and more succeeded as the Gaza-based terrorists learned how to penetrate the Israeli barriers. Still, the Olmert government hung back. It lacked the courage and decisiveness needed to re-enter Gaza to stamp out the terrorist enclaves. And, more importantly, it couldn't go back into Gaza without admitting that its withdrawal policy was a failure. Instead, Olmert ineptly struck back at rocket launch points and Israel's ability to defend itself seemed - thanks to Palestinian disinformation campaigns directed at sympathetic media -- to produce innocent civilian casualties among the Palestinians.
Hamastan poses problems both too large and too small for Israel to solve. The small problems, such as terrorists excavating the terror tunnel used to surprise Gilad Shalit's unit, can never be entirely prevented. The military strike into Gaza this week won't re-establish Israeli occupation, and it will from time to time be repeated. Bigger problems, such as the Hamas government and the support it gets from Israel's neighbors, won't, say some top Israelis, be solved by topping Hamas because there's no moderate Palestinians to take their place. That is another counsel of despair. Israel is stuck in a military cycle it thinks can't be broken. But it can, and it must, for our benefit as much as Israel's.
Israel can never settle the Palestinian problem by dealing only with the Palestinians just as we cannot ever settle Iraq's problems by dealing only with Iraqis. Because Israel's neighbors, and Iraq's, are the sources of their problems, so they must be the focus of the solutions. They are regional problems. If they are not solved throughout the region, they will not be solved at all.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal - operating from his headquarters in Damascus -- ordered the raid in which Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. Meshaal, and pretty much every other terrorist leader other than Usama bin Laden, operate from Syria with impunity because Bashar Assad's Syria - the Syria he inherited from his father, and which has been on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979 - is entirely stable. He has no fear that through American or Israeli action his support for terrorism will be interrupted. From Syria money, weapons and terrorists flowed into Iraq for months before and ever since the American invasion of 2003.
Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that Meshaal - even in Syria - was a target for Israeli action. We should encourage Israel to strike into Syria, and not just to capture or kill Meshaal. Destabilizing Syria, and thus destabilizing its support for terrorism in Israel and Iraq is the goal. If anyone chooses to equate "destabilization" with "regime change", we should do nothing to encourage or dissuade them. It's time to put the terrorist genie back in the bottle. If the genie won't comply, we may soon have to smash the bottle all to pieces.
Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration. He is a contributing editor to The American Spectator and author of Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States (with Edward Timperlake, Regnery 2006) and Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think (Regnery 2004).
#2
The tactics used also have implications. If Shalit is tortured and murdered, it will be a reaffirmation of the lesson of Menchaca and Tucker that you don't want to be taken prisoner. Given the BS of Abughraib and Gitmo, it's also clear there's not a lot of upside in taking prisoners. At this rate, it'll be a replay of the Pacific Theater. The muzzies should really think carefully, if they can think at all, before they push us into tactics we actually can do much more effectively than they.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/29/2006 11:17 Comments ||
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#4
The taking of hostages, vivisection and beheading is the chief terrorist tool of recruitment, guys. They are not trying to intimidate those on the other side, they are trying to get more support from the Umma.
#5
Palestinians are the only people apparently incapable of acting in their own self-interest. For generations they have been willfully ignorant of the fact that their refusal to make peace with Israel serves only their enemies. Since Israel was created by UN mandate, the Palestinians have been rejected by Jordan (itself 60% Palestinian), Egypt and Syria. Saudi Arabia and Lebanon don't want them. But for decades under Arafat, the Palestinians did the bidding of the same countries that rejected them. Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others bought Arafat's regime for the price of terrorist campaigns against Israel.
Pretty much sums up the history of the most hapless f&ckwit morons to have trod the earth.
JERUSALEM--Dawn broke yesterday over the Israel-Gaza border on a surreal but not unfamiliar scene: Rows of Merkava tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees were assembled in preparation for an incursion into the strip. These forces--when given the green light--would punch through booby-trapped refugee camps in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen, while Israeli jets and helicopters hunt the terrorists from above.
By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian attacks--such as the firing of some 1,000 Qassam rockets at Israeli border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier this week. The troops will probably net a large number of terrorists and may rescue the captured soldier. But while the operation may flex its military muscle, it cannot restore Israel's deterrence power or prevent future rocket attacks and kidnappings. Indeed, the attack may well prove Pyrrhic--inflicting greater injury on Israel than on the Palestinians.
The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. A sizable majority of Israelis supported disengagement, excruciating as it was, as a means of achieving a national consensus on the country's borders and of preserving its vital Jewish majority.
#2
I think all this pussyfooting around (both by Israel and the coalition in Iraq) is a big mistake. Does no one remember the concept of total war?
Sherman. Patton. MacArthur.
These are the men who win wars. Because they understand that there is only one way to win a war. And that is by killing the enemy, and killing, and killing, and killing them until they beg - BEG! - for mercy on any terms. And anyone who doesn't like it (that is, international critics) can come and get some asskicking themselves.
Anything other than the strategy above is a losing proposition. And both the USA and Israel will continue to lose, unless they regrow some nuts and start the serious killing. War is rough stuff, and history rewards only the winners.
#6
Scooter, don't you realize that 'THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD' ? The leftist cowards in the media really believe that BS. They taught that crap in school even back when I was a child.
The reality is guns and bombs can alter society centuries faster than any dogma. That's why the Islamodicks are using bombs and guns. Only the weak and the meek are overwhelmed by words.
The article above is a leftist pull-out-now whiner
trying like hell to make a difference.
#7
#2 I think all this pussyfooting around (both by Israel and the coalition in Iraq) is a big mistake. Does no one remember the concept of total war?
Sherman. Patton. MacArthur.
Scooter: The bad news is that many contemporary military types have rejected "total war" concepts. We've graduated a ton of officers more suitable to patten leather than Patton (sorry Mike Savage). Check out a number of mil-blogs (like Arrggg!) and you'll see what I mean. Welcome the new, sensitive legal officers corps.
To reach a conclusion about Iran's choice of this approximate date we also have to look at "neo-Iran" as it has evolved since Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad became President in August, 2005. He immediately set forth into implementing a palace coup against the old timers and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and now strives for Iran to be the leader of a global Moslem take over.
The Ahmadi-Nejad gang has tried already to jettison the word Republic and call the Iranian regime the Islamic government of Iran. The United Nations refused to accept the name change.
Earlier, Ayatollah "the Crocodile" Mesbah Yazdi (leader of the Hojatieh sect of Shia Islam) said that Ayatollah Khomeini did not really want to use the word Republic and the vote of the people is not what really counts in the Islamic government, after all, the word of the Faghih (loosely "Allah's representative on earth") or Velayat Faghih (the clerical law imposed by that person) is above the law and peoples vote...
It seems as if The New York Times is revealing all our national security secrets. But relax -- they have their limits.
If The Times learned that U.S. troops were force-feeding Gitmo detainees with Coca-Cola, they wouldn't publish Coke's secret formula. They might get sued. If there's a CIA program that uses offensive cartoons of Muhammad to communicate with agents, they'll keep mum, lest they have to publish the images. But secret law-enforcement-type programs as classified as the access code to The Times' top-floor elevator? Fair game. You've got the right to know.
Here's a look ahead to new, vital scoops.
Aug. 21, 2006: "Super-stealthy surveillance drone emits high-frequency sounds harmful to dogs," a story announces. "Classified documents personally unsealed by Times editor Bill Keller reveal the latest spy drones cause dogs to run in circles, barking uncontrollably." Asked whether this might cause terrorists to start keeping dogs, a Times spokesman said it was unlikely, as they struck him more as cat people.
What's more, the terrorists probably assumed they were being watched. The spokesman references The Times story on classified satellites that could see through roofs at night from space, unless the roofs were covered with two layers of aluminum foil. "Thanks to that story," the spokesman adds, "the satellite has only been used one-tenth of the time, which adds considerably to its longevity." He also references a story on Baghdad's booming aluminum-installation trade as one of those "good news" stories bloggers are always demanding.
Sept. 10, 2006: The Times runs a story about a CIA agent named Mohammed al-Ghouri, 1234 Oceanside Boulevard, Evanston, Ill., who is attempting to penetrate a radical sleeper cell suspected of having 19 liters of homemade mustard gas. The series concludes with the agent's obituary, and a moving quote from a CIA historian noting that "al-Ghouri was one of that rare, brave breed whose names and deeds are rarely known. Except in this case, of course."
Criticized for blowing the agent's cover, a Times spokesman tartly notes that "this man is -- sorry, was -- a government employee, and if he's using taxpayer money to take terrorists out to lunch, we think the people ought to know, if only so they judge the menu items chosen on behalf of the government. Was veal consumed? Because a lot of people are sensitive to the veal issue."
Feb. 14, 2007: Times Editor Keller approves publication of the Pentagon's plans for a Feb. 15 strike on Iran, asserting that "there has been far too little debate about whether the sustained assault by cruise missiles and stealth bombers will provide a cover for the infiltration of several SpecOps teams from the Iraqi and Afghan bases, or whether these groups, code-named `Red Six' and `Blue Fourteen' respectively, might suffer friendly fire. One error in timing, such as the barrage scheduled for 3 a.m. on the night of the 24th, could expose our troops to great harm. If this leads to a debate about whether the Tomahawk missile can be sent slightly off course by a concentrated microwave burst, as classified documents seem to suggest, it's a debate we need to have."
April 1, 2007: Speaking before Congress -- specifically, the Visitors Gallery, where he suddenly stands and begins to orate -- Keller demands that the Senate declare the First Amendment "the bestest amendment ever" and highlight it in the Bill of Rights with a yellow marker. He is removed.
Oct. 31, 2007: Rumors in The Times newsroom indicate that Keller has become a believer in the "Hidden Editor" sect of journalism. This sect believes that if newspapers create enough chaos in the world, the hidden, or Twelfth, editor will appear. This will institute a reign of peace, justice, rising circulation rates, an eternal lock on the classifieds market, and a general agreement that Walter Duranty was correct: Ukrainians really did starve themselves to death out of patriotic fervor.
Jan. 27, 2008: Keller's replacement announces that The Times will begin running comic strips. Four full pages, from Garfield to Blondie. New York intellectuals are finally horrified. Subscribers cancel in droves.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/29/2006 09:37 ||
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#1
Sad, because it rings so true.
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
06/29/2006 11:39 Comments ||
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#2
Sept. 11, 2011: "Questions rise when entire top-level management and board of the Times is discovered to have left the metro area four days before Manhattan vaporized by a terrorist nuke."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
BY Michael Oren 
