Thoughts, comments, musings on life, politics, current events and the media.



Blogroll Me!


Comments by YACCS

 

I expect we'll see human rights protesters rushing here any day now

Fighting between Maoist rebels and the Nepalese government have claimed at least 160 lives so far in a single battle.

"They are so ferocious that they killed officers ... even after they surrendered," Vohra said. "They were stripped naked, then paraded, and finally beheaded with khukris, he said, referring to the traditional Nepali knives.

But only when the Israeli government kills someone is it worthy of Security Council resolutions.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/13/2002 05:53:00 PM |

 

What exactly do these people do for their government paychecks?

The IRS employs approximately 100,000 people. Apparently none of them are paid to actually look at the tax returns we're all forced to file. According to the Washington Post, over the last two years, the IRS has mistakenly paid about $30 million to people claiming a tax credit for slavery reparations. There is, of course, no such credit allowed under the tax code. The Post tries to portray the recipients of these credits as innocent dupes of scam artists and urban legends, but it's a little hard to believe that they couldn't figure out that the credit didn't exist when they looked at their tax return and couldn't find a line to put it on.

Then again, Paul Krugman is a nationally prominent economist, and he sees imaginary line items on the 1040, so maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/13/2002 05:49:00 AM |

 

Slightly one-sided

It's not hard to see why the rest of the world is so much less supportive of Israel than the United States is. Blame the media. The Reuter's headline for Saturday's recap of Middle Eastern events:Israel launches new raids in defiance of U.S. Last I checked, the U.S. asked Israel to withdraw and asked Arafat to condemn terror attacks, and to stop them. Neither side has complied. So why is the sole focus on Israel's behavior? How come the headline isn't: Palestinians blow up pedestrians in defiance of U.S.? Or, at least, Arafat refuses to denounce terror attacks in defiance of U.S.? After all, even today, President Bush reiterated his demands for Arafat:

"The president expects Yasser Arafat to denounce this morning's attack, to step up and show leadership," Fleischer said. "This is murder and Yasser Arafat needs to renounce it and renounce it soon, if not today."

"Expects" may not be the right word here; why on earth would anybody "expect" Arafat to renounce murder? What would make today any different than any time over the last six months? (Let alone the last four decades?)
posted by David Nieporent at 4/13/2002 05:21:00 AM |

 

Thanks for nothing, Larry

So Harvard's new president, Lawrence Summers, gets into a feud with Cornel West, so now we're stuck with him at Princeton? For someone who is so concerned with "respect," Princeton is actually somewhat of an odd choice for West (though he spent six years here earlier in his career) because African American Studies is a non-degree granting program, rather than a full department.

Coincidently, a devastating review of West's behavior during the Summers incident was just published by John McWhorter in City Journal. McWhorter takes West to task for playing the victim card when confronted by Summers with valid criticisms.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/12/2002 08:58:00 PM |

 

Why, you thought they'd solve something?

Is there any group other than the staff of the New York Times editorial board that could get excited enough about the World Assembly on Aging to write an editorial about what the delegates are discussing? It's a United Nations conference! They'll sit around for a week arguing that the United States should give away lots of money, write a report blaming Israel for something-or-other, and go home.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/12/2002 07:12:00 AM |

 

Pounding the table

There's an old legal aphorism that goes, "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table." Paul Krugman does a lot of pounding the table. Today, since he has run out of things to make up about President Bush's social security or energy plans, he decides to slur Bush over Thomas White. White's the secretary of the army, and a former Enron executive who presided over one of the more questionable Enron subsidiaries, which makes him an easy target. But Krugman doesn't care about Thomas White; he wants to go after Bush.

I don't know if anyone has done a calculation, but it's obvious that the Bush administration has appointed a record number of corporate executives to high-level positions, often regulating or doing business with their former employers.

I don't know if anyone has done a calculation, but it's obvious that Paul Krugman has set a record for the fewest factual columns in a newspaper career. Also, I don't know if anyone has done a calculation, but it's obvious I won the lottery last night. Fork over the money.

The administration clearly doesn't worry about conflicts of interest, but you don't have to posit outright corruption to wonder. For example: The secretaries of the Navy and Air Force are both lifelong defense-contractor executives. Won't they tend in the nature of things to believe that what's good for General Dynamics is good for America? Indeed, defense stocks have soared, partly because Wall Street analysts predict that profit margins on future contracts will be far higher than was considered appropriate in the past.

Oh. I see. Nothing else has happened in, say, the last six months that might affect the future profitability of the defense industry, has it? Wait, don't tell me... it's on the tip of my tongue. Nope, sorry, I can't think of anything. It must be corruption. By the way, who exactly would Krugman like to see as secretaries of the armed forces? Greenpeace activists?

But there's a further question. Many of the business executives recently appointed to government positions first entered the private sector after prior careers in the Reagan and Bush I administrations. As Sebastian Mallaby put it in The Washington Post, they are "political types dressed up in corporate clothing: people who got hired by business because they knew government, then hired by government on the theory that they knew business." (Dick Cheney is the quintessential example.) So are they really good businessmen, or are they just crony capitalists, men who have lived by their connections?

So wait, are they "lifelong defense-contractor executives," or are they "political types"? I can't keep all this innuendo straight. Paul, help me out here!

Consider the case of Thomas White, secretary of the Army, a former general who became a top Enron executive in 1990.

[...]

Stories about Mr. White's questionable behavior at his current job have emerged only recently, but it has been apparent for months that he was a Potemkin executive: all facade, with nothing behind it. Given that he was hired for his supposed business skills, this means that he is like a surgeon general who turns out never to have finished medical school.

So why does this administration, which is waving the flag so hard its arms must hurt, leave the Army — the Army! — in the hands of a man who is, at best, a poseur?

But I thought he was "a former general." Sheesh. Am I the only one reading these columns? Does Krugman ever look at them after he churns them out?

One theory I've heard is that Mr. White can't be fired: that there are facts about the administration's relationship with Enron that it doesn't want to come out, and that Mr. White knows where the bodies are buried.

One theory I've heard is that Paul Krugman personally organized the anthrax attacks last fall. Okay, it's probably not true, but as long as "theories I've heard" can substitute for facts, you might as well make them interesting.

My preferred explanation, however, is that Mr. White has been protected by the administration's infallibility complex. In case you haven't noticed, this administration never, ever admits making a mistake; even when it makes a policy U-turn, it tries to rewrite history to pretend that everything is still going according to plan.

Speaking of which, I wonder when Krugman is going to admit he was wrong about last year's tax rebate. I expect about the same time Condoleezza Rice is serving her second term as president, after Krugman finally gets over his sulking about his lack of influence in Washington.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/12/2002 06:52:00 AM |

 

In his spare time, he did Michael Bellesiles' research

The Washington Post reports that the resume of D.C. Fire Chief Ronnie Few had a few minor mistakes on it, such as claiming a degree from a college which he only attended briefly. The error has been blamed on "staff," as if some secretary just decided to inflate his credentials on her own. Then again, some Europeans keep putting "elected leader" on Yasir Arafat's resume, so I guess anything is possible.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/12/2002 05:55:00 AM |

 

Good news, bad news?

Venezuelan President/Dictator Hugo Chavez has been removed from office in a coup, according to the Venezuelan military. He lost the support of the military after his supporters fired into a crowd of marchers who were protesting his attempt to install his cronies in charge of the state oil company, killing at least twelve.

Venezuela is a key source of oil for the United States, and Chavez's actions had prompted a strike which was threatening to disrupt the nation's oil supply. So while this might create a short term disruption, it's probably beneficial in the long run.

On the one hand, a military coup is hardly something to be glad about. On the other, the military ousted a pro-Castro, pro-Saddam demagogue who was becoming more and more authoritarian -- with one of his final acts being to shut down the television stations that were broadcasting the protest march.

I guess we'll have to see how this plays out -- and whether Europe gives even a fraction of the amount of attention to these events as they do to Israel.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/12/2002 04:10:00 AM |

 

Maybe Arafat can get a European trademark on terrorism

People often mock the federal government, and correctly so, for having dozens of pages of regulations to control the size of holes in swiss cheese or to define chocolate chip cookies. But at least Washington doesn't do these sorts of things by multinational committee, as the European Union does:

On Tuesday, the 15-member union’s regulatory committee discussed a proposal by the EU Commission to include the Feta cheese on its list of appellation of origin products. These products can only be marketed as such if made in a specific geographical area traditionally linked with the product. However since no votes where taken after the discussion, the vote would have to be postponed for the next committee meeting in the following months.

If the proposal passes, anybody will be allowed to make Feta cheese, but only Greece will be able to call it Feta cheese. Oh, but it gets more bureaucratic, the longer it goes on:

The Commission's proposal envisages a transitional period of 5 years, which would help the cheese producers to adapt.

[...]

This proposal will be discussed and voted upon in the next meeting of the member states’ regulatory committee, which is set to be in the next 2 or 3 months. In the absence of an agreement in the committee's next meeting, the question will be referred to the Council of Ministers. If no agreement is reached, the matter will be judged by the Commission, which had already come out in favour of the Greece proposal.

The punchline, such as it is: they came up with this proposal years ago, but it was overruled by the European Court, who ordered them to reconsider whether or not Feta cheese was a generic term.

And these people expect to be taken seriously as an international political, economic, and military force?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/11/2002 06:29:00 PM |

 

It only counts when we do it

Hezbollah is stepping up its attacks from Lebanon on Israel's northern border. You'd think this would be big news, but it isn't. The Post headlines it, "Lebanese Border Skirmishes Could Spark Regional War." Could? What the heck do they think is going on now? Why are attacks on Israel seen as part of normal, everyday life in the Middle East, while Israel defending itself would be "war"?

"We thought that when the Israeli army withdrew, we'd finally get peace," said Valency Ahoun, the mayor of several Israeli villages along the northern border. "I cannot understand what Hezbollah is doing."

I believe that's what Europe calls the "peace process."
posted by David Nieporent at 4/11/2002 05:14:00 AM |

 

More campaign finance hyperbole from the Times

The New York Times is again upset about a campaign finance issue before Congress, but Jason Rylander tears their argument to shreds.

If you're in favor of burdensome, redundent reporting requirements, then join the NY Times in their sanctimony. But even if you truly care about regulating campaign spending, the bill before the House this week to eliminate duplicate filing requirements on state and local candidates and PACs is no Trojan horse. It doesn't weeken McCain-Feingold. It's a needed reform that restores some sense to the campaign finance system.

Jason explains what the laws actually say, instead of what the Times claims they say.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/11/2002 01:46:00 AM |

 

Not a surprise

The Daily Californian, Berkeley's student newspaper, reported on Tuesday that the Deputy Mayor of San Diego is calling for a boycott of the Padres because their owner held a fund-raiser in favor of a ballot initiative which would ban racial profiling. (Via OpinionJournal's Best of the Web.) This is the "good" kind of racial profiling, as far as liberals are concerned -- the kind where the state collects racial data on job and college applicants -- and therefore opposition to it is racist. The article makes a faint attempt to be evenhanded, but can't quite manage it:

The recent census data, which demonstrates that California is a state without an ethnic majority, may have scared whites and provided the impetus for the initiative.

This is a news story, remember, and that wasn't a quote, but rather the reporter's analysis. Now, finding liberal bias in the Berkeley student newspaper is approximately as shocking as finding sand in Northern Africa, but that seemed pretty egregious to me -- particularly given that the article notes that the initiative is the brainchild of activist Ward Connerly (who is black).
posted by David Nieporent at 4/11/2002 12:07:00 AM |

 

Plus, they all talk funny over there

Everyone else has probably already linked to this, but it's such a good piece that I felt the need to do so, too. David Brooks explains why they hate us, where "they" is Europe and the Arabs, and "us" is the United States and Israel.

AROUND 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a large crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were making lots of money, living in the big houses, and holding the key posts. They had none of the high style of the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the peasants. Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar materialists, shallow conformists, and self-absorbed philistines, who half the time failed even to acknowledge their moral and spiritual inferiority to the artists and intellectuals. What's more, it was their very mediocrity that accounted for their success. Through some screw-up in the great scheme of the universe, their narrow-minded greed had brought them vast wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social prestige.

Naturally, the artists and intellectuals were outraged. Hatred of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion of the French intelligentsia. Stendhal said traders and merchants made him want to "weep and vomit at the same time." Flaubert thought they were "plodding and avaricious." Hatred of the bourgeoisie, he wrote, "is the beginning of all virtue." He signed his letters "Bourgeoisophobus" to show how much he despised "stupid grocers and their ilk."

Of all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia. Marxism is dead. Freudianism is dead. Social Darwinism is dead, along with all those theories about racial purity that grew up around it. But the emotions and reactions that Flaubert, Stendhal, and all the others articulated in the 1830s are still with us, bigger than ever. In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has flowered variously and spread to places as diverse as Baghdad, Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary creed of our age.

This is because today, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower.

Right after 9/11, George Bush said that it was because "they" hated our way of life. "Intellectuals" sneered at this -- it was just more of Bush's "simplistic" thinking. The elite all "knew" that it was a reaction to our foreign policy, because, after all, our "way of life" wasn't something worth thinking about. Brooks explains why it is.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/10/2002 07:50:00 PM |

 

Sure, just pick on the attorneys

Although in this case, it might be justified. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on Monday that four associates of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman's have been indicted for passing messages to Rahman's terrorist organization in Egypt. At least three of the people indicted worked on Rahman's defense team during previous terrorism trials in New York, including his attorney, Lynne Stewart.

The facts of the case shouldn't be too difficult to establish; a few years ago, it was openly noted in the Egyptian media that this was going on:

Last Thursday, the spiritual leader of the militant Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, affirmed from his US prison that he has withdrawn his support for the group's unilaterally declared truce. However, the statement was not exactly a call to revive the armed struggle against the government. Abdel-Rahman said he would leave the final verdict on the fate of the cease-fire to the Gama'a leadership in Egypt. Abdel-Rahman is serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Centre in New York.

[...]

Originally, Abdel-Rahman had formally declared his support for the cease-fire. However, on 14 June Abdel-Rahman through his American lawyer, Lynne Stewart, stated that he had withdrawn his support because he believed the government had failed to reciprocate. This statement left Gama'a leaders divided on whether Abdel-Rahman was actually advocating a new wave of violence or merely calling for a re-evaluation of political strategy.

Still, it's a troubling case. It's built on wiretaps of conversations between attorney and client, and could give ammunition to Ashcroft's attempt to limit attorney-client privilege in alleged terrorism cases. It's a dangerous precedent, even if Ashcroft insists that this effort will be limited to terrorism cases.

Stewart, incidentally, has a rather, uh, interesting career, hanging out with the likes of nutcase Ramsey Clark. She has built a practice on defending the radical and unpopular, including mobster Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Rahman, Larry Davis (an accused drug dealer who shot several members of the NYPD who came to his apartment to arrest him, claiming (successfully) self defense, and members of the "Ohio 7," a domestic terrorist group responsible for the murder of a New Jersey police officer, She also pled guilty once before to contempt charges for refusing to disclose the source of her fees in a drug case.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/10/2002 02:24:00 PM |

 

Let's wait for the European Union to denounce this

Well, the Israeli offensive brought them more than a week of safety, but now the Palestinians have struck back, courageously blowing up a bus filled with commuters, killing at least 8 and wounding more than a dozen others. I'm sure, in some way, this is all Israel's fault -- because, after all, these sorts of things didn't happen before last week, when the Israeli "invasion" began.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/10/2002 12:46:00 PM |

 

And if that doesn't work, we'll hold our breaths until we turn blue

It would be funny, if it weren't sad. The European Union -- the same group that just gave $44 million to Yasir Arafat last week is now threatening trade sanctions against Israel if they don't pull out of the West Bank immediately.

"The Israeli military operation must be halted, not in stages, not town by town. It must stop, and stop immediately," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told the parliament.

He argued that Israel was jeopardizing its own security because the destruction of the Palestinian Authority could leave no one to implement a peace plan negotiated last year by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet.

Hello! Is anybody home in Europe! There is no peace plan! Nobody is implementing anything. Arafat doesn't want peace! Hello!

But, see, this time it will be different. Because now Arafat will eagerly talk to Powell to work with Zinni to sign on to Tenet which will lead to Mitchell and then, sometime around when Ralph Nader becomes president of the U.S., we'll be back to Oslo.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2002 08:38:00 PM |

 

Everything you thought you knew... is wrong

Who is responsible for attacking several public figures with anthrax last year? We had the "terrorists did it" theory. We had the "Iraq did it" theory. We had the "rogue American scientists did it" theory. And now the Washington Post reports that everyone is baffled because the anthrax "recipe" used was very different than any known source of anthrax, domestic or foreign. The FBI is apparently sticking with the "domestic nutcase" theory, but that's complicated by the fact that the anthrax sample sent to Senator Leahy was ground more finely than even U.S. government laboratories had ever managed, which seems to point to someone with more resources than a single individual. This story isn't over yet.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2002 11:51:00 AM |

 

Pay attention, please

The New York Times is annoyed at Ariel Sharon because he won't buy into their vision of Middle East peace, and because he's putting the interests of Israel ahead of those of President Bush.

It is increasingly clear that the costs to broader Israeli interests far outweigh whatever short-term security benefits this military operation may be yielding. Mr. Sharon's actions may be netting some terrorists and some of the terrible tools they employ, but they are inflaming the fury of thousands more Palestinians and millions of Arabs whose governments are being asked by Mr. Bush to press for more responsible Palestinian leadership. The prestige of the United States is on the line in an effort to help Israel, and the Israeli government is doing nothing to make the job easier.

An effort to help Israel? I don't think so. It's an effort to help the United States line up Arab support to attack Iraq. As for the Times' delusion that all was peaceful and copacetic in the region for Israel before the "invasion," little need be said.

The military operations, Israel's largest in the West Bank since it first occupied the area nearly 35 years ago, came in response to the attack by a suicide bomber on a Passover Seder in Netanya last month. Israel's declared objective is to dismantle the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure, but Mr. Sharon has also targeted leaders and offices of the Palestinian Authority.

What do you mean "but" and "also?" The Palestinian Authority is the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. Why does the Times persist in acting as if attacks on Israel were the work of "lone gunmen" who had suddenly snapped and attacked Israel? As the documents seized by Israel from Arafat's headquarters show, the attacks were planned and financed by the Palestinian "leadership."

More to the point, why does everyone get collective amnesia whenever they discuss Israel's actions? The wave of terrorist attacks on Israel were the reason for, not the result of, the Israeli "invasion" of the West Bank. Israel's "invasion" is not "inflaming" Palestinians; they were already inflamed. Israel's "invasion" is not "inflaming" the Arab world and preventing Arab states from cooperating in American peace efforts; the Arab world's refusal to condemn even the Netanya Pesach attack predates the Israeli "invasion" of the West Bank. We're not talking about full-fledged peace here, but the minimum standard of human decency and civilized behavior. If you can't condemn a murderous terrorist attack on a seder, you're not a potential ally or partner for peace. And nothing Israel does can change that.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2002 06:14:00 AM |

 

Maybe there are reasons not to shop at Amazon

The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that both the federal and Colorado constitutions limit the powers of law enforcement to obtain bookstore records. The ruling wasn't, as some news outlets erroneously reported, that bookstore records must remain anonymous; the court merely held that law-enforcement must demonstrate a compelling government need for the records, and that the bookstore is entitled to a hearing before turning over the records. It applies only in Colorado, unfortunately.

This ruling provides an interesting contrast to last fall's USA Patriot Act, which (among many other things) explicitly empowers the FBI to obtain records from bookstores and libraries. Is this new ruling a sign that hysteria over the 9/11 tragedy -- the hysteria which led Congress to rush to enact the USA Patriot Act into law with minimal debate -- has evaporated? Let's hope so. I certainly don't want Americans to become complacent about dealing with Islamofascist terrorism, but I do hope it shows that Americans are realizing that restricting our own civil liberties isn't the answer.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2002 05:27:00 AM |

 

Good enough for you?

Israel has begun pulling its forces out of two West Bank towns. Does anybody think that this will satisfy anybody? Certainly not the Palestinians, who have finally admitted what we've always known -- that the so-called "peace process" is dead:

Yasir Abed Rabbo, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said: "Sharon will not find local leaders who will be quislings for him. He has destroyed any future possibility of peace talks even before Secretary Powell arrives." In a written statement approved by Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leadership said, "The Israeli prime minister has, de facto, declared the end of the peace agreements signed between the Palestinians and the Israelis."

Well, this trip by Powell is sure to be productive. I just hope Bush has a fallback plan.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2002 04:54:00 AM |

 

Much ado about who gives a damn?

ABC has announced that Nightline will stay on the air for two more years, in its current timeslot. Yawn. Does it really matter anymore? I was a big fan and regular watcher of Nightline years ago, but in an age when I can turn on at least 4 different channels and get news 24 hours a day -- including satellite interviews with people from around the world, Nightline just isn't all that exciting. I still think Ted Koppel is a better interviewer, and a more serious journalist, than the "personalities" which infest television news today. But it's a half-hour show, which means 22 minutes of broadcasting. It's just not that significant.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2002 04:19:00 AM |

 

Required reading

Did I ever mention that I love Mark Steyn? Not only does he see the Middle Eastern situation more clearly than more prestigious columnists like Tom Friedman, but he manages to avoid Friedman's pompous ignore-what-your-eyes-tell-you-because-I'm-an-expert approach to commenting on the situation. In describing the results of Dick Cheney's failed field trip through the Mideast:

Aside from the grim body-count, the whole period was a deranged exercise in unrealpolitik, with all parties negotiating fictions. The vice-president wanted Saudi Arabia to pretend to be his friend, the Arab League to pretend that the peace plan is for real, Ariel Sharon to pretend that Yasser Arafat is cracking down on terrorism, and Arafat to pretend that he wants to crack down on terrorism. Why? What’s the point? Where’s it get you? The only consolation is that Saddam’s rapprochements with his neighbours are also illusory. The Arab armies make Belgium look butch: when the Marines go into Iraq, they won’t be running into any Egyptian or Syrian units. Nor is it worth fretting over Saddam’s call to use the oil supply as a weapon: right now, those guys need to sell the stuff more than the West needs to buy it. On the other hand, if the old monster’s wheeze was to postpone the US invasion by whipping up the West Bank into full-scale war, everything’s going to plan.

And on the futility of negotiations:

That’s not how the rest of the world sees it, of course, no matter how many suicide-bomber belts and printing plates in assorted currencies are stacked in the counterfeit king’s corridors of power. The UN has long treated Arafat as the leader of a sovereign nation, as if to underline his inevitability: he’s already a head of state; all he needs is for those ‘intransigent’ Israelis to give him a state to be head of. The Australians and Canadians still deplore the violence ‘on both sides’, but the EU has pretty much given up on Israel: the famously ‘shitty little country’ is more trouble than it’s worth. Even in America, the airwaves are clogged with experts urging a withdrawal by Israel, as that will encourage Arafat to get ‘Oslo’ back on track, not to mention ‘Tenet’ and ‘Mitchell’, as if this Beltway-speak means anything when you’re all wired up and ready to blow.
It’s very difficult to negotiate a ‘two-state solution’ when one side sees the two-state solution as an intermediate stage to a one-state solution: ending the ‘Israeli occupation’ of the West Bank is a tactical prelude to ending the Israeli occupation of Israel. The divide among the Palestinians isn’t between those who want to make peace with Israel and those who want to destroy her, but between those who want to destroy Israel one suicide bomb at a time and those who want to destroy her through artful ‘peace processes’. Ayat Mohammed al-Akhras, the straight-A high-school student who blew herself up in a supermarket last week, devoted her farewell video to castigating the Arab League big shots for pussying around with peace plans and leaving the real work to Palestinian schoolgirl bombers. Her view would appear, from the polls, to be the opinion of the overwhelming majority. It’s useless to pretend there’s anything to negotiate.

Tom Friedman should be sentenced to read Mark Steyn 100 times, and summarize Steyn's observations in his own words. Only then should he be allowed to comment on the situation.

posted by David Nieporent at 4/08/2002 05:12:00 AM |

 

Can we try this for Yasir Arafat?

File this tidbit from the Baltimore Sun under Big Time Oops:

Correction
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally published April 2, 2002



An obituary in Saturday's editions of The Sun reported the death of Ralph D. Chester of Millers Island. Mr. Chester is not dead.

Mr. Chester was reported to have died by a family member, who called The Sun to provide material for the obituary. The Sun later determined that the family member who called has been estranged from Mr. Chester for several years.

The Sun regrets the error.

I don't remember my criminal law class very well; is it legal to kill someone if the newspaper has already reported that he's dead?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/08/2002 04:33:00 AM |

 

There must have been a Wal-Mart opening to oppose...

When Israel kills Palestinians, Israel gets denounced. (Of course, when Palestinians kill Israelis, Israel also gets denounced.) When the U.S. announces it will try Al Qaeda members in military tribunals, the U.S. gets denounced. So you'd think that Palestinians secretly sentencing other Palestinians to death would be major news, sparking international protests. But if it is, I've missed it. And it's not because the story is too new:

Killings of Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel have become almost a daily occurrence as the fighting with Israel has intensified in recent weeks. Last week, Palestinian militants killed 10 Palestinians on one day for allegedly cooperating with Israel. In the West Bank city of Ramallah last month, the corpse of an accused collaborator was strung up from a monument in the center of town.

So where are the human rights protestors? Where are the "human shields" to protect these people? Why isn't the European Union threatening sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for this? Why isn't the United Nations passing resolutions condemning the Palestinians?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/08/2002 03:46:00 AM |

 

You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to

How do you define terrorism? Well, if you're William Raspberry, you don't bother. You just declare yourself confused, everyone bad, wash your hands of the whole thing, and go have dinner.

Here's where I get in trouble: Does it make sense to see the crisis in the Middle East as primarily the work of Palestinian terrorists driven by anti-Israeli hatred?

Uh, yes? Is this a trick question? Actually, I shouldn't be flip; it's far more than that. It's primarily the work of Arab regimes driven by anti-Western hatred, of which anti-Semitism (let's call it what it is) is only part. Saddam Hussein isn't paying terrorists because he hates Israel; he's paying terrorists because it distracts the United States from going after him, and because it distracts the people of Iraq from going after him.

I certainly do not intend to praise the Palestinian suicide bombers who were, for a while during Passover, blowing themselves up on a daily basis. But to think of them as violence-prone cowards -- even to call them terrorists -- is to miss the most salient fact of their behavior: utter desperation.

Haven't we gotten past this silliness by now? As Jonah Goldberg noted, it's brainwashing, not hopelessness, that describes these bombers. Raspberry continues:

I don't dispute that the suicide bombings constitute terrorism (even while the United Nations struggles to define the term). A good-enough working definition is violence, particularly against civilians and innocents, in furtherance of political ends.

But isn't it reasonable to examine those political ends? Isn't it reasonable also to ask what moral distinctions there are between what the suicide bombers (and those who dispatch them) are doing and what the Israeli forces have been doing?

No, it's not "reasonable to examine those political ends." Not as long as the terrorist attacks continue, it isn't. Otherwise, you're rewarding terrorism, and thus encouraging future terrorism. And as for your second question, if you have to ask, Mr. Raspberry, the answer is beyond you.

President Bush has described the latter as justified in retaliating for the suicide bombings. Those who see the suicide bombers as heroes naturally view their actions as retaliation for the latest humiliation visited upon them by the Israelis. What seems obvious to me is that every act of violence, by both sides, is both aggression and retaliation -- and that it does no good to try to separate one from the other. One might just as well hope to settle claims on the land variously called Israel and Palestine by hiring a title-search company to look it up.

Sure. Why bother making moral distinctions? That might involve thought. It's so much easier to throw up your hands and declare policeman and criminal, England and Germany, Sharon and Arafat to be exactly the same. By the way, Sharon's actions are not "retaliation" for the suicide bombings. They're an attempt to stop future suicide bombings by getting the people responsible.

Just as Sept. 11 has changed the way we think of our security, so should the wave of suicide bombers change the way Israelis think of theirs. What's the point in making clear to those who would attack you that they do so at peril of their lives if they knowingly do so by giving their lives?

This is the fuzzy thinking that comes from the belief that Palestinians are acting because they're "desperate," instead of understanding that this is part of a coherent strategy. You don't see Yasir Arafat strapping bombs to his own chest, do you? The point, Mr. Raspberry, is to make it clear to the people directing the suicide bombers that these actions will cost them their lives. Yasir Arafat may publicly proclaim his desire to be a martyr, but he sure doesn't seem to be in any big hurry to die -- at the same time he was saying he was willing to be killed, he was begging for help from world leaders.

Are they terrorists? Certainly. But is Israeli President Ariel Sharon any less a terrorist because he does his thing through a uniformed military, with tanks and machine guns? There's terror -- and intransigence and duplicity -- on both sides, and precious little value in trying to determine which side owns the preponderance of guilt.

Well, no. He's any less a terrorist because he doesn't deliberately blow up pizzerias and discos and supermarkets. How on earth did Raspberry get so confused that he thought the weapons, rather than the targets, determined whether it was terrorism?

Or the preponderance of virtue, for that matter. Much is made of the concessions the Israelis offered -- and that the Palestinians (in the person of Yasser Arafat) rejected about 18 months ago. And hardly anything is made, in the United States, at least, of the Palestinians' earlier concessions -- particularly of Israel's right to exist within secure borders and the abandonment of the Israel-is-Palestine contention in favor of a Palestinian state made up of only the West Bank and Gaza.

Perhaps because those of us who are paying attention don't believe that any such concessions have been made? Perhaps we've been listening to Hamas when they've told us that they don't support any "two-state solution"? Perhaps we were paying attention as Yasir Arafat walked out at Camp David? Perhaps we've seen Arafat's refusal to stop terrorist attacks?

But, as I say, there's not much point in reviewing the bidding now. What strikes me as essential is the recognition by each side of what the other side requires and a search for ways these requirements can be had without unacceptable peril.

Great! Got any suggestions for us? No, of course you don't.

For a long time, it seems to me, Israel preferred a stable strife to what it considered unpalatable concessions. The intifada, at first, and the suicide bombers now seem calculated to force serious negotiations and concessions by rendering the status quo intolerable.

Why is it so much easier for us in America to see Sharon's actions as in Israel's legitimate interest than to see the suicide bombers' as serving theirs?

Because the suicide bombers' "interest" is in killing Israelis. And by the way, how awful of Israel to consider the death of all its citizens to be "unpalatable."

This is one of the most muddled arguments I've read in a long time; at least the Europeans know what they want, even if it's wrong. Raspberry seems to have just turned on his television, seen a bunch of people getting killed, and decided it was too much trouble to figure out what was happening. But "a pox on both your houses" is literature, not foreign policy.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/08/2002 02:27:00 AM |

 

I vote neigh

Shenanigans in Massachusetts: organizers of a ballot initiative drive to ban horse-slaughtering claim that their supporters were tricked into signing a petition against gay marriage. Of course, there are similarities between the two: both involve banning activities because of the "Ugh" factor, rather than for any real reason.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/07/2002 10:00:00 PM |