Who can that be? In 1981, Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak.
"Thank God that Menachem Begin overrode his own intelligence agency, which worried that the attack would affect the peace process with Egypt, and ordered the reactor destroyed. Otherwise Iraq would have gained nuclear weapons in the 1980's, it might now have a province called Kuwait and a chunk of Iran, and the region might have suffered nuclear devastation. So pre-emption sometimes works, and even doves tend to favor cross-border intervention to prevent genocide in the Rwandas of the world."
An intelligent analysis, right? Would you believe it comes from the New York Times'
Nic Kristoff?
Don't get your hopes up, though, because Nic doesn't think this example applies to any other situation:
The lesson of Osirak is very limited — that in extreme cases it is justifiable for a country to make a pre-emptive pinpoint strike to prevent an unpredictable enemy from gaining weapons of mass destruction that would be used against it. That's a reasonable approach toward Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to cooperate and if we have intelligence about what sites are worth striking.
...one can accept that pre-emption is sometimes necessary, yet still prefer to rely not on an invasion of Iraq but instead on a less risky combination of containment, pinpoint bombing and assassination.
Because that has worked
so well over the last decade.
NJ Orthodox Jews get their eruv: A federal appeals court ruled that Orthodox Jews in Tenafly, N.J., may keep their eruv. In its decision Oct. 24 decision, the court said the religious demarcation that allows Orthodox Jews to carry items on the Sabbath should be allowed on the town's utility poles. Tenafly officials had argued that allowing the plastic strips on the poles constituted government endorsement of religion. However, the court said that by singling out the eruv, Tenafly was "selectively" applying an ordinance and discriminating against the Orthodox community. (The Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 7)
Quirky Iraqi Quotes: The Iraqi Foreign Minister's
letter to the UN, already highlighted by OpinionJournal's Best of the Web to be no statement of compliance whatsoever, opens with an interesting quotation:
Go thou to Pharaoh, for he has indeed transgressed all bounds. But speak to him mildly; perchance he may take warning or fear (Alla)."
(Allah's is the Word of Truth)
My wife saw this, and asked if Islam had suddenly adopted the book of Exodus. Didn't they edit Moses out of their version of events? And are the Iraqis supposed to be Moses and the U.S. supposed to be Pharoah in this new rendition?
Are women people? Matt and Co. are discussing whether or not women in the US are full citizens before the law, or slaves. Actually they are discussing abortion, but it amounts to the same thing. I said:
There is one glaring item missing from all these heady philosophical comments. Can all you college boys guess what it is? No?
How about the woman? Yes, that real live adult (at least post-puberty, which is the definition of adulthood in most cultures) human being.
The reason, college boys, that abortion is a thorny issue is because - unlike a brain-damaged person - the fetus' life depends on the the life and activities of its host (which I will only call a mother in situations where I agree that the fetus is a baby).
You can't compare and contrast the legal status of a fetus to any human which is already outside another human's body. The only comparable case is siamese twins, and courts have ruled that doctors may sacrifice the life of one twin for another if that is the only way to keep both from dying.
A woman who is forced to carry a child she doesn't want for 9 months and then undergo labor and the physical results of pregnancy, is not a free citizen but a slave. Is it ethical to enslave an existing human being to a potential human being? Hell, to another human being at all. That's the issue.
Do we force citizens to donate organs to other citizens who may die for want of said organ? No. Do we force people to donate money to beggars on the street who may starve if they aren't fed? No. Do we force children to house and feed aging parents who may die if left on their own? No.
We expect people to do these things, we hope they do these things, but we do not force them. Likewise, we do not force women to carry fetuses to term if they do not want to have children.
This is a religious argument as well as a political one, if the free choice of religious obligation means anything. (Of course, if you believe the infidel must be forcibly converted, you probably also believe people are organs of the collective body and shouldn't choose much of anything.)
If the right to abortion had been framed in those terms, we would still suffer from anti-abortion terrorism, but I think the public's minds would be clearer. The fact that it isn't framed in those terms, and that you can have a long complicated discussion about abortion without once mentioning the individual human being in which the uterus resides, says something about how much we consider women to be true citizens the minute their reproductive faculties are involved.
(I owe this particular pro-choice argument to my
favorite sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll Jewish
feminist Ellen
Willis)
Giving terrorists American citizenship: Michelle Malkin blows the whistle this morning on another immigration scandle. It turns out that a
member of the terrorist outfit Hizbullah was granted citizenship. INS and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force officers refused to turn over the terrorist's files when asked.
More on-line Jew-hatred. When someone
complains about hate-filled comments on lgf, show them
this.Sample:
. . . the Jews killed Martin Luther King to safeguard Jewish suburbia from blacks. . . .
. . . the most de-energizing and traitorous component of the anti-war movement are its Jews. It is Israel that should be levelled by an armada of B-52's dropping cluster bombs, Israel which should feel the terrible might of the U.S. military, and Israel which has forfeited its right to exist. This is the consensus of the world, writ large.
This is what we as patriotic Americans, and good citizens of the planet should be fighting for. . . .
. . . Israel is the growing evil, they're the ones who've employed nuclear blackmail on the U.S., they're in charge. . .
. . . Wicked and odious Jews whispering treacheries into the ears of callow or idiotic despots, on behalf of a foreign power IS a recurring blight of History. . . .
. . . 1. Synagogues, formerly known as dens of thieves, are now Israeli outposts. They should be bombed. . .
Is this an jihad-kiddy website? A speech by a mullah? No, it's the comment section at
an American anti-war blog. (Granted, most of these are by one troll run amuck, but he did manage to take over the whole thread, and the other comments aren't much better.)
Mike Sultan notwithstanding, Moment magazine is forced to ask the terrible question:
Are Jews still funny?
Hoist by his own petard. Great catch by Steven Chapman.
From the archives department: President John Adams, 1806
"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any
other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I
should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most
essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of
the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by
chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and
propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise,
almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great
essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization."
-
John Adams, 2nd U.S. President, 1806
Israeli-Italian-Arab communications: "Italy and Israel have agreed to install a sea cable of high standard international telecommunications which will link the telephone calls and digital lines between Italy and Israel and the southern Mediterranean states." Arabic News reports that Arabs are
offended that their communications might ever be routed through Israeli cables.
Myopia: Israel Radio Arab Affairs Correspondent Avi Yissakharov recently reported that the kibbutz massacre did not violate the deal being brokered by the European Union that there be no suicide attacks within the Green Line. Since the gunman escaped, this was technically not a "suicide attack." (
HonestReporting)
Was George Washington an anti-semite? They work more effectively against us than the enermy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America -- The Jews.
Actually, old GW never said any such thing. What Washington actually wrote, regarding currency speculators who sought to profit by taking advantage of soldiers and others during the Revolutionary War, was this:
This tribe of black gentry work more effectually against us, than the enermy's arms. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties, and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America.
He did, however, pen the following in response to a goodwill address from a Newport synagogue:
May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Old GW was no
anti-semite.
Jews on the diamond: There have only been 140 Jewish Major League Baseball players. Martin Abramowitz will soon be releasing a series of
Jewish baseball trading cards.
Blogosphere Civil Discourse Enforcement Dept. I have taken the
Neanderthals of the warblogger scene to task
several times. So has
Meryl (on lgf if not on her own blog). Now Diane E
delivers the coup de grace. We hope. My favorite line:
You can say anything you want. That doesn't mean you should. There comes a point in life when you are expected to act like an adult. If everyone got in touch with their inner frat-boy whenever they felt like it, human life would be unliveable.
Exactly. Thank you, Diane. Read the whole thing, and stop giving the
Anils ammunition.
BTW I thought Anil's intentions and targets for criticism were justified, but his shrill self-righteousness, defensiveness, inability to see the forest for the trees, and attempts to start a crusade made him a troll. The participants in a comments section that keep a good discussion on a sane footing do so by adhering to basic rules of verbal de-escalation: they choose their battles carefully, they don't act morally superior, they stick to the facts instead of making personal attacks, they praise before they blame, they accurately identify trolls and don't feed them, they don't use the blog primarily to vent but to communicate. They have quiet authority, like the kid in high-school who everybody thought was a mensch, even though he/she didn't fit into any of the cliques and wasn't trying to be popular.
In other words, they are
Heinlein individuals. Remember how in every Heinlein novel there was at least one whiney minor character who was never a villain but was just kind of annoying, and part of the protagonist's journey to maturity was to figure out how to handle said character with dignity and intelligence?
Endangered Mythical Species Dept.Silent Running reports a public works project on hold because it's
infringing on the habitat of a taniwha. Don't ask.
Eric Alterman needs a nap, part deux. Alterman posted
Grasshoppa's letter about the IDF.
Barak scheduled to speak at Berkeley - protests planned. A friend forwarded an alert about a protest against
Ehud Barak's upcoming appearance at
UCB. There was no URL attached, nor is the event on the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition
website; however,
this blog from Berkeley also posted the identical call to rally by the BSTWC. So I assume the rally email is genuine, but BSTWC hasn't put it on their website yet, or Google just hasn't turned up any additional URLs on the topic yet.
Here is what Berkeley Stop the War Coalition wants you to do:
OPEN LETTER TO CAMPUS ACTIVISTS - PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
LET'S ORGANIZE A PROTEST AGAINST EHUD BARAK SPEAKING ON CAMPUS
(NOVEMBER 19 at Zellerbach)!
Don't be fooled. Although the campus is promoting former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's speech on campus as "Peacemaking in the Middle East", Barak is anything but a man of peace. Not only has he overseen military aggression against the Palestinians, but Ehud Barak is actually coming to campus as part of a nation-wide tour to promote the US war with Iraq. A recent article in the Stanford Review quotes him saying the following:
"To the best of my judgment, the course that has been set by the Bush administration is the right one'" he said. Several times, Barak returned to the merits of removing Hussein from power, stressing that no one can be sure when Iraq's leader will acquire "a crude nuclear device similar to those which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "If we wait too long [to deal with Iraq] we may be making a very grave mistake'" he noted warily. "We must act while we still can." "Previous violations of many United Nations Security Council resolutions provide the legitimacy to remove [Hussein]'" he said, defending the "moral and strategic clarity" of Bush's motives for a strike against Iraq.
We believe that everyone who is opposed to the policies that Ehud Barak represents should come together to protest his speech. We would like to organize the largest possible rally and an open-air teach-in to coincide with his speech in Zellerbach.
Please send concerns, comments, and queries to ucbstopthewar@hotmail.com
Signed, The Events Committee of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition
As
Calstuff pointed out
A better question might ask why Barak has turned Hawkish recently. Perhaps it has something to do with Arafat destroying his political future and hopes of peace in his preference for Intifada.
The email I got notes how
the anti-war rhetoric segues into an anti-Israel one. Notice that there is absolutely no mention of Barak's offer at Camp David that would have given Arafat 97% of the West Bank on which a state might have been established along with peaceful relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Notice the historic revisionism: during Barak's administration there was some suicide bombings and minimal Israeli response; relatively speaking there was no military aggression towards the Palestinians. Notice the irony: Barak's policies represent an attempt to achieve peace--and this is what these activists want to protest?
So, if you will be in the lovely Bay Area on November 19th,
you know
what to do
instead.
PC on steroids. Stephen Den Beste notices
a dark storm cloud on the horizon of freedom of expression. For Europeans.
The rest of the world doesn't hate us. According to
Fareed Zakaria, it's more complicated than that.
what was most heartening was not that Bush won the battle within the United Nations but that Colin Powell won the war within the administration. “When I saw that Syria voted for the U.N. resolution on Iraq, I was thrilled,” said Hary Tjan Silalahi, an Indonesian scholar. “It’s not that I care about Syria at all, but I breathed a sigh of relief that people couldn’t look at this resolution and say it was America versus Arabs or the West versus Islam. It makes things so much better for us, the moderates in the Muslim world.” Because America’s policies were presented through an international body, in cooperation with other nations, it made it possible for people to gulp and accept our awesome power.
In other words, Bush was smart to get the UN on board. It wouldn't matter in the short run (conquering Iraq and forcing a regime change), but it would in the long run (keeping allies who will support policies which increase civil rights and material comfort throughout the world). (via
VodkaPundit)
UPDATE: Zakaria's article discusses how Eastern European and South Asian countries as more supportive of the US position than Western Europe.
This article zooms in on the Eastern European front:
Romania and Poland will bring a "pro-American critical mass" to NATO, said Mircea Geoana, Romania's foreign minister in an interview. Indeed, whenever Mr. Geoana's French diplomatic counterparts worry about Romania's enthusiasm for the United States, he said he tells them that "after Romania enjoys several decades of prosperity like France, then we will have the luxury of taking the U.S. for granted."
Throughout their history, Romania, Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries have been overrun and occupied by outside powers. They have survived by playing one power against the other, and by using those powers to protect themselves from local enemies. . . . Officials in this part of Europe are comfortable with an American military strategy that emphasizes American-led coalitions over strictly NATO ones.
(via
Best of the Web)
Four Lessons from Five Countries on
countering terrorism. (via
lgf comments) (The countries are Israel, the Philippines, Colombia, Peru, and the United Kingdom.)
Night of Breaking Glass. This past weekend, 64 years ago,
rampaging mobs throughout Germany and the newly acquired territories of Austria and Sudetenland freely attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship. At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned (and possibly as many as 2,000), almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
This event, a turning point in Hitler's war against the Jews, came to be known as
Kristallnacht. Meryl has
more.
Veteran's Day Memorial. Charles began it with "In Flanders Fields," and the
comment section took it from there. Wilfred Own, Emily Dickenson, Patrick Henry, Rudyard Kipling, and more.
American Jews mull over the U.S. elections: JTA examines the
Republican-Democratic dynamic -- while Jews are still voting overwhelmingly Democratic, things are changing slowly...
Bolstering entrepreneurialism amongst Russian Jewish women: Some 100 Jewish businesswomen from Israel and the former Soviet Union met in Moscow last month to form a social and professional network. The meeting, organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, was part of a larger initiative designed to establish exchanges between Russian Jewish and Israeli businesswomen — and create avenues for business partnerships among women entrepreneurs from both regions.
Russian society has traditionally been abusive and dismissive of women - turning this tradition around will
take more than a little time.
Tracking Yasser Arafat's dirty money: The Jewish Internet Association points out a new B'Nai Brith analysis, written by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld. The study, "
Where does the money go?" (PDF file; Adobe Acrobat required) details the criminal sources of Yasser Arafat's money (drugs, money laundering, smuggling, counterfeiting), the funds extorted from the Palestinian economy (taxes, monopolies, bribes, protection money) as well as the billions received from international agencies and donor countries including the United States. How much reaches the lower levels of Palestinian society? Hardly any. Arafat's henchmen have certainly gotten a lot of it, building lavish mansions (complete with swimming pools in the desert), sending their children to private schools in Europe, and developing huge slush funds in untouchable private bank accounts. Much of this is documented on the public record, but the flow of funds continues unabated.
Suicide bombing averted: Border policemen on duty near Kibbutz Metzer, on the seam-line north of Tul Karm, stopped a Palestinian car carrying two suspected terrorists yesterday afternoon. The car then exploded, killing
only its two occupants.
Anti-war, anti-semitic?: James Morrow points out the anti-semitism in the anti-war crowd at
Florence.
