"Not in Our Name." Closely argued
scathing critique of antiwar politicians and organizers, this op-ed asserts that they hide behind huge unaccountable amorphous political bodies like the EU and the UN to avoid taking responsibility, and that their position is so dangerous precisely because it is so passive.
. . . Ask yourself why, exactly, a war waged under the auspices of the UN is better than one waged by Britain and America alone. Would the outcome be any different, the consequences any less bloody? No. The difference is that, if the UN goes to war, it is tantamount to the wrath of God. We have no control over the UN, and therefore we have no responsibility for it. . . . But for those crying 'Not in my name', the attraction of such bodies is precisely that they let the electorate, us, individuals, the little people, off the hook. Bad things happen, but we cannot be implicated, because we have no control. So we become, not individuals with limited power, but victims with no power at all.
. . . None of these people are fighting to take control of the situation, to galvanise a political opposition to this new Gulf war or anything else. All of these people are taking the opportunity to air their personal objections to the latest twist, to gain their personal absolution from the bloody mess. All of these people are saying, 'Not in my name'. And all of these people were supposed to be responsible for running the country.
Outside Downing Street, the antiwar lobby stages die-ins to show just how seriously they take their victim status, and encourage working people to take an impromptu coffee break when war breaks out. Database inputting? Not in my name! Schoolchildren - who really do have no decision-making power - are applauded for skipping lessons to show how much they do not want to be a part of world politics. Double maths? Not in my name!
As they say, read the whole thing.
(via
Daddy Warblogs)
What Iraqi strategy? Jim Keegan wonders
what kind of war the Iraqis are fighting, and concludes - carefully enumerating their many tactical mistakes - it's not much of one at all. Strong evidence that 1) Saddam is dead, and/or 2) has lousy generals, and/or 3) may have good generals but refused to listen to them (a predictable syndrome of megalomaniac dictators).
They did not defend their frontier with Kuwait. The coalition forces passed through unopposed. They scarcely defended Umm Qasr, Iraq's only and vital port. It fell to 40 and 42 Commando after three days. They have not fought any large-scale or even small-scale battles, though the territory of their country is being eaten up day by day. More mysteriously they have neither demolished nor seriously defended any of the bridges over the Tigris or the Euphrates, which are essential to the coalition's movements into the country.
If Saddam had some great counter-attack force preparing a trap for the coalition in the national heartland, one might fear that the abandonment of the bridges intact was a devilish plot, designed to make all come right for him in one sudden reversal of fortune. As he does not possess such a force, Iraq's defensive strategy, if it can be so called, appears casual to the point of carelessness. Moreover, looking through the other end of the telescope, what Iraq has failed to do amounts also to an inexplicable abdication of advantage.
(via
Damian Penny)
Rising anti-semitism Dept. Meryl pulls together
the latest anti-semitism statistics. Many words have been written, by many people, about how Muslims were going to suffer a backlash of discrimination and hate crimes after 9/11. This has been come true, after a fashion. There is a minority group, both here and in Europe, that is suffering a backlash of violent discrimination and hate crimes.
But it's the Jews. And the backlash is isn't Americans attacking Muslims. It's Muslims and their supporters attacking Jews.
You know, Jews being beaten up and synagogues vandalized in Michigan, Berkeley, Paris . . . . You know, all that anti-semitism that we imagine in our heads, that we exaggerate, that we are so thin-skinned about, that isn't really anti-semitism because it's not
real anti-semitism unless we are actually on boxcars on the way to the death camps (which we exaggerated anyway). That anti-semitism.
(Meryl also has
some good news from that little country that so many of the world's self-regarding "activists" love to hate.)
UPDATE: Most recent fallout from
French anti-semitism, with a discussion of the case.
Another case:. . . When Jérémy broke free from his tormentors in the shower, he ran for help to the teacher's lounge but none of the faculty rose from their chairs to help the disheveled and distraught boy. . . In a telephone interview [the director of the school] grew irritated when asked if the teachers had come to Jérémy's aide. "Don't ask me to remember what they did," he said. "I didn't want to treat it as an anti-Arab or anti-Jewish incident. I treated it as fighting."
After the incident, Jérémy and his parents filed a complaint with the police, but the boy was taunted repeatedly in the subsequent weeks by other Muslim students. Finally, Jérémy's mother sent a lengthy complaint in the notebook that every student carries to pass messages between parents and faculty, but the notebook was never returned and a new, blank one was sent home with her son instead.
If you ever wondered what kind of people formed the Vichy government . . . .
Religion in wartime. Religion & Ethics Newsweekly has a whole section on military chaplains, with
quotes by several chaplains, and interviews with
Capt. James B. Magness, Chaplain for the U.S. Atlantic fleet,
Episcopal Military Bishop George Packard, and the first Navy Muslim chaplain,
Lieutenant MALAK IBN NOEL.R&E also has an interview with an editor of a popular anthology of prayers, about
the role of prayer in war time.BeliefNet is a great site about religion and spirituality and their challenges in modern life, with sections for every religion you've ever heard of and some you probably haven't. The site also has
a number of articles about the war, and a
blog, which has a few posts about trying to avoid harming sacred and historical sites in Iraq, which I will reproduce most of since they seem to not believe in permalinks.
. . . with some shooting continuing [in Karbala] and in Najaf, another city sacred to the Shiites, military spokesmen on both sides are fighting a spin war over who is desecrating the shrines.
Iraqis say American jets are buzzing the ancient tombs. American generals say G.I.s are holding fire even when fired at from mosques.
In our scorebook, the American side is ahead on points, since the latter is a crime, experts say, almost unforgiveable under Islamic rules of war.
Below that is another post on the topic:
. . . Karbala contains the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, who died there with his 72 followers in a massacre that might be called the Alamo of Islam. The shrine to Hussein commemorates the ultimate example of Muslim martyrdom, and Hussein himself is a founding imam of Shia Islam.
Though his own son-in-law is said to have destroyed the shrine while quelling Shiite riots after the Gulf War, Saddam has often made ingenious use of Islamic imagery. If the invasion comes down to a bloody fight between "infidels" and Iraqi troops at Karbala, the spiritual symbolism could well poison an American victory, especially for those Shiites whose support the coalition has been hoping for.
BeliefNet also has
an interactive map showing historical sites in Iraq that have religious meaning, and a link to a
tour of holy sites slated for October '04. I imagine Iraq will be glad for the tourism dollars.
(I had commented on
Command Post about concern that
Saddam is storing weapons next to historical sites in the belief that coalition forces won't risk damaging these sites.)
Here's a
chart showing number of soldiers of each major religious group in the US.
Naive tool / duplicitous terrorist sympathizer Dept. The religion/spirituality site BeliefNet has a whole
section devoted to Rachel Corrie, most of it repeating the falsehoods about how she was killed and what she was doing.
The essay that really turns my stomach is that of
Starhawk, a born-and-raised-Jewish Wiccan leader who bills herself as a teacher of non-violence techniques of activism, yet she
writes approvingly and with no criticism of the Palestinian cult of shaheed. She claims to be "teaching nonviolence techniques to peace activists of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," yet not once does she mention the innocent Israeli victims of suicide bombings. She says she is "working with the International Solidarity Movement to protect civilians" yet doesn't mention how
her group sheltered a known terrorist from the IDF. (You can also read this essay on
her website.)
PS Previous links to this story on Kesher Talk
here and
here, and
Honest Reporting has been keeping track of media reactions to this story.
Latest interesting war stuff. Blogging in the Weiss household has been bumpy lately. First, Glenn refers to a
CP post of mine from 2 days ago in
his interview on CNN. Cool. But then, I find out I can't open
Command Post because of some browser glitch. Not cool. Then, I have a life for a day or two. Cool. Then I download a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Netscape Navigator release which isn't dumbfounded by whatever is freezing IE (cool) and which has many wonderful bells and whistles (cool) but which frequently unexpectedly quits (not cool).
All to say that I haven't been posting to Command Post much lately but will resume probably tomorrow, and here's some more war stuff with shelf life:
Oxblog
posts a reader's letter approving General Franks' strategy.
This analysis compares General Franks' strategy to some historical battles and claims that the "pause" was deliberate.
How did the coalition forces get so far so fast, considering that as late as Monday they appeared to be stalled in their advance north, and questioning of the war plan ruled the day? A bit of military history will help to explain it, as will some necessary corrections to the view of coalition forces leader General Tommy Franks as an unimaginative general officer.
According to the UK tabloid
The Sun, their readers are
a bit upset at the posturings of MP George Galloway. Maybe the
Mirror will hire Galloway as a back up to Peter Arnett.
Command Post reviews
what photojournalist codes of ethics say about
manipulating photos.
War-related URLs. As I've said before, timely stuff goes to
Command Post, stuff with shelf life goes here.
Apparently, former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has been
making a lot of friends in public appearances across the country. Not.
The death rate from battlefield wounds has remained constant for 150 years, with one of five wounded soldiers dying, half from profuse bleeding.
New battlefield medical techniques aim to change all that. These range from bandages and clotting agents that quickly stop bleeding to mobile surgical teams which operate on the most severely wounded in the field, evacuating them when they are stabilized. Some of these techniques came about in response to the demands of inner-city trauma centers. Others were developed in the laboratory but will eventually come to an emergency room near you. A must read.
The antiwar movement got the message: it was too confrontational, too weird, too anti-American, too scattered in its message, too dependent on purveyors of fringe ideologies like ANSWER. Voila!
A new antiwar movement!. . . representatives of about 50 groups gathered at the Washington office of People for the American Way . . . For nearly a month in private conversations, they say they had been sharing their concerns that Answer's oratory was too anti-Israel, too angry. . . . "Answer is a radical left group and not very mainstream in terms of its image," said David Cortright, a veteran of the Vietnam War and the protests against it . . . They decided that afternoon to form a new coalition that would operate apart from Answer. They named it United for Peace and Justice. It immediately began planning small actions for December and January in various cities, and a large rally in New York City on Feb. 15, where speakers would be told that their remarks had to be about the war and nothing else.
Later that same October day, eight people from the meeting went out for dinner. . . . those eight agreed to create another group, calling this one Win Without War. To join, said Mr. Pariser of MoveOn, one of those attending, organizations had to explicitly sign on to the notion of being patriotic and taking a "reasonable" stance toward a conflict with Iraq, which at that time meant the continuation of weapons inspections.
. . . United for Peace said it supported nonviolent civil disobedience, while Win Without War said it did not. But as the general shift in strategy swept the peace movement over last weekend, United for Peace and Justice scaled back its advocacy of civil disobedience.
Perhaps now we'll find out if the antiwar movement actually has some good arguments against the war. They won't be such easy targets for ridicule, and that's all to the good.
If there wasn't a war on this would get a bigger headline Dept. Meteorites fell on Chicago. Big ones.
Several meteorites crashed through windows and poked holes in ceilings. Some reportedly struck cars in the area as well. One 13-year-old boy in Park Forest, Illinois, reports he was awakened when a five-pound rock crashed through his ceiling and rolled across the floor of his bedroom, just feet from where he was sleeping.
With Pesach coming, I wonder if we could count this as an
eleventh plague?
Catfight at Columbia. For those who have been following the story of the
"teach-in" at Columbia U: Academic watchdog Erin O'Connor
has a follow-up. Apparently, political science professor Jean Cohen is livid at what she terms de Genova's "hijacking" of her brainchild, the antiwar "teach-in."
Cohen emphasized that De Genova had not originally been invited to speak. He was replacing Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor who dropped out because of a medical emergency.
"At the last minute someone couldn't speak, and he just kind of appeared," Cohen said. "... He ended up on that platform by accident, almost by manipulation." Cohen said that as soon as it was clear that there was an opening in the program, De Genova was "right there, all ready with his speech--which makes me suspicious. It's bad luck that there was an opening, but he was all too ready," she said.
Most damning is that even Eric Foner, another professor who spoke against de Genova's comments at the time, defends the fact that only antiwar views were represented.
Erin has
comments on and
links to other campus teach-ins which purport to present a dialogue but stack the deck on their panels and speaker rosters.
UPDATE: De Genova
is skipping his classes because he is afraid for his life. Sounds like
projection to me.
The art of terrorism. I wrote previously (and others have mentioned it as well) about how
Saddam is taking a page from the Palestinian playbook: putting unarmed women and children out front and then milking the inevitable casualties for PR. Trent Telenko discusses how Saddam is also
working from the Stalinist playbook - specifically the use of prisoners as cannon fodder. (Cross-posted on
Command Post)
From An Unsealed Room:Whatever one might think of the Rachel Corrie bulldozer debacle, it has had an impact. The Hebrew-language website
Ynet quotes a senior IDF official as saying that the army is officially abandoning the tactic of bulldozing houses in Gaza because the army "has come to the conclusion that the damage to Israel's image internationally is greater than its effectiveness" as a terror-fighting tool. The right is condemning it as the military capitulating to the media. A left-wing politician, Ran Cohen of Meretz hailed it, saying that that "world public opinion has managed to accomplish what morality and common sense failed to acheive."
More than you ever wanted to know Dept. Synagogues in the US do not yet have to take the kind of security precautions as synagogues in Europe, which are often unmarked and require a visitor to phone ahead in order to be admitted. But w'ere getting there.
This site has some links on hiring the right security contractor, making the shul welcoming in spite of precautions, and a conference call on the subject with the
FBI and the
ADL.
Stay connected. I just wanted to remind folks about
TheBrave, a listserv for
Jews with family members in the US military.
1492 - Expulsion of Jews set in motion. On this day, 511 years ago, King Ferdinand of Spain signed a decree expelling Jews from his kingdom. An Italian Jew
wrote about it several years later, describing enormous acts of cruelty and betrayal by the kingdoms of Portugal, Tunis, Genoa, and mercenary ships hired to take them out of Spain. Naples and Turkey, however, took them in. (So did the Netherlands, which are not mentioned in this article from 1495.)
(via
Jurist law site's Paper Chase)
Hearings on Terrorism today. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - an independent, bipartisan commission created in late 2002 by Congress and the President to prepare a "full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks" - is holding its
first public hearings today and tomorrow in New York, with
live webcast.
More war-related news. I'm pouring most of the really hot items into
Command Post. These are juicy tidbits with more shelf life:
Apparently Tom Friedman refered to the Jewish mystical concept "tikkun olam" in one of his op-eds recently, in reference to the way the war is being conducted, so you may be interested in
its meaning and history.Virginia Postrel wonders:
"Is War a Generator of Expenses or an Economic Stimulus?" A generation ago, conventional wisdom held that an occasional war was good for the economy, but these days economists see war as an expense, although the Iraq war is a much smaller percentage of the GNP than previous wars. Postrel also mentions a U Chicago business school comparison of the projected cost of war vs. the cost of containment, using the containment of North Korea as a guideline. (You can download the PDF of that report
here.)
The Findlaw site has a page of links to
op-eds about the war from a legal perspective. Very interesting takes on issues such as the right to self-defense, POWs and journalists, state and local government resolutions on the war, congressional approval for war, and much more. The Jurist site also has a large section
devoted to legal aspects of the war. The International Committee of the Red Cross issues a
daily bulletin on relief efforts.
Everything you need to know about liberal mikveh. I previously
noted liberal Judaism's surge of interest in the tradition of chevra kadisha. Via the
Havurah Institute email list, here are a number of resources on another Jewish observance which has always been a pillar of orthodox community, and which liberal Jews are now investigating. (Hey, we're slow some times.)
A
mikveh run by non-orthodox Jews is being built in Boston, which means it will be open to use for non-orthodox conversions and other
innovative rituals. The Mikveh Makes a Comeback in
the Conservative movement, which technically requires
observance of taharat hamishpahah, although practice lags behind.
The idea of mikveh is bittersweet for me because as a result of surgery I no longer menstruate, so even if I were partnered and wanted to observe
taharat hamishpahah, I would have no reason to go. A primarily orthodox mikveh (almost all of them so far) gives preference to married women ending their periods at any time and observant men right before Shabbat and holidays, but a woman can technically go to the mikveh to purify herself for the same reasons as a man, and I did so for the first time right before Yom Kippur last fall. The mikveh on the Upper West Side is clean and well-appointed, the mikveh ladies are sweet and encouraging of newbies, and it was a wonderful experience.
