by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, March 7, 2002 3:55 P.M. EST

Left Out
National Review Online's Stanley Kurtz has a terrific analysis of both the hysterical lunacy of the "antiwar" far left and the discomfort about the war that some Democratic pols have clumsily expressed in the past couple of weeks. These reactions, he writes, "stem from a profound and entirely justified sense of foreboding about the open-ended nature of this conflict":

The problem for the Left is that Sept. 11 really may have changed everything--that a near-constant state of mobilization against terror may permanently cripple the politics of multiculturalism at home and anti-globalization abroad. That is why Senator Daschle and a rising chorus of pundits and intellectuals on the Left keep pressing the president to come up with an "exit strategy." It's not simply that they're puffing up a bogus problem to gain a lever of criticism against the president. No, the Left understands that this really is a different, and potentially permanent, sort of war. So for sake of their own political survival, they are desperate to define the conditions that might somehow bring this conflict to an end. . . .

The president is in fact defending us from an external foe, but that urgently necessary defense really does have the effect of cutting off the cultural and political oxygen of the Left.

Last month, in an American Enterprise Institute lecture, Norman Podhoretz warned of the danger of the antiwar left. "Of one thing we can be sure," he said: "As the war widens, opposition will widen along with it." He recounted European opposition to President Bush's "axis of evil" speech, then added:

At home, much the same position was expressed by the New York Times and other publications ranging from the Center to the hard Left. In these precincts the President was hit for recklessness and overreaching, while terms redolent of Vietnam like "slippery slope" and "quagmire" were resurrected. Yet unlike the antiwar movement during Vietnam, which was almost completely made up of leftists and liberals, today's developing opposition resembles the one we had during the run-up to the Gulf War. That is, it is forging a coalition of the hard Left, elements of the soft Left, and sectors of the American Right. . . .

As this kind of thing metastasizes, a great responsibility will fall upon those of us who stand in awe of the moral courage and the strategic clarity President Bush has increasingly drawn out of his heart and soul and mind and guts since 9/11. We will need to mobilize all our intellectual firepower to fight off the arguments against the Bush Doctrine, and to expose them for what they really are: appeasement and defeatism traveling under other names.

We take Podhoretz's point and will keep our powder dry. But there's a more optimistic interpretation of the "antiwar" phenomonon--that it's more vestigial than incipient. The Weekly Standard's David Brooks put this view forth in reporting on Podhoretz's speech:

In the 1960s, it was plausible to think that Norman Mailer, Jimi Hendrix, the student radicals, and the New York Review of Books crowd were the avant-garde. It was possible, and maybe even exciting, to imagine that they were the bright and radically novel future and that LBJ and Richard Nixon were the past.

But now, to borrow a Thatcherite phrase, the New Left is yesterday's vision of the future. There may be radicals in the universities who say stupid things. Susan Sontag may be inane. Norman Mailer may be his own worst enemy (or second worst, as long as Norman Podhoretz is around). But nobody thinks these people are important. Students at all universities regard them not only as wrong, worse, they regard them as stale. The same view is held by most liberal reporters, and, in my experience, most liberal academics.

Kurtz reaches a similar conclusion:

The Democrats and the Left are panicking--speaking out against the war too sharply, too soon, and with too little justification--all because they cannot control their fear that an "open-ended" war against terrorism will permanently shift the cultural politics of the country to the right. Their fears are well taken. This war will not have a definitive ending. Because of that, the Left now has a very serious long-term problem on its hands. That definitely does not mean that the culture war is over. The sources of America's post-sixties cultural revolution are far too broad and deep for the culture war to fade. But in ways that may last for a very long time to come, our political and cultural center of gravity has shifted several degrees to the right.

For the moment, at least, the Brooks-Kurtz reading of the situation seems to be the more accurate one. Tom Daschle didn't get anywhere last week when (not for the first time) he raised some tentative and insubstantial questions about the war. Indeed, the Washington Times notes that Daschle is now offering a resolution declaring that the Senate "stands united with the president in the ongoing effort to destroy al Qaeda."

Of course, only time will tell if Podhoretz is right when he predicts a growing "antiwar" movement. And if his prediction turns out to be wrong, his call for vigilance may deserve some of the credit.

'We're Happy to Oblige'
London's Telegraph reports that the number of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters battling U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan "has increased to about 1,200 in the past 24 hours," even as Americans have killed hundreds of them. "It's possible that additional al-Qa'eda or Taliban could come from the mountains or from the villages or from across the borders and, to the extent that happened, that could change the situation," says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "And that's fine, because we're looking for them, wherever they are."

The Miami Herald quotes Maj. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the 10th Mountain Division: "If they want to bring in more people . . . so we can kill them, we're happy to oblige." Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai, quoted by the BBC, adds: "We are determined to finish them and send them to hell."

The Associated Press describes how al Qaeda fighters taunted Americans--with deadly results:

[Capt. Kevin] Butler requested another airstrike, watching through a scope. Again the enemy fighters disappeared into caves dug into the granite, snowcapped mountains at 9,000 feet. When the explosions ended, they emerged with wide grins, flailing their arms over their heads.

That's when Butler had enough. He sprinted forward, running uphill on the peak--a task made more difficult by the thin mountain air--and exposing himself to hostile fire so he could pinpoint his enemy. . . .

The jets roared ahead, and just like before, the enemy ducked into the caves, emerging for a third time to taunt the Americans.

But as they came out, the mortars detonated over their heads, spraying the al-Qaida fighters with shrapnel. Four of them died, said U.S. special operations soldiers who scaled the mountains and counted bodies.

"It was like a game of mortar pingpong," Butler said. "They might think twice before they try that move again."

Human Rights Watch has issued a press release (though no International Herald Tribune op-ed) about the reports that al Qaeda terrorists captured and executed Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts:

If reports of his execution are true . . . it would represent a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, which applies to all parties in the present conflict in Afghanistan.

"Murdering a prisoner is a war crime, plain and simple," said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.

This is the same enemy, of course, that almost six months ago flew commercial planes into skyscrapers, murdering thousands of civilians. What's more, according to the Boston Globe, "Al Qaeda forces have threatened to kidnap an American journalist in Afghanistan." Somehow we suspect they will not prove terribly receptive to Roth's efforts at moral suasion.

At Least They're Not Bulimic
The Guantanamo Bay hunger strike "dwindled Wednesday, with only three men left who have been without food since the protest's initial days," the Associated Press reports. Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert tells the AP: "We have what I would refer to as a rolling hunger strike. Essentially, people take turns not eating."

"There's not a sorority in America that couldn't whup you at that game, tough guys," observes reader S.E. Brenner (though InstaPundit quoted her first).

The U.N.'s Priorities
Mary Robinson, the United Nations' human-rights honcho, is warning against "xenophobia against Arabs and Muslims living in the West," the Associated Press reports. At a conference in Beirut, the former Irish president declared "We have to counter this prejudice, this kind of racial profiling and . . . we have to promote understanding." As long as she's visiting an Arab country, wouldn't it be more useful--not to mention more courageous--if she delivered the message that what we really need to counter is Arab and Muslim terrorism?

Italy Ties to Sept. 11?
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Italian authorities are investigating whether four Moroccan terrorism suspects are connected to the Sept. 11 atrocities. "What set off alarm bells was an Arizona address on a folder of Arabic documents," the paper reports:

Macedonia Turns Over Four Suspects
"The Macedonian government turned over two Jordanians and two Bosnians to U.S. custody after they were arrested near the U.S. ambassador's residence two weeks ago," the Washington Post reports from Skopje, the former Yugoslav republic's capital. "On Saturday, Macedonian police shot and killed seven men they said were from Pakistan or the Middle East and possibly on a terror mission aimed at Western facilities" in Skopje.

An al Qaeda Script
Martin and Gracia Burnham, the Christian missionaries being held hostage by the Philippine terror group Abu Sayyaf, have appeared on a videotape, reading a statement from their captors. The statement acknowledges Abu Sayyaf's ties to al Qaeda, referring to the Philippine group as "the Al Qaeda's 'Al Harakatul Islamiah,' or known as the Abu Sayyaf group."

Powell Urges Appeasement
Testifying before a House subcommittee, Secretary of State Colin Powell continues to press Israelis to appease the Arabs. "If you declare war against the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed--I don't know if that leads you anywhere," Powell said. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, quoted in Ha'aretz, says it was not he who declared war: "The Palestinian Authority and its leader have forced the war on Israel, and those who have initiated the war, also have the power to stop it."

With America fighting its own war on Islamic terrorists, it certainly sends a confusing message when the secretary of state tut-tuts Israel for its military response to terrorist acts. And Sharon is right that the Arabs are the aggressors. Even the New York Times today has an article entitled "For Fatah, Only a War Can Bring Peace to the Mideast" (link requires registration):

Since the beginning of the year, it has been Palestinian militants tied to Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction who have carried out most of the attacks against Israelis--and the most lethal attacks, Israeli and Palestinian officials say.

Israel's leaders see this as supporting their case that Mr. Arafat and his top Fatah lieutenant in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, are terrorists.

Mr. Barghouti sees the attacks, which he argues were provoked by Israeli violence, as the surest path to peace. He says they show that Fatah has recovered its political strength and is in a position to reach and enforce an agreement with Israel--provided the violence rages until the deal is done.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Today's Washington Post has a report on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah-linked group that has conducted most of the recent suicide bombings. Although the Post says the brigades "operate semi-independently" of Fatah, Hussein a-Sheikh, a senior Fatah commander in the West Bank, tells a slightly different story. Here's what he says in an interview with Israel radio, transcribed and translated from Hebrew by the Israeli group Independent Media Review Analysis:

Q: You also control the members of the Al Aksa Brigade?
Hussein a-Sheikh: Yes.
Q: Completely?
Hussein a-Sheikh: Not completely, but we control them to one extent or another.
Q: That is to say that if one of them wants to carry out an attack within Israel that they need your approval?
Hussein a-Sheikh: No.
Q: You consider them a positive body? A good group within the Fatah movement?
Hussein a-Sheikh: I am proud of them. It certainly is a positive group.

Ha'aretz reports that the Union of European Football Associations has suspended all soccer matches in Israel, and that al-Aqsa is threatening that if UEFA reverses the suspension and holds a forthcoming game in Tel Aviv, it will carry out "an attack 'in connection to the game.' "

If a poll by the Palestinian Council of Public Opinion is to be believed--and the usual caveats about public-opinion polling under an authoritarian regime apply here--the Palestinian Arab population is squarely behind the murder of Jewish civilians. "Of the 571 people selected at random, 66.5% said they support the continuation of the intifada, and 64.3% favored suicide attacks," the Jerusalem Post reports. "Supporting Arafat were 66.1%; 51.3 percent believe the intifada serves their interest, while 34.2% said it harms it." Remember when the Palestinians whooped it up on Sept. 11?

Be Prepared
The Second Amendment is alive and well--in Israel. "With the current escalation of terror, the Interior Ministry has been inundated with a 75 percent increase in requests for weapons permits over the last year, a figure that is expected to rise even further. According to figures released yesterday, the ministry received 7,790 request for permits last year, compared to 4,417 in 2000," the Jerusalem Post reports.

The Art of Spying--Not
Yesterday's report on a supposed ring of Israeli spies posing as art students "seems to be an urban myth that has been circulating for months," Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden tells the Washington Post. "The department has no information at this time to substantiate these widespread reports about Israeli art students involved in espionage."

We have, however, heard from more readers who've encountered Israeli art students. Francis Till writes:

Those sinister Israeli art students have found their way to New Zealand. Not long ago I spent half an hour going through the portfolio of one of these spies who was loitering suspiciously on a corner in the Highbury shopping district on the North Shore (just across the bridge from Auckland City). She had a clear view of the harbor from where she'd taken up position (of course, most people do, here, from almost any vantage point not directly behind a tree). I suspect, however, that she'd taken the wrong turn, since Devonport, where the Navy bases its ship and a half, is only a few miles away and full of artists, among whom she might have blended inconspicuously had she but had a camera.

And there's this, from David Waghalter of Los Angeles:

Two students canvassed our Orthodox neighborhood a while back. Several neighbors and I purchased pictures. The students were in our house for well over an hour while my wife and my sister-in-law went through each piece three or four times, deciding what to get. I admit it felt a little fishy, but the kids (a young, scrawny pair) seemed harmless enough.

For the record, these were simple paintings--that is, they were only canvases, not even stretched on a block. If there was some sort of bug on it, it has to be the most sophisticated fiber-thin remote device on the market. And they would have had to put on on every picture, and be willing to waste them on the likes of me and my extended family. Why spy on Orthodox Jews? The art looked to me a little too advanced for students, and surely there must be a better way to raise money, but what could they possibly have accomplished, espionage-wise?

How to Prevent Suicide
"High Religious Commitment Linked to Less Suicide," reads the headline of an intriguing Reuters dispatch. This seems awfully counterintuitive, given the prevalence of suicide attacks by Muslim fanatics. But it turns out this was a study of Mormons. Hmm, are there any Latter-day Saints missionaries in the Arab world?

Stupidity Watch
"Senior U.S. Officials Behind Sept. 11 Attacks," reads a headline in the Tehran Times. So who is the source for the Iranian newspaper's scoop? Get a load of this:

A U.S. presidential candidate in the 2000 election, Lyndon Larouche, has said that senior security officials of the United States were behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and were aiming to use the incident to promote a war against Islam.

Life Imitates the Onion
Remember those stories of congressmen getting past airport security by showing their Sam's Club cards? Turns out the Onion at some point did a satirical piece listing "new security measures" enacted in the wake of Sept. 11. Among them: "Sam's Club Supersaver cards no longer acceptable form of ID for airport check-in."

USA Today Imitates the Onion
From an op-ed by Robert Myers, a cultural anthropologist at Alfred (N.Y.) University:

Fun is back.

During the past several weeks, the word "fun" and its first cousin "funny" resurfaced. Their prominence had waned even before Sept. 11, but after the terrorist attacks, they disappeared nearly completely.

Fun returned cautiously at first, muted and often without the exclamation point that nearly always accompanied it before September--but it returned nevertheless. If Alan Greenspan were in charge of fun instead of the Federal Reserve, he might say with characteristic caution, "There are tentative indications that the contraction phase of the fun cycle is declining."

THEAter of the Absurd
The following item appears on the "links" list on the Web site of the Clinton Presidential Center:

President Clinton is the Honorary Chairperson of the THEA Foundation. THEA--The Home Everyone can Achieve--is dedicated to improving family life through hands-on family experiences. The THEA Foundation is based on the idea that retreat-based encounters can help families build a home that is warm and caring, as well as structured and demanding, resulting in children with high moral and ethical standards.

One of These Things Does Not Belong
Here's interesting crop of headlines from budget stories yesterday:

"CBO Changes Budget Forecast Back to Black"--Fox News

"Congressional Analysts See Surplus"--ABC News

"CBO Predicts Budget Surpluses"--MSNBC

"CBO: Bush Budget Would Lead to Bigger Deficits"--CNN

'You'd Drink Too'
Marvin Franks, a school-bus driver from Calgary, Alberta, had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit when he was arrested Friday afternoon for driving his bus while intoxicated. His excuse? "He said he smelled of alcohol because he was hung over and had consumed only two beers before setting out on his route, accompanied by a female companion," the National Post reports. Franks adds: "If you had these kids on your bus, you'd drink too."

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to S.E. Brenner, Richard Olson, David Merrill, Bill Phelps, Damian Bennett, C.E. Dobkin, Gregory Taylor, Jim Orheim, Aaron Rosenbaum, Raghu Desikan, Drew Parkhill, David Simon, James Childs, Aaron Gross, Michael Segal, Andrew Shulman, Jenifer Sawicki, Yehuda Hilewitz, Rob Harvie, Frank Natoli, Joel Fuhrmann, Shelley Taylor, Eric Timmons, John Reboul, Allen Taylor, Ed Jasaitis and Peg Innis. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Norbert Vollertsen: In attacking President Bush, Jimmy Carter loses his moral sense (link requires registration).
• Kim Strassel: A by-the-numbers look at the nation.
• John Fund: California voters still want to throw the bums out.