From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Leading
Indicators
Here's another datum to bolster our optimism about America's long-term resolve
in fighting the war: Today's Harvard Crimson carries a clear-headed editorial
endorsing the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review:
The countries outlined in the report--Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, China and Russia--pose a clear danger to the security of the United States and its allies. All either have weapons of mass destruction, or have tried to develop them. Even more telling, several of these countries--most notably Iraq and Syria--have shown the willingness to slaughter their own people. And though Russia's relationship with the U.S. has improved immeasurably since the Cold War, it would be irresponsible of the military not to have a nuclear contingency plan for the world's largest nuclear power. . . .
Throughout the Cold War, the United States embraced the idea of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction. Due to this counter intuitive logic, the U.S. and the USSR were able to survive decades of intense geopolitical competition without engulfing the world in a nuclear holocaust. Today, as then, the threat of nuclear retaliation may do much to prevent a world conflict.
Contrast this with today's semihysterical New York Times editorial on the same topic (link requires registration), titled "America as Nuclear Rogue":
If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send that document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future American generations.
The Times also objects to the idea of developing new nukes to use on underground bunkers, on the grounds that they would have to be tested. "The voluntary moratorium on such tests," the Times risibly claims, "now helps restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran."
Now, the New York Times arguably is more influential than the Harvard Crimson. But is there any doubt which of these editorials is the voice of the future?
Another
Munich?
The analogy that came to most Americans' mind on Sept. 11 was Pearl Harbor.
But the perpetrators, not surprisingly, see matters differently. The excellent
Middle East Media and Research Institute translates an online column by Abu
Ubeid Al-Qurashi, an al Qaeda "activist," who says the attack was
another Munich.
That's Munich 1972, not Munich 1938. The reference, of course, is to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman at the Summer Olympics. Al-Qurashi writes:
In truth, the Munich operation was a great propaganda strike. Four thousand journalists and radio personnel, and two thousand commentators and television technicians were there to cover the Olympic games; suddenly, they were broadcasting the suffering of the Palestinian people. . . .
While the Munich operation failed to accomplish its goals, the New York raid was very well planned, and accomplished its planners' goals in full. It painfully challenged America, and was an unprecedented slap that had, and will still have, ramifications for the entire world. Unlike the Munich operation, which was limited and had limited national demands, the New York raid had broad goals and aspirations; it rang the bells of restoring Arab and Islamic glory.
Meanwhile, the Iranian news agency IRNA reports that "the English-language 'Kayhan International' in its Viewpoint column on Tuesday drew a parallel between the September 11 attacks against US financial and defense centers and the Boston Tea Party, when a group of New Englanders disguished [sic] as Red Indians boarded His Majesty's ship to dump crates of Indian tea into the Atlantic." The bulk of the article is devoted to an exposition of Iran's favorite American politician--Lyndon Larouche.
The
Final Assault
The fighting continues in Afghanistan. "An Afghan force backed by aging
armor and modern warplanes advanced to the foot of al Qaeda and Taliban forces'
mountain fortifications and prepared for an assault that commanders hoped would
finally wipe out the guerrilla holdouts burrowed inside," the Washington
Post reports. Reuters
says the terrorists--sorry, "rebels"--"were in full retreat toward
the Pakistan border," according to an Afghan general.
The Times of London, however, says America's Afghan allies have been grousing about America soldiers' inadequacy. "They were not trained for the kind of fighting we do in the mountains and, in these conditions, their kind of fighting is useless," Cmdr. Allah Mohammed tells the paper. "They were weakening our morale, it was better for them to go."
But the Associated Press reports that "Afghan leaders were considering a plan that could allow enemy survivors to leave the area unharmed."
Yankee
Ingenuity
The Weekly Standard, quoting an article in Jane's Air Launched Weapons,
describes the operation of a "thermobaric bomb":
A warhead containing a canister of aerosol liquid such as ethylene oxide or an explosive powder is dropped on a target. "A small initial explosive charge bursts this canister at a predetermined height, allowing the contents to form a concentrated explosive vapor cloud. This cloud is then ignited by a second, larger charge, to generate an intense fireball and blast overpressure. . . . Even if the FAE (fuel-air explosive) fails to detonate completely, it will generate a widespread burning effect," says Jane's. "The temperature can be as high as 3,000 degrees Celsius--more than twice that generated by a conventional explosive. The blast wave can travel at approximately 10,000 feet per second."
Our
Friends the Saudis
Hey, they finally did something! "After months of private U.S. grumbling
that Saudi Arabia has not done enough to restrict religious charities tied to
Osama bin Laden, Riyadh yesterday cracked down on some overseas operations of
a large Muslim foundation based in the desert kingdom," the Washington
Post reports. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says Washington and Riyadh are
working together to cut off funding for the Haramain Islamic Foundation--well,
for its Bosnian and Somali branches anyway.
Highway
to Hell
Arab gunmen disguised as Israeli soldiers murdered six Jews on a highway in
northern Israel today, Ha'aretz reports. "Al Jazeera television reported
that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's
Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack."
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Ha'aretz quotes Al Manar, Hezbollah's TV station, as reporting: "The intifada holy warriors shifted their operations to the occupied northern Palestine and the Golan at noon today by attacking a Zionist bus near the Shlomi settlement." Shlomi is actually in northern Israel, not the Palestinian territories, yet CNN has apparently adopted the Hezbollah practice of referring to Israeli towns as "settlements." A dispatch on the network's Web site reports: "The Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrilla organization also denied responsibility for any operation in the Jewish settlement in Israel."
Suicide
by Cop
"Eleven photographs taken by an amateur photographer from his window in
east Jerusalem have caused outrage in the Arabic media, which allege they show
the summary execution of a Palestinian militant," the BBC reports. The
Arabs claim that police had already subdued the man, a would-be suicide bomber,
when they shot him; police say they were forced to kill him to prevent him from
detonating his bomb.
If the suspect had indeed been rendered harmless--and the BBC, no friend of the Jewish state, pronounces the evidence "inconclusive"--the policemen's conduct is deplorable. In a civilized country cops do not shoot suspects unless they pose an imminent danger. Even so, it's hard to work up any genuine outrage on behalf of the slain terrorist. He was, after all, on a suicide mission, the failure of which consisted in not managing to take any Jews with him. If the police were wrong to kill him, they were wrong only by the standards of the civilized world--a world the Palestinian Arab leadership has yet to join.
Pentagon
Widow: Let's Surrender
The Boston Globe profiles Amber Amundson, whose husband U.S. Army Specialist
Craig Amundson, died at the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Amber is now a "peace
advocate":
"I do not like unnecessary death," she wrote to President Bush. "I do not want anyone to use my husband's death to perpetuate violence." . . .
"We want to be a voice to let the country know that not all the victims of Sept. 11 are comfortable with what has gone on in Afghanistan," she said. Amundson has . . . enlisted her brother-in-law to help her drive around the country preaching peace. She has not found a wide embrace. "When I first started, I thought, 'Isn't it obvious we shouldn't be using violent force?"' she said. "I thought everybody would say, 'Right on.' They didn't."
Our heart goes out to Mrs. Amundson, who suffered a horrible loss. But let's get real. Her personal suffering doesn't make her views about public policy any less silly.
Send In the Mormons--II
There's no better way to draw a flurry of reader e-mail than to write about
the Mormons. Our item
yesterday suggesting wistfully that someone translate the Book of Mormon
into Arabic drew 16 responses from readers pointing out that such a translation
is already available. You can order it online here
from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a mere $2.50 (a bargain
at twice the price). And here's a handy list
of all the languages in which it is available, including Korean. A Farsi translation,
and the entire axis of evil would be covered.
Now all we need to do is flood Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and so forth with copies, and with Mormon missionaries, and soon the Mideast will be as peaceful as Utah. The only drawback is it'll still be difficult to get a drink.
Stupidity Watch
John
Whitebeck, an "international lawyer" writing from Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, offers this pearl of wisdom in the Los Angeles Times:
The greatest threat to world peace today is clearly "terrorism"--not the behavior to which the word is applied but the word itself.
And the editorial board of the Toledo Blade seizes on the war to justify an outrageous bit of corporate welfare--the use of eminent domain to seize private land on which Chrysler Corp. plans to build a Jeep plant:
There are times when the good of the civic body requires individual sacrifice. That is why members of our military are dying in Afghanistan, and that is why some people sacrificed their homes and small businesses for the Jeep plant. It wasn't about moving assets from one party to another but investing in the community's future.
Newsday's Carol Richards alerts her readers to the threat of Catholic schoolgirl suicide bombers:
They're Catholic schools, not Muslim, and the girls wear cute plaid skirts, not graceful head scarves--but the gimmick that advocates cite for their supposed constitutionality is that vouchers can be used at any nonpublic school and so don't violate the First Amendment ban on establishment of a religion.
It is ironic that the pitch for vouchers has reached the nation's highest court just as Americans have been made forcefully aware by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that the religious indoctrination of school children can breed poisonous hatred.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Building on the national reputation it earned from its work on the JonBenet
Ramsey case, the Boulder, Colo., police department has solved a chilling case
in which two culprits prepared a "hit list" of 40 people they wanted
to shoot and kill. The suspects are a pair of 12-year-old girls who are seventh-graders
at the Base
Line Middle School. Good thing they don't go to Catholic school, or there's
no telling what they'd have done.
Lazy Columnist Watch
Apparently the New York Daily News's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist E.R.
Shipp couldn't think of a topic for today's column. So instead she quotes
at length and then condemns a letter she got from a racist crank. If the Daily
News really thinks letters from racist cranks are worth publishing, why not
just put them on the letters page?
Not to be outdone, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof (link requires registration) spends his column mocking e-mails he's received from readers. The best thing about the Kristof column is the dateline: "SANA, Yemen." The guy goes halfway around the world to read his e-mails and make fun of them?
'Bag
of Garbage'
In a Salon rant (full article requires subscription) titled "Kenneth Starr's
$70 Million Bag of Garbage," Joshua Micah Marshall offers the following
observation:
The investigation [Robert] Ray inherited from his predecessor Kenneth Starr cost $70 million, and in the end yielded only the promise that it could have led to the president's indictment, but didn't. We all deserved more than that.
Gee, Josh, maybe you were out of the country for a few years there, but surely even the International Herald Tribune mentioned the 14 convictions Starr won (including a sitting governor of Arkansas) and Bill Clinton's impeachment.
Gorbachev
Blasts Clinton
In an interview with Crisis magazine, erstwhile Soviet strongman Mikhail Gorbachev
has this to say about Bill Clinton: "My relationship with President Clinton
was quite strained, if not downright tense. Of course, it was not because of
Monica Lewinsky. I was highly critical of his foreign policy. He is guilty for
the fact that the U.S. has wasted those ten years following the end of the Cold
War."
This
Story Is a Riot
The Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise reports: "The Port Arthur school district
Wednesday canceled the performance of an anti-violence play after fighting broke
out among some of the 300 high school students watching it a day earlier."
The event was part of the district's annual "Peace Week."
You
Don't Say
"I shouldn't have done it," Andrea Yates says, adding that the drowning
of her five children was "a bad choice."
'Fighting
Whities'
Solomon Little Owl, a student at the University of Northern Colorado, is unhappy
that a local high school's sports teams are called the Reds and use an American
Indian as a mascot. To illustrate his point, he has named his intramural basketball
team the Fighting Whities and is using a white man as its mascot. "The message
is, let's do something that will let people see the other side of what it's
like to be a mascot," Little Owl tells the Associated Press.
Seems to us, though, that this undermines the argument. We can't imagine any white person--or "person of colorlessness," in the politically correct parlance--would actually be offended by this. It actually strikes us as quite witty. But maybe Little Owl's point is that Indian mascots aren't so bad. National Review's John Miller reports on a Sports Illustrated poll of Indians:
"Asked if high school and college teams should stop using Indian nicknames, 81 percent of Native American respondents said no. As for pro sports, 83 percent of Native American respondents said teams should not stop using Indian nicknames, mascots, characters, and symbols."
The poll also found that 75 percent of Native Americans don't think the use of these team names and mascots "contributes to discrimination."
Fighting
Irish
Francis Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
apparently prefers whine to beer. He's upset about a student event called the
Pre-St. Patrick's Day Bar Crawl, which he describes, in the Chicago Tribune's
words, as "anti-Irish, anti-Catholic and racist":
Boyle said is considering filing a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights because he said his objections to the pub crawl have resulted in him receiving a stream of insulting e-mails--at least one of which he said was from a member of the school's administration.
"It insulted me, demeaned and berated me because I'm Irish," he said.
If this proves anything, it is that thin skin knows no skin color.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Bob Dudolevich, Ed Morrissey, Jerome Marcus, C.E. Dobkin, Raghu Desikan, Damian Bennett, Mikhail Malkin, David Merrill, Phil Elmore, Michael Segal, Joel Fuhrmann, Brandon Lynaugh, Rich Nicolello, Kevin Kelly, Greg Galdau, Steve Brizel, Sukumar Muralidharan, John Hartness, Hazen Dempster, Daniel Goldstein, Mike Basham, Anthony Brunsvold, Jeff Roby, Janice Lyons, Marie Bourgeois, Patricia Catto, Gregory Taylor and Paul McGrady. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Also on OpinionJournal:
- Max Boot: To have and have not in Havana (link requires registration).
- Tom Bray: The Democrats' latest phony attack on judicial nominees.
- Brendan Miniter: The worst and the dimmest unite against the war.
