From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, April 9, 2002 4:15 P.M. EDT

Breaking News
On Sept. 11 The Wall Street Journal lost the use of its offices in downtown Manhattan. But for the feat of putting out a paper the next day anyway, it has won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting. Ten articles made up the winning entry; among them was Daniel Henninger's powerful firsthand account of the atrocity. Congratulations to all our colleagues.

Friedman's Friends the Saudis
Kudos to the New York Times' Thomas Friedman (link requires registration) who, alas, broke the Journal's two-year winning streak in the Commentary category for his fine post-Sept. 11 columns. Anyone who doubts Friedman deserved the prize should read this hilarious Arab News piece, published before the Pulitzer announcement, by one Wahib Binzagr, who says he was present at a meeting between the Timesman and "a number of Saudi intellectuals, businessmen and officials. Since that meeting I have decided not to read anything by this malicious columnist." He continues:

He always insists that Arabs and Muslims hate Israel and America. This claim may now be correct to a large extent and it is certainly not surprising. But Friedman cowardly avoids acknowledging that this hatred is not rooted in our souls but is a circumstantial phenomenon caused by the actions of Israel and American support for them. . . .

Even sillier is Friedman's claim that the Saudi peace initiative was launched to improve the Kingdom's image. Why should Saudi Arabia need to improve its image? The fact is that Saudi Arabia is known for its dedication to peace, stability and coexistence. Yes, I agree that nations or countries which support and encourage the theft of other people's lands need some image improvement. Of course, the lies of pro-Israel pens will continue to write.

The Times won in six other categories, including Public Service (for "A Nation Challenged," the special section on the war) and both photography categories. The New York Post's Andrea Peyser blasts the Pulitzer board for not giving the Breaking News Photography award to the Bergen (N.J.) Record for its photo of three firemen raising the American flag at ground zero. The Post invites readers to vote on whether the board made the right decision.

Winning the award for Investigative Reporting was the Washington Post, for a series on the local child-welfare bureaucracy. Among the also-rans was the Seattle Times' controversial series about the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which Journal reporter Laura Landro debunked. Over on Jim Romenesko's Media News, the Times' managing editor, Alex MacLeod, calls Landro's article a "hamhanded attack" and declares that "as the dust settles . . ., it will be The Journal's reputation, not ours, that has been damaged."

Homelessness Rediscovery Watch

"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000

"Awarded to Alex Raksin and Bob Sipchen of the Los Angeles Times for their comprehensive and powerfully written editorials exploring the issues and dilemmas provoked by mentally ill people dwelling on the streets."--Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing, April 8, 2002

Boos for Booze
Stop the presses: In a new study, the National Institutes of Health find that college students drink a lot. They needed a study to find that out? It gets even more blindingly obvious: "Though common on many campuses, alcohol abuse does not run rampant among all college and university students," declares an NIH press release, which goes on to explain (really) that heavy drinkers drink the most.

The study proposes such solutions as harsher enforcement of the drinking age, establishment of Friday night and Saturday morning classes, and an increase in the number of alcohol-free dorms. "I've lived in college dormitories for much of my adult life," says the Rev. Edward Malloy, Notre Dame's president and co-chairman of the NIH's college drinking task force, "so I know firsthand the impact irresponsible drinking has on the quality of residential life."

But the NIH does not suggest the most sensible approach: making collegiate imbibing safe and legal by lowering the drinking age to 19. Since 1986, when the federal government forced states to raise the age to 21, we've heard of study after study showing "binge drinking" in college is on the rise. With alcohol completely off limits to adults under 21, it's little wonder they have a hard time learning to drink responsibly.

As the NIH was releasing its study today, the Hartford Courant was reporting that Yale has become the fourth college to defy federal law by announcing it will reimburse students who lose their financial aid because of drug convictions. Western Washington University and Hampshire and Swarthmore colleges also scoff at this provision of the 1988 Higher Education Act. If colleges won't respect federal law when it comes to illegal drugs, does it really make sense to deputize them as Prohibition enforcers?

Powell Meets the Impotentates
King Mohammed of Morocco embarrassed Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday as Powell made the first stop in his Middle East trip. "Don't you think it would be more important to go to Jerusalem first?" the king asked the secretary within earshot of reporters, just after Powell's arrival at his palace in Agadir. Powell also met Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was vacationing in Morocco.

There's no evidence that the Arab leaders plan to comply with President Bush's demand that they stop giving moral and financial support to terrorism; indeed, the New York Times (links require registration) reports that "both American and Saudi officials said that none of the various other tensions in Saudi-American relations, including Saudi government support for schools that preach extremism, were addressed at the dinner and meeting tonight, but that Secretary Powell had focused solely on the prospects for peace in the Middle East."

Powell's mission, it seems, is to soothe the Arab world. The Associated Press reports:

[Arab leaders are] demanding, sometimes in blunt language, that the United States do more to rein in Israel. Otherwise, they warn of devastating consequences both for their moderate regimes and the United States.

There has been rising anger and frustration toward Israel," Jordan's King Abdullah II said in a CBS interview aired Monday, explaining why thousands of people have taken their protests to the streets in his country.

"Unfortunately, also, the anger is being leveled at the United States," Abdullah said ahead of his meeting this week with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The effort to soothe, however, seems to fall short of all-out appeasement. Although Reuters quotes Powell as saying "I intend to meet with Yasser Arafat," the Boston Globe reports that "while publicly calling on Israel to end its offensive against Palestinians in the West Bank 'without delay,' the Bush administration has privately signaled to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he can phase out the operation gradually."

Arab leaders today are perhaps as weak as they have ever been. They cannot credibly wield oil as a weapon; the New York Times reports that even Saddam Hussein's puny 30-day embargo may not be complete; "Baghdad did not indicate" that it plans to stop selling oil to its neighbors Jordan, Syria and Turkey. They pose no conventional military threat to Israel, so they have had to resort to hiring Palestinian hit men to murder Jewish civilians. In an Arab News piece, a Saudi writer rails impotently:

What is the use of Arab countries having armies? Why do we spend so much of our gigantic budgets for armaments, training, navies and air forces? What is it all for? When are we going to use our military power? And for whom are we building military installations? It is said that the Arab armies are there to defend our dignity, our faith, our religious sanctuaries and our existence. In fact, US policy has trod on our dignity and given no thought to our existence.

The Arab leaders' only threat is also their greatest fear: that their people's atavistic rage, which their own governments have nurtured over the years, will spark a regionwide implosion, bringing down the "moderate" governments that preserve Middle East stability, such as it is. This would not be in America's interests, especially when Saddam Hussein has yet to fall, which is why Colin Powell is over there trying to bring down the temperature. But if the Arab world makes good on its threat to go completely insane, no one will suffer more than the Arabs.

A vignette in a New York Times dispatch from the West Bank city of Nablus is a metaphor for the Arab predicament:

One of the wounded hopped on one foot to spare his injured leg, singing a Palestinian national song to keep his spirits up. "My enemy, I am coming for you, my enemy," he sang.

Once again, life imitates Monty Python.

Great Moments in Negotiation
Will Powell be able to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinian authority? Not if you ask Saeb Erakat, a Palestinian negotiator. He says, in the Jerusalem Post's words, that "the PA no longer exists, since Israel has isolated its leader, and destroyed its security services and institutions." Talk about nihilism; we've never heard of a party to a dispute begin negotiations by denying its own existence.

What if They Had Daisy Cutters?
"Palestinian gunmen killed 13 IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] reserve soldiers in a well-planned, multi-stage ambush in the center of Jenin's refugee camp early this morning," the Jerusalem Post reports. The gunmen may have been from Islamic Jihad. This is a reminder of how gentle Israel's war-fighting tactics have been compared with America's. Imagine if Israel had dropped a daisy cutter-type bomb on the jihadis. The Israeli soldiers would have been spared, but a lot more Palestinian civilians likely would have perished.

Guns Don't Kill People, Terrorists Kill People
The Catholic Church has put forward a plan for ending the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Reuters reports: "The Palestinians in the basilica would be given safe passage to the Gaza Strip, leaving their weapons." We guess we don't mind leaving the weapons there, so the clergymen who run the church can hold off the next invasion, but the whole point of Israel's military operation is to catch terrorists, not take away their easily replaceable guns.

A Religion of Peace
The Jerusalem Post reports "IDF units on Saturday discovered 20 Kassam rocket launchers and related apparatus in a mosque in the town of El Bireh, near Ramallah."

Europe's Embargo
It's no secret that the EU-niks back the impotentates. Now, Ha'aretz reports, "Germany, France and England are imposing an embargo on sales of certain defense equipment to Israel." Germany has already been holding back tank parts:

[Israeli] Defense Ministry sources said the steps against Israel were taken in the wake of international reports that Merkava tanks are being used in the hostilities against the Palestinians. As a result, Green organizations that support the German government coalition applied heavy pressure on the Social Democrats in Germany to cease all defense sales to Israel. The Greens object to any German involvement where there is violence, and oppose any military aid to those places where violence takes place.

The Greens' attitude seems to be: We'll sell the Jews our weapons, but only if they promise not to defend themselves. Is this really a policy Germany wants to adopt?

Israel vs. the World?
By his own admission, Kofi Annan heads one of the pre-eminent anti-Semitic organizations in the world; in 1999 the secretary-general said: "It sometimes seems as if the United Nations serves all the world's peoples but one: the Jews."

Now Annan is demanding that Israel cease its efforts to defend itself from terrorism: "The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraws--I don't think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and Government, can be wrong," a U.N. press release quotes him as saying.

Annan made that statement at the U.N. Second World Assembly on Aging. An Associated Press dispatch from that conference makes clear that Annan was right in 1999. In preparing an "International Plan of Action on Aging," "Arab countries, backed by China and more than 100 other developing nations, wanted to include references in the text to older persons living under occupation, primarily intended to mean Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, said a member of the Sudanese delegation."

Terrorist Police Blotter
A federal grand jury has indicted four people, "including an American attorney who represents a convicted terrorist," on charges of "providing material support and resources to an Islamic terrorist group," CNN reports. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the four, three Muslims and lawyer Lynne Stewart, "helped Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman 'direct' terrorist activity from his prison cell."

Missed Him by That Much?
The Press Trust of India picks up a report in the Nation, a Pakistani paper, that "terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden managed to escape hours before a joint team of FBI and Pakistan commandos raided an Al Qaeda hideout in Faisalabad in Punjab province on March 28, which resulted in the capture of his lieutenant Abu Zubaydah." It's not clear how credible the report is.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, observes that "it is interesting to me that Osama bin Laden doesn't seem to be putting out any videotapes lately," the Washington Times reports. "The defense chief stopped short of saying he believes bin Laden is dead or incapacitated. But he suggested that bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters are preoccupied with survival. 'If you put enough pressure on it so that it makes their lives more difficult, you have, indeed, accomplished something, it seems to me.' "

Stupidity Watch
Talk about bringing coals to Newcastle: "A group of 128 US intellectuals opposed to the notion that the "war on terrorism" is a "just war" has sent a letter to European counterparts calling for "a sane and frank European criticism of the Bush administration's war policy," Agence France-Presse reports. All good Americans no doubt are trembling at the prospect of being criticized by EU-nik intellectuals.

On the Taliban watch, the Grand Forks (N.D.) Daily Herald reports that Mayor Mike Brown likened a proposed city ethics course with--what else?:

"This is a solution in search of a problem," Brown said, noting that the Century Code already has general provisions guarding against conflicts of interest. "It reminded me of the Taliban," he said of the code's perceived strictness. . . .

When it was his turn to speak, [City Councilman Tim] Burke asked sarcastically: "Where can I get my membership card for the Taliban?" He said he took offense at the mayor's comments. The Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan, were known for their zealous religious police and atrocities committed against women and minority ethnic groups.

Almost as bad as Brown's remark is the Herald's description of the Taliban as targeting "minority ethnic groups." It would be more accurate to say they were known for atrocities committed against women and men.

Zero-Tolerance Watch
"An independent hearing examiner sided Monday with a Madison sixth-grader who brought a steak knife to school for a science project, calling the district's attempt to expel him 'overkill,' " the Wisconsin State Journal reports. We noted the case Friday.

You Don't Say
"As a group, Americans whose incomes are in the top 5 percent are footing an increasing share of the national income tax burden," reports the Associated Press. "People in the bottom half, on the other hand, are paying only a fraction of the total take." That "only a fraction" is a particularly nice touch. Even the rich pay "only a fraction" of all taxes--they just pay a much bigger fraction.

Brazil Nuts
The Rio de Janeiro tourist board is preparing to sue Fox Television "for damage to its international image and loss of revenue." At issue is an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer & Co. visit Rio and find "a city where all men are bisexual, where fearsome monkeys roam the streets, and tourists are kidnapped by taxi drivers and mugged by children." Reports Britain's Guardian:

Rio has severe social problems and high levels of violence, although these are generally restricted to certain areas. Attacks on tourists are rare and no one has ever been attacked by a monkey on Copacabana.

Part of the anger in Brazil about The Simpsons is that, as well the stereotypes, there are many inaccuracies--Marge, the mother, finds that the local mode of transport is the "conga", which is a Caribbean dance. (She takes a conga to the hotel).

Also, the family visits a samba school to learn the macarena--a Latin dance not performed in Brazil. There is also the penetrada, a fictitious and lascivious dance shown them by the teacher.

Rio's tourist secretary, Jose Eduardo Guinle, said: "If Fox is so worried about Brazilian orphans and the poverty of our children, it should donate the profits of the episode to the city's social work programme."

Well, that does it. We were thinking of going to Rio for vacation, but we've changed our mind. The people there have no sense of humor.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Glen Smith, Daniel Goldstein, Patricia Catto, Bill Patterson, Mark Curry, Gregory Brunt, Michael Segal, John Hartness, C.E. Dobkin, David Kaufman, Jerome Marcus, Yehuda Hilewitz, Aaron Gross, Elizabeth Herman, Diane Ravitch, Raghu Desikan, David Shepherd, Anthony Brunsvold, Neal West, Carter Wood, John Stoneman, Daniel Cowles, Mike Daley, Sean McAloon, Christian Peck, Robert Krumm, John Lott, Chris Hayes, Pat Rowe and Marie Bourgeois. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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