From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Terrorists
Murder American Hostage
Martin Burnham, a Christian missionary from Kansas, is dead after Philippine
troops attempted to rescue him from his terrorist kidnappers. Burnham's wife,
Gracia, survived the raid, but a third hostage, Filipino nurse Deborah Yap,
also died. The terrorist group Abu Sayyaf kidnapped the Burnhams in May 2001
and Yap a month later. Christianity
Today blogger Ted Olsen has a thorough summary of the news, with links.
In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof complains that Americans are "distracted by our own stereotypes, searching for Muslim terrorists in the Philippine jungle . . . and forgetting that there are blond, blue-eyed mad bombers as well." He thinks authorities should pay more attention to domestic militia-type nutjobs, and he cites as examples men named David Burgert and James Dalton Bell. It's hard to see where the authorities are falling short, though, given that Burgert and Bell are both already in jail!
It's a very silly day on the Times op-ed page, where former Enron adviser Paul Krugman writes: "Dick Cheney . . . remains in charge of energy policy. And that scares me more than terrorism. . . . Osama bin Laden can't destroy Western civilization. Carbon dioxide can."
Clueless
at the USDA
In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, it appeared America was up against a
formidable enemy. Hijacking four planes simultaneously and destroying New York's
two biggest buildings seemed to require a certain tactical brilliance. But the
more we hear about the pre-Sept. 11 activities of Mohamed Atta & Co., the
dumber the terrorists seem--and the more clueless Americans, especially government
officials, appear.
ABC News interviews Johnelle Bryant, a loan officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who says she met four of the hijackers, including Atta, when they tried to get government loans to buy crop-dusting planes. Her story is hard to believe, but here it is:
Bryant says Atta came to her office, and at first refused to talk to her, saying with disgust that she was "but a female." He relented when she told him there was no other way of getting a loan. He explained that he had come from Afghanistan, in Bryant's words, "to start his dream, which was to go flight school and get his pilot's license, and work both as a charter pilot and a crop duster too":
"He wanted to finance a twin-engine six-passenger aircraft . . . and remove the seats," said Bryant. "He said he was an engineer, and he wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."
When Bryant explained that there was an application process, Atta became "very agitated." He thought the loan would be in cash, and that he would have no trouble obtaining it to purchase an aircraft.
He also remarked about the lack of security in the building, pointing specifically to a safe behind Bryant's desk. "He asked me what would prevent him from going behind my desk and cutting my throat and making off with the millions of dollars in that safe," said Bryant. . . .
Before leaving Bryant's office, Atta became fixated with an aerial photo of Washington that was hanging on her office wall.
"He just said that it was one of the prettiest, the best he'd ever seen of Washington," she said, remembering that he was impressed with the panoramic view that captured all the monuments and buildings in one photograph, pointing specifically to the Pentagon and the White House. . . . "I believe he said, 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it,' like the cities in his country had been destroyed?"
None of this set off any alarms:
Atta also talked about life in his country. "He mentioned al Qaeda, he mentioned Osama bin Laden," said Bryant. "I didn't know who Osama bin Laden was . . . He could have been a character on Star Wars for all I knew."
He boasted about the role that they would one day play. "He said this man would someday be known as the world's greatest leader," she said.
Bryant and Atta shook hands on his way out. "I told him I wished him luck with his endeavor," remembered Bryant.
Bryant turned down Atta's loan application--as a noncitizen, he wasn't eligible--"but she referred him to other government agencies and to a bank downstairs."
The BBC, meanwhile, reports that Anne Greaves, a British woman who was a flight-school classmate of Atta, "is helping the FBI in its investigation into the terrorist attacks on the US."
"I was told by my instructor that he was an Arab prince and his companion was his bodyguard. But I didn't believe it," Greaves tells the BBC. "I noticed his determination. He had a cold steeliness about him. Sadly, that did not tie in with love of aviation or anything like it. He was fixated on achieving something but without the pride and pleasure of doing something you enjoy."
Obvious but
Controversial?
Matt Drudge reports that CNN "Moneyline" anchorman Lou Dobbs is on
the "hot seat." It seems the following statement, from Wednesday's
show, prompted "angry phone calls to CNN" from "stunned viewers
in Arab countries":
The government and media for the past nine months have called this a war against terror. So have we here. But terror is not the enemy. It is what the enemy wants to achieve. So on this broadcast, we are making a change . . . in the interests of clarity and honesty. The enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists. That's why we are abandoning the phrase, "War Against Terror." Let us be clear. This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them.
Left unclear is why exactly this is controversial.
Strange
Bedfellows
James Zogby, head of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, explains
America's "far right" to readers of the Saudi newspaper Arab News.
This passage is interesting:
David Duke, a former Nazi sympathizer and Ku Klux Klan leader, has run for office as a Republican in his home state of Louisiana capturing, at one point, about one-third of the vote. He was quickly denounced by the National [Republican] Party and has, therefore, remained a marginal figure in national politics.
Zogby fails to mention that, as we noted last month, Duke is a fellow Arab News contributor.
Saudi
Chutzpah Watch
"Today many Saudis and other Arabs resent Washington's new security measures
as being unfair," the BBC reports. "They say it is further evidence
of US bias against Muslims and Arabs."
The U.S. State Department's annual report on religious freedom notes that Saudi Arabia bans all public worship of non-Muslim religions and restricts both private worship and the practice of Shiite Islam, a minority sect in the kingdom. In addition, non-Muslims are not allowed to set foot in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. When the Saudis do away with these restrictions, perhaps their complaints of "bias" against Muslims will be worth taking seriously.
Who's
Against the Saudi Peace Plan?
The Bush administration has expressed support of the "Saudi peace plan,"
first proposed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Two important groups,
however, oppose the plan: the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post
reports on a pair of new polls--of Israelis, by the Israeli group IMRA and the
Zionist Organization of America, and of Palestinians, by the Palestinian Center
for Public Opinion. (Full
results are on IMRA's Web site.) The polls' findings:
- Seventy-three percent of Israelis and 80% of Israeli Jews oppose "the proposal that Israel withdraw to the pre-Six Day War lines--including from all of the Golan, Jordan Rift Valley, and the Old City of Jerusalem, and agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state in return for peace with the Palestinians and the Arab states." Only 3% of Jews supported the plan if it included a Palestinian "right of return" to the shrunken Israel.
- Only 24.1% of Palestinians support, and 62.4% oppose, the Saudi plan if it doesn't include the right of return.
- A slender majority--50.1%--of Palestinians say that members of the Tanzim militia should "hide their weapons" if the Palestinian authority orders them to surrender them. Only 12.1% said the militiamen should comply with such an order; 37.8% say they should "do nothing."
Agence France-Presse, meanwhile, reports that Yasser Arafat is demanding that the West Bank be Judenrein: "We insist on scrapping Jewish settlements that have been illegally created on our territory." What makes these "settlements" illegal? The Jerusalem Post reported in 1997 the Palestinian Authority's "justice minister," Freih Abu Medein, "said publicly that the death penalty would be demanded in PA courts for anybody who sold land to Jews."
Hold
Your Breath
"Syria's role as head of the U.N. Security Council resulted in an awkward
dilemma Thursday, when Israel asked the council president to condemn his own
country for harboring militant groups that attack Israel," the Associated
Press reports.
Commencement Idiocy Watch
Lani
Guinier at Smith College:
Even those of you who cannot boast of excellent grades, need not worry too much. After all, last year, our current president, George Bush, was the commencement speaker at Yale, his alma mater, and he delivered an address, explicitly directed to the "C" students. He said, "And to the 'C' students I say, you too can be president." Of course, he forgot to say, "You, too, can be president, but only if you're a straight white man."
Bell hooks at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, quoted by Marc Levin in Frontpage magazine:
Our nation's call for violence in the aftermath of 9/11 was an expression of widespread hopelessness, the cynicism that has been at the heart of our nation's ongoing fascination with death. Any society based on domination supports and condones violence. Yet as that violence wreaked havoc in our own hearts and in the lives of our loved ones and fellow citizens, many Americans experienced for the first time a moment of clarity when they knew without a doubt that to choose life, we must stand against violence, we must choose peace.
And yet that moment of collective clarity was soon obscured by the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal hunger to show the planet our nation's force, to show that this nation would commit absolute acts of violence that will wipe out whole nations and worlds. The world was held spellbound by our government's declaration of its commitment to violence, to death. Yet just as the violence of the terrorists who slaughtered the innocent on 9/11 does not lead us closer to justice, to reconciliation or peace, the violence acts of imperialist aggression enacted in the name of bringing an end to terrorism have brought us no closer to reconciliation, to peace, to justice.
Commencement
Banality Watch
Zayed Yasin delivered his "jihad" speech at Harvard yesterday, and
to judge by what we've heard from people who were there, as well as from the
account in the Harvard Crimson, it was utterly banal. "I am one of you, but
I am also one of them," Yasin said. "When I'm told this is a world at war
. . . I don't know whether to laugh or cry."
"On a global scale," he added, jihad "is a struggle . . . for control of the Big Decisions: not only who controls what piece of land, but more importantly who gets medicine, who can eat." Pardon us while we nap.
The Rocky Mountain News reports on a dustup at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, Colo., that erupted after Gail Wagner, whose daughter was a graduating senior, wrote the paper a letter (it's the fourth from the bottom) complaining that the school had played a computer-generated (really!) "World Anthem" in place of "The Star-Spangled Banner." She called it "an insipid little song about a world of peace and love," and she's right. Here are some of the lyrics:
Throughout the world,
We sing our praise to peace,
Our bond of love,
Will serve us endlessly.May we sing loud,
To fire our hopes and joys,
And let us now,
Believe in trust,
Eternally for all.
Principal Sandra Lundt says Wagner is wrong--the school never plays the national anthem at graduation. Why couldn't they at least have played the school's own "Impala Fight Song" instead of the wimpy world anthem? It's a lot more inspiring:
Poudre High will hit the line like thunder,
And we'll all shout for you to win.
Poudre High will plow the foe right under,
Never, Never to give in.Silver, Blue our colors shining brightly,
Guard them well throughout the game.
Heads up, drive on until we've won,
And then they'll know the victor's name.
The Associated Press reports that some Dartmouth students are up in arms about the college's choice of commencement speaker: Fred Rogers of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" fame. "Dartmouth College President James Wright, who made the final choice of the commencement speaker, said a good speaker is someone students can look up to," the AP reports. What an insult to past Dartmouth commencement speaker Robert Reich.
Bad
(and We Mean Bad) Hair Day
"A Hong Kong woman lost her case for compensation against a hair salon
which she claimed made her look like Osama bin Laden when she wanted a hairstyle
like Hollywood actress Julia Roberts," Reuters reports. Chu Ieu had sought
50,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$6,410) in damages. She complains that adjudicator
Yuen Chun-kau was biased against her: "He's bald. Of course he would not know
the pain of having damaged hair."
Monkeyfishing,
Chinese Style
"Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus story
about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington
builds them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome," Reuters reports.
The Beijing Evening News (circulation 1.25 million) took at face value the article
that first appeared in the Onion,
a satirical newspaper. Reuters adds:
Told the story came from the Onion and was not true, the editor said, "We would first have to check that out. If it's indeed fake, I'm sure there will be some form of correction."
It's too bad Arab newspapers didn't do the same thing with this Onion article, which has the added advantage of being true.
Dem
Bones
"Police Find Leg Bone Near Site of Chandra Levy Remains," reads the
headline of an Associated Press dispatch. Actually, though, it wasn't the cops
who found the bone; it was, as the article's lead sentence says, "investigators
working for Chandra Levy's parents." It doesn't exactly bolster your confidence
in Washington's finest, does it?
I,
the Jury
Monica Lewisnky has been excused from jury duty, the Associated Press reports.
"When asked by an attorney if she could be fair, the handbag designer and
former White House intern replied that she could not serve as a juror,"
the Associated Press reports. "Lewinsky became teary-eyed when one of the
two attorneys continued to question her."
Go Vandals!
Yesterday we
noted a letter to the editor from Thomas Schwink, an Iowa man who complained
that the word vandal is insensitive to Vandals.
We suggested that Washington state's Issaquah High School change the name of
its sports teams from the Indians to the Vandals just to tick Schwink off. Several
readers wrote us to say they thought Schwink was only joking; Iowans, it seems,
are famous for their dry wit.
In any case, it turns out that there are already sports teams called the Vandals, at the University of Idaho, Van High School in Van, Texas, and Vandalia High in Vandalia, Ill.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Thirteen-year-old Jeffrey Figueroa has been sentenced for the "spitwad"
incident, in which he injured another boy's eye. He could have faced up to eight
years behind bars, but instead got six days in juvenile hall, probation and
150 hours' community service at an eye bank. "He also was ordered not to
make any more spitballs, according to his mother, Yvette Figueroa," the
Associated Press reports. We noted
the case May 15, and added
some details on the seriousness of the victim's injury the next day.
Anarchists
Remain Disorganized
Fifteen-year-old Katie Sierra is dropping her lawsuit against the Kanawha County,
W.Va., Board of Education. The Associated Press reports Katie had been suspended
for trying to start an "anarchy club." When we were in high school,
we belonged to the solipsism club. We were the only member.
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Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Is John Ashcroft a meanie, or is Andy Rooney a fraidy-cat?
- Daniel Henninger: The FBI and CIA are first of all bureaucracies.
- Peggy Noonan: Obsessing over Sept. 11 distracts us from preventing the next attack.
And on the Taste page:
- Review & Outlook: Literary passages that are too racy, and a teacher who seduces a seventh-grader.
- Tony & Tacky: A small publisher hits the big time, and Norway needs a backdoor.
- Tunku Varadarajan: Be nice to Stephanopoulos, he's a good egg.
- Andy Bellin: A lot more is riding on War Emblem than his jockey.
- Lisa Singh: The "Son of Sam" says he's found God--but his story doesn't add up.
And don't miss "WSJ Editorial Board With Stuart Varney," tonight at 9 EDT and 8 PDT on CNBC.
