From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Our
Enemies the Saudis
In a dispatch that reads like a Best of the Web
Greatest Hits collection, the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks reports that "a briefing
given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an
enemy of the United States":
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.
The briefing was prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. It's two steps removed from being actual administration policy--it's the advice of an outside adviser to an outside advisory board. But it does suggest that the administration at least has its eyes open about the Saudis. Ricks says the briefing "represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration--especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership--and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers." Some highlights:
- "The briefing argued that removing [Saddam] Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia--which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements." We said this in March.
- If the Saudis refuse to comply with American demands to end support for terrorist organizations, "Saudi oil fields and overseas financial assets should be 'targeted.' " This echoes an October Wall Street Journal editorial.
- Ricks quotes "an administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq," as saying: "The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad." We said this in March too--and we even used the road metaphor.
Little wonder this column has become the scourge of the Saudi press. The Saudis hate us almost as much as they hate Jews. Indeed, in an article helpfully translated by the Arab News, Amr Mohammad Al-Faisal of Al-Madinah, a Jedda-based daily, accuses us of representing "Jewish hegemony over the Western media."
On
Visas, No More American Express
The State Department would lose some
of its visa-issuing authority to the new Department of Homeland Security under
both House and Senate versions of bill creating the new department, the Washington
Post reports. The House bill includes provisions that "allow members of the Homeland
Security Department to be placed in consular offices," where they could "review
visa applications and order some rejected" and "give 'expert advice and training'
to consular officers on security threats." The Senate bill allows for stationing
security people in consulates but not giving them the power to reject applicants.
Our
Friends the Japanese
Time was when history was written by the victors.
Today, it seems, it's written by the victims. Today is the 57th anniversary of
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Reuters reports the top local pol marked
the occasion with some anti-American cant:
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba lamented the world's growing tendency to forget the horrors of the atomic bomb and warned his audience that the dangers of nuclear war were rising. . . . He added that the possibility of history's repeating itself had grown since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Akiba invited [President] Bush to Hiroshima "to confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons can do to human beings" and lashed out at Washington's go-it-alone stance.
"America has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world," Akiba said. "Rather, we, the people of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority to destroy the world."
Editorialists at the Boston Globe pick up the theme, wringing their hands about the possibility that America will "follow Japan's earlier path of wanton military aggression and contribute to future suffering." This is a rather appalling thing to say when America is defending itself against wanton aggression.
A pair of articles in left-wing British papers--of all places--provide a nice counterpoint to all this America-hating nonsense. The Independent picks up a report in Japan's Asahi newspaper that Japan itself had plans to build a nuclear bomb. Asahi "says the military ordered the destruction of the plans the day before Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945," the Independent reports. But "scientists . . . thought this was 'a waste' and decided to save at least part of the plans." They gave them to a researcher named Kazuo Kuroda, who later became a professor at the University of Arkansas. The plans surfaced when Kuroda died in April 2001.
Still among the living is Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the airplane that nuked Hiroshima. Studs Terkel interviews him for the Guardian and asks his views on current events:
Terkel: One big question. Since September 11, what are your thoughts? People talk about nukes, the hydrogen bomb.
Tibbets: Let's put it this way. I don't know any more about these terrorists than you do, I know nothing. When they bombed the Trade Centre I couldn't believe what was going on. We've fought many enemies at different times. But we knew who they were and where they were. These people, we don't know who they are or where they are. That's the point that bothers me. Because they're gonna strike again, I'll put money on it. And it's going to be damned dramatic. But they're gonna do it in their own sweet time. We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them. . . .
Terkel: One last thing, when you hear people say, "Let's nuke 'em," "Let's nuke these people," what do you think?
Tibbets: Oh, I wouldn't hesitate if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the sh--: "You've killed so many civilians." That's their tough luck for being there.
Not for nothing are Tibbets and his peers called the Greatest Generation.
Real
Courage
Abe Avremel Zelmanowitz, an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, N.Y.,
has been buried in Jerusalem. He died Sept. 11, but his remains were identified
only last week. Zelmanowitz worked on the 27th floor of 1 World Trade Center,
the second tower to collapse, so he surely could have escaped. Instead he stayed
behind to look out for a paraplegic colleague, Ed Beyea, urging Beyea's full-time
nurse to save herself instead. Ha'aretz recounts a story Zelmanowitz's brother told at his
funeral:
"A few days before the terrorist attack," Yankel Zelmanowitz related Monday, "Avremel attended a Sabbath shiur [lesson]. The rabbi spoke about sacrificing oneself for the love of God. Avremel told the rabbi: 'You speak of the great historical heroes, like Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, but how can a simple Jew like myself show his love of God?' The rabbi made some suggestions, but Avremel was not satisfied, so he asked the same question once again. The second reply didn't satisfy him either, nor did the third. But a few days later, he got the reply."
Next time some moral cretin like Susan Sontag opines that thugs who knife stewardesses and slam planes into buildings are "courageous," make him read the story of Abe Avremel Zelmanowitz.
Slow
Learners--II
Members of the Washington Post editorial board join their
counterparts at the New York Times in practicing moral equivalence befogged by
meaningless disclaimers. Referring to Hamas massacres of Israelis and Americans,
the Post writes:
It is not to shift the blame for these crimes that we note that they were entirely foreseeable reactions to the Israeli decision to assassinate a Hamas leader with a large bomb--an attack that also killed a number of civilians, several of them children. . . . So the cost of any operation designed to neutralize a major Hamas terrorist is not just the innocent Palestinian blood it might shed. The cost also, as a practical matter, involves Israelis whom Hamas will kill in response.
This is arrant nonsense. Shifting blame is exactly what the Post is doing, and they haven't even got the facts right. The Post imagines Hamas and Israel as children engaged in a schoolyard fight, in which provocation leads to escalation and an adult can bring peace by intervening with a stern "Break it up!" In fact, Hamas's leaders have made clear in both word and deed that Israel's mere existence is sufficient "provocation" for their barbaric attacks, and their goal is nothing less than genocide. As Arutz Sheva noted last week, Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi "said that terrorist attacks will continue until all Jews leave Israel."
You
Don't Say--I
"The inclusion of rat poison in bombs would be a sign
of malicious intent."--ABCNews.com, Aug. 6
Pagans
Against the War
You have to hand it to Tony Blair; the British prime
minister is nothing if not devilishly clever. In an effort to discredit opposition
to the forthcoming military operation against Saddam Hussein, Blair has appointed
Rowan Williams as archbishop of Canterbury, the top job in the Church of England.
Williams "is among 2,500 signatories of a Christian petition delivered to Downing
Street opposing military action against Iraq," the BBC reports. "The declaration
drawn up by the Christian peace group Pax Christi calls any attack on Iraq 'immoral
and illegal.' "
On the same day, London's Daily Telegraph carries a report that Williams "was inducted as an honorary white druid yesterday at an open-air ceremony in Wales reminiscent of a scene from a Monty Python sketch."
Blair is almost as cunning as the gang of right-wing saboteurs who apparently run The Nation.
A
Fool's Errand
Mike O'Brien of the British Foreign Office is in Libya,
where "he is expected to hold talks aimed at securing the support of Colonel Muammar
Gaddafi's regime for the international war on terror," the BBC reports.
The Jerusalem Post reports that while the U.N. General Assembly was debating its latest ritual denunciation of Israel, "Libyan Ambassador Abuzed Dorda used the podium to praise suicide bombers. 'Those they call terrorists,' he said, 'will be immortalized in history.' "
Stupidity Watch
The San Francisco Chronicle
carries a letter to the editor from one Anita
Hill:
An excellent piece by Daniel Kurtzman on George W. Bush's channeling of George Orwell ("Learning to love Big Brother," Insight section, July 28). And it was gutsy of The Chronicle to print it, especially given the administration's position that any criticism of or even disagreement with its policies and activities is anti-American.
Kurtzman brings focus to all the things some of us have been thinking and saying ever since the United States' initial responses to the Sept. 11 tragedy, and puts them into a cohesive, horrifying whole: the legendary secretiveness, manipulation of information, disinformation, constant state of "war" (the details of which of course cannot be made known for security reasons), encouraging citizens to spy on one another, and on and on.
This Anita Hill who's so worried about citizens "spying on one another"--this wouldn't be the same Anita Hill who ratted out her erstwhile boss to the FBI for allegedly making a few ribald comments two decades ago, would it?
George Monbiot of Britain's Guardian really hates America. "We should cross our fingers and hope that a combination of economic mismanagement, gangster capitalism and excessive military spending will reduce America's power to the extent that it ceases to use the rest of the world as its doormat," he writes.
The state of Iowa, Michael Said tells Cityview, a Des Moines weekly, is indistinguishable from Nazi Germany. Already the Iowa army has invaded and occupied Montana, South Dakota and part of Nebraska. It has set up forced labor camps and is bombing Chicago in a latter-day Blitz.
Well, OK, we just made that stuff up. Here's what Said actually said:
"I'm waiting for them to tell me that from now on I have to wear one of those yellow stars on my shirt," says Michael Said, who is also an immigrant. "There is very little difference between this and what happened in Germany, my country of origin, in the 1930s. Jewish people had yellow stars; gays, pink; Commies, red--all to show your status in society."
So what's he referring to? A special designation on immigrants' drivers licenses that says when their visas expire. Sorry, Mike, but Auschwitz this ain't.
We
Get Results
On Friday we
noted that the BBC, in reporting on France's prosecution of an Egyptian editor
who published an anti-Semitic blood libel, reported the libel as if it were true.
The BBC has now rewritten the article in question to rectify this.
Homer
Nods
In yesterday's
item about Palestinian terrorism, we cited two Arutz Sheva reports about a
"work accident" in which a suicide bomb in a car went off prematurely. A more
up-to-date Arutz Sheva report makes clear that in yesterday's incident the car
was not stolen, and the driver, an Arab from the Israeli city of Nazereth, has
been cleared of any involvement with the bombing.
Who
Gets the Pledge?
Two California parents are battling for custody of
the Pledge of Allegiance. In June, you'll recall, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled in favor of California crackpot Michael Newdow, the illegitimate
father of an eight-year-old girl, who had objected to his daughter having to hear
other kids say the pledge, including the phrase "under God," which drove Newdow
to distraction. Now the unnamed girl's mother, Sandra Banning, has "filed a court
motion seeking to intervene in the case," the Associated Press reports. "If the
court will not allow that, she asks that references to her daughter be taken off
the lawsuit":
In the court motion, Banning said she wants her daughter to be able to recite the pledge, exactly as it stands, as part of her education. Banning said neither she nor her daughter believe there is anything wrong with reciting the words "under God" in the pledge.
Banning has sole legal custody of the girl, and Newdow has been challenging that, too. Last month the New York Times noted that Newdow objects to the family-law principle that custody decisions should be made "in the best interests of the child." We can certainly see why.
The
Washington Post Times
Is the White House beat really this boring?
The Washington Post's Mike Allen has apparently been reduced to clock watching.
"The president used the phrase 'the spirit of America' 11 times in his 13-minute
remarks," Allen reports from Green Tree, Pa., where Bush met with rescued miners.
"Bush met privately with the miners and their families for about 20 minutes. . . .
Bush spoke 17 minutes longer at a Pittsburgh luncheon that raised $1 million for
Pennsylvania's Republican attorney general, Mike Fisher."
Allen has the wrong job. He should be a correspondent for Time magazine.
And
What Would a Picnic Be Without Them?
"Ants are sentient beings, like
we are, and have a right to life like we do, and they shouldn't be shown the level
of disrespect the producers of ant farms show them," Stephanie Boyles of the People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals tells the Chicago Tribune. "We can learn
about ants without having an ant farm. Kids end up getting tired of them and they
perish."
You
Don't Say--II
"Collision With SUV Hurts Motorcyclist"--headline, St.
Paul Pioneer Press, Aug. 5
Life
Imitates Ridiculopathy.com Imitating Life
Sometimes life is so ridiculous
as to be beyond satire. This past April, a humorous Web site called Ridiculopathy.com
published a joke news story saying that President Bush had put forth a peace plan
calling for Palestinian "reservations," on the model of American Indian reservations,
complete with gambling. But the satirists had long before been overtaken by events.
In September 1998, as the Jerusalem
Post reported, a casino called the Oasis opened outside the West Bank town
of Jericho. The Jericho casino quickly drew crowds of "well-heeled Israelis frustrated
by the closure of Turkey's casinos last winter and the reluctance of their own
government to legalize casinos inside Israel," the Post reported. Alas for betting
Israelis, the casino shut
down after the current round of Palestinian terror began, when Jericho visitors
risked losing more than their shirts.
In another story that should be satirical but isn't, Reuters reports that former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari is working on a "global lottery" to raise money for the U.N. The wire service says the world body and the World Lottery Association are working on a "feasibility study" and that the lottery "could help fight . . . poverty by supplementing official development aid." It's not a new idea; Ghana put forth a similar proposal back in 1972.
This does not seem the wisest antipoverty program. A lottery, after all, is a regressive tax, appealing as it does to poor people who dream of a sudden fortune. It also poses severe diplomatic challenges. Does the U.N. propose to override national or local laws in places that take a dim view of gambling, like Saudi Arabia--or, for that matter, Utah? If a group of colleagues pool their money on a winning ticket and can't agree how to divide the loot, will the U.N. send in peacekeepers?
The U.N. ought to stay out of the gambling business and stick to what it does well--whatever that might be.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Robert LeChevalier, Clark Landry, Rosanne Klass, Tom Elia, Jim Baer, Napoleon Cole, Scott Penner, S.E. Brenner, Jerome Marcus, Michael Morley, Francesca Watson, Howard Weiser, Damian Bennett, Scott Offen, Natalie Cohen, Chuck Herrick, Jamie Gregorian, Mara Gold, Yehuda Hilewitz, Michael Segal, Michiel Visser, Michael Simons, Craig Applebaum, David Schlosser, John Steele Gordon, Randy Schwartz, Elliot Ganz, Aaron Gross, Jeremy Winer, Jeffrey Shapiro, Nathan Wirtschafter, C.E. Dobkin, Richard Miniter, Joe Krakoviak, Stephan Levy, Larry Rothenberg, Zev Meisels, John Affleck, Donald Korn, Mark Freiberg, Joshua Sharf, Carl Sherer, Bill Levenson, David Siev, Adam Schupack, Robert Lawrence, Mike Bowers and Aaron Curtis. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Also on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Clinton tries to rewrite the history of "Black Hawk Down."
- Tom Bray: In Idaho and Wyoming, a reminder of what makes America great.
- Tunku Varadarajan: MSNBC's Nachman has a knack for words.
