From the WSJ Opinion Archives
'No
Current Danger'
The maestro of malaise, peanut farmer turned home builder Jimmy Carter, weighs
in on the Washington Post op-ed page with an article entitled "The Troubling
New Face of America." Carter, last
seen repeating Arab lies about the Jenin "massacre," opines that
America should leave Saddam alone, since "there is no current danger to
the United States from Baghdad." In his view there is, however, a current
danger to the United States from Washington: "Formerly admired almost universally
as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost
target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic
principles of democratic life."
What people often forget--or at least try to forget--is that Carter actually served a term as president of the United States, and during that time such fatuity was official American policy. The results included the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of power in Iran by Islamic lunatics, who invaded the U.S. Embassy and took dozens of Americans hostage, releasing them only after Ronald Reagan had been inaugurated.
We're not sure what drove the editors of the Post to publish Carter's silly piece, but we have a sneaking suspicion they meant it as a joke at his expense. A front-page story in today's Post gives the lie to Carter's complacency about Iraq:
Both the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency believe that Iraq's missile arsenal now includes two types of short-range missiles and a small number of medium-range Scuds that Iraq's military managed to hide from U.N. inspectors after the Gulf War. In addition, they say, Iraq probably retains dozens of missile warheads and possibly many more rockets and artillery shells that were filled with biological or chemical weapons years ago.
But large gaps exist in the West's knowledge of each of these programs.
The unknowns are critical, because they bear directly on the central question in the Iraq debate: whether Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose a significant threat to the United States and its allies.
Blogger Scott Koenig has a useful summary of Saddam's nuclear program. Among other things, he quotes the nonpartisan Nuclear Control Institute:
- All of Iraq's nuclear scientists are still in place.
- None of the nuclear-bomb components they built before the Gulf War have been found.
- If Iraq could steal or buy plutonium or bomb-grade uranium, Saddam could have the Bomb in short order.
As for Carter's contention that this should concern us less than the good opinion of "respected international organizations," we note this BBC report that one such organization, the U.N. Commission for Human Rights, may soon be chaired by . . . Libya! "Libya maintains an extensive security apparatus," a State Department human-rights report notes. "The result is a multilayered, pervasive surveillance system that monitors and controls the activities of individuals. The various security forces committed numerous serious human rights abuses."
Taisez-Vous,
S'il Vous Plaît!
For months now we've been hearing the mantra that President Bush needs to "make
the case" for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But now the French are taking
a position against making the case. "France said it was against publishing
top-secret evidence on Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction,
saying the public arena was not the place to wage such a campaign," Agence
France-Presse reports.
Riyadh's
Useful Idiots
Joel Mowbray is all over the latest developments in the case of Pat Roush's
daughters, Alia and Aisha, still hostages in the repressive desert kingdom of
Saudi Arabia. "The State Department surreptitiously undermined congressional
efforts this past weekend to rescue two abducted children from Saudi Arabia,"
Mowbray reports in the Washington Times. (Actually, Roush's daughters are grown
women, not children, but under Saudi "law" adult women need the permission
of a "guardian"--a father or husband--to leave the country.) A delegation
led by Rep. Dan Burton had gone to Saudi Arabia to try to arrange freedom for
the two women and other American hostages, but Alia and Aisha weren't there:
In a move that can only been seen as a direct swipe to take a pound of Miss Roush's flesh, the Saudis shuttled Alia and Aisha to London just as the congressional delegation was arriving in Saudi Arabia in order to have them sign a statement denouncing their own mother, and the country of freedom and liberty where they were born. . . .
Despite asking for--and being denied--Miss Roush's permission to take a statement from her daughters, a consular officer with the State Department willingly took the statement made by Alia and Aisha on Saturday anyway. . . .
The State Department wasn't content with merely spouting the official Saudi line about the girls "requesting" the meeting while "on vacation." No, the State Department had to do the Saudis' bidding to try and squash hopes of Miss Roush's daughters ever escaping the Wahhabist wonderland. The State Department told the press not that Alia and Aisha did not want to move to the United States, but that they didn't even want to "travel" here.
In National Review Online, meanwhile, Mowbray looks at the role of Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, which we noted yesterday. O'Reilly comes across as more useful idiot than co-conspirator:
O'Reilly's maneuvers were not driven by any secret sympathies he harbors for the despotic Saudi tyrants--he is no fan of the House of Saud. . . . But that's the maddening thing: He knows enough about the Saudis to know better.
Repeatedly exclaiming "they're gone for good" during [a] phone interview, O'Reilly is convinced that Roush's daughters will never breathe freedom again--and that they will never want to. But how could he believe this when his sentiment is based on what Alia and Aisha said in a London hotel under close Saudi supervision?
The Saudis would not allow the O'Reilly team to interview the girls on camera, or outside the presence of a PR flack working for Riyadh:
For some inexplicable reason, O'Reilly refuses to accept that the Saudi representative tainted the whole interview--because, he reasons, the p.r. woman is an American. But being an American, sadly, makes the woman's presence no less pernicious than that of a member of the royal family--because that's who she works for. The girls understood what O'Reilly apparently did not: The woman was going to report back to the House of Saud. Even if the girls somehow had the unlikely ability to overcome 16 years of psychological torture in mere moments, Alia's newborn baby, Bisma, was not in the interview room with her mother and may not have even been in the hotel.
Yet however foolish O'Reilly was in parroting the Saudi line, Mowbray notes that he may still have done some good: "Though he is pessimistic about the prospects for Alia and Aisha ever reaching freedom, O'Reilly's dedication to the case has brought tremendous exposure, and the interview clearly showed the effects of Saudi brainwashing--something that State didn't even mention in its official line about the girls' 'statement.' "
Those
Peace-Loving Palestinians
Israeli security forces "intercepted a car in the early hours of Thursday
morning filled with 600 kilograms [1,320 pounds] of explosives" near the
town of Pardes Hana, Ha'aretz reports:
After police at a roadblock ordered them to stop, the cars continued driving for a short distance and the occupants then jumped out and fled. Police then discovered the explosives in the van, along with a cellular phone and two large containers filled with fuel and metal fragments. The cellular phone was likely to be used to detonate the bomb and the second vehicle as a getaway car.
"This was one of the biggest (successes in) foiling an attack that we know of," police chief Ya'akov Borovsky tells the paper. "We did not have any specific warnings, but our working assumption is that the eve of a Jewish holiday is a time when terror attacks are likely."
'I
Don't Want to Get Into That'
Here's a charming vignette from an Associated Press account of the trial of
Palestinian terror figure Marwan Barghouti:
"There's a mistake here. The one who should be sitting here (as a defendant) is the government of Israel," Barghouti, wearing a dark brown prison uniform, told the three-judge panel in fluent Hebrew. "You have no right to try me."
Barghouti, who has grown a dark beard in five months of detention, also said he was a fighter for peace.
When Presiding Judge Sarah Zerota commented that "fighters for peace don't plant bombs," Barghouti responded: "I don't want to get into that."
Munich
1972
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Arab terrorist attack that ended with the
murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. HFienberg.com
has an index to a "blogburst" of Web commentary on the atrocity. Blogress
Judith
Weiss notes a 1997 statement from the Zionist Organization of America:
According to Israeli media reports, Amin el-Hindi, who is currently the head of the Yasir Arafat's General Intelligence Service, masterminded the Munich massacre. . . . Hindi has been in the news again recently, because of reports that he is involved in the PLO's policy of murdering Arabs who are suspected of selling land to Jews.
"If I were James Taranto," Weiss writes, "at this point I would remind you that Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994."
DWI(ntifada)
MSNBC.com features a photo essay in which, as the site describes it, "photojournalist
Judith Passow remembers the 1987-1993 Palestinian uprising." But someone
at MSNBC is not so sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The essay is entitled
"Intifada: Birth
of a Nation"--after D.W. Griffith's infamous 1915 film glorifying the
Ku Klux Klan.
Trouble
in Afghanistan
We know, it's a dog-bites-man headline. Anyway, here's the story: "President
Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt Thursday when an Afghan security
guard fired at his car as it was leaving the governor's mansion" in Kandahar,
the Associated Press reports. Karzai's American bodyguards opened fire in response.
In the shooting, Kandahar's governor was wounded and three people were killed,
possibly including the would-be assassin.
Earlier, a car bomb in the capital of Kabul "killed and wounded scores of people." Reuters puts the death toll at 15.
You
Don't Say--I
"Bush Relieved Karzai Not Hurt"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 5
Banner
Banners
The University of California, Berkeley, is holding a Sept. 11 memorial service,
but expressions of patriotism are verboten, the California Patriot reports:
The Sept. 11 Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Chancellor's office, the student body government and the Graduate Assembly, will also feature student leaders distributing white ribbons, instead of the red, white and blue ones they had originally planned.
"We thought that may be just too political, too patriotic," said Hazel Wong, chief organizer for the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). "We didn't want anything too centered on nationalism-anything that is 'Go U.S.A.' "
Blogger Rory Miller broke the story. Knight Ridder, meanwhile, quotes California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who says she's encountered lots of anti-American sentiment on overseas visits: "As an American, I have always been proud," she says. "I have a (U.S. flag) pin. I was embarrassed to wear it."
London's Daily Telegraph visits Berkeley and finds that some people there think aliens committed the Sept. 11 attacks. Now, we know what you're thinking--of course they were aliens; most of them were Saudis. But no. These wackos mean men from Mars. "After Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania, they saw a craft buzzing around," someone on Telegraph Avenue tells the paper. "Now what was that? All earth air traffic had been grounded. And in the World Trade Centre, where are all the bodies? They were transported out first to be experimented on. Listen to me now, September 11 was all caused by aliens."
You
Don't Say--II
"Study: Attacks Stressed New Yorkers"--headline, Associated Press,
Sept. 5
And
Your Point Is . . .?
The Los Angeles Times reports that the State Department plans to fingerprint
visitors from 26 countries. "The names of the 26 countries are classified,
but they are widely believed to be mainly Muslim nations," the paper reports.
James Zogby of the Arab American Institute doesn't like the plan: "It's
going to contribute to the perception that it's Muslims we're after."
Our
Editors the Saudis
From "Keeping Faith With Islam in a New World," an op-ed by Mona Eltahawy
in the Sept. 5 Arab News:
Another example is the determination of American Muslims to resist foreign influences in their mosques. They are paying more attention to their prayer leaders, the messages they preach in Friday sermons and, most important, the source of the money that pays the imams' salaries. I am saddened that such a debate has not taken off with much vigor in other parts of the world.
Here's how that same passage appeared in the original version of the piece, which ran two days earlier in the New York Times (we've put in bold the sentence the Saudis deleted):
Another example is the determination of American Muslims to resist foreign influences in their mosques. They are paying more attention to their prayer leaders, the messages they preach in Friday sermons and, most important, the source of the money that pays the imams' salaries. Many are fighting Saudi financing and the attempt to impose the puritanical Wahhabi school of thought on Muslims here. I am saddened that such a debate has not taken off with much vigor in other parts of the world.
A Tough Audience
"Repeatedly interrupted by jeers and protests, Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the United States' environmental record and its efforts to help the poor in the developing world Wednesday, the closing day of the World Summit. . . . The boos and jeers began when Powell criticized the government of Zimbabwe for exacerbating the food crisis in that country and pushing 'millions of people to the brink of starvation.' "--Associated Press, Sept. 4
"The reception of the statement by Powell about Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe's land policies . . . was a rare positive moment in a speech that was often interrupted and barely listened to by the many summit participants who disagree with Washington's environmental stands."--United Press International, Sept. 4
A
Ruthless Supreme Court?
The "Greedy Clerks Board" on Findlaw.com carries the following rumor--and
it's just a rumor--from one "P.L.":
Less than a month before the term is to begin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, citing health concerns, will announce her retirement on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports the Senate Judiciary Committee has rejected the nomination of Priscilla Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, to serve on the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite her "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association, the Senate panel nixed her by a 10-9 party-line vote.
'Visibly
Black'
Denys Blell has a master's degree in African and Afro-American history. His
ancestry is African and Lebanese. Last year he applied for a job as "assistant
vice president for academic affairs and diversity" at Baltimore's Loyola
College. The college turned him down, reports the Baltimore Sun's Michael Olesker
reports, because he was of the wrong race. Well, not exactly the wrong
race:
In a lawsuit filed the other day in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, he says he was told by Loyola's hiring official, Vice President for Academic Affairs David Haddad, that "the African-American faculty (and Haddad, in response to their criticisms) needed to hire an African-American that was visibly black."
Blell claims that Haddad told him "that race and skin color were important issues because 'Baltimore is predominantly black and the state of Maryland has a significant black presence.'" And he says he was not hired because he is "light-skinned, of Afro-Lebanese origin and not an African-American."
Great
Moments in Public Education
A fourth-grade teacher at Mary
C. Williams Elementary School in Wilmington, N.C., "has received a
formal reprimand for teaching her students the word 'niggardly,' "
the Wilmington Star-News reports:
Last week, teacher Stephanie Bell said she used the word "niggardly," which means stingy or miserly, during a discussion about literary characters. But parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur.
The word niggardly is not even etymologically related to the word nigger. You'd think the teachers union would be all over this, defending a member under attack from an ignorant parent. Nope. The union doesn't even want her to defend herself: "Ms. Bell said the N.C. Association of Educators has told her not to talk to anyone about the situation," the Star-News reports.
You
Make Me Sick!
"Teacher Wins Compensation for Illness Caused by Classroom Stress: High
school teacher blames post-traumatic disorder on a student's Tourette's syndrome"--headline
and subheadline, Vancouver Sun, Sept. 5
Great
Moments in Headline Writing
"Palestinians: Sharon Breakthrough Hope 'Nonsense' "--Reuters
dispatch, Sept. 4
You
Don't Say--III
"Study Finds Mothers Unaware of Children's Sexual Activity"--headline,
New York Times, Sept. 5
Robert
Fisk Redux
The Associated Press reports from West Yellowstone, Mont., that "a grizzly
bear attacked a group of animal-rights activists . . ., mauling
a 38-year-old man."
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Tom Elia, Scott Atkinson, Lew Prince, Marie Bourgeois, Jim Orheim, Natalie Cohen, Jerome Marcus, Steve Prestegard, Pat Rowe, Michael Williamson, Steve Zak, Rosanne Klass, Raghu Desikan, Alexander Lubarov, J. Brabston, Yehuda Hilewitz, Thomas Holsinger, Richard Haisley, S.E. Brenner, Howard Weiser, Michael Segal, Monty Krieger, Bill Levenson, Carl Sherer, Alexander Tsibushkin, Damian Bennett, Mike Daley, C.E. Dobkin, Lorne McClenaghan, Zabelle Huss, Jeannette Boot, Joe Littrell, Paul Armfield, Kurt Flechtner, Michael Edwards, Bruce Campbell, Janine Wenzig, David Burnes and Timothy Wylder. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Bush makes the case on Iraq.
- Micah Morrison: Was Saddam involved in Oklahoma City and the first WTC bombing?
- Kim Strassel: Donkeys are an environmental group's favorite species.
