From the WSJ Opinion Archives
A
Laurel for Howell
Mohammad Aldouri, Iraq's ambassador to the U.N., appeared on "Fox News
Sunday" with Tony Snow yesterday, and "he thanked the New York
Times for defending Iraq," blogger Will Veers reports. We went to the transcript
(not available on FoxNews.com, but we found it on Factiva) and our TiVo to find
out what Aldouri said, and it turns out he was referring to an op-ed piece,
which we noted
Friday, in which one Stephen
Pelletiere pronounces Saddam Hussein innocent of human-rights violations
and urges America to stop--this is an actual quote--"picking on" the
poor Iraqi dictator. Says Aldouri:
This is a part of the American and the British propaganda against my country. . . . Your president, President Bush, mentioned that several times that Iraq, the president of Iraq, poisoned its own people. Pelletiere in the article in New York Times last Friday, and I'm thankful for the New York Times for that, saying that it is not true, Iraq is not poisoning its own people.
The Friday piece for which Aldouri is thanking the Times claimed, despite ample documentation from Human Rights Watch and others, that Saddam Hussein did not commit genocide against the Kurds in northern Iraq. It's almost as if a humble Holocaust denier had won public praise from Adolf Eichmann himself. Howell Raines must be beaming with pride.
The Year 2003 Problem
Remember "Y2K"? This was the most popular of those end-of-the-world
cults that sprung up in the late 20th century, only it wasn't a religious cult;
it was started by computer consultants. (We know it sounds crazy, but you can
look it up.) The idea was that at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1999,
all hell would break loose as computers, programmed to store years as two digits,
choked on the year "100." Air-traffic-control systems would fail,
causing planes to fall from the skies; computer-driven elevators would grind
to a halt, stranding passengers; utilities, financial systems and even food
supplies would be disrupted.
Companies, government agencies and other organizations spent billions upon billions of dollars making their computer systems "Y2K compliant," helping fuel the tech bubble that burst a few months into 2000. As the end of 1999 approached, the doomsayers started moderating their predictions. Because of these compliance efforts, they allowed, America and most industrialized countries would escape devastation--but woe betide the Third World, which had scrimped on compliance.
In the event, nothing happened. Zero, zip, zilch. The world on Jan. 1, 2000, ran every bit as smoothly as it had on Dec. 31, 1999. Y2K was the hoax of the century.
What puts us in mind of this is another Y2K-like scare in the air: the fear that America liberating Iraq will cause a new wave of Muslim terrorism. The argument isn't that Iraq will use terrorism as a tactic in the war; indeed, many of the same people issuing this warning also steadfastly deny that Saddam Hussein has anything to do with terrorists. Rather, it is that overthrowing Saddam will inflame the Muslim world and provide the impetus for more terror.
This claim--call it Y2K3--is everywhere, but we'll just cite a few examples. The Washington Post's William Raspberry, in a column that rehearses every defeatist argument he can cram into 800 words, declares: "Even a war that ostensibly would be waged against terrorism would have the likely effect of generating new legions of anti-American terrorists throughout the Arab world, and maybe here as well." Over at the New York Times, poor little Nick Kristof got himself so spooked over the putative threat last week that we hope he's sleeping with a night light on. And the Associated Press reports that the Vatican hopes to convince Washington that liberating Iraq isn't worth "irritating a billion of Islamics," in the words of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the pope's secretary of state.
We certainly don't mean to diminish the danger of terrorism, which could hardly be more real. But proponents of Y2K3--the notion that liberating Iraq will cause more terrorism--present it as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. Yet if you think it through, it makes no more sense than Y2K did.
For one similarity, both scares present as an entirely new threat a situation that has existed for decades. Anti-American Muslim terrorism is nothing new; it's been going on at least since 1979, when Iranian lunatics seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It continued through the '80s, when America was on friendly terms with Saddam Hussein, and the '90s, when the U.S. pursued what amounts to a policy of containment. Similarly, if Y2K was going to cause, say, banking computers to choke, why didn't that happen the first time a bank processed a 30-year mortgage on Jan. 2, 1970?
Y2K and Y2K3 are both based on premises that are at odds with observable reality. Even if the date problem caused some computers to act flaky, there was never any reason to think the result would be catastrophic failure. To test this, try firing up an old TRS-80 or Apple II--or running one of the emulators available online. These clunky old machines work as well as they ever did, even if they "think" it's 1903.
By the same token, what possible reason is there to think that liberating Muslims from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships is going to make them mad at us? By this logic, the late 1940s and 1990s should have brought a wave of anti-American terrorism by Germans and Russians, respectively. Do the Raspberrys and the Kristofs of the world really think Muslims are fundamentally different from all other human beings--that they hate freedom while everyone else loves it? If so, they should at the very least argue the point, rather than leaving it as an unspoken prejudice.
One more Y2K-Y2K3 similarity: The people pushing both scares most vigorously are doing so out of a vested interest. The biggest Y2K doomsayers were the computer consultants who raked in big bucks peddling prophylactic programming. The Y2K3 alarmists' motives vary and are ideological and political as well as financial: They oppose American strength and Western democracy, or they wish to see President Bush fail, or (as in the case of the French and Germans) they think Saddam's continued rule will be more profitable to them than a free Iraq.
Like George McGovern, the Y2K3 doomsayers are projecting their own political views onto America's worst enemies. No one denies that a terrorist attack on America is a possibility, regardless of what America does in Iraq. But if such an attack does occur after the liberation of Iraq--heaven forbid--the doomsayers will say we told you so. An awkward position, that--claiming vindication on the grounds that Osama bin Laden agrees with their views of American foreign policy.
Squealing
on Saddam
Saddam Hussein's "senior bodyguard" has been feeding information about
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to Israeli intelligence, reports the Herald
Sun of Melbourne, Australian. The New
York Post reports that "a former junior officer in Palestinian intelligence"
told an Israeli paper Baghdad commissioned him to carry out "mega-attacks"
against Israel. "I was told to be ready to spread poison in the major Israeli
water pipelines, the River Jordan or the Lake of Galilee," says Mohammed Farouq
Abu Roub. And the Washington
Times reports that Secretary of State Colin Powell will present the U.N.
Security Council with transcripts of Iraqi officials' phone conversations, in
which they discuss how to deceive weapons inspectors.
No doubt once Iraq has been liberated, much more information will come out about Saddam's atrocities, deceptions and quest for weapons. Saddam apologists in the West will be left with a lot of explaining to do, though they won't do it.
The
Left-Wing Case for Freeing Iraq
In London's Guardian, Julie Burchill, who describes herself as having been "born
and raised to be anti-American," takes on the left's pro-Saddam arguments:
If you really think it's better for more people to die over decades under a tyrannical regime than for fewer people to die during a brief attack by an outside power, you're really weird and nationalistic and not any sort of socialist that I recognise. And that's where you link up with all those nasty rightwing columnists who are so opposed to fighting Iraq; they, too, believe that the lives of a thousand coloured chappies aren't worth the death of one British soldier. Military inaction, unless in the defence of one's own country, is the most extreme form of narcissism and nationalism; people who preach it are the exact opposite of the International Brigade, and that's so not a good look.
"The US is ignoring an important lesson from history--that an empire cannot survive on brute force alone."--Madeleine Bunting, Guardian, Feb. 3
"U.S. Launches Drive Against Tetanus in Afghanistan"--headline, Reuters, Feb. 2
Landslide
Devastates Weasel Habitat
Gerhard Schroeder, Germany's weasel-in-Chef, "was dealt a shattering
political blow last night when voters in two important regional states firmly
rejected his Social Democratic Party," the Times of London reports. The
Christian Democrats took over the government of Schroeder's home state, Lower
Saxony, for the first time in 13 years, with the vote for Schroeder's party
dropping by 12 percentage points since the last election, in 1999.
Reuters reports that Schroeder "was looking increasingly lonely Monday after a regional election rout compounded growing international isolation over his strict anti-war stance on Iraq." Oh well, at least he has his steadfast friends the French. Heh heh heh.
Dove
Stabs Hawk
Hey, who says Germans aren't willing to fight? Agence France-Presse reports
from Cebu, Phillipines, that 37-year-old Frank Oesterle, a Munich economist,
got into an argument with John Flynn, a 41-year-old American man. Oesterle says
he argued that "many people will die if the US makes good its threat"
to liberate Iraq. Oesterle says, in AFP's words, that "a fistfight followed,"
whereupon Oesterle stabbed Flynn with a Swiss army knife.
Puff
Goes the Weasel
American moralism gets a bit out of hand at times; freedom from secondhand smoke
just doesn't deserve as much zeal as freedom from tyranny. That said, the New
York Times' Thomas Friedman, reporting from Europe, makes a delightful point.
The French and German positions on Iraq, he argues, "are the diplomatic
equivalent of smoking cancerous cigarettes while rejecting harmless G.M.O.'s
[genetically modified organisms]--an assertion of identity by trying to be whatever
the Americans are not, regardless of the real interests or stakes."
Homer Nods
Friday's
lead item gave the wrong name for the Massachusetts-based organization headed
by Iraqi refugee Zainab Al-Suwaij. It's the American Islamic Congress,
not Muslim. (We've corrected the original item.)
Where
Would You Like to Bomb Today?
"Microsoft and other large corporations, including Houston-based Compaq,
matched their employees' donations worth thousands of dollars to a Muslim charitable
foundation now accused of funneling money to Osama bin Laden's terror network,"
the Associated Press reports. "The donations were disclosed in court papers
released Wednesday in the federal racketeering case against Enaam Arnaout, head
of Illinois-based Benevolence International Foundation."
Big
Trouble for Democrats
A Washington Post poll finds that when respondents were "asked which party
is more trusted to keep America safe, the Republican margin was 47 percent to
16 percent." That's a difference of 31 percentage points--and it can't
bode well for the Dems going into the next election.
'The
Legacy of Columbia Must Carry On'
SpaceflightNow.com carries a statement from the families of the Columbia astronauts
that's worth quoting in full:
On January 16th, we saw our loved ones launch into a brilliant, cloud-free sky. Their hearts were full of enthusiasm, pride in country, faith in their God, and a willingness to accept risk in the pursuit of knowledge--knowledge that might improve the quality of life for all mankind. Columbia's 16-day mission of scientific discovery was a great success, cut short by mere minutes--yet it will live on forever in our memories. We want to thank the NASA family and people from around the world for their incredible outpouring of love and support. Although we grieve deeply, as do the families of Apollo 1 and Challenger before us, the bold exploration of space must go on. Once the root cause of this tragedy is found and corrected, the legacy of Columbia must carry on--for the benefit of our children and yours.
Hezbollah,
Hamza and San Francisco Whoop It Up
"The head of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas said on Sunday the break-up
of the U.S. space shuttle showed the United States was not an infallible deity
and gave hope to Arabs and Muslims ahead of possible war against Iraq,"
Reuters reports from Beirut. Well, he's got a point. The space programs of Arab
and Muslim countries have a perfect record: not a single accident.
Sky News reports Abu Hamza, just ousted as imam of London's Finnsbury Park mosque, echoes the sentiment "by saying the shuttle disaster showed the mission was a 'Trinity of Evil' punished with death by Allah." Rounding out this trinity is one Cheryl Merrill of San Francisco, who writes to the San Francisco Chronicle (last letter):
I was wondering if anyone ever considered that God might just well be a kind of supernatural terrorist, intervening in things such as the space shuttle exploding over Texas, President Bush's home state.
Throughout the Biblical Scriptures, God has often acted like a supernatural terrorist, unleashing unexplained calamities against enemies. Could it be that God is trying to send a strong message with this latest tragedy to the lying, two-faced hypocrites in the White House? Is Bush going to declare war on God?
A
Drawing Survives
It's only a tiny consolation, but it turns out that contrary to a Jerusalem
Post article we
cited yesterday, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon had only a copy of "Moon
Landing," a drawing by Holocaust victim Peter Ginz, with him on the Columbia.
The original remains at Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem Holocaust museum, explains
a press release from the museum.
You
Don't Say--I
"Shuttle's Effect on Economy May Be Small"--headline, New York Times,
Feb. 3
You
Don't Say--II
"Job Outlook Cloudy for Space Contractors"--headline, Houston Chronicle,
Feb. 3
You
Don't Say--III
"Poll: Affluent Are Optimistic About Economy"--headline, (Albany,
N.Y.) Business Review, Jan. 27
You
Don't Say--IV
"For Bush's tax plan to work and stimulate economic growth, it must pass."--Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Feb. 2
Dr.
Freud, Call Your Office
"For 200 years, the terms 'race' or 'minority' connoted black-white race relations
in America. All of a sudden, these same terms connote black, white, Hispanic.
Our privileged status is about to be disrupted in profound ways."--Henry Louis
Gates, chairman of Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department, quoted in the
New York Times, Feb. 1
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
"A ninth-grade student from Space
Coast Junior/Senior High was suspended Thursday for carrying cold medicine
to school," Florida Today reports. "The school followed the district-wide
zero-tolerance policy regarding drugs" and suspended 15-year-old Derek
Sattley for 10 days.
Glad
They Cleared That Up
The "Corrections" column of yesterday's New York Times included this
"editor's note" (last correction):
The Age of Dissonance column last Sunday, about cozying up to celebrities, mentioned a report in The Daily News that guests at the Sundance film festival "had their shoes spattered" when the actor Tobey Maguire was taken ill. But the day the Times column appeared, The News quoted the actor's publicist as saying that although Mr. Maguire doubled over at one point, it was not he who vomited.
You
Don't Say--V
"Homeopathic Remedy 'Ineffective' "--headline, BBC Web site,
Feb. 3
You
Don't Say--VI
"Internet on Rise as Information Tool"--headline, Washington Times, Feb.&nsbp;3
Alternate
Universe
In his "Only in L.A." column for the Los Angeles Times, Steve Harvey
notes that the online application
for Miss Universe contestants asks aspiring beauty queens to indicate their
"gender."
"Miss Universe officials are obviously trying to avoid discrimination lawsuits," Harvey writes. But wait. The form provides only two options, "male" and "female." Is that really sufficient to avoid a discrimination lawsuit in L.A.?
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Gregory Taylor, Steve Zak, Brian Rosen, Andrew McKnee, Steven Platzer, Marie Bourgeois, Geoffrey Biddulph, Jarrod Musser, Joel Goldberg, Wilkes Furlano, Natalie Cohen, Barak Moore, David Schlosser, Harrison Roberts, Michael Segal, Rosanne Klass, Robert LeChevalier, Robert Wood, Klara Iskoz, Larry Berlin, Richard Baehr, Brian Clark, Edward Himmelfarb, Asla Aydintasbas, Linda Cooke, Mara Gold, Jenifer Sawicki, Raghu Desikan, Alistair Latour, Edward Baer, Mark Schulze, Jose Guardia, Ronald Ramsay, Eric Lundberg, C.E. Dobkin, Drew Cooper, Frank Bifulco, Peter Salonon, Michael Paranzino, Colin Caspers, Nancy Zimmerman, Miriam Himmelfarb, Toby Bronstein, David Sherzer, Deborah Tor, Daniel Goldstein, John Nettleton, Jim Langford, Clayton Stromberger, Allyson Taylor, Lane Core, Nechemia Coopersmith, Ben Finkelstein, Benjamin Smith, Joe Volland, Robbie Su, Harry Forbes, Roger Heinig, Christopher Hayes, Jeffrey Shapiro and Rick Wahler. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The Wall Street Journal stands accused of committing journalism. We plead guilty.
- Robert Bartley: Even the CIA no longer insists Saddam wouldn't help Osama.
- Peggy Noonan : Questions and answers about Bush and Iraq.
- Colin Powell: We will not shrink from war.
- Michael Gonzalez: The story behind the story of the "new Europe" statement.
