From the WSJ Opinion Archives
This Is Your Last Last Last Last Last Chance
"Hussein will be given 'a last chance to comply before he gets clobbered,' The New York Times on Monday quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying."--CNN.com, Jan. 27, 1998
"Annan Admits Iraq Trip Could Be Last Chance for Peace"--CNN.com, Feb. 18, 1998
"Clinton: Iraq Has Abused Its Last Chance"--CNN.com, Dec. 16, 1998
"The White House suggested Wednesday that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has missed his 'last chance' to disarm."--CNN.com, Dec. 18, 2002
"Future European Union members endorsed a joint declaration Tuesday warning Saddam Hussein he has one last chance to disarm."--Associated Press, Feb. 18, 2003
Aren't five years worth of "last chances" enough? It's time to cut the nonsense and rush to war.
How
to Live With a Neurotic Cat
A neurotic, it is said, is one who does the same thing over and over, expecting
a different result. Jonathan Freedland of the London Guardian either is joking
or could use some therapy. In a commentary piece today, Freedland starts off
with a clear-eyed criticism of his colleagues on the "antiwar" left
for their blithe acceptance of Saddam Hussin's brutal dictatorship. "No
slogan will sink the peace cause faster than 'anti-war equals pro-Saddam,' "
he writes. "And the anti-war movement has made itself vulnerable to that
charge." Indeed. So Freedland offers a plan to liberate Iraq without military
combat:
The UN could demand that Hans Blix's team be joined by a squad of "human rights inspectors," keeping tabs on, say, the fate of political prisoners. . . . Backed by a military presence, "muscular rights inspectors" could force Baghdad to open up. They could demand that Iraqis be allowed access to western media, the internet and cell phones. . . . Most pressing of all, the UN could demand the return of Iraqi exiles. Numbering in the millions, these are the professionals with skills who either fled or were chased out of their country. . . . [This approach] would require persistent UN commitment and the constant pressure of a military threat hanging over the regime. But it would be a lot less bloody than an invasion.
The whole point of weapons inspections, of course, is to verify that a regime is voluntarily disarming; Hans Blix & Co. are worse than useless absent full Iraqi cooperation. That's why the U.N.'s feckless approach has failed to disarm Iraq. Friedland wants to take the same ineffective approach to human rights. Oh, and just who is going to supply "the constant pressure of a military threat"--and how credible will that threat ever be if the U.N. continues to shrink from using it, as it's consistently done for 12 years?
Will
Blix Take Scuba-Diving Lessons?
"Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence
on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,"
London's Independent reports. The vessels left port in November, just after
Hans Blix returned to Iraq. "Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000
tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three
months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime
law, say authoritative shipping industry sources."
America and Britain "are believed to be reluctant to stop and search the vessels for fear that any intervention might result in them being scuttled. If they were carrying chemical and biological weapons, or fissile nuclear material, and they were to be sunk at sea, the environmental damage could be catastrophic."
Weasel
Watch
The Los Angeles Times has a quote from French think-tanker Francois Heisbourg
that nicely sums up the division between America and old Europe: "The biblical
references in politics, the division of the world between good and evil, these
are things that we simply don't get." This is nothing new. France and Germany
didn't quite "get" the difference between good and evil in the 1930s
and '40s either.
Janet Daley in London's Telegraph makes an interesting point about weasel politics:
It used to be said that declaring war was a convenient way for failing governments to distract attention from their domestic problems. But declaring non-war, as it turns out, is almost as good. What better way for Gerhard Schröder and M Chirac to divert attention from their failure to get to grips with the reform of their economies, than to snub the United States and lecture the world on the value of peace? Militant pacificism, it seems, can be as effective a strategy for propping up weak national leaders as invasion of an enemy.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that a court in Hamburg, Germany, has convicted Sept. 11 co-conspirator Mounir El Motassadeq of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder. The Germans threw the book at him--only it was a slender paperback. Motassadeq, 28, got the maximum sentence of 15 years--less than two days per victim. Even if he serves out his term, he'll be a free man at 43. His victims will still be dead. We suppose the Germans have to treat accessory to murder as a minor crime, else the whole country would have gone to prison in 1945.
Our
Friends the Canadians
Saddam Hussein must be breathing easier, for it appears he will not have to
face the fearsome Canadian armed forces. "Canadian Prime Minister Jean
Chretien has until now refused to rule out contributing forces to a possible
unilateral U.S. attack, but on Tuesday he told Parliament this was not an option,"
Reuters reports. Of course, it's logically impossible for Canada to contribute
forces to a "unilateral U.S. attack," since its doing so would make
the attack at least bilateral.
What
Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts: Overwhelming Force Is Key"--headline, FoxNews.com, Feb. 18
Yankee
Ingenuity
Scientific American reports on some of the new high-tech weaponry America will
use in Iraq. The U.S. "may use a surprise one-two punch of secret weapons
to neutralize Iraqi chemical and biological weapons":
The first, a high power microwave (HPM) burst delivered via a cruise missile or other guided munition, would act like an electronic lighting bolt to disrupt computerized command facilities as well as guidance systems aboard enemy missiles. The second knockout punch would be what the military calls an agent defeat weapon (ADW) that uses an incendiary explosive to first burn any harmful chemicals and biological toxins and then further inactivate them with chlorine and acid cleansers.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that "the U.S. military has embraced information technology since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 in hopes of more efficiently targeting the enemy while avoiding 'friendly fire' accidents":
Now, with high-powered computers integrating data from forces on the ground, surveillance aircraft and satellites, it will be easier for commanders directing the war and soldiers in the field to identify their forces and those of the enemy.
"In the analog system, I was constantly trying to figure out where everybody was," said Col. Michael Formica, a brigade commander in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, which is in the process of becoming the Army's second officially "digitized" division. . . . While commanding troops in South Korea, Formica estimated that he used to spend about 80 percent of his time figuring out where everybody was--and was right only about half the time. Now the situation is reversed. He spends only about 20 percent of his time understanding where all the forces are.
The
Sun Also Gets a Rise--II
We hope we won't bore our readers too much if we revisit the debate over the
New York Sun's tongue-in-cheek suggestion that authorities consider prosecuting
"antiwar" protesters for treason. We won't rehearse the whole thing;
see our item
last Thursday for background (and a disclosure of this Web site's relationship
with the Sun). Spinsanity.com's Brendan Nyhan has responded to that item:
Even if the statement was intended to be ironic, it is still unacceptable. Many pundits use faux humor, sarcasm or irony when making their most inflammatory statements, in part to protect themselves from criticism. But such tactics do not make what one says acceptable. It would also be "provocative," for instance, to ironically call for repealing the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Is the hypocrisy here not obvious? Nyhan is defending the right to dissent, the urgency of vigorous public debate. So where does he get off declaring certain ideas "unacceptable"?
His odd additional example doesn't really help his case. Just imagine the scene: A newspaper publishes an editorial that humorously calls for repealing the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. A red-faced Brendan Nyhan mounts his soapbox and delivers a fiery oration about how "unacceptable" it is even to think about tampering with the Bill of Rights. Maybe there really are people who are that uptight about the Fourth Amendment, but we have a hard time imagining anyone actually reacting this way. Most of us would just laugh it off as either an amusing joke or a harebrained idea.
Anyway, it seems to us that Nyhan's real objection to the Sun's editorial is not that its constitutional law is screwy, but that it violates his sense of civility to call the antiwar types traitors. He writes that "we should insist on a fair and vigorous public debate that is conducted with respect for their right to express dissenting views without accusations of treason and the like."
But why are they entitled to such sensitivity? They themselves do not practice it. Check out Evan Coyne Maloney's hilarious video of Saturday's "antiwar" rally in New York, in which demonstrators call the president of the United States a "baby killer," a "nuclear terrorist," an "unelected tyrant" and an "idiot" who heads a "junta" and resembles Hitler. This is part of public debate in a free society--sometimes it gets ugly; sometimes people call each other names. The Sun's jocular reference to protesters as traitors merely gives them a taste of their own medicine--and an exceedingly mild dose at that.
Domestic
Bliss, Saudi Style
Have our friends the Saudis stopped beating their wives yet? Apparently not,
according to the Arab News, which reports that "wife beating is a widespread
phenomenon in Saudi society." The paper itself takes what we might term
a moderate pro-wife-beating stance: "It is certainly against Islam to beat
a good wife. An erring wife should be warned first and advised. If that does
not work, then the husband could give her a light beating, the purpose of that
being to embarrass rather than inflict pain."
The
Sharpton Conundrum
A pair of Washington Times reports suggest that the Democrats may be having
trouble holding together the most loyal segment of their coalition: black voters.
The Times' Steve Miller reports that many black Democrats are angry about the
presidential campaign of ex-senator Carol Moseley-Braun, whom they view as an
"interloper" on Al Sharpton's campaign. Here's Rep. Jesse Jackson
Jr. of Illinois: "I have heard rumors--not unlike what the [Democratic Leadership
Council] did when they tried to use former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder to
undercut my father's potential campaign in 1992--that she is possibly being led
into this race by Democratic forces who would not like to see Al Sharpton in
the race or do very well, and they see her as being able to undercut his campaign.
I hope that this is not the dynamic at work with respect to her potential campaign."
Donald Lambro reports that Donna Brazile, "a top minority voter outreach adviser to the Democratic National Committee," is warning that the GOP is making "inroads" into the black vote and that, as the Times puts it, "Democrats must step up their efforts to court black voters." This means treating Sharpton with respect: "Debate him, don't disown him." This is dangerous advice--not because Sharpton is black but because he is an extremist and a demagogue. A Democratic Party that embraces Sharpton will have a harder time appealing to the middle-of-the-road voters who are most crucial in deciding elections.
You
Don't Say--I
"Black Coaches a Minority at Most Schools"--headline, Daily Nebraskan
(University of Nebraska, Lincoln), Feb. 18
You
Don't Say--II
"Blizzard Saps States' Snow Removal Budgets"--headline, Associated
Press, Feb. 19
The
Unlikeliest Creationists
"Lesbian Japanese Monkeys Challenge Darwin's Assumptions"--headline,
(London) Daily Telegraph, Feb. 19
Hail
to the Chief?
Every now and then you'll encounter a delusional left-winger who insists that
Al Gore is really the 43rd president. But Nick Pahys insists that George
W. Bush is actually the 51st. "For five decades, he's been preaching
his theory to anyone willing to listen," the Dayton Daily News reports
from Hartsgrove, Ohio. His theory is that eight men served as "president"
under the Articles of Confederation between 1781, beginning with John Hanson
of Maryland, before George Washington was elected in 1789 under the newly ratified
Constitution.
Roberta Sue Alexander, a historian at the University of Dayton, pours some cold water on Pahys's theory: "Hanson and the other seven men may have played significant roles, but it would have been in their roles as legislators, not as executives. We need to keep in mind that these men were presidents of Congress, not presidents of the United States."
Pahys, however, is undeterred. "I want them to replace George Washington's picture on the $1 bill with a portrait of John Hanson," he tells the Daily News. Even Grover Norquist's effort to put Ronald Reagan on the $10 bill seems more likely to succeed.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Randy Heath, Drew Anderson, Jerome Marcus, Yehuda Hilewitz, Judie Amsel, Raghu Desikan, Howard Weiser, C.E. Dobkin, Barak Moore, Jennifer Ray, Andrew Bartter, Charles Steinberg, Daniel Foty, William Specht, Jim Orheim, Doug Levene, Reuven Weiser, Michael Segal, Steve Ginnings, Damian Bennett, Joe Deltoro, Alex Markovich, David Stern, Tom Elia, Justin Taylor, Steve Parks, Brian Otey, Russell DePalma, Bert Wolff, Robert LeChevalier, Marie Bourgeois, Greg Griffith, Linda Webster, Charles Mitchell, Peter Salomon, Peter Rice, Charlie Gaylord, Kyle Harrell, John Siminoff, Eric Ivers and Joe Littrell. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Ahmad Chalabi: After the invasion, leave it to us Iraqis to establish democracy.
- Claudia Rosett: "Please send help," writes a friend in northern Iraq.
- Melik Kaylan: Are celebrity activists passé?
