by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, February 21, 2003 2:58 P.M. EST

Disturbed American Muslims
The Muslim Public Affairs Council, which styles itself "the progressive voice for American Muslims," has weighed in on yesterday's arrests of Sami "Death to Israel" Al-Arian and three other U.S. residents, who are charged with supporting the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has murdered some 100 people in Israel, including two Americans:

Dr. Maher Hathout, Sr. Advisor to MPAC, said, "Rather than defending the individuals in this case, we need to defend some important American principles." . . .

Dr. Hathout added that it was disturbing that Attorney General John Ashcroft inserted religious expressions, like Jihad and martyrdom, to a major federal investigation and indictment. Such ambiguous assertions and inflammatory language about religious terms does not help in clarifying the direction of the war on terrorism nor does it reassure Americans of the effectiveness in the government approach in rooting out terrorism.

So Ashcroft "inserted religious expressions," according to Dr. Hathout? Hey doc, what was the name of that terrorist group again? Palestinian Ice Cream Abroad? Well, something like that anyway.

A New York Sun editorial points out that the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof penned an embarrassing column last March in which he paid tribute to Al-Arian as a free-speech hero, "a rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard who is harshly critical of Israel (and also of repressive Arab countries)--but who also denounces terrorism, promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians, and led students at his Islamic school to a memorial service after 9/11 where they all sang 'God Bless America.' "

What prompted Kristof's column was the University of South Florida's move to fire Al-Arian, a computer science professor, because his "death to Israel" remarks had brought infamy to campus. "Of course," opined Kristof, "the same logic could on some campuses [to] justify the ouster of a gay professor--or, a few decades ago, a black professor." Gay, black, anti-Semitic--all parts of the glorious diversity that is American higher education.

Sontag Award Nominee
Here's an interesting article that makes a strong case against "antiwar" sentiment in Europe. It's worth reading in full, but here are some highlights:

• In the first paragraph, the author mocks "the widely held vision of Helpless Europe being dragged into a bellicose folly by Big Bad America."
  
  
• She observes that contemporary Europe is "precisely designed to be incapable of responding to the threat posed by a dictator" and that Europe's self-conception "renders obsolete most of the questions of justice--indeed, all the moral questions."
  
  
• She deplores Europe's inaction "in the face of all this irrational slaughter and suffering," and observes: "Of course, it is easy to turn your eyes from what is happening if it is not happening to you."
  
  
• In answer to the placards at antiwar demonstrations, she says: "For Peace. Against War. Who is not? But how can you stop those bent on genocide without making war?"
  
  
• She argues that a dictator need not pose an immediate threat to those outside his borders to justify taking action against him: "Imagine that Nazi Germany had had no expansionist ambitions but had simply made it a policy in the late 1930's and early 1940's to slaughter all the German Jews. Do we think a government has the right to do whatever it wants on its own territory? Maybe the governments of Europe would have said that 60 years ago. But would we approve now of their decision?"
  
  
• She rejects as "grotesque" any attempt to equate the casualties inflicted by the . . . bombing with the mayhem inflicted on hundreds of thousands of people" by a genocidal dictator.

Here's her conclusion:

Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.

No forceful response to the violence of a state against peoples who are nominally its own citizens? (Which is what most "wars" are today. Not wars between states.) The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders. Can we really say there is no response to this? Is it acceptable that such slaughters be dismissed as civil wars? . . . Is it true that war never solved anything? (Ask a black American if he or she thinks our Civil War didn't solve anything.)

War is not simply a mistake, a failure to communicate. There is radical evil in the world, which is why there are just wars. And this is a just war. Even if it has been bungled.

Stirring words indeed. A powerful case for liberating Iraq. Only the author wasn't writing about Iraq, she was writing about Kosovo. The article appeared in the New York Times magazine, on May 2, 1999. The author? Susan Sontag.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story.

This Is Your Last Last Last Last Last Last Chance
"Bush: Saddam Throwing Last Chance Away"--headline, CNN.com, Feb. 20

You Don't Say--I
"Saddam 'Will Hide Once Attack Starts' "--headline, (London) Times, Feb. 21

What Will Blix Do About This?
"In an apparent effort to enrich the regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has resorted to illegally sending large shipments of oil through a port called Khor al Amaya in recent days," The Wall Street Journal reports. (In case you aren't a WSJ.com subscriber, the Dow Jones wire service has an abbreviated version of the report.) It's yet another violation of U.N. resolutions: "Under the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Baghdad is permitted to export its oil, subject to U.N. supervision, through only two terminals: Ceyhan in Turkey and Mina al Bakr on the Persian Gulf."

War for Oil? Why Not?
"No blood for oil" is the most common refrain of pro-Saddam protesters, but Nicholas Boles, writing in the Times of London, makes what he calls "a perfectly moral case for fighting for Iraq's oilfields":

You would have thought that the need to protect the world economy from calamity required little further justification. But the Left does not see it that way. For it, an economic motivation is merely a selfish motivation. It isn't sufficient to point out that a depression would cause many in Britain to lose their jobs, savings and homes. For few people in Britain are likely to die as a result.

But what about the world's poor? The high priests of anti-materialism don't ever seem to consider what effect economic devastation among rich countries would have on the Third World. When the OECD economies shrink, so does the demand for Third World products. When the only member of an extended family working in a factory loses his or her job, elderly relatives die because the family can no longer afford treatment, children are deprived of an education because the family can no longer afford them not to work in the fields, members of the family may even starve. Now the Left can call these consequences "economic" if it likes. But if defending those who rely on a healthy global economy to feed themselves is not a moral imperative, what on earth is?

You Don't Say--II
"High Petrol Prices Blamed on World Situation: A senior executive of a major Australian oil firm says a number of factors are to blame for rising petrol prices."--headline and subheadline, Australian Broadcast Corp. Web site, Feb. 21

The Iran-Iraq Axis
One of the more fatuous assertions of "antiwar" types is that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein would never work together because their ideologies are so different. "Bin Laden" himself, played by character actor Jim Pinkerton, made such an assertion earlier this week. But in fact enemies often work together when they have a confluence of interests. A case in point: The Middle East Media Research Institute picks up an interview with Hamid Reza Zakiri, a recent defector from Iran's Revolutionary Guard, in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat:

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: It was mentioned that there are close connections between the [Revolutionary] Guards intelligence and Iraq. Is this true? Weren't the Guards in the first rank of the war against Iraq?

Zakiri: After the [Gulf] war, the [Revolutionary] Guards, commanded by Morteza Rezai, established commercial companies in order to provide work for the Guards personnel and the Basij [paramilitary units loyal to Khamenei that operate together with the Revolutionary Guards.

These companies have been cooperating with the Babil Company, headed by Qusay, Saddam's son, since the mid-1990s. Along with smuggling Iraqi oil and marketing it, these Iranian companies smuggled Iraqi dates. The cooperation between the intelligence of the Guards and Iraq in smuggling and in trade stopped about a year ago. But the Guards intelligence still maintains relations with Uday, Saddam's other son, and with the Iraqi intelligence, and coordination between the parties on matters such as the siege on the Kurds and confronting the U.S. continues. For example, the Ansar Al-Islam organization in Iraqi Kurdistan won the support and protection of the Guards intelligence and of the intelligence apparatuses of the Iraqi regime.

Ansar al-Islam, of course, has also been tied to al Qaeda. Zakiri also describes Iranian relations with North Korea, al Qaeda and the Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah.

Weasel Watch
Germany, which has said it will not participate in the liberation of Iraq even if the U.N. passes an 18th resolution specifically sanctioning it, "has cited the conflict in an appeal to the [European] Union to waive stringent rules governing members' budget deficits," the Times of London reports. Gerhard Schroeder, of course, exploited anti-American sentiment on Germany's far left to win re-election despite his woeful economic record.

The Financial Times reports that Germany is also threatening to leave Afghanistan, where it has sent 1,700 peacekeeping troops and plans to add another 800 by next month:

"According to a confidential document from the German foreign office, "hostility towards the leading role of western countries" is already mounting even among the Afghan government's security forces. The report says German troops may have to be withdrawn if the situation deteriorates seriously.

In other words, German "peacekeepers" are there as long as things as peaceful; if they're actually needed, they'll cut and run.

The New York Post's Page Six says the animal-rights folks are complaining about the characterization of French and German leaders as "weasels":

"First off, it's a bad stereotype because weasels are distinctly a North American animal--they are very hard to find in France," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' Ingrid Newkirk informs us. "They are also fierce warriors, Rambo types." Newkirk advises that "the poodle" is a better representation of the French. "Poodles are pretty, chic, pensive," she notes. "They like to make love, not war." Another thing: weasels eat rodents and insects, not snails and sauerkraut. And their bellies are white--not yellow.

The Sun, a British tabloid, favors another animal: the worm (which, unlike the weasel, does not have a backbone). The paper printed a special French-language edition yesterday, shown alongside, depicting an anneledan Jacques Chirac, and handed it out on the streets of Paris. Government officials in France, which "does not share the UK's tabloid tradition," were not amused, reports the BBC. The transportation minister called the depiction "disgusting." The culture minister said it was "aggressive, very disagreeable, pretty vulgar and shows contempt for our country." He added: "I'd say they've been very badly brought up." Chirac himself was mum, but a spokeswoman sniffed: "Insults often say more about the people who make them than about those they claim to describe."

Today's Sun continues the tradition, with an article titled "Worm Meets the Monster" on Chirac's hosting Zimbabwe's genocidal dictator, Robert Mugabe. The Guardian, meanwhile, reports that France may assess a £30,000 fine against the Sun, apparently under French "privacy laws."

In an op-ed piece for the Financial Times, Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium explains the origins of weaselateralism: "As long as Soviet divisions could reach the Rhine in 48 hours, we obviously had a blood brotherhood with our cousins overseas. But now that the cold war is over, we can express more freely our differences of opinion. And one of those differences of opinion concerns the fundamental question about the use of war as an extension of politics."

Three thousand people dying on American soil apparently is insufficient to forge a "blood brotherhood" with our friends the Belgians.

They're Chicken, Eh?
Canada is not an official member of the axis of weasels. Its foreign minister, Bill Graham, explains Ottawa's courageous stance to the National Post: "Canada is on the fence of the United Nations process, which some people don't like, because it doesn't give the sense of whether we are going to go one way, or another way. But where we can be useful in this is working with others to bring the process to a positive conclusion."

The National Post also reports that "the Royal Military College of Canada has dropped out of a historic hockey game for fear that its officer cadets might be injured during the no-contact match." Joane Thibault, the college's athletic director, explains: "We're not wimps--we'd love to play that game. But there's a safety rule we have to follow. . . . It's a risk we're not prepared to take."

You Don't Say--III
"Among New Yorkers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after Sept. 11, 2001, those who have lost family members, lost jobs or experienced other stress since the attack are the most likely to still be having symptoms, researchers have found."--New York Times, Feb. 20

Not in Their Name
We heard from the folks at the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who were unhappy about our item yesterday on an Adventist pastor convicted of genocide in Rwanda. The church has issued a statement:

"The Rwandan tragedy--the senseless loss of thousands of lives--cannot be forgotten," says Ray Dabrowski, Communication Director at the Seventh-day Adventist Church world headquarters. "Christians should reject violence as a means of conflict resolution. The heart of the Christian message is reconciliation, compassion and love, which transcend any differences of language, race or nationality."

We thought it went without saying that the church did not condone genocide, but we're happy to say it.

We also missed one interesting detail of the original story: The genocidal pastor's lawyer was none other than anti-American wacko Ramsey Clark, a man who has an uncanny knack for getting on the wrong side of every international conflict.

Peggy Bresee Remains Anonymous
The Associated Press reports from Montpelier, Vt., that some bookstores are purging their sales records lest the government use them to combat terrorism. "The Patriot Act approved after the 2001 terrorist attacks allows government agents to seek court orders to seize records 'for an investigation to protect against international terrorism,' " but some booksellers apparently think their customers' privacy is more important than the lives of terror victims. The AP quotes one customer:

Peggy Bresee was in Bear Pond Books recently to buy War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy as birthday gifts for a son who lives in Utah. She had the store purge the purchase records.

"It really does make me feel so much better," she said. "They're protecting those of us who are readers. It matters."

In case any FBI agents are reading this, that's B-R-E-S-E-E, and Bear Pond Books is at 77 Main Street in Montpelier.

Stupidity Watch
The San Francisco Chronicle has an unintentionally hilarious puff piece on folk singer Joan Baez ("her voice once again resonates among those who are uncertain, uneasy or downright outraged about our government's determination to entangle the nation in a war far from our own shores," yadda yadda), who offers this brilliant foreign-policy insight: "Maybe we ought to put Bush and [Saddam] Hussein in a room together and let them battle it out and save all those lives." We hope Baez is on Carol Moseley-Braun's short list for secretary of state.

The New York Times reports from Baghdad on the "human shields," pro-Saddam protesters who say they're going to put themselves in harm's way to protect the Iraqi dictator. Some of them turn out to be even dumber than that:

Others have become aware of the sinister side of what some say they naïvely interpreted as a kind of extraordinary war protest. "I think the Iraqi government is potentially putting us in a dangerous position," said a young Australian who said he had decided to leave.

Shouldn't this guy be in some sort of institution for his own protection?

Great Moments in Bureaucracy
Marc LaCloche was behind bars for first-degree robbery at New York's Clinton Correctional Facility (note: many potential jokes there) and he decided to take advantage of the prison's vocational-training program to learn a trade. The New York Post reports LaCloche "spent 1,200 hours in prison learning to cut hair." When he got out, he applied for a barber's license, which the state denied because he has a felony record.

Not Too Brite--LVII
"Congolese villagers have stoned and beaten to death four teachers accused of casting an evil spell to cause an outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease that has killed nearly 70 people," Reuters reports from Brazzaville. "The outbreak of Ebola in the districts of Kelle and Mbomo near the central African country's northern border with Gabon is thought by scientists to have been caused by the consumption of infected monkey meat."

Oddly Enough!

You Don't Say--IV
"College Blackout Drinkers Face More Risks; Accidents, Injuries Are More Common"--headline, USA Today, Feb. 20

You Don't Say--V
"Long-term use of antidepressants can prevent depressed patients suffering a relapse, a team of international researchers said on Friday."--Reuters, Feb. 21

You Don't Say--VI
"Snow on Mars Might Be Source of Water"--headline, United Press International, Feb. 19

You Don't Say--VII
"Some Parents Sick of Snow Days"--headline, Washington Post, Feb. 20

Metaphor Alert
"The winter storms of ideology have left Connecticut's ship of state foundering on the shoals of cash shortfall and stranded many innocent bystanders on unemployment lines."--Edward Marth, executive director of the University of Connecticut chapter of the American Association of University Professors, Hartford Courant op-ed, Feb. 21

Great Moments in Public Education
The British government is backing a sex-education course "encouraging pupils under 16 to experiment with oral sex, as part of a drive to cut rates of teenage pregnancy," the Times of London reports:

The scheme, which has been pioneered by Exeter University and is backed by the Departments of Health and Education, trains teachers to discuss various pre-sex "stopping points" with under-age teenagers.

It aims to reduce promiscuity by encouraging pupils to discover "levels of intimacy," including oral sex, instead of full sexual intercourse.

This is brilliant, and it occurs to us that this approach might work to prevent other forms of youthful misbehavior. Want to stop kids from using drugs? Have the teacher hand out pints of whiskey. And encouraging fistfights sounds like a dandy way of preventing the next Columbine.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Jerome Marcus, Ed Lasky, Jon Sanders, Gerald Caponetti, Natalie Cohen, David Beebe, Bill Williams, Barak Moore, Brian Ballard, J.R. Wilson, Drew Anderson, Alex Robson, David Gerstman, Rosanne Klass, Allan Toole, Mara Gold, Jenifer Sawicki, Raghu Deskan, T. Norton, Michael Segal, Tammy Mosley, Mikael Nussdorf, Rosslyn Smith, Dan Nitschke, Janice Borawick, Marie Bourgeois, Wayne Brown, Mark Morgan, C.E. Dobkin, Robert Finch, Dan Kennedy, Chuck Kramer, Brett Garver, Reagan Lynch, Tom Wolf, Joshua Weiner, Jose Guardia, Steve Ginnings, Yehuda Hilewitz, Edward Morrissey, Kevin Dietrich, Michael Siegel, John Siminoff, Jeff Bergman, Allan Grady, Wes Gainer, W.E. Stewart, Louie Herbert, Jim Orheim, Jamie Gregorian and Thomas Crimmins. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Why our friends the Turks are driving a hard bargain.
• Daniel Henninger: Antiwar protesters invite the world to their 35th reunion.
• Tunku Varadarajan: It's the day of the weasel; suddenly, stereotypes are OK.

And on the Taste page:

• Review & Outlook: Can liberals produce a Rush Limbaugh? Not without a sense of humor.
• Tony & Tacky: Scotland bans religious music at weddings.
• Russ Smith: Salon sinks, Radar rises. Who needs either of these magazines?
• Adrian Karatnycky: Saddam tries to make himself over as a devout Muslim.