From the WSJ Opinion Archives
'Antiwar'
Is Anti-American
On this semianniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks--they happened 18 months ago
today--a story from La Habra, Calif., tells you all you need to know about the
"antiwar" movement. The Whittier Daily News reports:
Antiwar protesters burned and ripped up flags, flowers and patriotic signs at a Sept. 11 memorial that residents erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard days after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and have maintained ever since.
One Les Howard, a sociology professor at Whittier College, tells the News that, as the paper puts it, "the incident might be an indication of some confusion among people trying to stop a possible war against Iraq but uncertain how to express their sentiments." Leave it to a sociology prof to explain away an act of pure hatred as the work of well-intentioned but mixed-up folks.
A
Democrat Speaks Out
A Democratic congressman who opposes the liberation of Iraq is blaming the Jews
for threatening Saddam Hussein's hold on power. "If it were not for the strong
support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing
this," the Connection newspapers of northern Virginia quoted Rep. Jim Moran
as saying last week. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough
that they could change the direction of where this is going and I think they
should."
Democrats have for some time shown a troubling tolerance for politicians who say or do anti-Semitic things: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, former Reps. Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard. Will the party distance itself from Moran's remarks? Today's Washington Post quotes numerous Virginia Democrats, including a spokesman for the governor, as criticizing Moran--but no members of Congress are among them, nor does the paper quote any Democrats from outside Virginia.
Moran offered this Trent Lott-style "apology": "I should not have singled out the Jewish community and regret giving any impression that its members are somehow responsible for the course of action being pursued by the Administration, or are somehow behind an impending war." In other words, he regrets giving the impression that he meant precisely what he said.
In an op-ed in Pakistan's Balochistan Post, another Southern politician weighs in with views similar to Moran's: "This is a war that has been promoted for years by the most radical Jewish supremacists in Israel and America." The author of these words? David Duke.
Chirac's
Dangerous Game
France's President Jacques Chirac vowed yesterday to veto any further U.N. resolution
that would lead to the liberation of Iraq. "Our position is no matter what
the circumstances, France will vote 'no,' " the Associated Press quotes
Chirac as saying. Asked if this would hurt relations between Paris and Washington,
the AP adds, "Chirac said 'I am totally convinced of the opposite.' Chirac
said President Bush meant it when he declared a few days ago that 'France and
Germany are our friends, and will continue to be.' "
Well, President Bush was right to show restraint; the time is not yet ripe to make public any official reconsideration of America's frayed "alliance" with Paris. But Chirac sorely underestimates the rage against his country on the American "street." Talk of weasels and worms doesn't quite capture it; some Americans are thinking very dark thoughts indeed about our erstwhile allies. In National Review Online, Michael Ledeen spins a conspiracy theory:
Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren't thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there's evidence of such a design. . . .
No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America's vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.
And here's blogger Steven Den Beste, pondering what might go wrong when the shooting starts in Iraq:
I'm deeply concerned about the French. . . . Since then their resistance has made less and less sense, and what I worry about now is that if they think the stakes are so high, no matter why that might be, that they're clearly willing to sacrifice the UN and NATO and even the process of formation of the EU itself just to oppose the war despite having only negligible chance of actually preventing it, then maybe they might be willing to go to even greater lengths against us, extending beyond the diplomatic. De facto they're allied with Saddam even if there's no publicly-declared treaty or agreement; so will they be willing to intervene militarily? Will they smuggle some sort of weaponry in? Or ship it in openly?
If 20 cargo jets take off from French territory and head towards the middle east, what will we do? If they ignore all attempts to prevent them from reaching Iraq, would we be willing to actually shoot one or more of them down?
Just how far are they willing to take their opposition to us? They've reached the point where it seems as if they're willing to make any sacrifice. Do they see the stakes as being high enough so that they might actually threaten to nuke us?
This is getting a little crazy, and both authors acknowledge that their speculation is, as Ledeen puts it, "fanciful." Besides, what the French are actually doing--abusing NATO and the U.N. in an effort to prop up one of the world's worst dictators--is despicable enough.
That such far-fetched thoughts are even thinkable among reasonable men like Ledeen and Den Beste shows how far Chirac has gone in alienating America. France, of course, is much worse in this regard; last year Chirac's countrymen made a bestseller out of a book called "L'Effroyable Imposture," which claimed that Sept. 11 was a U.S. government conspiracy.
It's not surprising that French paranoia about America would surface before the opposite. America is the most important country in the world, so it's no wonder people in a second-rate power like France are consumed with envy. In contrast, under normal circumstances the only Americans who have occasion to think about France are aficionados of wine and soft cheeses. France now has succeeded in getting America's attention. It may wish it hadn't.
Too Clever
by Half?
The New Republic's "&c." blog argues that Russia's promise of
a U.N. Security Council veto--which preceded France's by several hours--may
have upset Paris's strategy:
France's crucial mistake was its failure to realize that it is the only permanent member whose own prestige is almost entirely dependent upon the prestige of the Security Council. That means France's interests were never perfectly aligned with those of Russia and China, who are world powers in their own right and who can therefore costlessly cast the vote that makes the Security Council irrelevant. For whatever reason, the French assumed that just because they couldn't afford to take their own cynical rhetoric seriously, neither could anyone else. Now Russia has, and the French will pay the price.
Meanwhile, Reuters quotes Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain as pointing out that France, Russia and China want to keep Saddam in power in order to preserve their "material interests" in Iraq.
No
More Patience
Wow, even the New York Times has given up on trying to spin its poll results.
"Americans are growing impatient with the United Nations and say they would
support military action against Iraq even if the Security Council refuses to
support an invasion, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll,"
reads the first paragraph of the lead article in today's Times.
Left-Wingers
Against Affirmative Action
At California State University, Northridge, some left-wing Hispanic activists
are complaining that a college program is "targeting Hispanics." The
people who run the program deny the "charge," though they do
say that Hispanics are underrepresented in their profession, reports the Ventura
County Star.
Huh? Aren't minority activists supposed to be in favor of affirmative action? Not, it would seem, when the program in question is the Reserve Officer Training Corps. Apparently these left-wingers hate America's military more than they love equal opportunity.
You
Don't Say
"President's Religious Beliefs Are Reflected in His Speeches"--headline,
Oakland Tribune, March 8
The
Manhattan Zoo
We know William McGowan, whose book "Coloring the News" is a well
regarded treatment of media bias on racial issues. McGowan is a serious guy,
so we have to wonder what he was thinking when he agreed to appear on a panel
with a trio of nutcases: bilious blogger Eric Alterman, SUV scourge Arianna
Huffington and crackpot comedian Janeane Garafalo, who summed up her political
views a few weeks back when she told Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, "I just
spit."
Editor & Publisher has an account of the Monday panel, which "turned into an animated series of divisive rants on the media's coverage of the Bush administration and Iraq." Alterman claimed that "the right-wing establishment has so much control" over the media "that no one on the left can fight back." He added that talk radio is "less diverse than the press under Stalin's Soviet Union."
Garafalo, for her part, "said she had been ridiculed by the media for her antiwar activism and, clearly, it hurt. She blasted conservative talk show hosts for attempting to marginalize the antiwar movement by focusing almost exclusively on celebrities." Garafalo has made something of a shtick of complaining that the media trivialize the "antiwar" cause by focusing on celebs, but she thus far has refused to take the most obvious corrective action: Shut up already.
That's
Entertainment?--II
"Britain's Prince Charles will undergo a hernia operation at the end of
the month, forcing the cancellation of an Easter skiing holiday in the Swiss
Alps," Reuters reports. OK, we guess the health problems of the heir to
the throne are newsworthy, if barely. But why does Reuters file this under "Entertainment"?
Getting
a Head
You hate when things like this happen. At a concert in the city of Bergen, Norwegian
"death metal" band Mayhem "was carving up a dead sheep as part
of its stage act when the animal's head flew off lead singer Maniac's knife
and struck Per Kristian Hagen, 25," the Associated Press reports from Oslo.
Hagen tells the AP: "My relationship to sheep is a bit ambivalent now.
I like them, but not when they come flying through the air. I have a headache
now."
Me-OW!
Shades of Jimmy Carter and the killer rabbit in this story out of Nova Scotia,
where an unnamed man's cat "went berserk and trapped him in a bathroom."
According to Ananova.com, "it took two police officers and animal control
officer Ron Sabean, to subdue the seven-year-old cat." How will we ever
beat Saddam Hussein without the help of the valorous Canadians?
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Today on OpinionJournal:
- Kofi Annan: Will the Security Council live up to its responsibility?
- Brendan Miniter: The Vatican's views on war are welcome, agree or not.
- Paul Johnson on why the French have few friends.
