From the WSJ Opinion Archives
The
Rachel Corrie Memorial Massacre
Remember Rachel
Corrie? She was a mixed-up 23-year-old lass from Olympia, Wash., whose hobbies
included playing in traffic and burning
the American flag. Last March the former pastime cost her her life. She
stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer, but was in the driver's blind spot and
was accidentally crushed to death.
Corrie's fatal game of chicken was the product of malice as well as idiocy. Her goal was to promote Palestinian terrorists' murderous campaign against Jews by obstructing Israeli efforts to destroy tunnels that are used to smuggle weapons and explosives from Egypt into the Palestinian "refugee camp" in Rafah, on the Gaza Strip.
Today Palestinian terrorists murdered at least three Americans on the Gaza Strip, reports the Jerusalem Post:
A massive explosion demolished a US armored jeep carrying US diplomatic and CIA officials Wednesday, killing at least three Americans and critically wounding one.
Minutes after 10 am, a large road side bomb went off under a convoy of 3 US diplomatic vehicles, backed by a Palestinian police escort, driving pass [sic] a gas station on the outskirts of the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israeli security sources confirmed the explosion killed at least three Americans, identifying them as US citizens acting as security guards in the targeted vehicle.
And where did the bombs come from? Here's a report from the Israeli group IMRA:
Brig. Gen (res.) Zvi Poleg told Israel Radio in an interview after the attack that the explosives could have been smuggled from Egypt through the smuggling tunnels. Poleg charged that Egypt was violated its treaty obligations in allowing the smuggling of weapons, explosives and ammunition from Egypt to the Palestinians via smuggling tunnels. He noted that members of the Egyptian Army have been involved in the smuggling and that the Egyptians are well aware of the operations but have not acted to stop the operations. He noted that over 60 smuggling tunnels were located and destroyed by Israel in the last year.
The Egyptians, who receive billions in American foreign aid as a reward for making "peace" with Israel a quarter century ago, have a lot of explaining to do. And it appears terror advocates like Rachel Corrie now have American as well as Israeli blood on their hands.
'Serious
Moral Goals'
Somehow this is more infuriating than all the idiocy spouted by all the Michael
Moores and Susan Sarandons and Noam Chomskys over the past two years. From the
London Daily Telegraph:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, yesterday urged America to recognise that terrorists can "have serious moral goals."
He said that while terrorism must always be condemned, it was wrong to assume its perpetrators were devoid of political rationality. "It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable."
He said that in ignoring this, in its criticism of al-Qa'eda, America "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality."
In the same speech, Williams denounced the liberation of Iraq. So let's see if we have this straight: The head of the Anglican Church is telling us that the wanton murder of thousands of innocent people is a sign of "serious moral goals," while the liberation of millions from one of the world's most vicious dictatorships is, as he has put it, "immoral and illegal."
Is this really what Christianity is all about?
Foleyed
Again?
"Rep. George Nethercutt said yesterday that Iraq's reconstruction is going
better than is portrayed by the news media, citing his recent four-day trip
to the country," reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
"The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable," Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.
"It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day."
He added that he did not want any more soldiers to be killed.
Nethercutt, a Spokane Republican, is running for the Senate seat currently held by the woman some say is the dimmest member of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, Patty Murray. As we noted last year, Murray has described Osama bin Laden as a philanthropist: "He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."
Not that Murray necessarily wants us to do that. On Sept. 27 she delivered the Democratic response to President Bush's weekly radio address, and she sounded like a right-wing crank railing against foreign aid: "While . . . families struggle to make ends meet, they are watching billions of their tax dollars go to rebuild Iraq. . . . Democrats have proposed policies that will get us back on track. . . . Investments will be made in America first, not last."
Murray is not consistently bad on national security. To her credit, yesterday she joined seven other Democrats and all 51 Republicans in voting to table an amendment by Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan to divert $5 billion from Iraq reconstruction and spend it on domestic pork.
Still, the good people of Washington state could do the country a service, and spare themselves six years' worth of further embarrassment, by firing Murray a year from now. In a state that voted for Michael Dukakis, Nethercutt is an underdog; Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball lists the Murray seat as "likely Democratic"--one step short of "solid." Then again, Nethercutt was an underdog in 1994 too, when the incumbent Democrat he beat was no less than House Speaker Tom Foley.
Weasel
Watch
"France, Russia and Germany on Tuesday dropped their demands that the United
States grant the United Nations a central role in Iraq's reconstruction and
yield power to a provisional Iraqi government in the coming months," the
Washington Post reports. "The move constituted a major retreat by the Security
Council's chief antiwar advocates, and signaled their renewed willingness to
consider the merits of a U.S. resolution aimed at conferring greater international
legitimacy on its military occupation of Iraq."
Didn't we say they'd eventually bow to reality? It would have been better if Paris, Berlin and Moscow had led or followed, but at least they're getting out of the way.
Who's
Distracted?
U.S. forces have captured Aso Hawleri, a k a Asad Muhammad Hasan,
in Iraq, the Associated Press reports. Hawler is one of the top leaders of Ansar
al-Islam, an al Qaeda-linked terror outfit in northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports from Islamabad that "Pakistan said on Wednesday a senior al Qaeda official may be among the eight suspected militants killed in a clash with Pakistani forces near the Afghan border earlier this month." The Pak man doesn't name the man, but says "he could be among the top 10 or 15 [al Qaeda] people."
Keep
Your 'Dissidents'
In yesterday's
item on antiregime protests in Saudi Arabia, we quoted the Associated Press's
claim that the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a Saudi "dissident"
group, "champions a liberal, moderate system of government and has never
been linked to violence." A London-based Web site that identifies itself as
belonging to MIRA, however, suggests that this group's sympathies are decidedly
immoderate, illiberal and anti-American:
To our knowledge, America still considers dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan a morally justifiable action and refuses to apologise for it. . . . If America considers nuclear attacks against civilians, merely to hasten an inevitable defeat of an opponent, then how could you consider the strikes against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon unjustifiable? If you claim that you do not condone America's nuclear attacks, then you should consider her act as more morally repellent than that of those who attacked New York. Accordingly the strikes against America is [sic] as legitimate as the way her war against those who attacked her is justifiable.
Well, this'll teach us not to believe everything we read on the wires.
Clerical
Error
"A few weeks after the arrest of a Muslim chaplain on charges of mishandling
classified information, the Department of Defense said Tuesday it is changing
the way it chooses military clergy," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Charles Abell, deputy undersecretary for personnel and readiness, told a congressional
hearing yesterday, that, as the paper puts it, "the Pentagon would stop
relying exclusively on three Islamic groups for chaplains after lawmakers said
the groups have terrorist ties." But the Scripps
Howard News Service reports that the Pentagon "has no intention of
severing ties" with the questionable groups.
Our Brendan Miniter highlighted the issue yesterday.
Vietnam
Vanity
Bully for Howard Dean. The peevish peacenik has "sharply criticized"
Sen. John Kerry for "seemingly flip-flopping on the importance of serving
in Vietnam in presidential politics," reports the Hill, a newspaper that
covers Congress. The paper unearths a speech Kerry, the haughty, French-looking
Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, gave more than a decade
ago:
On Feb. 27, 1992, Kerry defended then presidential candidate Bill Clinton against an attack by his Democratic rival Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). As the primary season unfolded, Kerrey, who lost part of his leg in Vietnam, had peppered Clinton with uncomfortable questions about whether the Arkansan had evaded the draft.
Kerry hit back at his Senate colleague, saying: "I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way. . . . What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary."
Kerry operatives defend his harping on Vietnam: "John Kerry has always said military experience is not a pre-requisite for the presidency, but it informs the tough questions he asks and it certainly gives him the firsthand perspective you can't learn in the situation room," says spokeswoman Kelley Benander. Then again, Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of America's greatest wartime leaders, had the same military experience as Bill Clinton: none.
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
- "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew
Jackson
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin
Roosevelt
- "The buck stops here."--Harry
Truman
- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country."--John
Kennedy
- "I am running for president of the United States to enable the goddess of peace to encircle within her arms all the children of this country and all the children of the world."--Dennis Kucinich
Great
Moments in British Journalism
The Web site of London's Guardian, a left-wing newspaper, is hosting an online
discussion on the topic "Is it time to assasinate [sic] George Dubya Bush?"
We'd say it's time for the Secret Service to investigate the Guardian.
Firing
Back at the L.A. Times
Jill Stewart has a detailed response to Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll's
defense of his newspaper's pre-election coverage of Arnold Schwarzenegger, which
we noted
Monday. Stewart disputes Carroll on just about every point; the most explosive
part comes from an interview Stewart conducted with "a longtime, respected
Timesian involved in the Schwarzenegger coverage," whom she doesn't identify:
"Toward the end, a kind of hysteria gripped the newsroom. I witnessed a deep-seated, irrational need to get something on this guy [Schwarzenegger]. By Wednesday before it was published, I counted not fewer than 24 reporters dispatched on Arnold, and this entire enterprise was directed by John Carroll himself.
"Carroll launched the project with the words: 'I want a full scrub of Arnold.' This was fully and completely and daily driven by Carroll. He's as good as his word on being balanced and trying to make this paper more balanced, he really is. But not when it came to Schwarzenegger. Carroll changed completely. It was visceral, and he made it clear he wanted something bad on Schwarzenegger and he didn't care what it was. . . .
"The paper used methods as if they were trying to crack a criminal enterprise. That is fundamentally what happened here. They took the rules of criminal investigation and overlaid them onto a political campaign, as if we had an organized crime figure running for office. . . . What happened here, from day one, was deeply aberrant. Yes, our political coverage is skewed, like most papers, and so what? It's a fact of life. This was aberrant. It was outside of bounds. It was intense and real. To get something on him was the goal. No question, and no other goal."
Brother,
Can You Spare $235,000?
"Green Acres" star Arianna Huffington, who likes to portray herself
as a scourge of money in politics, is still raising money for her disastrous
bid to become California's governor, according to an announcement on her Web
site:
Despite being severely underfunded, Arianna's campaign had a major impact on the just completed California recall election. Arianna consistently and effectively brought attention to a wide range of progressive issues, including renewable energy, universal health care, and the need to close outrageous corporate tax loopholes. All of this, of course, cost a great deal of money and has left Arianna's campaign facing a debt of $235,000. Please contribute whatever you can to help pay off this financial obligation.
Somehow we doubt many people are going to come forward and pony up, but there may be hope for Arianna to earn some extra bread and retire her debt, not to mention revive her flagging show-biz career: Wasn't she recently offered a part in "Terminator 4"?
What
Would Sick Societies Do Without Experts?
"The increasing rape and abuse of babies and young girls in South Africa
is a dangerous symptom of a very sick society, says an expert."--South
African Press Association, Oct. 14
Not
a Pretty Picture
You've got to hand it to those German photojournalists; they're really brilliant.
They were unhappy because Bob Dylan, the rock musician best known for the haphazard
enunciation of his lyrics, "stated that he would not allow his photograph
to be taken during performances," Billboard reports. Their solution: They're
boycotting Dylan's forthcoming tour.
This is one of those wonderful, win-win solutions. Everyone's happy: The photojournalists get to make their statement, and Dylan doesn't have to put up with pesky photojournalists snapping his picture. Now if we could only get telemarketers to boycott those of us who've signed up for the do-not-call list.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to S.E. Brenner, Michael Segal, Henry Kaye, Mara Gold, Tom Linehan, Jerome Marcus, Monty Krieger, Doug Levene, Joel Goldberg, Barak Moore, Michael Hopkovitz, Daniel Sterman, Shelley Taylor, Joshua Weiner, Seth Surchin, Michael Siegel, Carl Sherer, C.E. Dobkin, William Specht, Christopher Johnson, Daniel Foty, Fred Komarow, Steve Duda, John Archer, Chris Mykrants, Paul Dyck, Ian Colle, Ayal Sharon, Robert LeChevalier, Edward Schulze, Thomas Conway, David Beebe, John Williamson, Bob Batts, Charlie Gaylord, Bennett Ruda, John Williamson, Justin Taylor, Merv Benson and James Silverglad. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The Democrats aren't prejudiced--they bork everybody.
- William McGowan : Why are journalists afraid to debate the excesses of diversity?
- Mark Yost: Family fun at the machine-gun range.
