by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, October 25, 2005 4:37 P.M. EDT

War Is Peace
The Washington Post reports on a New Yorker interview with Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the Ford and Bush père White Houses:

Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace."

Now let's see. Between 1953 and 2003, here are the Mideast wars we can think of off the top of our head: the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the two Palestinian intifadas against Israel, the Algerian Civil War, the Yemen Civil War and two Sudanese civil wars. That doesn't even count acts of terror against non-Mideastern countries, from the Iranian invasion of the U.S. Embassy to the attacks of 9/11.

What do you call someone who describes this as "50 years of peace"? A "realist."

Iraq Gets a Constitution
Voters in Iraq approved the new constitution by a landslide 78% to 21% margin, Reuters reports:

Two provinces had already been confirmed to have voted heavily "No"--96 percent in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar and 81 percent in Saddam Hussein's home region of Salahaddin.

But the final results announced on Tuesday showed that a third, "swing," province of Nineveh, had voted by only 55 percent against the constitution, short of a two-thirds majority.

Opponents of Iraqi democracy will complain that the Sunnis are "disenfranchised," but it should be noted that such outlying jurisdictions are common in the U.S. too. In 1964, for example, 87% of Mississippi voters rejected Lyndon B. Johnson, who won a nationwide landslide. Likewise in 1984, when the District of Columbia went 85% against Ronald Reagan. No one would argue that these results mean America would be better off under a fascist dictatorship.

Watching the Death Watchers
Is Harriet Miers another John Kerry*? At first blush the answer would seem to be "no." By all accounts, she is neither haughty, nor French-looking. She's not from Massachusetts, and she is no longer a Democrat. She did not serve in Vietnam. (Don't tell her Democratic opponents, though, or they'll start attacking her as a "draft dodger.")

Yet reader Robert Gaumont sees a parallel:

OK, your Miers post yesterday made me laugh. The reason is that your "Miers Nomination Death Watch" reminded me of the "Kerry death watch" that Mickey Kaus posted a few months before Kerry won the Iowa causes, the New Hampshire primary and the Dem nomination.

It makes me chuckle harder because Mickey's borderline obsessive loathing (in a nice way) toward Kerry, I think, is comparable to this column's feelings toward Miers. Kind of like--"OK, she/he's one of us, but is this really the best we can do?" "Doesn't everyone in the world realize he/she's a vapid idiot?"

Well, first, we'd say "vapid idiot" overstates the case, even where Kerry is concerned. But even if Kaus was premature in predicting Kerry's political demise, wasn't he ultimately right? After all, as far as we recall, Kerry did not win the general election.

One difference, though, is that one could at least argue that Kerry was the least bad of the Democratic candidates on offer (though if pressed, we would make a case for either Joe Lieberman or Dick Gephardt). With Miers there is no question that the president passed over many, many more-qualified prospective nominees.

* This space intentionally left blank.

Government Waste
An Arizona congressman is trying to stop a drain on the Treasury (link to press release in Microsoft Word form):

Jeff Flake, who represents the state's Sixth District, today decried a $2 million earmark in the House version of the Defense Appropriations bill to study "no flush" urinal technology. The earmarked funds are drawn from the Navy's operations and maintenance budget.

What this country needs is a good $900 toilet.

Rosa Parks, R.I.P.
"One man with courage makes a majority," Andrew Jackson observed, and one woman in the 20th century embodied this aphorism as well as anyone: Rosa Parks, who died yesterday at 92. The Washington Post describes her contribution:

Parks said that she didn't fully realize what she was starting when she decided not to move on that Dec. 1, 1955, evening in Montgomery, Ala. It was a simple refusal, but her arrest and the resulting protests began the complex cultural struggle to legally guarantee equal rights to Americans of all races.

Within days, her arrest sparked a 380-day bus boycott, which led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that desegregated her city's public transportation. Her arrest also triggered mass demonstrations, made the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famous, and transformed schools, workplaces and housing.

The Associated Press quotes Sen. Ted Kennedy: "A half century ago, Rosa Parks stood up not only for herself, but for generations upon generations of Americans." And here we thought she didn't stand up.

Puffington Host
"The Newark City Council has awarded the Newark Weekly News a $100,000 no-bid contract to publish positive news about the city," reports the Associated Press:

Howard Scott, who owns Newark Weekly News, pitched the idea to the city council, which unanimously approved the idea earlier this month.

"Do we have critical reporters on staff? No. Do we have investigative reporters? No," Scott said. "Our niche is the good stuff. People have come to know it, and they love it."

We found the Newark Weekly News online (link is bandwidth-intensive, since the paper is presented as a series of JPEG images), and we must say it does not appear to be the best-edited publication we've ever seen.

The headline of the lead story, an obituary for a city councilman, reads "Newark's Loss Leaves Gaping Political Whole." Even odder, the byline is "Kenya Nairobi, Assistant Managing Editor," though the masthead on page 3 lists the AME as Kenya Pope. Similarly, two other front-page stories list the author as "JahJah Shakur, City News Editor," while the masthead lists no one by that title but does cite a "City Reporter-at-large" by the name of "Jah Jah Jah."

Anyway, the Weekly News deal doesn't strike us as inherently problematic, so long as the paper doesn't pretend to be independent. The city is, in essence, contracting out a public-relations newsletter. But given the quality of the product, it's hard to see how Newark taxpayers are getting their money's worth.

The World's Smallest Violin
"When it comes to reading or arithmetic, Marvin Calvin is delighted to help his two children," the Associated Press reports. "But when it comes to MP3 players, video game consoles, computers or the Internet, he is just baffled":

"I won't even sit down with them and play that little game thing because I don't even know how to operate it," said the 48-year-old Calvin. . . .

He is a technological Rip Van Winkle.

Why isn't Calvin up to date on the latest gizmos? No good reason, really. All he did was a little armed robbery, which landed him in prison for 10 years. "Because of the rapid pace of technological change, thousands of inmates like Calvin leave prison every year to find a world very different from the one they knew when they went in." The heart bleeds.

And Just as His Sentence Was Ending!
"Man Serving Life for Murder Dies"--headline, Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald, Oct. 24

Luckily, He Won't Have to Pay It
"Dead Man Gets Parking Ticket"--headline, Reuters, Oct. 21

At Least Unicorns and Dodos Are Safe
"Mermaids, Dinosaurs Deemed Terror Targets"--headline, Tampa Tribune, Oct. 25

Cheese-Eating Surrender Ducklings
"Egypt Slaughters French Ducklings Amid Flu Fears"--headline, Expatica.com, Oct. 23

'You're Supposed to Pin It on the Donkey, Dammit!'
"Six Stabbed at 1-Year-Old's Birthday Party"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 24

Thanks for the Tip!--VII
"Health Tip: Pregnancy Test Kit Must Be Used Correctly"--headline, HealthDayNews, Oct. 25

Mind Your Pigs and Q's
"British banks are banning piggy banks because they may offend some Muslims," reports the Australian Associated Press:

Halifax and NatWest banks have led the move to scrap the time-honoured symbol of saving from being given to children or used in their advertising, the Daily Express/Daily Star group reports here.

Muslims do not eat pork, as Islamic culture deems the pig to be an impure animal.

Even some Muslims think the move is silly: "I doubt many Muslims would be seriously offended by piggy banks," says Khalid Mahmoud, a Muslim member of Parliament. Anyway, Islam forbids interest, so wouldn't Muslims be inclined to stay away from proper banks as well as piggy ones?

Some odd sensibilities prevail in secular Muslim societies, too, as evidenced by this Reuters report from Diyarbakir, Turkey:

A Turkish court has fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law that bans use of characters not in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said. . . .

The 1928 Law on the Adoption and Application of Turkish Letters changed the Turkish alphabet from the Arabic script to a modified Latin script and required all signs, advertising, newspapers and official documents to only use Turkish letters.

Now we know why the Turks didn't like George W. Bush's plan to liberate Iraq.

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