From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Don't
Look at Us!
"British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett last week issued the latest
European demand to close down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,"
The Washington Post reports. "The existence of the prison is 'unacceptable'
and fuels Islamic radicalism around the world, she said, echoing a recent chorus
of complaints from Europe about U.S. counterterrorism policy."
OK, so the Europeans want us to shut down Guantanamo. And what do they propose we do with the detainees?
Behind the scenes . . . the British government has repeatedly blocked efforts to let some prisoners leave Guantanamo and return home.
According to documents made public this month in London, officials there recently rejected a U.S. offer to transfer 10 former British residents from Guantanamo to the United Kingdom, arguing that it would be too expensive to keep them under surveillance. Britain has also staved off a legal challenge by the relatives of some prisoners who sued to require the British government to seek their release.
Other European governments, which have been equally vocal in assailing Guantanamo as a human rights liability, have also balked at accepting prisoner transfers. A Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany was finally permitted to return from Guantanamo in August, four years after the German government turned down a U.S. proposal to release him.
In addition, virtually every country in Europe refused to grant asylum to several Guantanamo prisoners from China who were not being sent home because of fears they could face political harassment there. The Balkan nation of Albania agreed to take in five of the Chinese in May, but only after more than 100 other nations rebuffed U.S. pleas to accept them on humanitarian grounds, State Department officials said.
There you have our moral betters in Europe, whose motto is Hey, not our problem!
Lowest
'Common' Denominator
The Democrats have a new slogan, the Associated Press reports:
Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America--then repeated the phrase 29 times.
The term is "common good," and it's catching on as a way to describe liberal values and reach religious voters who rejected Democrats in the 2004 election. Led by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think-tank, party activists hope the phrase will do for them what "compassionate conservative" did for the Republicans.
"It's a core value that we think organizes the entire political agenda for progressives," said John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "With the rise of materialism, greed and corruption in American society, people want a return to a better sense of community--sort of a shared sacrifice, a return to the ethic of service and duty."
Isn't this about the 87th slogan the Dems have come up with? Remember "culture of corruption," "America can do better," "enough is enough," etc.? Maybe the Republican slogan should be "slogans are not enough."
Then again, maybe they are enough. It now seems within the realm of possibility that Democrats will take one or both houses of Congress in three weeks, even though they are campaigning on not much more than not being Republicans. But the Republicans are campaigning on not much more than not being Democrats. To our mind the Republicans have the better of this argument, but there is something to be said for punishing the party in power if its performance has been subpar.
Jerusalem
Sex Scandal
"Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, absented himself from the opening
of parliament on Monday after police investigators recommended he be indicted
on rape, sexual assault and other charges," the Financial Times reports:
The recommendation followed months of inquiries into complaints by women who worked in the 60-year-old head of state's office. Menachem Mazuz, attorney general, is expected to decided in about two weeks whether to proceed with a trial.
We suppose it's possible this will give propaganda fodder to Israel's enemies, but it's worth noting that not only is the president not above the law, but if he is charged with rape, his alleged victims will not be in danger of prosecution for adultery if there aren't four male witnesses.
Womb
With a View
Back in August, MediaMutters.org
blasted us for having "made light of Sheehan's surgery":
In his August 24 "Best of the Web Today" column, Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto used reports of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's recent hysterectomy to joke that Sheehan underwent the procedure as a cure for hysteria.
The MM guys sort of missed the point of the joke, which was to make fun of (1) Sheehan's hysteria, and (2) the bizarre culture of celebrity that regards this wacko's surgery as news. We got the usual batch of semiliterate complaints, some of which faulted us for using such an intimate matter as an occasion for political humor.
Well, we agree it's an intimate matter--a matter of concern only to Sheehan and those closest to her. It didn't belong in the news. Of course, maybe Sheehan was the victim of nosy reporters. But that seems a lot less likely now that she has made the following public statement, reported by "Allahpundit":
Over the summer I had a hysterectomy, and um, I got my "parts" back. I thought I could just [inaudible] on eBay, you know, "[inaudible] Cindy Sheehan's uterus." And so I planted it in the garden where the bush, it's a pretty bush. . . . It's so funny 'cause me and my children, we'll always be a part of, of Crawford, Texas. Long after people forgot the horror of the Bush regime, long after, you know, we're forgotten. We'll always, our DNA will always be in the land.
This is the moral and intellectual leader of the antiwar left?
How
Many Lynchings?--II
Dennis C. Jett, whose Gainesville Sun op-ed we skewered in an Oct. 2 item,
writes in response:
James Taranto reprints a portion of an op-ed that I wrote and poses several questions for me. Unfortunately Mr. Taranto printed only 200 of the 800 words I wrote. If he had published the entire op-ed, your readers would have seen the stupidity of the questions he posed. They were instead left to wonder whether Mr. Taranto's obsession about the crimes committed against the patrons of gay bars indicates that he shares Mark Foley's family values.
Any of your readers who bothered to read my full op-ed would see that I was making a statistical point, not a moral one. Does Mr. Taranto really think anyone finds accidental death to be in the same moral category as murder? I used the statistics to indicate that, in terms of probability, the likelihood of an American becoming a victim of terrorism is no higher than a lot of other ways that Americans die every year like riding in boats and on bicycles. I used that as a way of contesting the absurd contention of our president that the threat of terrorism is equal to that posed by Hitler and Stalin. (For those that think it is, I ask you what sacrifice have you made to protect this country?) Of course terrorism is a grave threat that can and has done great harm, but it does not threaten our very survival as a country as fascism and communism did.
Mr. Taranto identified me as an academic, apparently hoping to play to the soft bigotry of some readers' expectation that such people have no experience outside the ivory tower and no stomach for confronting terrorists. As the line identifying the author on my op-ed indicated, I was a career diplomat before entering academia. A simple Web search would also have shown that had I stayed at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Peru half an hour longer, I would have gotten to know 14 terrorists on an extended personal basis. Nine of my staff and five of their wives were not so lucky.
So I have had over 30 years to think about terrorism and its effects. I spent much of that time lecturing people abroad about respect for democracy and human rights and holding my country up as an example. I did not do that to now remain silent as, to use Colin Powell's words, the rest of the world increasingly doubts the moral basis of our war against terrorism.
I do agree with the president on one thing. Our way of life is threatened by fascism. It is not the Islamo variety however. It is the fascism of people like Mr. Taranto, who reinforced by paranoia and a certitude born of inexperience, think the only way to respond to people that disagree with them is to trivialize their arguments and qualifications.
For the record, the original op-ed is here, and our earlier item included a link to it.
Homer
Nods
Yes, yes, in our item yesterday about the Dinesh D'Souza kerfuffle at a Seattle
prep school, we meant to write, in describing the views of the plaintiffs in
a lawsuit, "Merely inviting someone who holds politically incorrect
ideas about race to come and speak is 'discrimination,' " not "politically
correct ideas." We've corrected it.
What
Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts: School Shootings Still Rare"--headline, Finger Lakes Times
(Geneva, N.Y.), Oct. 16
What Would
We Be by Year 3000 Without Scientists?
"Scientist: By Year 3000, We'll Be Giants With Brown Skin Living to Age
of 120"--headline, New York Sun, Oct. 17
Wouldn't
It Be Better to Focus on Passing Them?
"Guilford Schools Focus on Failing Students"--headline, News &
Record (Greensboro, N.C.), Oct. 16
Will
They Pay Farmers Not to Grow It?
"U.S. Launches Effort to Stop Growing Violent Crime"--headline, Reuters,
Oct. 16
Publishers
of 'Awake'
"A small private jet carrying the one-year-old Malawian boy pop star Madonna
hopes to adopt took off from the southern African country on Monday, a Reuters
witness said."--Reuters, Oct. 16
Wow,
It's Virtually 'News'!
"Reuters Opens Virtual News Bureau"--headline, MSNBC.com, Oct. 16
Do
the Adults at Least Get an Open Bar?
"Kick-Off Event for Education Campaign to Reduce Teen Access to Alcohol"--headline,
media advisory, Federal Trade Commission, Oct. 16
The
Barley Lobby Speaks Up
"We Need the Guts to Say No to Rice"--headline, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 16
Someone
Needs a Shampoo
"Study Links Hair to Eating Disorders"--headline, Associated Press,
Oct. 16
News
You Can Use
"Your Seat Belt Matters, Where You Go to High School Does Not"--headline,
Citizen Journal (Clayton, Mo.), Oct. 11
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Bill Murray Attends Student Party, Does Dishes"--headline, CNN.com,
Oct. 16
- "Labor Leader Arrested for Racketeering"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 17
A Pair of
Protesters
"An appeals court has ruled that women can demonstrate topless as part
of a legitimate political protest, striking down the arrest of a woman who has
repeatedly flouted laws banning women from publicly going bare breasted,"
the Associated Press reports from Orlando, Fla.:
The Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 5 upheld a county judge's opinion that Elizabeth Book could protest topless on the city's Main Street Bridge.
Book was arrested by Daytona Beach police and fined $253 during Bike Week in March 2004. The city said she violated an ordinance banning public nudity that was passed in 2002 to curb indecency at special events.
This raises some intriguing possibilities. Suppose you wanted to stage a protest against marijuana laws? Or against embezzlement laws? Or for that matter against murder laws? If people find out about this loophole, it'll be anarchy!
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ed Lasky, Ethel Fenig, Brian O'Rourke, Evan Slatis, Steve Prestegard, John Williamson, Joel Goldberg, Mark Solomon, Roger Jones, Keith Rayburn, Marion Dreyfus, Neal Meissner, Robert Gessner, Eric Garcia, Eric Nilsson, Mike Miller, Mark Williams, Jack Seeley, Steven Getman, Rod Meers, John Buford, Don Stewart, Fred Furia, C.E. Dobkin, Matthew Maginley, Joel McLemore, Dennis Powell, Kyle Kyllan, Joseph Tully, Ken Hennesay, Jeff Pittman and Nicholas Felten. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: A lawyer who passed messages to terrorists gets off light.
- Jeffrey Lord (from The American Spectator): Conservatives have bounced back from electoral setbacks before.
- Brendan Simms: The U.S. has always been a "dangerous nation" on the world stage.
