From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Pelosi
Questions Own Patriotism
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday phoned President Bush to air her
complaints over Vice President Dick Cheney's comments that the Congressional
Democrats' plan for Iraq would 'validate the Al Qaeda strategy,' "
Fox News reports:
Pelosi, who said she could not reach the president, said Cheney's comments wrongly questioned critics' patriotism and ignored Bush's call for openness on Iraq strategy.
"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war,' and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," the speaker said.
Here is what Cheney said, in an ABC News interview:
I think, in fact, if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people. In fact, knowing they can't win in a stand-up fight, try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit. I think that's exactly the wrong course to go on. I think that's the course of action that Speaker Pelosi and Jack Murtha support. I think it would be a huge mistake for the country.
It is true that Cheney accuses Pelosi and Murtha of, as she puts it, "acting against the national security of our country." Does Pelosi think it illegitimate to make such accusations? Evidently not, to judge by this Pelosi press release of Sept. 24, 2006:
The news report on the National Intelligence Estimate is further proof that the war in Iraq is making it harder for America to fight and win the war on terror.
Five years after 9/11 and Osama bin Laden is still free and not a single terrorist who planned 9/11 has been caught and brought to justice. President Bush should read the intelligence carefully before giving another misleading speech about progress in the war on terrorism.
Pelosi claimed that the president's policies have helped al Qaeda--a commonplace among Democratic opponents of the Iraq effort (including many who voted for it). Why is Cheney's statement invidious if Pelosi's was innocuous?
It's not because Cheney questioned Pelosi & Co.'s patriotism, as she claims. He didn't. He said they were espousing bad policies, but he offered no opinion or speculation about their motives for doing so. Pelosi thus joins a long line of Democrats to raise questions about their own patriotism.
Dem
Death Match
"An increasingly acrimonious competition between Sens. Barack Obama and
Hillary Rodham Clinton to enlist the Democratic Party's leading fundraisers
and operatives burst into the open yesterday," the Washington Post reports:
The back-and-forth between the two campaigns has largely been fodder for political insiders. Yesterday, however, David Geffen, the music and film producer who is one of the party's most prominent donors, made the fight more public. In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Geffen said that Clinton is "the easiest to beat" of the Democratic field and skewered her unwillingness to apologize for her 2002 vote to use force in Iraq. "It's not a very big thing to say 'I made a mistake' on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can't," Geffen said.
Geffen, who was a co-host of an Obama fundraiser Tuesday night in Los Angeles, saved even sharper criticism for former president Bill Clinton, to whom he was close before a falling-out over the pardoning of financier Marc Rich at the end of Clinton's second term. "I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," Geffen said in an oblique reference to questions surrounding the former president's private life.
We never thought we'd say this, but we're glad someone reads Maureen Dowd. Geffen was once a big supporter of Mr. Clinton, so this is personal. Editor & Publisher quotes Dowd's inaccessible column:
They fell out in 2001, when Mr. Clinton gave a pardon to Marc Rich after rebuffing Mr. Geffen's request for one for Leonard Peltier. "Marc Rich getting pardoned? An oil-profiteer expatriate who left the country rather than pay taxes or face justice?" Mr. Geffen says. "Yet another time when the Clintons were unwilling to stand for the things that they genuinely believe in. Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling."
We've got to defend Mr. Clinton here. Whatever you may think of Marc Rich's pardon--and we didn't think much of it at the time--at least he didn't murder two FBI agents, as Peltier did.
As for the Hillary-Obama contretemps, it reminds us of what Henry Kissinger supposedly said about the Iran-Iraq war: It's a pity both sides can't lose.
The Future's
So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
Here is the abstract of Working Paper No. 12910 from the National Bureau
of Economic Research:
This paper studies the relation between human capital of suicide bombers and outcomes of their suicide attacks. We argue that human capital is an important factor in the production of terrorism, and that if terrorists behave rationally we should observe that more able suicide bombers are assigned to more important targets. We use a unique data set detailing the biographies of Palestinian suicide bombers, the targets they attack, and the number of people that they kill and injure to validate the theoretical predictions and estimate the returns to human capital in suicide bombing. Our empirical analysis suggests that older and more educated suicide bombers are being assigned by their terror organization to more important targets. We find that more educated and older suicide bombers are less likely to fail in their mission, and are more likely to cause increased casualties when they attack.
Or, as someone* once said, "You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
* We can't remember his name, only his hair.
No,
Wise Guy, It Isn't Jim Webb
"Virginia Man Faces Charges for Assaulting Republicans"--headline,
FoxNews.com, Feb. 21
America's
Secret Admirer
The mad mullahs who run Iran want to make friends with America, CNN's Christiane
Amanpour claims:
As I sat down recently with a senior Iranian government official, he urgently waved a column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times in my face, one about how the United States and Iran need to engage each other.
''Natural allies,'' this official said. . . .
"We are not after conflict. We are not after crisis. We are not after war," said this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But we don't know whether the same is true in the U.S. or not. If the same is true on the U.S. side, the first step must be to end this vicious cycle that can lead to dangerous action--war."
He confided that what he was telling me was not shared by all in the Iranian government, but it was endorsed so high up in the religious leadership that he felt confident spelling out the rationale.
"This view is not off the streets. It's not the reformist view and it's not even the view of the whole government," he replied.
But he insisted he was describing the thinking at the highest levels of the religious leadership--the center of decision-making power in Iran.
I asked whether he meant Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself.
"Yes," he said.
Just one little question, Christiane: If this guy "feels confident" and speaks for the so-called supreme leader, why won't he let you tell us his name?
Sounds
Like Him Needs Grammar Lessons Too
"Blair: ME Needs Viable Palestinian State"--headline, Jerusalem Post,
Feb. 21
This
Is Not a Drill
Here's an amusing Associated Press story from the Peach State:
State schools and government were supposed to practice responding to bad weather on Wednesday, but the weather was too bad, says Ken Davis, a Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokesman.
Rain, which began Tuesday and is expected to let up Wednesday afternoon, was the problem.
The drill, planned as part of Severe Weather Awareness Week, was rescheduled for Friday.
Apparently whoever planned this wasn't aware that the weather would be severe during Severe Weather Awareness Week.
A
Novel Way to Avoid Love Triangles
"NASA, Virgin to Collaborate on Space Flights"--headline, Jerusalem
Post, Feb. 22
Was It Over
When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?
"Lawsuit Attacks Booze, Frat Life"--headline, Denver Post, Feb. 21
Stay
off the Tracks, Poor Walkers
"Streetcars Hurt Poor, Walker Argues"--headline, Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, Feb. 20
Gov.
Moonbeam
"Spitzer Sees Light From Faraway Worlds"--headline, RedOrbit.com,
Feb. 21
Bottom
Story of the Day
"Jesse Jackson Seeks More Diversity in Hollywood"--headline, Reuters,
Feb. 22
A
Wireless Plan for Your Family
Working Assets, "a progressive phone company," offers "The Right
Choice That Supports Choice":
Planned Parenthood Wireless is a new choice for your cell phone service. By signing up for this service, you will help preserve reproductive rights, and ensure access to comprehensive family planning and medically accurate sex education for women and families around the world. You'll do something you do every day--talk on your cell phone--and you'll be helping Planned Parenthood as 10% of all monthly charges goes to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, at no extra cost to you.
Just make sure you're prepared to stick with it for the duration of the contract. We hear those early-termination fees can be murder.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Thomas Dillon, Jim Orheim, Mike Glasgow, John Hartness, Ed Laksy, Ethel Fenig, Rod Pennington, Darryl May, Marion Dreyfus, Bill Kiack, Eric Orbock, Matt Callaway, Monty Krieger, Scott Yates, Steve Edwards, John Sarna, Tom Cooper and Brett Taylor. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Edward Jay Epstein: The Spanish connection: what the 9/11 Commission didn't consider.
- Daniel Henninger: Scooter Libby and prosecutions that wreak ruin on a lifetime.
- William Anthony Hay: Why no one questioned the implications of bringing large Muslim populations into a secularizing West.
