Best of the Web Today - January 5, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Saddam's 'Sex Therapist'
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Back in April, the Boston Globe reports, a "sex therapist" called Susan Block, wrote a lurid pro-Saddam essay in which she likened the liberation of Iraq to rape:
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The supreme victory for the rapist is proof that his victim "enjoyed" it. Though he may force his way into her property, demolish her home, murder her loved ones, pillage her belongings, though he may terrify and humiliate her, beat and batter her, break her bones and tear her flesh, spill her blood, wound her organs and lay waste to her very soul, if, in the midst of the rape, between tears and shrieks of agony, if his victim should, for a moment, for some reason, any reason, if she should smile, or, better yet, orgasm [sic], the rapist is redeemed; he is even (in his mind) heroic.
This is why, when the Anglo-American rape of Iraq began, we so desperately searched the Iraqi faces on our televisions for a smile.
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Block's imagery is particularly twisted given that Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime actually used rape as a tool of political control. But whatever, she's just another harmless left-wing nut case, right?
Unfortunately, wrong. The Globe reports that Yeni Safak, an Islamist newspaper in Turkey, cited Block's essay in a "report" that claimed American soldiers had raped more than 4,000 Iraqi women. The rumor seems to have incited at least one terrorist attack in Istanbul:
Nurullah Kuncak says his father, Ilyas Kuncak, was boiling about the rumored rapes just before he killed himself delivering the huge car bomb that devasted [sic] the Turkish headquarters of HSBC bank last month, killing a dozen people and wounding scores more.
''Didn't you see, the American soldiers raped Iraqi women,'' Nurullah said in a recent interview. ''My father talked to me about it. . . . Thousands of rapes are in the records. Can you imagine how many are still secret?''
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Since Sept. 11, "Why do they hate us?" has been a stock
question of the anti-American left. One reason they hate
us is because of the diligent efforts of homegrown haters
like Susan Block.
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Dean Goes Job Hunting
Why did God give Howard Dean a mouth? So he'd have someplace to put his foot. The foaming-at-the-mouth front-runner continues to say idiotic things about religion, as Reuters reports:
He said a trip to Israel in December 2002, when he had already been to Iowa a couple of times looking into a possible presidential bid, had a particularly dramatic effect on him.
"If you know much about the Bible--which I do--to see and be in the place where Christ was and understand the intimate history of what was going on 2000 years ago is an exceptional experience," he said.
Asked to name his favorite book in the New Testament, Dean cited Job--which is in the Old Testament.
In a Republican debate back in 1999, George W. Bush was asked to name his favorite "political philosopher or thinker." He answered: "Christ, because he changed my heart," then elaborated: "When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that's what happened to me."
One might complain that Bush didn't answer the question, since Jesus Christ was not in fact a political philosopher. Then again, if you watch any of these debates, you'll see the candidates almost always dodge the question and say what they want to say. And Bush's nonanswer answer was pretty smart, for it deftly accomplished what Dean is now trying to do: let Christian voters know he's one of them.
Dean has talked an awful lot about how he plans to talk about his faith, but on the rare occasions when he actually does talk about his faith, you get the impression that he thinks Jesus really was a political philosopher. On Christmas Day the Boston Globe quoted Dean as explaining why he left the Episcopal Church to become a Congregationalist: "I didn't think [opposing the bike path] was very Godlike and thought it was hypocritical of me to be a member of such an institution."
Today's Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, quotes Dean as asking a group of voters: "Don't you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees than he does of the teachings of Jesus? And don't you think this campaign ought to be about evicting the money changers from the temple?" One wonders what George Soros thinks of the latter idea.
The contrast between the Bush and Dean approaches to religion is instructive. To Bush, religion is a source of personal strength and guidance. To Dean, by contrast, it dictates policy: God told me to build a bike path. Dean has criticized his Democratic opponents as "Bush lite," but he seems to be Pat Robertson lite.
What Would Pat Robertson Do Without God?
"Pat Robertson: God Says Bush Will Win in 2004"--headline, FoxNews.com, Jan. 2
Yeah, Right
A long New York Times magazine article on Democratic foreign policy contains this quote from Howard Dean:
"The line of attack [on President Bush] is not Iraq, though there'll be some of that. The line of attack will be more, 'What have you done to make us feel safer?' I'm going to outflank him to the right on homeland security, on weapons of mass destruction and on the Saudis,'' whom Dean promises to publicly flay as a major source of terrorism. ''Our model is to get around the president's right, as John Kennedy did to Nixon.''
Will this approach work? Well, ponder this question: Whom would Osama bin Laden rather have in the White House, George W. Bush or Howard Dean?
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The Terrorists Have Won, and So Has Dean
"Dean Cites Terror Alert as Vindication"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 2
And We're Throwing Our Own Surprise Birthday Party
"Dean to Make Surprise Visit to N.H."--headline, Boston Globe, Jan. 5
The New Republican
Election Day is still 10 months off, but Republicans have already picked up a Texas House seat as a result of a GOP gerrymander that replaced the old Democratic gerrymander. Eighty-year-old Rep. Ralph Hall, a conservative who was first elected to the House as a Democrat in 1980, has filed to run in the Republican primary. "I think I can get re-elected much easier if I run as a Republican," the Associated Press quotes Hall as saying.
Party-switching from Democrat to Republican has been fairly common in recent decades; among those who've made the switch, as an outdated CNN list notes, are former and current senators Strom Thurmond (S.C.), Phil Gramm (Texas), Richard Shelby (Ala.) and Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.) and representatives Bob Stump (Ariz.), Nathan Deal (Ga.), Billy Tauzin (La.) and Virgil Goode (Va.), though Goode was an independent for a time before he became a Republican.
GOP-to-Dem switches are far rarer; the only one CNN lists is Rep. Michael Forbes of New York, who jumped in 1999, then lost a primary to a candidate who in turn lost the 2000 general election to a Republican--though the Democrats picked up the seat in 2002.
The U.S. Senate Web site, meanwhile, has a list of senators who've switched parties since 1890. (Gramm doesn't appear because he actually made the change while in the House.) Interestingly, not a single senator went directly from the Republican to the Democratic party, though two (Henry Teller of Colorado and Fred DuBois of Idaho, around a century ago) became "Silver Republicans" and then Democrats, and one (Wayne Morse of Oregon, at midcentury) became an independent and then a Dem. And of course the last senator to switch parties was Vermont's Jim Jeffords, who became an independent and started voting with the Democrats even more than he did as a nominal Republican.
By the Way
Over the weekend the Washington Post published a groundbreaking story on John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who turns out to have served in Vietnam. "The Vietnam War was the defining event in Kerry's life," the Post informs us, although the paper reports that "he does not dwell on it"--which makes the paper's scoop all the more impressive.
No, Most of Us Are Born in Hospitals
"Not everybody's born on a level playing field. You've got to help lift people up and give them a chance, and that's what affirmative action does. And it's not just about race; it's also about sex."--Wesley Clark, quoted by the Associated Press, June 5 |
