Best of the Web Today
December 1, 2003
By JAMES TARANTO
Dean Spirit
"Mr. President, if you'll pardon me, I'll teach you a little about defense." So said Howard Dean yesterday at a town meeting in Manchester, N.H., the Washington Post reports.
"I think he's made us weaker," Dean said of Bush at another event, in Merrimack. "He doesn't understand what it takes to defend this country, that you have to have high moral purpose. He doesn't understand that you better keep troop morale high rather than just flying over for Thanksgiving." Dean also accuses Bush of "petulance" and of "bullheadedness" (really).
You just have to laugh at the condescension: He just doesn't understand! One expects Dean to heave a giant, Al Gore-like sigh. Does Dean realize how this comes across? Agree or disagree with President Bush's foreign policy, he has led the country through two wars, and he has assembled an impressive team to deal with international relations. How much foreign-policy experience did Dean have during his 12 years in Montpelier?
It's true that Bush came to office with little foreign-policy experience; it is possible to learn on the job. But this time around it is Dean who is green. He sounds like a bright teenager hectoring his elders about how everything they're doing is wrong. When he grows up--make that if he grows up--he'll find he knows a lot less than he does today.
More Mush From the Wimp
"Former President Jimmy Carter called the American invasion of Iraq one of the country's worst foreign policy blunders, and predicted it may take a dozen years to bring stability and democracy to the region," reports the State newspaper of Columbia, S.C. A dozen years? Hmm, Carter took office more than two dozen years ago; if the Middle East can be made stable and democratic in just a dozen years, it's a shame he didn't start the process back then.
The disgraced former president also says of Iraq, "I was strongly against going in unilaterally." He should call the families of the seven Spanish intelligence officers who died over the weekend in an Iraq ambush and deliver the comforting news that they didn't really lose their loved ones, since America is in Iraq "unilaterally."
Fighting Back
"The U.S. military said 54 Iraqis were killed in the northern city of Samarra as U.S. forces used tanks and cannons to fight their way out of simultaneous ambushes while delivering new Iraqi currency to banks," the Associated Press reports. Five American soldiers were wounded and none killed.
The AP tries to spin this as an indication of enemy strength: "The scale of the attack and the apparent coordination of the two operations showed that rebel units retain the ability to conduct synchronized operations despite a massive U.S. offensive this month aimed at crushing the insurgency." The "rebel units" may indeed retain that ability, but this attack doesn't prove it, since after all it was thwarted.
A Liberal for Liberation
The New York Times' Thomas Friedman urges fellow liberals to stop siding with tyrants and terrorists:
This war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate, tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.
Weirdly, Friedman's columnist page on the Times Web site still features an anti-Semitic blurb from a reader called "cogit8," which we noted in March: "Mr. Friedman's columns are refreshing to read now, especially since he's seen the light on how badly wrong the whole zionist enterprise against Iraq could go."
Who's Distracted?
A series of developments over the weekend help undermine the left's pro-Saddam case:
The Associated Press reports that "American forces have captured three members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network in northern Iraq," all Iraqi nationals.
London's Observer reports that investigators believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--an al Qaeda-linked terrorist who was given refuge in Saddam Hussein's Iraq--was involved with last month's terror attacks in Turkey.
The New York Times reports that Saddam Hussein's regime "engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea" to obtain "a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region." Saddam paid Kim Jong Il $10 million, but Pyongyang seems to have taken the money and run--which does not, however, exonerate Saddam.
A Stopped Clock Is Right Twice a Day
On Friday we wondered what the Angry Left was going to say about President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad. On the kooky Counterpunch.org site, Wayne Madsen offers an unusual take:
I may be a bit naive, and it has been a while since I served on active duty, but I can't recall ever sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at 6:00 AM. Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International Airport, under cover of darkness, at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on the ground for two and a half hours, his plane departing Baghdad at around 7:50 AM. Considering that it likely took some 30 minutes for Bush to disembark from Air Force One and travel by a heavily secured motorcade to the hangar where the troops were assembled, that means our military men and women were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries, and toast. . . .
And the abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York press corps seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving "breakfast dinner." Chalk that up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a military chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it would certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of bed to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn.
Just one problem: Madsen's entire rant is based on a factual error. The dinner was around 6 p.m., not a.m. News of the visit was embargoed until just after Air Force One tookoff from Baghdad, and the Associated Press moved its first alert about the trip at 12:12 p.m. Eastern Time, which is 8:12 p.m. in Baghdad. When the president and the troops tucked into their turkey, it was dinnertime in Iraq, even if it was morning in America.
Amazingly, Madsen at first stood behind his story. Blogger Brian O'Connell e-mailed him to point out the error, and Madsen wrote back citing a Washingon Post report that erroneously describes the plane coming in for landing "a little after 5 a.m. Baghdad time." This is clearly an error, since the same report has the plane leaving Washington just before 11 p.m. Eastern, which is 7 a.m. in Baghdad.
Today Madsen has a new column in which he acknowledges that the 5 a.m. time was an error--and he blames the mistake on the Bush administration:
The fact that the Post's editors were cut out from the secret trip to Baghdad practically guaranteed that an erroneous 5:20 am Baghdad time account would have crept into the Post's early morning edition. A number of people who read the Post print edition Friday morning were also given the impression that there was an early morning landing and that Bush was serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops in the morning. And they would stay confused. Outrageously, by Sunday, November 30, the Post still had not corrected its error.
Huh? Clearly someone messed up at the Post, but what difference does it make when the editors found out about the trip? The Post ought to run a correction, but Madsen's outrage would be more credible if he acknowledge his own error.
'Avenger of the Bones'
An Iraqi blogger called Alaa has a nice tribute to President Bush: "The bones in the mass graves salute you, Avenger of the Bones," he writes. "Hail, Friend and Ally, Hail, Sheikh of Sheikhs, GWB; Descendant of the Noble Ancient Celt."
Our Friends the Saudis
"Saudi Arabia will withhold the $1 billion in loans and credits that it pledged last month for Iraq's reconstruction until the security situation is stabilized and a sovereign government takes office," the Los Angeles Times reports.
In the Arab News, one Amr Mohammed Al-Faisal writes that it is in Saudi Arabia's national interest to "find a way of allowing the Americans a face-saving exit out of Iraq that leaves that country with a stable and representative government and with the necessary funds to begin its economic recovery." But he argues the Saudis should do so only if "the Americas [sic] meet certain conditions in advance." Among them: "The halt to the vicious campaign of hatred and lies propagated in the US against Saudi Arabia." Faisal apparently thinks Saudi-style tyranny is the norm, and the U.S. government can simply order Riyadh's critics here to shut up.
Another Saudi columnist, however, has some reasonable things to say. The Middle East Media Research Institute excerpts a column by Muhammad Talal Al-Rasheed of the English-language Saudi Gazette:
We have bred monsters. . . . We are the problem and not America or the penguins of the North Pole or those who live in caves in Afghanistan. We are it, and those who cannot see this are the ones to blame.
Castrated as we are, we look to America. Why? Because they went into Iraq and made a difference. Better or worse is another point. Once America has demonstrated its willingness to do something, the moral imperative is that it should not stop at the first station along the road. The majority of us are sick and tired of this carnage and President Bush, wrong on just about everything else, is right on this one. Does he have the (courage) to finish the job? I wonder.
Rasheed adds: "I don't think this will be published in the Arab News, as it should be. If not, I understand their point of view and their perpetual selectiveness."
How Can Anyone Tell?
"Thousands of French Diplomats Go on Strike"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 1
'Espionage,' Bangladesh Style
Bangladesh is one of the more moderate states in the Muslim world, but the Bangladesh Observer reports that a Bangladeshi journalist was detained at the airport Saturday "for alleged espionage in favour of Israel against Bangladesh and Muslim countries." From the paper's account, though, it appears that his "crime" was merely planning to travel to Israel:
According to intelligence officials, Shoaib Chowdhury was arrested just before boarding a flight bound for Singapore. His next destination was Tel Aviv to participate at a symposium. . . .
According to intelligence sources, Shoaib Chowdhury has been interrogated by different security agencies at the airport. He admitted to the security agencies that his destination was Israel via Singapore, where he would need to collect valid travel document from the Israel Embassy in Singapore.
Security agencies are checking his travel itinerary and interrogating him for the reasons of his travel. How he was selected for the conference? Why he decided to travel to Israel which is not recognised by Bangladesh? Why he is travelling to Israel at time of political crisis with Palestine? Sources are tight lipped and refused to divulge any information. . . .
He . . . was not going to Israel only to speak about peace, but also to start building the bridges that will help achieve it, security sources said.
According to the sources he was also assigned by the Zionist Intelligence to lay out a plan for bringing the people of Bangladesh and other non-Arab Muslim nations for more balanced news about Israel and the Middle East, which was supposed to be addressed at the conference.
He was supposed to speak regarding the positive experiences of Christian missionaries and other religious minorities in Bangladesh.
Turkeys and Terrorists
A Time magazine report on the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay cites "a U.S. military official" according to whom "at least 140 detainees--'the easiest 20%'--are scheduled for release." And not a moment too soon, for the Guantanamo camp is drawing scrutiny from crackpot Swedish anthropologists.
The Boston Globe reports that Prickly Paradigm Press has published a new pamphlet called "The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, the Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantanamo" by Swedish anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjo:
"Power and pardon are very closely related," according to Fiskesjo, who calls the Thanksgiving turkey pardon a ritual performance "as exotic as any piece of strange ethnographica out of Africa or the Amazon jungle." He compares it to other pardoning gestures, from an ancient Chinese king's decision to spare a sacrificial ox to Teddy Roosevelt's famous refusal to shoot a captured bear. These acts of mercy, he argues, serve to establish a leader's undemocratic power to decide when and where "normality and legality are suspended--whether for birds or bears or for human beings."
No wonder Fiskesjo is upset about the fate of Thanksgiving turkeys--he sounds like a turkey himself.
Howell He Live This Down?
Back in June, Salon (picking up an item from U.S. News & World Report) said that "GOP pranksters" were proving "that they are high school bullies in bad suits":
Their plans for the 2004 race include sending "attack mascots" to Democratic candidate appearances to heckle and unnerve. They are proudest of their idea to send a Thurston Howell III look-alike to a John Kerry speech.
Finally, we understand what this is all about. In a long profile yesterday of Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, the New York Times reports that "like Thurston Howell III, the millionaire on 'Gilligan's Island,' he calls his wife 'Lovey.' "
Material Girl Meets Ethereal Candidate
"In an unlikely attempt to gain star backing for a slow-burning campaign, the Democratic presidential candidate, General Wesley Clark, is spending late nights talking politics with Madonna," reports London's Sunday Telegraph:
After a 90-minute policy discussion with Madonna in her Los Angeles home recently, a friend of the star was authorised to disclose that "Madonna was very impressed with Gen Clark's intelligence and his vision for America." Another associate added: "Don't under-estimate this. Madonna is often ahead of the curve." |
