They Can't Take That Away From Me

But the NYT can give it back. Walter Duranty has been long dead, and now it appears his Pulitzer might at last follow him to the graveyard. The NYT -commissioned study of the work for which he won the prize in 1932 has resulted in a recommendation to Sulzberger, Jr. has determined that the work reflected a "serious lack of balance" and was a disservice to American readers...and the peoples of the Russian and Soviet empires." (New York Sun, 10/22/03 Eric Wolff. Read this paper every day.) Throw it back, NYT. It will be a blot off your journalistic soul.

Australia is Not Asian

I've never thought of Australia as Asian. It is part of the Anglosphere, a distant part, but a vibrant outpost of Anglo sentiment and sensibilities. The Singapore PM has confirmed my visceral belief: Australia will not be part of Asia until the population is over 50% non-white. (Reported in the Daily Telegraph)

The Clash of Civilizations
New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

Ralph Peters cites historian Samuel P. Huntington on the clash of civilizations, and goes further:

"Huntington fell short by suggesting that this clash of civilizations was something new. Clashing is what civilizations do. Especially monotheist civilizations, with their one-God, one-path-to-the-truth, our-way-is-best convictions.

We should not be surprised at the current clash of civilizations. It would be far more surprising if it were not occurring. Such conflict is the rule, not the exception.

Of course, we would be fools to celebrate this clash, despite our own triumphs. It would be better for all if the Middle East could regain its moral and economic health. Cooperation is better than warfare. Peace should be our ultimate goal.

But not peace at any price. And cooperation doesn't work unilaterally.

Our soldiers in Iraq aren't engaged in a religious crusade. But ours is, undeniably, a cultural crusade, based upon our belief that the values of our civilization, from human rights to popular sovereignty, are superior to archaic forms of oppression. It's an old, old struggle, fought on post-modern terms.

Today's Middle East has become a citadel of tyranny. And tyranny must be fought without compromise. If that's a crusade, there's no reason to deny it."

Ralph Peters' new book is "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."

Many are afraid to suggest that the West and the Islamic world are in conflict, suggesting, as does GWB that the conflict is betwen the nations under attack and terrorists. We would be wise to understand that the conflict has deeper roots.






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Legacy of Henry Ford Lives On

NY Sun headlines: Ford Foundation Spends Millions to Aid Anti-Semitism

Good piece in the Sun today, documenting the how the Ford Foundation financed the NGOs which attended the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 which turned into an anti-Israeli rally. (Authored by Edwin Black)
I would link, but don't subscribe to the Sun online. Maybe it's time I did so.

Clash of Civilizations

The LA Times writes of Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence who sees the war against terror as a war of Judeo-Christian vallues v. Satan.
This is countered thusly:

"The first lesson is to recognize that whatever we say here is heard there, particularly anything perceived to be hostile to their basic religion, and they don't forget it," said Stephen P. Cohen, a member of the special panel named to study policy in the Arab and Muslim world for the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

"The phrase 'Judeo-Christian' is a big mistake. It's basically the language of Bin Laden and his supporters," said Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development in New York.

"They are constantly trying to create the impression that the Jews and Christians are getting together to beat up on Islam.... We have to be very careful that this doesn't become a clash between religions, a clash of civilizations."

Isn't it a clash of civilizations? Medieval thugs v. people trying to get on with their lives?

Gaza Bomb Kills Americans
Jihad Salim, a young man in a white T-shirt, said many Palestinians would feel little sympathy for the United States. "America has to pay for its foreign policy, which is against Muslims," he said.

Whinge, whinge, whinge. Of course US policy supports Israel over terrorists of the PLA. On 9/11 Palestinians danced in the streets. Israelis did not. 'Nuff said.

The Queen Awakes

QEII has apparently grown uneasy at the prospect of the EU constitution:
It is believed that the Palace's concerns focus on whether the Queen's supreme authority as the guardian of the British constitution, asserted through the sovereignty of Parliament, could be altered or undermined by article 10 of the draft text.

This states: "The constitution and law adopted by the union's institutions in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the member states."

Many MPs say that this will rob the House of Commons of its ultimate authority to override decisions and laws made by the EU.

I fear that the member states will realize what they've signed on to far to late to escape. Odd to think that centuries of struggle in Europe might be trumped by on a document which will not be fully comprehended until many years pass. If the trend of statist governments was toward liberty and human freedom, I would not be so aghast. The nature of statism is to impose itself at the expense of human freedom and liberty. Statist, appeasement-minded Europe, aligned at the behest of Germany and France with totalitarian China presents a spectacle which makes the blood run cold.
God save the Queen! God save a sovereign GB.

Clinton Works on His Legacy

Clinton asserts that : his inability to convince Bush of the danger from al Qaeda was "one of the two or three of the biggest disappointments that I had."
Which of course, raises the question as to why Clinton did so little about the problems he now cites as the most critical when he had the reins in the Oval Office. Must have been some right-wing conspiracy preventing him from doing his job.

There's a War On:

Peter Brookes writes in the NY Post about the ongoing war on terror, quoting Cheney:

"Terrorists are doing everything they can to gain even deadlier means of striking us. From the training manuals we found in the caves of Afghanistan to the interrogations of terrorists that we've captured, we have learned of their ambitions to develop or acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons."

"If terrorists ever do acquire that capability - on their own or with help from a terror regime - they will use it without the slightest constraint of reason or morality." There will be no warning and the result: tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of American lives lost in a single nightmarish day."

9/11 (remember that?) would be dwarfed.

The Good News Is...

NY Post: Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who joined the Democratic presidential race last month, is in a statistical dead heat with President Bush, a stunning new poll shows.

The question is, for whom is this good news? Wes (hat tip Joe Leibermann) is new to the race, still stumbling, no one knows much about his real positions or ablity to run, let alone govern. Still, the Democrats, desparate to beat Bush, see him as the best choice to try. When Clark fades (he must, and will) to whom do they turn? Bush is like the pitcher who's given up 8 hits over two innings, yet still has a lead in the game.

What is, and what is reported
This from Down Under ( I came across it on Andrew Sullivan's blog).

In brief, Andrew Bolt recounts the many items in David Kay's report which point to WMD, despite what you may have read in the press.

The French Consider Their Own Decline

In "Ouest contre Ouest," by Andre Glucksmann, one of the few leading French intellectuals to challenge the country's position on the Iraq war, France is described as a nation, with others in Europe, that fled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States in panic and attempted to set up a sterile biosphere away from the world's realities.
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The book, also a bestseller, maintains that this flight from confronting trouble carried with it an attempt to create two opposing notions of the West: a serene Europe, sheltered from terrorist kamikazes, and a warlike, imperialist, autistic United States.
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Glucksmann wrote that the central question of the future was not hegemony or multipolarity, the key French terms illustrating the Chirac government's seeming obsession about the United States and its desire to counter the Americans, but civilization versus nihilism, and whether the West together could make a fight to protect civilization.
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Glucksmann believes that France's leadership has wanted to bring Russia into its project to counter the United States, with France promising in the bargain a return of Russia's lost rank and prestige.
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"What does France gain?" he asked. "The possibility to continue its siesta. It would be up to Russia to counterbalance America, and keep the Islamist and Eastern hordes away. It would be the United States' job to chase down all the worldwide risks that we want to avoid. Paris, in all this, gives itself the role of directing the world by proxy. Once the Euro-Asiatic bloc is cemented through the inspiration of the Elysée Palace, Washington, put in its just place and counterbalanced, will conform."
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These messages converge with that of "L'Arrogance Française," by Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, whose chapter and section headings - How France Lost Europe or Narcissistic Blindness - well sum up a book that holds that French foreign and European policy is guided by "obsessive concern with its standing, and terror in the face of its decline."
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France's essential arrogance, the authors suggest, is in continuing to act as if the world community and its European partners do not comprehend that for the French leadership, the "EU serves as the means for France to recover its influence and to reconquer its lost power."
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In this light, although the writers of "L'Arrogance Française" do not say so specifically, it is possible to see French policy in relationship to Iraq as a temporary instrumentalization of Germany in an effort to recapture European primacy - an attempt understood and foiled by the vast number of its NATO and EU partners.
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Months later, the fact is, after Sweden's rejection of the euro (in part because of France's refusal to conform to the economic performance standards it set up itself for the currency's credibility), and the likely splintering of the EU into groups of several speeds without any semblance of a unified foreign or defense policy, France has come up empty.
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The sum of the messages of the books, in French to the French, is that this vision of the country's current circumstances is not a French-bashing invention from afar, but a home truth.
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For Bavarez, France is threatened with becoming a museum diplomatically and a transit center economically. To do anything about it, it must revive itself internally first, getting away from what he calls its "social statist model." To advance, it must end the dominant role of a "public sector placed outside of any constraint requiring productivity or competitiveness."
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The reform of the rest of French policy, based on genuine integration into Europe, should follow, he argues.
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He recommends what he calls shock therapy, a forced march toward modernity that involves the risk of a clash among French interest groups and an end to the "sinister continuity" that unites the presidencies of François Mitterrand and Chirac in a kind of angry immobility.
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But for Bavarez, and most of the other writers now gaining the nation's attention, the present reality is harsh for France.
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"Overtaken by the democratic vitality and technological advance of the United State," Bavarez concludes, "downgraded industrially and challenged commercially by China and Asia, the decline of France is accelerating at the same rhythm as the vast changes in the world."
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International Herald Tribune

The first step in getting well is to recognize that you are ill. Bon chance, mes amis.

Can't Sing, Can't Dance, Can Act Like A General

I knew there was something I didn't like about Wes Clark. The NYT has supplied the answer: He's Hollywood's hottest star. That confirms my opinion of Clark, and says a lot about Hollywood dems, who have seized on the latest candidate to pop out of the woodwork. It's like a huge casting call, for the most important role in the country, and Clark seems to be getting the greenlight from the casting directors.

Looking for a military type with no blots on his record. Environmental sensitivity a must. Must be avaialble for longterm committment to callbacks. Send headshot to the DNC.
Scary stuff. And Hollywood laughs at actors becoming politicians.

Clark: There He Goes Again

Times like these demand a Ronald Reagan. I can't believe he'd sit and wait as his administration and policies get picked to pieces by the Lilliputians. Could be that Bush the Younger has the patience to ride it out. Give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves. Clark seems to be completing the hangman's noose about now with his foreign policy ideas spelled out, however incompletely in his new book, Winning Modern Wars. It appears to me that Bush has no problem winning the wars, with the nifty army the US has managed to maintain despite Clintonian attempts to downsize and scrimp. (Remember the peace dividend we were all going to get with the end of the Cold War? Less for defense, more to make the US lazy and fat like Olde Europe.) Clark sees it all as a failure, and proposes a Department of International Assistance to oversee a vastly expanded foreign aid program. The mind boggles. I can only ask: What is this guy smoking? Do we really need another department to argue and squabble and spend money on administrative cots and carve out bureaucratic policies to undermine the policies of the elected branches of government? Does Clark believe what he is saying/

From the Washington Post:
Soon after taking office, the Bush administration launched the country on a different course, Clark says, reflecting "a more unilateralist, balance-of-power stamp." He cites the U.S. withdrawal from international efforts to address global warming under the Kyoto treaty and the decision to proceed with a national missile defense system. The administration's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks only reinforced these defiant, high-handed tendencies, Clark argues.

"Overnight, U.S. foreign policy became not only unilateralist but moralistic, intensely patriotic and assertive, planning military action against Iraq and perhaps other states in the Middle East, and intimating the New American Empire," he writes.

The result, he says, has been damaging to long-term U.S. interests. The administration's approach has hampered counter-terrorism efforts, undercut NATO and "turned upside down five decades of work to establish an international system to help reduce conflict," he writes.

Clark as stalking horse, Clark as the loose cannon, not really capable of winning anything, but good to say all those intemperate things that even Kerry and Dean won't say. I'm sure our enemies, foreign and domestic must be comforted by Clark decrying US empire-building. I'm sure the Clintons are even crazier about Clark, the more he lets loose. I worry about any man who behaves as Clark does, and really believes that he is heading in a positive direction. I find him frightening.

More Good News On Iraq You'll never read in the Paper of Record

Interesting piece carried in the NY post by a critic of the war who spent some time there at the end of the war as a judicial observer. His conclusion: We are not getting the whole truth from the news media.

The news you watch, listen to and read is highly selective. Good news doesn't sell. Ninety percent of the damage you see on TV was caused by Iraqis, not by coalition forces. All the damage you see to schools, hospitals, power generation facilities, refineries, pipelines and water supplies, as well as shops, museums and semi-public buildings (like hotels)was caused either by the Iraqi army in its death throes or Iraqi civilians looting and rioting.

Great piece. No wonder bush's rating decline as the press covers only the bad news, in the bleakest possible terms, and leaves the good news uncovered.

Palestinian supporter Edward Said has died, according to knopf Publishers. He had been ill with Leukemia for some years.

Clark's House O' Waffles

Clark also was cautious about plunging into battle after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when many Americans were out for vengeance.

Three days after the attacks, he counseled this response: "It's fundamentally a police effort against individuals. It's not a military effort directed against factories and airfields. You may still need to use military force, but you have to use it in a very precise way."

It became a huge military effort to uproot the government of Afghanistan and the terrorist network it harbored. Clark seemed to swing behind the strategy once it was set, and he voiced confidence in the outcome.

On Iraq, before any shots were fired, Clark sketched out the dangers that would follow the fall of Saddam Hussein.

"I think there will be a lot of tensions inside Iraq, and I think that we will be welcomed very warmly at the outset but afterward, as these tensions begin to assert themselves, it'll be convenient for many different groups to look on us as the source of their problems rather than the solution," he said in February. "And I think our troops will be at some risk there."

Once the war started, Clark praised many aspects of the battle plan and provided a steadying voice when things were not going well.

He was particularly impressed with cooperation among the branches of the armed forces and their coordination with the CIA and credited the Bush administration with that result.

"In the first place, this is a trained and experienced team of top leaders," he said.

Clark occasionally sounded as if he'd supported the war all along.

"President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," he wrote in The Times of London in the first flush of the takeover of Baghdad.

And in June, he spoke as if his only change of heart had been over whether it was vital to capture Saddam, deposed Iraqi president.

"I was one of those before the war who said, `Don't focus on Saddam Hussein. Go in there, take over the government, and you'll take care of things.'" Afterward, he came to the view that Iraq could not be secure with Saddam still at large.

Clark's stance on the validity of the war is still an open question. Last week, he said he probably would have voted for the Iraq war resolution in Congress but asserted the next day: "I would never have voted for this war. Never."

The Good News Is

Nearly 2/3 of Baghdadis believe that getting rid of Saddam has been well worth the hardships of the past few months. Despite the incessant drumbeat of bad news from Iraq, the people are optimistic about the future. Hard to explain how they have more positive feelings towards Chriac than Bush and Blair, their liberators, but that goes to show - something? about, Iraquis and media coverage and the power of good PR. Maybe Bush shoudl try to hire Chirac's PR people for election 2004.

Judeo-Christian Nation ?

Reuters makes a big deal about Colin Powell calling the US a Judeo-Christian nation, a term once heard regularly. Muslims would like the US to be referred to as a Judeo-Christian-Islamic nation. I fail to understand how a secular democracy based on Enlightenment ideals is in anyway Islamic, despite the presence of Muslims. In recent times especially, the designation Judeo-Christian refers more to the foundations of US government in Western Civilization and its values, (which are, after all, heavily dependent on the Judeo-Christian tradition) than on the actual behavior and beliefs of increasing numbers of US citizens.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell called the United States a Judeo-Christian country on Monday but quickly amended that to "a country of many faiths."

The first amendment to the U.S. constitution prohibits the establishment of any state religion -- a provision usually interpreted as requiring strict separation of church and state, though Christian activists dispute that.

Powell made the remark in an interview with the Charlie Rose Show on public television while talking about Washington's vision of what kind of government Iraq should have.

He said he expected it to be "an Islamic country by faith, just as we are a Judeo-Christian..."

"Well, it's hard to tell any more, but we are a country of many faiths now," he added quickly.

The remark was likely to antagonize millions of American Muslims, most of whom want to be included in the mainstream.

Some American Muslims have coined the term Judeo-Christian-Islamic to reflect their ideal of what the United States should be.

Is Media Bias Killing Our Troops?

Falsely bleak reports reduce our chances of success in Iraq By JIM MARSHALL



On Sept. 14, I flew from Baghdad to Kuwait with Sgt. Trevor A. Blumberg from Dearborn, Mich. He was in a body bag. He'd been ambushed and killed that afternoon. Sitting in the cargo bay of a C 130E, I found myself wondering whether the news media were somehow complicit in his death.

News media reports about our progress in Iraq have been bleak since shortly after the president's premature declaration of victory. These reports contrast sharply with reports of hope and progress presented to Congress by Department of Defense representatives -- a real disconnect, Vietnam déja vu. So I went to Iraq with six other members of Congress to see for myself.

The Iraq war has predictably evolved into a guerrilla conflict similar to Vietnam. Our currently stated objectives are to establish reasonable security and foster the creation of a secular, representative government with a stable market economy that provides broad opportunity throughout Iraqi society. Attaining these objectives in Iraq would inevitably transform the Arab world and immeasurably increase our future national security.

These are goals worthy of a fight, of sacrifice, of more lives lost now to save thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands in the future. In Mosul last Monday, a colonel in the 101st Airborne put it to me quite simply: "Sir, this is worth doing." No one I spoke with said anything different. And I spoke with all ranks.

But there will be more Blumbergs killed in action, many more. So it is worth doing only if we have a reasonable chance of success. And we do, but I'm afraid the news media are hurting our chances. They are dwelling upon the mistakes, the ambushes, the soldiers killed, the wounded, the Blumbergs. Fair enough. But it is not balancing this bad news with "the rest of the story," the progress made daily, the good news. The falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy.

During the conventional part of this conflict, embedded journalists reported the good, the bad and the ugly. Where are the embeds now that we are in the difficult part of the war, now that fair and balanced reporting is critically important to our chances of success? At the height of the conventional conflict, Fox News alone had 27 journalists embedded with U.S. troops (out of a total of 774 from all Western media). Today there are only 27 embedded journalists from all media combined.

Throughout Iraq, American soldiers with their typical "can do" attitude and ingenuity are engaging in thousands upon thousands of small reconstruction projects, working with Iraqi contractors and citizens. Through decentralized decision-making by unit commanders, the 101st Airborne Division alone has spent nearly $23 million in just the past few months. This sum goes a very long way in Iraq. Hundreds upon hundreds of schools are being renovated, repainted, replumbed and reroofed. Imagine the effect that has on children and their parents.

Zogby International recently released the results of an August poll showing hope and progress. My own unscientific surveys told me the same thing. With virtually no exceptions, hundreds of Iraqis enthusiastically waved back at me as I sat in the open door of a helicopter traveling between Babylon and Baghdad. And I received a similar reception as I worked my way alone, shaking hands through a large crowd of refinery workers just to see their reaction.

We may need a few credible Baghdad Bobs to undo the harm done by our media. I'm afraid it is killing our troops.


-- U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) of Macon, a Vietnam combat veteran, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.