Month: September 2002

My running comments on an article from the front page of today’s Washington Post (I’m excerpting here):
“The mixture of containment and establishing an international rule book by
and large encouraged democracy, the rule of law and open markets throughout
the world,” said Chris Patten, the European Union’s external affairs
minister, in an interview Friday. “Why should anyone think that that
approach was somehow less relevant after September 11th? I think it’s more
relevant.”
ISN’T IT JUST POSSIBLE THAT THE “INTERNATIONAL RULE BOOK” DOESN’T WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO DON’T ACCEPT IT?
Rallies by tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators in London and Rome on Saturday were reminiscent of the protests of the early 1980s in favor of
nuclear disarmament and against President Ronald Reagan’s tough stance on
the Soviet Union.
YES, AND THOSE ENDED NATO AND DESTROYED THE UN, RIGHT? IN FACT, REAGAN DID JUST WHAT HE WANTED, AND NOW NATO HAS A BUNCH OF NEW DEMOCRACIES ASKING TO JOIN. EVEN RUSSIA WANTS IN.
But here in Brussels, opposition to what is seen as the administration’s emerging unilateralism comes not just from the left but from across the board, and includes the highest levels of the EU.
ARE WE TO BELIEVE THAT “THE LEFT” AND “THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE EU” ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS?
Officials concede that one of their problems is that they do not speak with
one voice. The views of European leaders range from British Prime Minister
Tony Blair’s spirited endorsement of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy
to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s equally spirited criticism, with
French President Jacques Chirac somewhere in between. “It’s our weakness,
not America’s strength, that is the problem,” said Elmar Brok, chairman of
the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
NO KIDDING!
“We have no influence because we have no common European approach.”
Although the European Union is a baroque collection of institutions,
regulations and formalism designed to transform narrow national interests
into collective policies,
SOUNDS LIKE THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS TO ME
feelings still count — and European feelings have been badly bruised in recent months
NEW YORK’S FEELINGS WERE HURT TOO
The Europeans say the administration views them as “Euro wimps” who don’t pull their weight militarily, and who prefer prevarication to plain-speaking and appeasement to action.
NOTE THAT NOBODY OFFERS ANY EVIDENCE TO CONTRADICT THIS
Many officials
WHO DON’T HAVE THE STONES TO GO ON THE RECORD
regret that Schroeder took his stance, which helped him win a
narrow reelection victory last week, without consulting his European
partners. But they say that Schroeder was reflecting the views not just of
the German electorate, but of people throughout the continent. “President
Bush would not be able to walk the streets of Berlin shaking hands right
now,” THAT DIDN’T STOP FDR a senior official said, “or the streets of Madrid.”
Europeans also resent U.S. predictions that they will inevitably go along
with military action against Iraq, whether it is sanctioned by the United
Nations or not. “The consequences of allowing America to go in alone would
be too severe,” conceded another senior official. But not every European
leader would go along, he said. “A lot of Europeans would feel they’d been
put in an intolerable position.” For those who would agree to participate
militarily, “it would be less a coalition of the willing than of the
dragooned.”
IN OTHER WORDS, NOBODY IS DISAGREEING THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WILL HAPPEN
(At this point, the usual whining about Kyoto and the International Criminal Court . . . I don’t even have the heart to go after those canards, but they also cite U.S. support for Sharon’s policies in Israel, without explaining how this could possibly injure the Europeans)
The terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon momentarily overshadowed those disputes and created a wave of sympathy and support for the United States. “We’re All Americans Now,” declared the front page of Le Monde, the left-of-center Paris daily that usually takes pleasure in America-bashing.
But that sentiment quickly faded. European officials now concede that they
were slow to recognize the depth of the wound and shock to Americans — and
the degree to which Americans would take literally the concept of a war on
terrorism. “For you, it’s not symbolic, it’s a real term,” one official said. “From that moment, you decided it’s your problem and you have to solve it and the rest of the world can either help, or, if not, to hell with them.”
THE AMERICANS MEAN IT WHEN THEY SAY “WAR”! WE THOUGHT THEY’D JUST BUILD SOME MORE GIANT MULTINATIONAL BUREAUCRACIES AND GO HOME!
Europeans, who have experienced terrorism in such places as Northern Ireland and the Basque region of Spain
NOTE “EXPERIENCED” NOT “SUCCESSFULLY ERADICATED”
resent being dictated to
AREN’T THEY GLAD, THEN, THAT AMERICAN TROOPS KEEP GETTING RID OF THEIR DICTATORS?
Many people contend that the Americans have put too much emphasis on a military approach to attacking terrorism
AH, THAT JOURNALIST’S FRIEND, “MANY PEOPLE”
and not enough on dealing with what they identify as root causes, such as poverty and lack of freedoms.
SO, THE SOLUTION TO “LACK OF FREEDOMS” IS TO LEAVE SADDAM, THE IRANIAN MULLAHS, ETC. IN PLACE AS THEY ARE? AND TO BE NEUTRAL BETWEEN ARAFAT AND ISRAEL?
“None of this in any way justifies or explains what happened on September 11th,” Patten said, “but perhaps it means we have a slightly more nuanced idea of how you deal with terrorism.”
I.E., DON’T ROCK THE BOAT AND HOPE THEY GO AFTER SOMEBODY ELSE
Worse, many believe that Washington has adopted a militarized foreign policy
THAT WOULD BE KNOWN, IN AMERICAN CIRCLES, AS A “WAR”
that divides the world too simply into friends and enemies. Bush’s “Axis of
Evil” characterization, lumping North Korea and Iran with Iraq, disturbed
many here — including Britain, America’s most loyal European partner, which
was engaged in trying to build bridges to moderates in Iran when Bush’s
rhetorical hammer fell.
WE’VE BEEN TRYING THAT SINCE THE REAGAN YEARS, AND LOOK WHERE IT GOT US
The conflict over Iraq has crystallized many European fears. After the
hawkish statements of Vice President Cheney, national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld, many here concluded that the Bush
administration had no genuine interest in seeking to disarm Iraq of weapons
of mass destruction, but was using the issue as a ploy to topple Saddam
Hussein under any circumstances
WHICH WOULD BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO “DISARM IRAQ OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION,” NO?
While they welcomed Bush’s decision to seek a new U.N. Security Council resolution on weapons inspections — and give Britain’s Blair credit for helping guide Bush in that direction — they fear that the administration is only using the council as justification for military action, and will go ahead even without U.N. assent.
“It was wholly legitimate for President Bush to go to the United Nations and
to challenge the international community to make good on what it says it believes,” said Patten. “But that’s just not for one day. It’s got to be for real.”
DID I MISS SOMETHING? HAVE WE STOPPED WORK ON THE RESOLUTION?
Bush’s new strategic doctrine formalizes some of the trends Europeans find
most troubling. “Preemption says to us, ‘This is an empire and we will not allow anybody to get close to our capabilities and we are ready to act to prevent that from happening,’ ” a senior official said.
NOW WHO’S BEING SIMPLISTIC? IT’S NOT ABOUT FEAR OF “CAPABILITIES” – HECK, AT THE BEGINNING OF THE ARTICLE THEY WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT US TELLING EUROPE TO GET MORE OF THOSE. IT’S NOT ENGLAND OR EVEN INDIA WE’RE ATTACKING HERE FOR WANTING THE BOMB
Another official said the doctrine set a bad precedent — if it is all right for the United States to attack another country preemptively for supporting terrorism, he asked, then what is to prevent India from dropping a nuclear
bomb on Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in retaliation for Pakistani support for separatists in Kashmir?
THAT WOULD BE “PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL,” THANK YOU
European officials search for signs that the American public is less hard-line than the administration. Every one of a half-dozen officials interviewed last week cited the recent opinion survey sponsored by the U.S. German Marshall Fund and Chicago Council of Foreign Relations indicating a convergence in views on security issues between Americans and Europeans and a solid American majority in favor of obtaining Security Council support for any attack on Iraq. Most cited with approval former vice president Al Gore’s attack on administration policy last week, although one official added, “If we’d said that here, we’d be immediately branded as anti-American.”
AND GORE . . . ?
U.S. diplomats contend European fears are overwrought. “Part of it [their fear] is European old-think — the old balance of power instincts,” said a senior U.S. diplomat, referring to the Cold War model in which strong nations balanced each other and effectively maintained world stability. “And I think part of it is that the Europeans see lots of reasons to interpret America’s terrorism war as America trying to bend Europe to its own will.”
Some Europeans agree that officials need to calm themselves and remember what they have in common with the United States. “There are so many areas where we have joint interests and so many similarities between us,” said Pascal Lamy, the EU’s trade commissioner. “Any good negotiator will tell you that Lesson One is having a clear view of each side’s starting positions.
Just getting there is a good start for living together because we have to live together.”
UNLESS THE TERRORISTS KILL US, THAT IS. BUT DON’T WORRY, THE AMERICANS ARE TAKING CARE OF THAT

Barbra Streisand says that “such special interests as the oil industry, the chemical companies, the logging industry, the defense contractors, the mining industry, and the automobile industry . . . clearly have much to gain if we go to war against Iraq” and commands Dick Gephardt “to publicly convey this message to the American people.” As one blogger (“Ranting Screeds”) notes, perhaps the Anti-War Left’s new slogan will be “No Blood For Trees.”

I heard this bombshell on Imus this morning (because I was too lazy to change radio stations in my car) – Al Qaeda is back in business, and guess where they have training camps? (Hint: think “axis of evil.” Hint, hint: First up on Michael Ledeen’s hit list). Clearly, we need to go in and get rid of them, ASAP, regardless of the war on Iraq. It shouldn’t slow us down militarily – if we can’t take on Iran and Iraq at the same time, we have more serious problems than we think – and it wouldn’t necessarily require an immediate effort at regime change, although once we’re done with Saddam that should be at the top of the priority list. Diplomatically, it may upset the applecart, but Bush has already established a fairly ironclad precedent of chasing Al Qaeda wherever they may be, and he can’t plausibly find a reason here not to do so sooner or later, preferably sooner.

Prof. Dershowitz also continues on his warpath, with this Crimson piece; you might also find his earlier attack on Noam Chomsky (from May) interesting on this point. Dershowitz has always been pro-Israel to the core, and hasn’t abandoned that view even as his friends on the Left have abandoned that position. It may be a rare occasion, but I’m with him on this one.

Michael Barone, counting noses as usual, says China won’t waste the weapon of a Security Council veto on a case where we are going to act anyway – after all, that would dilute the Security Council’s influence and hence the value of the veto threat for some later adventure (he doesn’t say it, but I’m guessing North Korea comes to mind) where our mandate is weaker and China’s interest is stronger.

Contempt for the Gore speech is still pouring in from the conservative quarters of the blogosphere; Andrew Sullivan’s take was almost identical to my own, and OxBlog has a good roundup including Michael Kelly’s just slightly over the top assault on Gore (Kelly writes, “If there is a more reprehensible piece of bloody shirt-waving in American political history than this attempt by a man on the sidelines to position himself as the hero of 3,000 unavenged dead, I am not aware of it.” — well, I think I might start with using Oklahoma City to bash Newt Gingrich, for one, and there are certainly others.)
I noted yesterday Gore’s contention that if the U.S. disregards international institutions by declaring pre-emptive war on Iraq, other nations will follow suit and invade whoever they want. There’s a fundamental fallacy in this — they won’t because we will stop them. If some regional-power yahoo, like Bashar Assad or that Turkmen idiot, feels like invading one of his neighbors, the mental picture of 250,000 Iraqi soldiers getting carpet-bombed and buried under sand dunes and running for their lives out of Kuwait ten years ago may come to mind. So may the fact that the Taliban was put to the mountains in a matter of weeks by an angry superpower. But in Al Gore’s world, the only thing holding back the deluge is U.N. resolutions, and nobody would dare violate those, nosiree Bob!
I’ll let The Wall Street Journal sink the final dagger here:
Some of our Democratic friends have said to us since the trauma of 9/11 that any U.S. President would have had to respond the way Mr. Bush has. A President Gore would have been just as determined and shown the same moral clarity. Mr. Gore has just told the country what he thinks about that argument.
Gore’s defenders have a choice: admit that he would not have been as steadfast as Bush – or worse, admit that his position while out of office is not the same one he would have had in office.

I’d parody Maureen Dowd, but it can’t be done. Read today’s column and see if you can come up with anything shallower, snider or more blinkered or petulant than this. “Maybe the Bush policy on Empire & Pre-emption allows us to decide not only who can run a country, but what are the proper issues for other nations’ election debates.” That sounds like something you’d see posted on some far-out message board, not a newspaper with editors. “Only the Saudis get away with disobliging the administration on Iraq without being frozen out. They’re like the spoiled, foreign princesses in high school, dripping in Dolce & Gabbana and Asprey, who drive their Mercedes convertibles into the magic alpha circle.” Yeah, that sounds just like my high school. Never mind that part of the point of going after Iraq is to make the Saudis both less indispensable and less comfortable . . .

George W. Bush is not going to wait for an Iranian-style hostage crisis to develop in the Ivory Coast. The cavalry is on the way.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY, and I may run with this one some more when I have more time to write: is Continental Europe’s timidity in foreign affairs linked to demographics? Yes, Muslim immigration, but more fundamentally I’m talking about an aging and shrinking population, with fewer young men and more old women. Think on it.

Stanley Kurtz at NRO is once again stumping for free speech in the academy, this time lauding Daniel Pipes’ attempt to create a MEMRI-like organization dedicated to exposing the biases of Middle Eastern Studies faculties and their efforts to stamp out any, well, actual studies of the Middle East. My lawyer’s heart just loves organizations like this that get specific with people who attack with broad, false generalities and hate to be confronted with reality.

David Brooks of The Weekly Standard has the definitive account of the anti-war Left’s critical flaw — its total abdication of responsibility for dealing with the actual threats at hand. There are too many gems in this piece to excerpt; here are just a few:
“When you read through the vast literature of the peace camp, you get the impression that Saddam Hussein is some distant, off-stage figure not immediately germane to matters at hand.”
On the “Not In Our Names” advertisement taken out by a bunch of what Brooks charitably calls ‘peaceniks’:
“In the text of the ad, which runs to 15 paragraphs, Saddam Hussein is not mentioned. Weapons of mass destruction are not mentioned. The risks posed by terrorists and terror organizations are not mentioned. Instead there are vague sentiments . . . The entire exercise is a picture perfect example of moral exhibitionism, by a group of people decadently refusing even to acknowledge the difficulties and tradeoffs that confront those who actually have to make decisions about policy.”
On Chomsky and his ilk: “Their supposed demons–Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, and company–occupy their entire field of vision, so that there is no room for analysis of anything beyond, such as what is happening in the world. For the peace camp, all foreign affairs is local; contempt for and opposition to Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, et al. is the driving passion. When they write about these figures it is with a burning zeal. But on the rare occasions when they write about Saddam, suddenly all passion drains away. Saddam is boring, but Wolfowitz tears at their soul. . . This is the dictionary definition of parochialism–the inability to consider the larger global threats because one is consumed by one’s immediate domestic hatreds. This parochialism takes many forms, but all the branches of the opposition to the war in Iraq have one thing in common: Iraq is never the issue. Something else is always the issue.”
One more, on the Dems: “Among some Democrats in Washington, a second form of parochialism has emerged. They see the Iraq conflict as a subplot within the midterm election campaigns. . . .What’s fascinating about this wag-the-dog theory is what it reveals about the mentality of the people who float it. These are politicians (far from all of them Democrats) who have never cared about foreign affairs, have no history with the Cold War, have no interest in America’s superpower role. One sometimes gets the sense that these people can’t imagine how anybody could genuinely be more interested in matters of war and peace than in such issues as prescription drugs, Social Security, and Enron. If the president does pretend to care more about nuclear weapons and such, surely it must be a political tactic. For them, the important task is to get the discussion back to the subjects they care about, and which they think are politically advantageous. . . . The president must “make the case,” many Democrats say, as if they are incapable of informing themselves about what is potentially one of the greatest threats to the United States. “
Read the whole thing. It’s more than worth it.

“Germany must be beaten; Germany must feel like she is beaten. No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong.”
–Winston Churchill, July 1917.

Haven’t read this one from the Atlantic all the way through yet, but it looks promising (NRO had the link yesterday): PJ O’Rourke on Egypt. O’Rourke, of course, has the gift of convincing the reader that his life was in constant danger every time he leaves the U.S. Here’s a classic from this one, on driving in Cairo:
“[M]ost foreign driving has the advantage of either brevity, in its breakneck pace, or safe if sorry periods of complete rest, in jam-ups. Cairenes achieve the prolonged bravado of NASCAR drivers while also turning any direction they want, in congestion worse than L.A.’s during an O.J. freeway chase.
When I could bear to peek, I saw traffic cops�not in ones or twos but in committees, set up at intersections and acting with the efficiency and decisiveness usual to committees. And I saw a driving school. What could the instruction be like? ‘No, no, Anwar, faster through the stop sign, and make your left from the far-right lane.’ Surely John Kifner, Chris Matthews, and NBC News are kidding when they use ‘Arab street’ as a metaphor for anything in the Middle East. Or, considering the history of the Middle East, maybe they aren’t.”