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Fouad Ajami reminds why we are in Iraq.
… Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.
Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the “charities” that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.
We should give the “theorists” of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration. …
Gabriel Schoenfeld posts on our country’s conduct when it wasn’t hamstrung by CAVE* people. (*Citizens Against Virtually Everything)
More than 6 1/2 years after devastating suicide attacks against the United States launched the Bush administration’s fight against global terrorism, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot is scheduled to appear in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom tomorrow morning.
In the current issue of COMMENTARY, I have an article entitled In the Matter of George W. Bush v. the Constitution, which takes up, as part of a more extended discussion of the legal knots in which we have tied ourselves, the issue of military commissions. Drawing on Jack Goldsmith’s brilliant book, The Terror Presidency, I made a comparison to our practices in this area during World War II. …
David Warren covers Mark Steyn’s trial in Vancouver.
The writings of Canada’s most talented journalist, Mark Steyn, went on trial in Vancouver on Monday, in a case designed to challenge freedom of the press. It is a show trial, under the arbitrary powers given to Canada’s obscene “human rights” commissions, by Section 13 of our Human Rights Act.
I wrote “obscene” advisedly. A respondent who comes before Canada’s “human rights” tribunals has none of the defences formerly guaranteed in common law. The truth is no defence, reasonable intention is no defence, nor material harmlessness, there are no rules of evidence, no precedents, nor case law of any kind. The commissars running the tribunals need have no legal training, exhibit none, and owe their appointments to networking among leftwing activists.
I wrote “show trial” advisedly, for there has been a 100 per cent conviction rate in cases brought to “human rights” tribunals under Section 13. …
… While media attention to Mark Steyn’s show trial is inadequate, it is nevertheless the best publicized case ever to come before our “human rights” bureaucracies. Most of the victims of these neo-Maoist tribunals have been “little people,” with nothing like the resources Maclean’s magazine has put in play to defend itself and Steyn, and no media reporting whatever. They have been persecuted, stripped of their livelihoods and savings, demonized among their neighbours, made to endure humiliating “re-education” programs – without lawyers, without assistance of any kind — all for exercising rights that any Canadian would have taken for granted a mere generation ago.
I want justice for Mark Steyn. But I also want justice for all these little people, who have been crushed under the jackboot of “political correction.”
Speaking of Steyn, we have a January 2001 goodbye Bill Clinton piece he wrote for the Spectator, UK.
So here we are. The Clinton Administration is finally reaching, in the preferred formulation of the Starr report, “completion”. In his political life, as in his sexual adventures, Bill Clinton is doing all he can to avoid that happy state. But whatever role awaits him – elder statesman, Arkansas Senator, executive vice-president at Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, night manager of the Erotic Pussycat lap-dancing bar – he will no longer be, so to speak, in our face. I take my hat off to him. Indeed, I take my pants off to him.
He is an amazing paradox: a man whose smallness loomed large, in every sense. We may never get the full measure of the man, but then neither did Monica. In the meantime, herewith an alphabet of fragrant memories from the Clinton era:
A IS FOR AFFIDAVIT
This was the first administration in US history to keep a standardised denial-of-sex form on file. When Paula Jones’ lawyers were sniffing round Arkansas for women who’d undergone similar experiences, a nervous Juanita Broaddrick called her attorney, who in turn contacted an old friend, White House counsel Bruce Lindsay. Shortly afterwards the President’s lawyer, Bob Bennett, faxed back the affidavit of another woman who’d denied involvement with Mr Clinton. Mrs Broaddrick’s counsel replaced the original name with that of his client and dropped it in the mail. “I [Your Name Here], being of sound body, did not have sexual relations with William Jefferson Clinton”: with the convenient do-it-yourself Clinton Home Affidavit Kit, you may get groped but there won’t be a lot of paperwork. …
John Stossel wants to protect ultimate fighting from nanny types like John McCain.
If John McCain becomes president, will he leave me alone?
You might think so. After all, he’s got Grover Norquist in his corner, and Norquist wrote “Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives”.
The book makes a good case for “Americans who simply wish to be left alone by the government. They are not asking the government for others’ money, time, or attention. Rather, they want to be free to own a gun, homeschool their children, pray, invest their money, and control their own destiny.”
What if people want to fight each other?
I ask because mixed martial arts (MMA) competitions are booming. …