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Mark Steyn wonders when the media will call a spade a spade.
Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, The Sydney Daily Telegraph’s columnist wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline:
“British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.”
Indeed. And so it goes. This time round – Mumbai – it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims “found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion”.
Oh, I don’t know about that. In fact, you’d be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was “linked” to any religion, least of all one beginning with “I-” and ending in “-slam.” In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations – “Islamic terrorists,” “Muslim extremists” – and by the time of the assault on Mumbai found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators “militants” or “gunmen” or “teenage gunmen,” as in the opening line of this report in The Australian: “An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok.”
Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion. …
… The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”
Hmm. Greater Mumbai forms one of the world’s five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An “accidental hostage scene” that one of the “practitioners” just happened to stumble upon? “I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?” …
… We are told that the “vast majority” of the 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra’s estimate) are “moderate.” Maybe so, but they’re also quiet. And, as the AIDS activists used to say, “Silence=Acceptance.” It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of Bush’s foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam – “Allahu Akbar.”
I wrote in my book, “America Alone,” that “reforming” Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Quran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there’ll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there’ll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Mumbai in the name of Allah, and that’s just business as usual. And, if it is somehow “understandable” that for the first time in history it’s no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline informs us, “worry about image.” Not enough.
Because he is a grown up, Charles Krauthammer reminds us of new success in Iraq.
The barbarism in Mumbai and the economic crisis at home have largely overshadowed an otherwise singular event: the ratification of military and strategic cooperation agreements between Iraq and the United States.
They must not pass unnoted. They were certainly noted by Iran, which fought fiercely to undermine the agreements. Tehran understood how a formal U.S.-Iraqi alliance endorsed by a broad Iraqi consensus expressed in a freely elected parliament changes the strategic balance in the region.
For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally. If we don’t blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq, we will have turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at the epicenter of the Arab Middle East into an ally.
Also largely overlooked at home was the sheer wonder of the procedure that produced Iraq’s consent: classic legislative maneuvering with no more than a tussle or two — tame by international standards (see YouTube: “Best Taiwanese Parliament Fights of All Time!“) — over the most fundamental issues of national identity and direction. …
John Fund grew up in California so he can provide interesting background on the movie “Milk.” And he has an update in Minnesota.
… Politics aside, “Milk” is a fascinating celebration of a man who was both a symbol of gay empowerment and a martyr to gay rights. The film premiered on the 30th anniversary of his death in 1978. Harvey Milk only served as a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors for 11 months before he, along with Mayor George Moscone, was gunned down at age 48 by Dan White, a former Supervisor who nursed political grudges against both men. White was convicted only of manslaughter after putting up a preposterous defense that too much junk food had impaired his judgment — a foretaste of even stranger legal arguments in later years as more and more people have sought to avoid responsibility for their actions. …
Tony Blankley says he thinks Obama will revert to form.
… Unlike some of his supporters, I take Obama at his word. In my reading of history, men with his level of intentionally displayed self-confidence should be believed when they earlier have asserted grand — even grandiose — goals. Whether they are actually that self-confident or tormented by secret self-doubt, it often leads to efforts at grand and “heroic” public policies once in office.
And as long as the president-elect will not declare himself publicly, these foolish psychological games are necessary. So I rather doubt that a man with his self-image is likely to be content to leave the White House eight years from now having been a mere steward of Republican capitalism and military policy. I suspect he wants to play for the history books and do something dramatic with America. I suspect, as he says, he intends to be the change — and not merely of the “can’t we all just get along?” variety. In fact, I suspect he doesn’t want to get along with his philosophical opposition; he wants to overwhelm us politically.
On the foreign policy front, likewise, solid appointments may not lead to solid policies. Remember during the campaign when he was on his way to Iraq and he was quite dismissive of the role of the top generals? Once again, he used the phrase “my job, as president,” and he said it is to make the policy. He said the generals’ job is merely to carry out his orders. That was a very unrealistic view of the relationship between civilian and military leadership — even by the example of such towering civilian leaders as FDR, Churchill and Lincoln.
Here is my suggestion to those who disagree with what, during and before the campaign, Obama seemed to be saying about economics, diplomacy, culture and foreign policy: Do not take too much comfort from his appointees. Brace for the change you do not believe in.
George Will on the Fairness Doctrine.
Reactionary liberalism, the ideology of many Democrats, holds that inconvenient rights, such as secret ballots in unionization elections, should be repealed; that existing failures, such as GM, should be preserved; and, with special perversity, that repealed mistakes, such as the “fairness doctrine,” should be repeated. That Orwellian name was designed to disguise the doctrine’s use as the government’s instrument for preventing fair competition in the broadcasting of political commentary.
Because liberals have been even less successful in competing with conservatives on talk radio than Detroit has been in competing with its rivals, liberals are seeking intellectual protectionism in the form of regulations that suppress ideological rivals. If liberals advertise their illiberalism by reimposing the fairness doctrine, the Supreme Court might revisit its 1969 ruling that the fairness doctrine is constitutional. The court probably would dismay reactionary liberals by reversing that decision on the ground that the world has changed vastly, pertinently and for the better. …
While much of the country and world have been making fun of him, George Bush has been making us proud with his efforts in Africa. Mona Charen has the story.
I can see it now. The world will be very different. The president of the United States will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifesaving aid to victims of disease in Africa. Government and civic leaders from Europe and Asia will express their admiration. Americans will walk a little taller. Barack Obama will bow his head as the ribboned medal is extended …
But wait. The president who deserves such an honor is in office now. It is George W. Bush who has devoted so much time, energy, and money (well, our money, but it was legal) to fighting AIDS and other diseases in Africa.
From the beginning of his administration, President Bush has pushed for more aid to Africa. Motivated perhaps by his deeply felt Christian faith (relieving poverty in Africa has become a major charitable push among evangelicals), the president has pressed for greater aid to Africa across the board. The original PEPFAR legislation (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which passed in 2003, was the largest single health investment by any government ever ($15 billion). At the time the initiative was launched, only about 50,000 sub-Saharan Africans were receiving antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Today, 1.7 million people in the region, as well as tens of thousands more around the globe, are receiving such treatment. PEPFAR has also funded efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus, provided compassionate care to the sick and dying, and cared for 5 million orphans. One aspect of the program has been to reduce the stigma of the AIDS diagnosis in Africa. …
Claudia Rosett covers the latest UN conference formed to bash Israel.
… Epitomizing the hypocrisy of this exercise is a statement submitted to the U.N. earlier this year by Iran, which also helped organize the original, 2001 Durban conference. Tehran proclaims that “The Islamic Republic of Iran, according to its formal and practical policies, is opposed to any policy based on racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and has fought against this phenomenon at national, regional and international levels.” This comes from the Iranian regime, which along with supporting terrorists, threatening to wipe Israel off the map and violating five U.N. Security Council resolutions meant to stop its nuclear bomb program, pursues domestic policies of forcing women to wear the veil and executes homosexuals. …
Walter Russell Mead in the Australian says booms and busts are the way of the West.
THERE is a lot of gloom and doom around today. Even very optimistic people are understandably shaken when they see George W. Bush, one of the most conservative presidents in the history of the US, presiding over the effective nationalisation of the banking industry. And now it looks as if the same may occur with the automobile industry.
We face what could well be one of the most sustained and deep economic recessions since World War II.
The past 300 years is the story of the rise of two interlinked systems: the global capitalism system and a geopolitical structure resting on the power of first Britain and now the US.
And those 300 years have been marked by one financial crisis after another.
Even before the English began to dominate global markets, the Dutch suffered though the tulip bubble of the 17thcentury. There was the South Sea bubble of the early 18th century. There were the panics of the Napoleonic wars, followed by successive and intensifying panics and crashes during the 19th century. Financial crises have continued throughout the 20th century and now into the 21st.
And none of those panics and crashes interrupted or fundamentally altered the liberal capitalist path of development. …