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Proving Mark Twain’s dictum that a lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, Anti-Semites started eight years ago on their latest blood libel ably assisted by a French news organization. Pickerhead refers to the story of Muhammad Al-Dura. French courts are beginning to correct the damage. David Warren has details.
My column today will be about just one incident in the Middle East, that happened nearly eight years ago. It was a significant incident in its own right, with repercussions to the present day. It is more broadly significant, because it provides a clear example of the way malicious dishonesty in media reporting costs lives, inflames conflicts, feeds ignorance, and spreads murderous racial hatred.
The incident was the alleged shooting of a little boy by Israeli troops in Gaza, in September 2000. His name was Muhammad Al-Dura, and if my reader has been watching any television over the last eight years, he will have seen the clip, probably many times. A Palestinian man and boy are shown cowering by a wall. Then suddenly the boy is shown dead in his father’s arms. The voice-over explains that he was picked off by an Israeli marksman.
The clip was produced for the French state television channel, France-2. After assembly in Paris, it was immediately aired, and also distributed free of charge to media the world over. It received huge play everywhere, and in most Muslim countries it continues to be shown, endlessly. The Arab League declared Oct. 1 to be “Al-Dura Day” to commemorate all Arab children “victimized by Zionists.” Hundreds of schools have been named after the child throughout that world, where depictions of his dead body have become iconic. Orchestrated demonstrations of rage over this have cost additional lives. …
Melanie Phillips blogs on Al-Dura.
Amer. Spectator imagines what it would be like if the media approached all events like those in Israel.
Bill Kristol’s Memorial Day message.
Last Thursday, the soldiers of the Third United States Infantry Regiment (the Old Guard) placed a small American flag in front of each of the 260,000 or so grave markers in Arlington National Cemetery. The soldiers remained on duty throughout the weekend, replacing flags that had fallen or been removed, to ensure that each grave was appropriately decorated and honored on Memorial Day.
This decades-old tradition exemplifies the attention the military pays to honoring its veterans and, above all of course, its fallen warriors. But what of the rest of us? Most of us in the Washington area didn’t visit Arlington this weekend. Most of us across America aren’t participating in Memorial Day services or commemorations.
This doesn’t mean Americans are indifferent to the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. In fact, I suspect that many of us feel so much in debt to our servicemen and women, and so much in awe of the ultimate sacrifice some of them have made and all of them are willing to make, that we worry any effort to honor them wouldn’t be commensurate with their deeds.
One retired general I know urges civilians to go out of their way to say thank you to servicemen and women they happen to encounter. At first I thought such a gesture might be intrusive, or awkward, or unwelcome. I was wrong. When civilians walk over to express appreciation to men and women in uniform, in airports or restaurants or the like, the recipients seem a little embarrassed — but grateful. So perhaps we all should be less shy about thanking our troops for their service. …
Matthew Continetti wonders why the Dems won’t recognize progress in Iraq.
General David Petraeus was back in Washington last week. President Bush has promoted him to chief of Central Command (CENTCOM), which requires Senate confirmation. Under Petraeus’s leadership, Iraq has changed dramatically. Why can’t the Democrats change with it?
Bush announced the surge in January 2007. Iraq was a violent place. Al Qaeda in Iraq held large swaths of territory. Shiite death squads roamed much of Baghdad. The Iraqi political class seemed feckless. Hence Bush’s decision to send more troops, replace General George Casey with Petraeus, and change the mission from force protection and search-and-destroy to population security. The new strategy’s strongest proponent and supporter was Senator John McCain.
Democrats opposed the surge almost without exception. Barack Obama said that the new policy would neither “make a dent” in the violence plaguing Iraq nor “change the dynamics” there. A month after the president’s announcement, Obama declared it was time to remove American combat troops from Iraq. In April, as the surge brigades were on their way to the combat zone, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid proclaimed “this war is lost” and that U.S. troops should pack up and come home. In July, as surge operations were underway, the New York Times editorialized that “it is time for the United States to leave Iraq.” The Times’s editorial writers recognized Iraq “could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave.” But that didn’t matter. “Keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse.”
Wrong. When Petraeus returned to Washington in September 2007, he reported that the numbers of violent incidents, civilian deaths, ethnosectarian killings, and car and suicide bombings had declined dramatically from the previous December. Why? The surge–and the broadening “Awakening” movement, which began when the sheikhs in Anbar province rebelled against al Qaeda in late 2006 and accelerated when the tribal leaders understood America would not abandon them in 2007. …
NY Times thinks McCain had a bad week. Jennifer Rubin begs to differ in Contentions.
The New York Times and other mainstream media pundits are convinced that John McCain is in dire straits and everything is going swimmingly for their favorite son Barack Obama. But is this right?
It is hard to ignore the stream of Obama gaffes. The Cuban community in Florida is unimpressed. Foreign leaders continue to express concern about Obama’s foreign policy pronouncements. And for someone who is now the certain nominee of the party “destined” to win in November his poll numbers are mediocre at best. Why after all this supposedly horrible news for McCain would Obama only be tied with him (and Clinton only slightly ahead of McCain) in the last Newsweek poll? (In Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls McCain is up slightly over Obama.)
Previously, Pickings posted on Amir Taheri’s concern for the damage Obama’a remarks have caused to the opposition in Iran. Abe Greenwald follows the story.
Great post from Power Line.
On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, “and it hasn’t made us safer.” It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.
Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.
Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history: …
Nicholas Kristoff says if the earthquakes don’t kill the Chinese, the air they breathe will.
China’s biggest health disaster isn’t the terrible Sichuan earthquake this month. It’s the air.
The quake killed at least 60,000 people, generating a response that has been heartwarming and inspiring, with even schoolchildren in China donating to the victims. Yet with little notice, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Chinese die prematurely every year from the effects of outdoor air pollution, according to studies by Chinese and international agencies alike.
In short, roughly as many Chinese die every two months from the air as were killed in the earthquake. And the problem is becoming international: just as Californians can find Chinese-made shoes in their stores, they can now find Chinese-made haze in their skies. …
Don Boudreaux looks at green initiatives.
… I wince at these efforts for two reasons. The first is identical to the reason why I wince at the thought of people voluntarily buying books that explain how to get rich quick or how to lose weight while they sleep. While I don’t wish to forcibly prevent adults from choosing to spend their money on such gimmicks, the fact remains that these things are fraudulent. Their purveyors prey on people’s gullibility.
And so it is with many of the ideas for how to “live green.” For example, consider the admonition to use ceramic cups rather than paper or Styrofoam cups. The idea is that production of paper cups causes more trees to be felled and Styrofoam cups cause more oil to be extracted. Such activities are deemed “ungreen.” But the production of ceramic cups requires intense heat — a requirement that consumes resources. And being heavier than disposable cups, ceramic cups require greater amounts of energy to be shipped to market. Finally, let’s not forget that washing ceramic cups also uses energy and water.
Now I have no idea if disposable cups are better or worse for the environment than are ceramic cups — which is my point. The complexity of our modern economy is far, far greater than most people realize. As Milton Friedman (taking his cue from his friend Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education) famously explained in his 1979 TV show “Free to Choose,” no one knows how to make even an ordinary pencil. …