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Last week’s prisoner/cadaver exchange between Lebanon and Israel has attracted a lot of comment for which we provide a round-up today. David Warren is first.
… It is right to recover the bodies. But at what cost?
This is something the postmodern mind, which I find increasingly unhinged, is incapable of processing. There are costs involved in obtaining any benefit: the world is constructed in that way. These costs are not always denominated in money; and even when they are, we forget that money stands as a counter for the labour and sacrifice expended to obtain it.
Whether we are dealing with indifferent small purchases — when, as the Yorkshireman says, “You can’t have (both) the penny and the bun” — or with huge political transactions touching everyone — the cost of what we propose must be calculated. And the bigger the measure, the more prudence (i.e. sanity) requires that we consider all the foreseeable costs — including, of course, the costs of not taking action. …
David Bernstein in Volokh wonders if Israel should have a death penalty for terrorists.
The farce plays itself out over and over. Israel captures terrorists, some of whom are guilty of horrific mass murders. Capturing the terrorists often requires the sacrifice of great human, financial, and intelligence resources. The terrorists’ allies respond by planning various operations to obtain human “bargaining chips,” dead or alive, to use in exchange for their captured allies. Israel then agrees to release anywhere from a handful to hundreds of terrorists in exchange for dead bodies or one or a handful of live captives. The released terrorists become heroes, and some go on to commit new murders.
The prisoner exchange taking place today is hardly the worst of them, but it illustrates the point. Israel is releasing Samir Kuntar, guilty of the horrific, cold-blooded murder of a child (and who is shamefully apparently a national hero in Lebanon) and two adults, in exchange for the bodies of two dead soldiers. The soldiers themselves were abducted in an attempt to gain Kuntar’s release, an incident that provoked the 2006 Lebanon Hezbollah war, and led to the death of dozens of more Israelis.
I simply don’t understand why Israel doesn’t put an end to this madness and institute the death penalty for murder caused by terrorism. I have mixed emotions about the death penalty in general, but this is one circumstance in which I think the arguments in favor are overwhelming. …
Mona Charen writes on the culture that celebrates a child killer.
… This week, Kuntar, dressed in fatigues and sporting a Hitlerian mustache and haircut, walked down a red carpet arrayed for him in Beirut. The government closed all offices and declared a national day of celebration. Tens of thousands of Lebanese cheered, waved flags, threw confetti, and set off fireworks as Hezbollah staged a rally to celebrate their “victory” over Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, the “moderate” leader of the Palestinian Authority, sent “blessings to Samir Kuntar’s family.” PA spokesman Ahmad Abdul Rahman sent “warm blessings to Hezbollah on the return of the heroes of freedom headed by the great Samir Kuntar.” …
Mitch Albom too.
… “Samir! Samir!” the crowd reportedly yelled. This for a man convicted of smashing a child’s head into pieces.
You can take whatever side you like in the Israeli-Palestinian debate. You can argue who is entitled to land and statehood and borders.
But you cannot defend the frenzied lovefest that took place for Kuntar in Lebanon, as if he were some long-lost statesmen, instead of a common murderer who did the worst thing you can do: take the life of a child. What religion condones that? What holy book says that is a good thing? A banner in Beirut, according to the New York Times, read “God’s Achievement Through Our Hands.”
What God would have a child’s murder on anyone’s hands? How do people celebrate such a killer? …
Contentions says prisoner prices will go up.
The logic of prisoner swaps dictates that, over time, successive swaps between states and terrorist organizations become more expensive to states. This is because terrorist organizations typically exchange prisoners only when they can declare victory – and victory can hardly be declared if a given deal looks paltry compared to one that preceded it. (On the other hand, when terrorist organizations lose, their captives are, ideally, liberated in the process of their defeat.) For this reason, states engaging in prisoner swap negotiations with terrorist organizations need to keep the possibility of future prisoner negotiations firmly in mind: giving away too much might make future – and possibly more important – prisoner exchanges cost-prohibitive. …
Do you ever wonder how the Arab world got to the point of worshipping brutality? Anne Applebaum looks at textbooks in Saudi schools.
Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice tests, the bane of any fourth grader’s existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report put out by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom last week, it seems that Saudi Arabians find them useful, too. Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question that appears in a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, Monotheism and Jurisprudence, in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish “true” from “false” belief in god:
Q. Is belief true in the following instances:
a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.The correct answer, of course, is c). According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn’t enough just to worship god or just to love other believers—it is important to hate unbelievers as well. By the same token, b) is also wrong. Even a man who worships god cannot be said to have “true belief” if he loves unbelievers.
“Unbelievers,” in this context, are Christians and Jews. In fact, any child who sticks around in Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught that “Jews and Christians are enemies of believers.” They will also be taught that Jews conspire to “gain sole control of the world,” that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day “the rocks or the trees” will call out to Muslims to kill Jews. …
Karl Rove says both candidates have flip-flopped.
… Sen. McCain has changed his position on drilling for oil on the outer continental shelf. But because he explained this change by saying that $4-a-gallon gasoline caused him to re-evaluate his position, voters are likely to accept it. Of course, Mr. McCain doesn’t explain why prices at the pump haven’t also forced him to re-evaluate his opposition to drilling on 2000 acres in the 19.2-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But, then, what politician is always consistent?
Mr. McCain flip-flopped on the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. He’d voted against them at the time, saying in 2001 that he’d “like to see more of this tax cut shared by working Americans.” Now he supports their continuation because, he says, letting them expire would increase taxes and he opposes tax hikes. Besides, he recognizes that the tax cuts have helped the economy.
At least Mr. McCain fesses up to and explains his changes. Sen. Obama has shifted recently on public financing, free trade, Nafta, welfare reform, the D.C. gun ban, whether the Iranian Quds Force is a terrorist group, immunity for telecom companies participating in the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the status of Jerusalem, flag lapel pins, and disavowing Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And not only does he refuse to explain these flip-flops, he acts as if they never occurred.
Then there is Iraq. …
Thomas Sowell continues the column from two days ago.
We don’t look to arsonists to help put out fires but we do look to politicians to help solve financial crises that they played a major role in creating.
How did the government help create the current financial mess? Let me count the ways.
In addition to federal laws that pressure lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to, and in places where they would otherwise not invest, state and local governments have in various parts of the country so severely restricted building as to lead to skyrocketing housing prices, which in turn have led many people to resort to “creative financing” in order to buy these artificially more expensive homes.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve System brought interest rates down to such low levels that “creative financing” with interest-only mortgage loans enabled people to buy houses that they could not otherwise afford.
But there is no free lunch. Interest-only loans do not continue indefinitely. After a few years, such mortgage loans typically require the borrower to begin paying back some of the principal, which means that the monthly mortgage payments will begin to rise.
Since everyone knew that the Federal Reserve System’s extremely low interest rates were not going to last forever, much “creative financing” also involved adjustable-rate mortgages, where the interest charged by the lender would rise when interest rates in the economy as a whole rose. …
Paul Gigot has details on some of the ways the government helped create this crisis.
Angelo Mozilo was in one of his Napoleonic moods. It was October 2003, and the CEO of Countrywide Financial was berating me for The Wall Street Journal’s editorials raising doubts about the accounting of Fannie Mae. I had just been introduced to him by Franklin Raines, then the CEO of Fannie, whom I had run into by chance at a reception hosted by the Business Council, the CEO group that had invited me to moderate a couple of panels.
Mr. Mozilo loudly declared that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I didn’t understand accounting or the mortgage markets, and that I was in the pocket of Fannie’s competitors, among other insults. Mr. Raines, always smoother than Mr. Mozilo, politely intervened to avoid an extended argument, and Countrywide’s bantam rooster strutted off.
I’ve thought about that episode more than once recently amid the meltdown and government rescue of Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac. Trying to defend the mortgage giants, Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently wrote, “What you need to know here is that the right — the WSJ editorial page, Heritage, etc. — hates, hates, hates Fannie and Freddie. Why? Because they don’t want quasi-public entities competing with Angelo Mozilo.”
That’s a howler even by Mr. Krugman’s standards. Fannie Mae and Mr. Mozilo weren’t competitors; they were partners. Fannie helped to make Countrywide as profitable as it once was by buying its mortgages in bulk. Mr. Raines — following predecessor Jim Johnson — and Mr. Mozilo made each other rich. Which explains why Mr. Johnson could feel so comfortable asking Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) to discuss a sweetheart mortgage with Mr. Mozilo, and also explains the Mozilo-Raines tag team in 2003. …
Times, UK thinks oil prices might be at their tipping point.
The Economist reports on East Africa’s pirates.
ON A dazzling morning in April, the Playa de Bakio, a Spanish fishing boat, limped into paradisal Port Victoria in the Seychelles, damaged by grenades. Its crew of 26 was shaken. A Spanish military aircraft flew them to momentary fame in Spain. The fishermen had been held by Somali pirates for a week and freed after a ransom of $1.2m—so it was rumoured—was paid, in contravention of Spanish law.
The boat, a big industrial vessel known as a purse seiner, was easy prey. The pirates attacked on a speedboat launched from a mother ship, a captured Asian fishing ship known as a longliner. Once on board, they regaled the crew with tales of famine in their villages. Some of the Spaniards felt sorry for them. When one of the pirates stripped his shirt off, “he was all bones, no meat at all,” said a Basque crewman. The Spaniards were less enamoured of the pirates when they threatened them with machineguns and knives. “They valued life less than cockroaches,” said the skipper. …