Pollyanna

I missed Pollyanna on Masterpiece Theatre, when it aired in 2004 and 2005. But I caught it last night, and it really was a masterpiece...

Interestingly, it seemed to have a lesson about how to deal with depression, something I never heard about in discussions of the story. Of course, I never read the book, nor did I see the Disney version with Haley Mills. But last night, Pollyanna appeared like a psychotherapist for a number of depressed, isolated, and lonely people. There was nothing "Pollyanna-ish" about the her. She was serious, thoughtful, and moving.

This production for Carlton television, written by Simon Nye, directed by Sarah Harding, and produced by Trevor Hopkins was well done in all respects. The acting was just right. The whole cast played their parts to perfection: Amanda Burton as Aunt Polly, Kate Ashfield as Nancy, Kenneth Cranham as Mr. Pendleton, Aden Gillett as Dr. Chilton, et al. And most wonderful of all was Georgina Terry as the little girl who had to cope with life alone after her mother and father had died. Her courage, pluck, and determination to overcome whatever obstacles life threw in her path were inspiring.

"I laughed, I cried..." is an old cliche. But in this case, true.

Five stars.

Russia Fears American Nuclear Attack

Today's Washington Post runs reporter Peter Finn's account of Russia's fear of a new Cold War, sparked by comments from President Bush about nuclear first-strikes, and an agressive Council on Foreign Relations report:

MOSCOW -- In this city, it's beginning to feel like a new Cold War, driven by what many people here see as an old American impulse: to encircle, weaken or even destroy Russia, just as the country is emerging from post-Soviet ruins as a cohesive, self-confident and global power.

The specter of a U.S. nuclear first strike even resurfaced this month. An article in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the United States could hit Russia and China without serious risk of retaliation. That sent heads spinning here with visions of Dr. Strangelove.

"The publication of these ideas in a respectable American journal has had an explosive effect," former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar wrote in an article in London's Financial Times newspaper. "Even those Russian journalists and analysts who are not prone to hysteria or anti-Americanism took it as an outline of the official position of the U.S. Administration."

I wonder whether provoking confrontation with Russia, while America is bogged down militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan--as well as diplomatically in Iran--is a smart move at this time...

Jill Carroll's Statement

Her written statement retracting earlier videotaped statements, in The Christian Science Monitor:

During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.

More info at Wikipedia.

April Fish!

The French call April 1 Poisson d'Avril, or "April Fish." French children sometimes tape a picture of a fish on the back of their schoolmates, crying "Poisson d'Avril" when the prank is discovered...

What Does Russia Want?

That seems to be the $64,000 question these days, as US-Russian tensions appear to be growing.

At last as far as Central Asia goes, there's at least a partial answer in a recent article in Moscow's English-language foreign-policy journal Russia in Global Affairs, by Stanislav Chernyavsky, Deputy Director of the 1st Department of the CIS Countries of the Foreign Ministry of Russia:

Russia’s strategy in Central Asia must take into account not only the increased differentiation of the post-Soviet space, but also potential conflicts of interests between Russia and other actors in the region. The worst-case scenario of developments may include the destabilization and breakup of the existing secular regimes, the coming to power of religious extremists, and the emergence of interstate conflicts.

The transformation of the region into a new field of confrontation is not in Russia’s interests. Gien the specificity of the present level of Russian-U.S. relations, Moscow must pursue a reasonable and clear-cut foreign policy and require that Washington make its military actions transparent and predictable. Considering the two countries’ common struggle against terror, Washington must share its plans with Russia in advance. Russian businesses would benefit from their joint participation with U.S. companies in the development and implementation of large economic projects.

Another major foreign-policy reserve for Russia is the further development of its interaction with China on Central Asian issues. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for example, whose organizational and legal formation is approaching the final stage, allows for Russian-Chinese cooperation to play a restraining role with regard to U.S. actions that are against Russian interests.

The Russian strategy must rest on sound pragmatism stemming from the country’s relatively limited foreign-policy resources. These resources must concentrate on key areas, above all, on security, the creation of favorable conditions for economic growth, and the protection of the rights of Russian citizens and ethnic Russians living in the region. Therefore, mutual readiness for cooperation and genuine respect for each other’s interests must become a major criterion of relations between Russia and its Central Asian partners.

From the above, it seems clear that Russia says that it seeks partnership with the United States in Central Asia, not confrontation.

Remembering Jill Carroll's Translator

A statement by Christian Science Monitor editor Richard Bergenheim:

I hope you'll pause with me also to think of Allan Enwiyah, Jill's translator, who was murdered when Jill was kidnapped. Over these past months his life has been honored by many, and a special fund exists to give support to his family.

Will the Christian Science Monitor now demand that Allan Enwiyah's killers be brought to justice?

BTW, Editor and Publisher has something on the question of ransom and negotiations with Jill Carroll's kidnappers, including this quote:

"There are indications that [the demand] was for money, but we don't know if any changed hands," said Steve Butler, Knight Ridder foreign editor who had been in touch with his reporters in Baghdad today. He said learning too much about what occurred behind the scenes could be harmful. "These things are sometimes better left unresolved," he added. "It could harm the next one or close off options in the future if too much is known."

Knight-Ridder, defending the American public's right not to know...

Jill Carroll Speaks

If this report from Middle East Online is true, what Jill Carroll told Arab audiences sounds different from what she is telling the American media:

In a late Thursday video footage, whose authenticity could not be verified, Carroll in an interview with her kidnappers before her release was seen praising Iraq's insurgents and even predicted their victory over the coalition forces.

"I think the mujahideen are very smart and even with all the technology and all the people that the American army has here, they still are better at knowing how to live and work here, more clever," Carroll said in answer to a question posed by one of her kidnappers.

Asked what she meant, Carroll, who was snatched from a Baghdad street on January 7, answered: "It makes very clear that the mujahideen are the ones that will win in the end."

The video showed her dressed in the same baggy clothes she was seen wearing after her release.

The interviewer then asked Carroll if she had a message for US President George W. Bush.

She smiled before saying: "He needs to stop this war. He knows this war is wrong ... He needs to finally admit that to the American people and make the troops go home."

Carroll then said she felt guilty being set free while many women remained imprisoned at Baghdad's US-run Abu Ghraib prison.

"It shows the difference between the mujahedeen and the Americans, it shows the mujahedeen are good people fighting an honourable fight while the Americans are here as an occupying force treating the people in a very bad way," she said.

PS I see there's more on this at littlegreenfootballs.

John Fund on the Yale Taliban (cont'd)

From Opinion Journal.

Jill Carroll Freed

Was a ransom paid, or other deal made, for her release? This news story doesn't say.

Blogging will be spotty for a while..

My apologies, but due to having to take care of some personal business, I'm not able to blog quite as much as before. I'd like to post every day, but it may be every few days for a little while...

Andrew McCarthy on Abdul Rahman

Via Benador Associates:

You reap what you sow. What is happening in Afghanistan (and in Iraq) is precisely what we bought on to when we actively participated in the drafting of constitutions which — in a manner antithetical to the development of true democracy — ignored the imperative to insulate the civil authority from the religious authority, installed Islam as the state religion, made sharia a dominant force in law, and expressly required that judges be trained in Islamic jurisprudence. To have done all those things makes outrage at today's natural consequences ring hollow.

We can pull our heads up from the sand now and say, "No, no, no! We're nice people. We didn't mean it that way. That's too uncivilized to contemplate." But the inescapable truth is: the United States made a calculated decision that it wasn't worth our while to fight over Islamic law (indeed, we encouraged it as part of the political solution). People who objected (like moi) were told that we just didn't grasp the cultural dynamic at work. I beg to differ — we understood it only too well.

Islamic law does not consider conviction, imprisonment, or death for apostasy to be an affront to civilization. That's the way it is.

Mark Steyn on Abdul Rahman

Via SteynOnline:

Unfortunately, what's "precious and sacred" to Islam is its institutional contempt for others. In his book Islam And The West, Bernard Lewis writes, "The primary duty of the Muslim as set forth not once but many times in the Koran is 'to command good and forbid evil.' It is not enough to do good and refrain from evil as a personal choice. It is incumbent upon Muslims also to command and forbid."

Or as the shrewd Canadian columnist David Warren put it: "We take it for granted that it is wrong to kill someone for his religious beliefs. Whereas Islam holds it is wrong not to kill him." In that sense, those blood-curdling imams are right, and Karzai's attempts to finesse the issue are, sharia-wise, wrong.

I can understand why the president and the secretary of state would rather deal with this through back-channels, private assurances from their Afghan counterparts, etc. But the public rhetoric is critical, too. At some point we have to face down a culture in which not only the mob in the street but the highest judges and academics talk like crazies.

Rahman embodies the question at the heart of this struggle: If Islam is a religion one can only convert to not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet. What can we do? Should governments with troops in Afghanistan pass joint emergency legislation conferring their citizenship on this poor man and declaring him, as much as Karzai, under their protection?

In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" -- the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

''You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

India today is better off without suttee. If we shrink from the logic of that, then in Afghanistan and many places far closer to home the implications are, as the Prince of Wales would say, "ghastly."

Amir Taheri: Iran Need Not Be Israel's Enemy

After watching Syriana this afternoon, through a link on Wikipedia I found Amir Taheri's review of the film at Benador Associate's website, which led to finding this interesting analysis by the Iranian-born writer and editor:

Yes, the anti-Israeli discourse of Iran's rulers is as virulent as that of Hamas and other Palestinian radical groups. But that discourse is partly prompted by the regime's desire to hide its Shiite identity so that it can claim the leadership of radical Islam, both Shiite and Sunni.

In fact, regardless of who rules in Tehran, Israel and Iran have common strategic interests.

If Israel had never appeared on the map, the energy of pan-Arab nationalism movement, which dominated Arab politics in the post-war era, would have been directed against two other neighbors: Turkey and Iran. To a certain extent, it was anyway. Even today, the Arab League claims that the Turkish province of Iskanderun is "usurped Arab territory" and regards the Iranian province of Khuzestan as "occupied Arab land."

And Arab Sunni Islamism is an even more deadly threat to Iran. It was Arab Sunni Islamism that destroyed the Shiite holy shrines in Iraq in 1802, and returned last month to do so again in Samarra. The same movement is behind the cold-blooded murder of several thousand Iraqi Shiite men, women and children since 2004.

To Arab Sunni Islamists, Iranians are gabrs (Zoroastrians); Shiites, including Arab ones, are rafidis (heretics) who must be "re-converted" or put to death.

Both pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Arab Sunni Islamism are as much mortal foes for Iran as they are for Israel. Neither nation will be safe unless the twin monsters are defeated and the Arab states democratized.

For me, Syriana was an intersting film because at least it was about something serious, so I'm prepared to forgive its flaws, of which it has many.

The biggest credibility problem with Syriana's storyline appears to be that the CIA missile aimed at the Emir hits its target--something that didn't take place in the case of Mohmmar Qadaffi, Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin Laden. As Taheri says:

The CIA masters, for their part, would be pleased with "Syriana" if only because it claims that they can do anything at all!

Some Good News at the State Department

Ukrainian websites report that US Ambassador John Herbst has been promoted to head the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization at Foggy Bottom. Herbst was ambassador to Uzbekistan while I was in Tashkent, and I thought he did a good job. Of course, I could be biased, because he met with my students twice--once in my apartment and once at his home. Still, I was impressed that he appeared to listen to what they had to say, and respond intelligently to their criticisms of American policies.

Herbst served as American ambassador to Kyiv during the Orange Revolution, and I think it may be at least in part thanks to his efforts that "color revolution" did not result in bloodshed, looting or chaos--something that can't be said for other American "democracy promotion" efforts...

Michelle Malkin on the Abdul Rahman Rally

On MichelleMalkin.com.

Madeleine Albright on the Clash of Civilizations

Her LA Times Op-Ed reads like she's channelling Samuel Huntington (though his name is never mentioned):

In the long term, the future of the Middle East may well be determined by those in the region dedicated to the hard work of building democracy. I certainly hope so. But hope is not a policy. In the short term, we must recognize that the region will be shaped primarily by fairly ruthless power politics in which the clash between good and evil will be swamped by differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, Arab and Kurd, Kurd and Turk, Hashemite and Saudi, secular and religious and, of course, Arab and Jew. This is the world, the president pledges in his National Security Strategy, that "America must continue to lead." Actually, it is the world he must begin to address — before it is too late.

Who Is Lukashenko?

Konstantin's Russian Blog paints a different portrait of the president of Belarus and his opposition:

1. Opposition in Belorus has nothing to offer to an ordinary person. They can only appeal to "capitalists" so to say who could make much more money without Lukashenko or to youth who sincerely believe that only Lukashenko is guilty they cannot become filth rich "capitalists" right now.

2. Lukashenko always points an accusing finger to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgystan or Moldova saying, "Look! Those idiots believed in a Western-type democracy! What did they get? Total chaos, poverty, inequality, corruption and wars. We are poorer economically than Russia but we live better." Opposition has no arguments here.

3. Opposition in Belorus is anti-Russian. Actually Western NGO's all over post-Soviet sphere subsidize ONLY anti-Russian opposition. No exceptions. This is a great mistake. The same as being anti-Semitic in Israel.

Even More on the Yale Taliban

From the Wall Street Journal(ht Roger L Simon):

In 2002, Yale received a letter from Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. The purpose of the organization, begun in that year, was to match young women in post-Taliban Afghanistan to U.S. colleges, where they could pursue a degree. Ms. Nirschel asked Yale if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined.

Yale was not alone. Of the more than 2,000 schools contacted by Mrs. Nirschel, only three signed up right away: Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Notre Dame College in New Hampshire and the University of Montana, Missoula. Four years later, the program enrolls 20 students at 10 universities...

FDR's Four Freedoms

FDR's own words, from January 6, 1941from Libertynet.org:

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere
in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way-- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
--everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to
such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the wold.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

By my count, Islamist extremism violates three of the four freedoms by definition. Therefore any support for Islamist individuals, parties or organizations is not compatible with expanding freedom or democracy.

Obviously, Islamism is the latest "'new order' of tyrrany which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb," to use FDR's eloquent turn of phrase.

Here's a link to Norman Rockwell's pictures of the Four Freedoms.

Still More on the Yale Taliban

John Fund isn't dropping the ball:

Mr. Hashemi probably won't be attending Ms. Joya's lecture tonight. He has dodged reporters for three weeks, ever since his presence at Yale was revealed in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine. Some claim he has fully repented his Taliban past, but in his sole recent interview--with the Times of London--he acknowledged he'd done poorly in his class "Terrorism: Past, Present and Future," attributing that to his disgust with the textbooks: "They would say the Taliban were the same as al Qaeda." At the same time, Mr. Hashemi won't explain an essay he wrote late last year in which he called Israel "an American al Qaeda" aimed at the Arab world. When asked about the Taliban's public executions in Kabul's soccer stadium, he quipped: "There were also executions happening in Texas."

Given his record as a Taliban apologist, Mr. Hashemi has told friends he is stunned Yale didn't look more closely into his curriculum vitae. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay," he told the New York Times. So how did he end up in the Ivy League? Questions start at the State Department's door. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's border security panel, has asked the State Department and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to explain exactly how Mr. Hashemi got an F-1 student visa. Yale's decision tree is clearer. Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions until he took the same post at Stanford last year, told the New York Times that Yale had another foreigner of Mr. Hashemi's caliber apply but "we lost him to Harvard" and "I didn't want that to happen again." Mr. Shaw won't return phone calls now, but emails he's exchanged with others offer insights into his thinking.

The day after the New York Times profile appeared, Haym Benaroya, a professor at Rutgers, wrote to Mr. Shaw expressing disbelief that Mr. Hashemi, who has a fourth-grade education and a high school equivalency certificate, could be at Yale. Mr. Shaw replied that he indeed had "non-traditional roots [and] very little formal education but personal accomplishments that had significant impact." Mr. Benaroya was stupefied; did Mr. Shaw mean accomplishments that had a "positive impact, not terroristic and totalitarian impact"? Mr. Shaw responded: "Correct, and potential to make a positive difference in seeking ways towards peace and democracy. An education is a way toward understanding the complex nuances of world politics."

Richard Pipes on Russian Conservatism

Just saw Richard Pipes' book on Russia reviewed in the UK Spectator. It looked interesting, but the Spectator is password protected--so here's a link to the Yale University Press catalog description:

Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: "Beginning with an insightful study of the origins of Russian statehood in the Middle Ages, when the state grew out of the princely domain but was not distinguished from it, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics includes a masterful survey of Russia?s major conservative thinkers and demonstrates how conservatism is the dominant intellectual legacy of Russia. Pipes examines the geographical, historical, political, military, and social realities of the Russian empire--fundamentally unchanged by the Revolution of 1917--that have traditionally convinced its rulers and opinion leaders that decentralizing political authority would inevitably result in the country's disintegration. Pipes has written a brilliant thesis and analysis of a hitherto overlooked aspect of the Russian intellectual tradition that continues to have significance to this day."

Michelle Malkin: Rally for Abdul Rahman

Noon tomorrow, at the Afghan Embassy in Washington, DC.

Daniel Pipes on Bush's National Security Strategy

Daniel Pipes says George Bush's strategy is missing something:

The report minimizes the threat of radical Islam via the fiction that a "proud religion" has been "twisted and made to serve an evil." Not so: Islamism is a deeply grounded and widely popular version of Islam, as shown by election results from Afghanistan to Algeria. Reliable opinion polls are lacking from majority-Muslim countries but repeated surveys in Britain give some idea of the harrowingly extremist attitudes of its Muslim population: 5 % of them support the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks in London and say more such attacks are justified; 20% have sympathy with the feelings and motives of the July 7 attackers and believe that suicide attacks against the military in Britain can be justified. These results are probably typical of Muslim populations globally, as recent polls of Indonesians and Palestinian Arabs confirms.

The NSS omits any mention of Turkey and Bangladesh and it refers to Saudi Arabia only in passing, suggesting that the Islamist leadership in these states poses no particular concern. The administration's grievous error in helping a terrorist organization, Hamas, reach power in January 2006 is glossed over with soothing words ("The opportunity for peace and statehood … is open if Hamas will abandon its terrorist roots and change its relationship with Israel").

Thus does the NSS accurately reflect the yin and yang of the Bush administration's Middle East policy: a much-needed, relentless focus on the region's sick political culture and the threats it poses to Americans, mixed with an insouciance that current policies are just fine, thank you, everything is on track, and problems – Iraq, terrorism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular – will soon enough be resolved.

More on the Yale Taliban

From John Fund, in the Wall Street Journal.

Anatol Levien: Stop Bashing Russia

From The Los Angeles Times (ht Johnson's Russia List):

To ordinary Russians, Western-sponsored "democracy" meant watching helplessly while "liberal" elites looted the country and transferred vast fortunes to Western banks, to the profit of Western economies.

Harvard University, for example, is very belatedly investigating the conduct of professor Andrei Shleifer, who allegedly profited corruptly from a U.S. government-sponsored Russian privatization project on which he was an advisor. Shleifer was long protected by Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who as President Clinton's Treasury secretary himself helped push Russia's monstrous variant of privatization. If U.S. scholars are — rightly — outraged by the Shleifer case, imagine how ordinary Russians feel.

Because Putin is seen as having ended the post-Soviet decade of chaos, looting and national humiliation; because he has presided over rising living standards; and yes, because he has stood up to the West, he currently has the support of a large majority of Russians.

By contrast, the Russian "democrats" Washington favors have no chance whatsoever of winning a free election. Moreover, the more ardently we support them, the more unpopular they become. Excessive Western criticism of Putin, far from strengthening Russian democracy, angers ordinary Russians and risks driving them further toward chauvinistic nationalism.

Yet Washington still seems to not understand the consequences of its disastrous Russia policies of the 1990s. Hypocritical and extreme anti-Russian attitudes are not confined to old-style Cold Warriors such as Cheney but are widely held among the nation's foreign policy elite. They are on display in a report on the U.S.-Russia relationship just issued by a bipartisan task force of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 76 pages of hectoring criticism of Russia, there is not one suggestion that any U.S. action toward Russia has been in any way wrong or harmful.

The American Thinker on Walt & Mearsheimer

Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky take apart a recent article by Harvard and University of Chicago professors of political science published in the London Review of Books (ht LGF)

But guilt by association is part and parcel of the Walt approach.  For this noxious paper is designed above all to taint the efforts by any Americans to support a strong US-Israel relationship, a bipartisan effort that has won overwhelming American support for many decades.  Much as they try, this article will be unpersuasive in convincing Americans that our real national interest lies with cozying up with Saudi Arabia, and abandoning Israel. And much as they claim their approach is motivated only by the national interest, something uglier is at work here. When something walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and looks like a duck, usually it is a duck. Walt and Mearsheimer have decided to navigate the waters of the Israel-hating, Jew-hating  conspiracy theorists.  There is a good reason for this. They seem comfortable in these waters.

A Belated Happy International Women's Day

We missed this celebration--my second favorite in the former USSR--because of our personal crisis. Konstantin's Russian Blog has a good post on its meaning, here. This paragraph about Russian educational theories might make interesting reading to former Harvard president Lawrence Summers:

One of the things that surprised me greatly at American universities was that so few women (almost all of them foreigners) study engineering, accounting or medicine. I thought that American women, being so feministic, would love to study engineering. At school we were always told by our teachers that girls are better at mathematics and chemistry than boys.

Happy Navruz!

It was my favorite holiday in Uzbekistan: Navruz--the Zoarastrian New Year, a legacy of the Persian Empire. Here's a website devoted to the annual festival of rebirth at Orexca.com. The green mixture seen in the cauldron above is made from new green grass and sugar, and symbolizes a sweet new year...

Integrate the Military and the Academy

Sick of Red v. Blue?

Will Marshall of the Progessive Policy Institute argues that a nation divided against itself cannot stand, and calls for putting more Democrats in the miliitary as well as more Republicans in the universities:

Since the draft ended in 1973, the U.S. military has become one of the nation's most conservative and rock-ribbed Republican bastions. Around the same time, New Left activists began storming the ramparts of higher education, moving universities sharply to the left. As a result, these two ostensibly nonpartisan institutions now define opposing poles on the contemporary political spectrum.

Each institution harbors a particular set of mores and beliefs that doesn't mesh easily with the other's. The U.S. military is the repository for the stern martial virtues of honor, valor, nationalism, discipline, and self-sacrifice. The academy is the wellspring of the postmodern values of personal autonomy, self-expression, cultural diversity, and profound skepticism of authority of any kind.

In the barracks, where televisions are usually tuned to Fox News, military personnel are socialized to view liberals as unpatriotic twits. On campuses, anti-war and anti-military attitudes remain de rigeur. More than three decades after the Vietnam War ended, some elite colleges still ban ROTC programs. And a coalition of law schools has gone to court to keep military recruiters off their campuses, as a way of protesting the Pentagon's policies toward gays.

Yet there is nothing natural or inevitable about antagonism between the military and the academy. Before the tumult of the 1960s, many U.S. universities were staid places more likely to be roiled by fraternity pranks than sit-ins. Mass conscription, begun in World War II and continued through the first half of the Cold War, ensured that the military faithfully mirrored U.S. society, with its dominant New Deal coalition and "natural" Democratic majority.

The Battle of Lookout Mountain

Our drive home took us through Chattanooga, home of NY Times publisher Adolf S. Ochs' Chattanooga Times and Lookout Mountain, where we visited the site of the "Battle Above the Clouds" that turned the tide of the Civil War in favor of the Union Army in November, 1863. From Craven's house, you could see the strategic significance of Chattanooga, and understand the city's role as General Sherman's supply and logistics center for his famous "March to the Sea."

The Pensacola Opera

On a lighter note, during our absence we attended a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Pensacola Opera in Pensacola's historic Saenger Theatre, originally built as an "Opera House" and vaudeville stage. The staging was good, the singing terrific, and the orchestra didn't hit a wrong note. We had a wonderful time, and can recommend it to anyone visiting the Gulf Coast. Bravo!

Afghan Faces Death Penalty in Conversion Case

Michelle Malkin says this news story deserves more attention.The case of an Afghan Christian facing the death penalty for apostasy--required under Islamic law--exposes some problems Islamism poses for democracy.

One of FDR's Four Freedoms was Freedom of Religion. Another was Freedom from Fear. Yet Islamic law prohibits free exercise of religion, and enforces this under penalty of death--that is, only through fear.

Still Offline...

Looks like it might be another week or so...

Offline

FYI, I'll be offline for a while, for personal reasons. Check back in a week or so...

Condoleezza Rice's Fitness Video

Watch it here.

Bush Will Go To Pakistan

Despite the recent bomb blasts that killed an American diplomat:

"Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan," Bush told reporters. His national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said there was evidence the U.S. diplomat had been targeted.

Pakistani officials said the bombing could have been timed for Bush's two-day visit.

Was Iran Behind Tashkent Rabbi's Murder?

Judith Apter Klinghoffer says, on History News Network, that there may be an Iranian connection to the recent murder of a rabbi in Tashkent, Uzbekistan:

The International Sephardic Leadership Council's official response blames IRAN:

The destruction of the Tajikistan synagogue last week was the most disgraceful act committed by a sovereign state toward its Jewish population since the end of WWII. Now, a suspicious murder of the leader of the sister Jewish community, only 4 hours away, raises concern that the Jews may be being targeted. We have heard, through official channels, that Iran may be involved with stirring up trouble in the region, and to that extent, we hope a full and fair investigation will be opened.

That is, indeed, the very least we should insist on.

Russia Demands Berezovsky From UK

Bloomberg News says he's charged with plotting an armed coup against Putin, based on statements he made in an Echo Moskvy radio interview. On the eve of the G-8 summit, it looks like Russia is playing "hardball" with the industrialized nations. It is doubtful that Her Majesty will turn over the former Oligarch:

Berezovsky celebrated his 60th birthday in January with a party at Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's birthplace, outside London, Kommersant reported. The extravaganza featured an ice sculpture representing St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, coated with black caviar.

The guests included fellow Russian millionaire exile Vladimir Gusinsky, the newspaper reported.

The Railway, A Novel From Uzbekistan

NewEurasia.net reports on Hamid Ismailov's new novel, The Railway, written in the tradition of Chingiz Aitmatov's The Day Lasts More Than a Thousand Years

Set in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route.

Their colourful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tartars and Gypsies.

Rich and picaresque, The Railway is full of colour. Fusing literary sophistication with a naive delight in storytelling, it chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the twentieth century.

AEI Discusses Russian NGO Law

Yesterday, Leon Aron moderated an all-star panel at the American Enterprise Institute on the implications of Russia's new NGO law. No one actually defended the law. Ntalia Bourjaily and Andrew Kuchins (below) detailed problems the new law posed for American-supported NGOs working in the former USSR. On the other hand, Nikolas Gvosdev (below) said the letter of the law was not as significant as how the Russian government would interpret the law, and that NGO concerns were not pressing at this time for a rising Russian middle-class just beginning to enjoy personal freedoms of travel, consumption, and lifestyle. He predicted that many non-political NGOs would not be affected, so that the impact of the law would be mostly felt by political activists, and attention must be paid to how they are affected. Maureen Greenwood (below) presented dramatic examples of NGOs targeted by the Russian government today.Unfortunately for Amnesty International, Greenwood's chosen example of a victim of the Russian NGO crackdown seems to be the case of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, now hbeing arrassed for publishing articles by the late Chechen terrorist leader Aslan Maskhadov in its magazine. Although Greenwood described his articles as "non-violent," Maskhadov is to Russia what Osama Bin Laden is to the USA. It is doubtful that an "American-Al Qaeda Friendship Society" would be permitted to operate in the context of the War on Terror (any more than the German-American Bund was permitted to operate during World War II). If Amnesty International, once known for a commitment to non-violent prisoners of conscience, has now decided to champion violent Islamist terrorists like Maskhadov, one would have to question why anyone in America--let alone Russia--would want to to support its efforts. And led this observer to question why Maureen Greenwood, who edited the 250-page report Anti-Semitism in the Former Soviet Union, 1995-1997, didn't discuss the existence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism among Islamist Chechens--examples such as this 2002 report by Lev Gorodetsky of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

A leaflet distributed recently in Chechnya stoked Jewish concern with the comment: "The Chechen people are continuing their great jihad by clearing the fatherland from Russian occupiers, servants of the world's Jews."

You can watch a video of the event, here.

Roger L. Simon's Oscar Picks

Picture - Brokeback Mountain
Actor - Phillip Seymour Hoffman - Capote
Actress - Reese Witherspoon - Walk the Line
Director - Ang Lee - Brokeback Mountain
Original screenplay - Paul Haggis - Crash
Adapted screenplay - Larry McMurty & Diana Ossana - Brokeback Mountain

More picks here...

Vladimir Bukovsky: EU May Become New USSR

The Soviet dissident told Brussels Journal that the EU project is dangerous and should now be stopped:

It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.

If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes – two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so – pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly.

Hence, we have now been warned. Meanwhile they are introducing more and more ideology. The Soviet Union used to be a state run by ideology. Today’s ideology of the European Union is social-democratic, statist, and a big part of it is also political correctness. I watch very carefully how political correctness spreads and becomes an oppressive ideology, not to mention the fact that they forbid smoking almost everywhere now. Look at this persecution of people like the Swedish pastor who was persecuted for several months because he said that the Bible does not approve homosexuality. France passed the same law of hate speech concerning gays. Britain is passing hate speech laws concerning race relations and now religious speech, and so on and so forth. What you observe, taken into perspective, is a systematic introduction of ideology which could later be enforced with oppressive measures. Apparently that is the whole purpose of Europol. Otherwise why do we need it? To me Europol looks very suspicious. I watch very carefully who is persecuted for what and what is happening, because that is one field in which I am an expert. I know how Gulags spring up.

It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberaties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.

Patrick Ross: Empower Artists to Aid Culture

Patrick Ross of the Progress and Freedom Foundation takes Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture. to task for his campaign against author's rights, such as copyright:

Now it may be in the self-interest of the Type C downloader to obtain "niche" content at no cost. But the vast majority of artists on Anderson's curve are on the "long tail" not at the head of the demand curve. Free Culture defenders like to cite how the Internet has changed things. Here is an example of true change resulting from the Internet; the ability of niche artists to profit from their work, even when it isn't mainstream. For respected scholars to argue that depriving a creator of potential revenue for her work is "harmless to the artist" shows a true disrespect to all artists, and a dangerous compulsion to put the desires of the masses ahead of the rights of individuals.

.

USSR Plotted Pope's Murder

Drudge headlines this Reuters story on Italy's finding that the USSR was behind the attempt on Pope John Paul II.

They might have added that Pope John Paul II--more successfully--plotted and executed the end of the USSR.

In the end, the Pope won (with a little help from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher), and the USSR lost.

Something we can celebrate today.

Ann Coulter's Oscar Predictions

Ann says Brokeback Mountain's a favorite for almost everything, then adds:

As a final prediction, for the second year, there will be no mention of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was brutally murdered by an angry Muslim a little over a year ago on the streets of Amsterdam. (Now that's blacklisted!)

Cat Curfews in Europe

To fight the bird flu epidemic, European countries have passed restrictions on the freedom of cats, reports the London Times.

New Sisyphus: Bush's PC War

The retired US State Department official who blogs as New Sisyphus explains the failure of the Bush Doctrine:

Bush lied. Not enough people died.
When President Bush made the case for the War on Terror, it was made in the context of the two main speeches quoted at length above, which constituted the beginning of what has become to be known as the Bush Doctrine. Conservatives signed on to that war effort because conservatives were persuaded that Bush's diagnosis of the problem and intended solution was correct.

From the beginning, I've had reservations about Bush's commitment to the so-called Bush Doctrine. While the initial job--dismantling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan--was approached properly, it also seemed to me that the Administration wanted to win that war on the cheap, expending other people's blood. Conservatives may shake with anger when Senator Kerry charges that Bin Laden got away because we sub-contracted out the fighting at Tora Bora, and I understand that. Kerry is not the man to carry such a charge. However, I think the real reason it resonates so badly is because it is true.

Afghanistan should have been invaded and occupied by a very large all-American army. Unlawful combatants, including Taliban spokesmen, should have been summarily shot, as is proper under both international law and the law of warfare as it has evolved. The war should have gone through Pakistan, laying to waste a government and a country that was the Taliban's main enablers. The entire area should have been laid to waste, destroyed completely and utterly; and then, having delivered the short, sharp punic lesson, we should have withdrawn en masse.

I thought so then, I think so now. Instead, what we got was PC cant about how we were "liberating" the Afghans. What was sold as an unrelenting war instead became a long-term occupation, with us playing at teaching a traditional, hide-bound Muslim society about multi-culturalism, tolerance, love, peace and harmony. We installed a government and backed it with power so weak its writ barely carried into outer Kabul, let alone the badlands. We issued press releases patting ourselves on the back about how many women attended the constitutional convention, as if such a thing would be happening were we not there with guns. Worse still, we then sub-sub-contracted the security work out to NATO, thereby exposing ourselves to every left-wing political party in Europe, who now hold our policy hostage by withholding their consent to new military deployments.

Still, I held my tongue. Look on the bright side: the Taliban are gone, Al-Qaeda is scattered and if the Afghans can salvage something out of the peace that follows, well, that's a good thing isn't it? It's not a perfect world, and the U.S. is acting under great constraint, so maybe this is the best we can hope for. Basically, at its root, the Bush Doctrine still appeared solid to me, though I disputed the tactics employed.

Iraq followed. Unlike the paleo-conservatives, I thought this was generally in line with the Bush Doctrine. For all the reasons Bush set forth (ignore the leftists and their "where is the WMD?" talk-they've lied so much that they themselves now believe their own lies), Iraq was a logical next step in the War on Terror.

While the planning was on-going, we made the politically fatal and totally self-made error of taking the issue to the United Nations, at the behest of the Hamiltonians/Wilsonians of our own foreign policy institutions and, largely, the British, whose support and whose military we did not and do not need. This decision was fatal because it focused the War on Terror on unimportant, minor concerns. (Did the inspectors receive full and complete access on March 19 or limited access or should they be there at all...blahblahblahblahblah). It also handed the keys of victory to our enemies. Not surprisingly, they promptly hid those keys, where they remain today in between award ceremonies to Michael Moore and shouts of "Abu Ghraib" on the hour.

What political correctness and a squeamishness about all matters religious did to Islamism, the approach to the United Nations did for European and international leftism. Now, thanks to the Bush Administration, all of our actions were to be judged by a Islamist and a Leftist. Every day we ask them if we are winning and every day they say "no;" the news headlines gleefully report our continued failure.

By turning what was an American war against an American enemy into a popularity contest, the Administration surrendered control over the victory conditions, ensuring our failure, which would then further erode popularity, etc. etc. until you just want to throw up.

The American Thinker: Islamism Not Democratic

Andrew J. Bostom says it is delusional to imagine that states governed by Shari'a law can be anything other than totalitarian:

The great 20th century scholar of Islamic Law, G. H. Bousquet, wrote in 1950,

“Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of the fiqh, to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer….the study of Muhammadan law (dry and forbidding though it may appear to those who confine themselves to the indispensable study of the fiqh) is of great importance to the world today.”

Bousquet’s admonition to study Islamic Law (Shari’a), or at least recognize the profound importance of its influence on basic Muslim conceptions, has perhaps even greater urgency more than a half-century later, in 2006. While electoral processes in the Islamic Middle East may have further enfranchised the Shari’a-based understanding of hurriyya, it is delusional to equate this conception with the freedom espoused by John Stuart Mill in “On Liberty.”

Andrew McCarthy: Investigate Dubai's Links to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad

I have so many links to Michelle Malkin that I am going to link straight to the Andrew McCarthy piece in National Review she quotes in her rebuttal to Bush administration mouthpieces on the Dubai Port Deal:

It cannot be gainsaid that the UAE was an al Qaeda booster before 9/11. Nor should it be minimized that, ever since, the country has vastly improved, giving valuable assistance to our military overseas. Of course, on the latter score, it is worth noting that — the port deal aside — a good relationship with the U.S. is where the UAE's interests lie. Its hospitality to American forces and its billions in purchases of American arms are precious insurance for a tiny autocracy that has sometimes tense relations with menacing Iran. Still, proponents of the ports deal understandably emphasize that the UAE's strides are a welcome development. It is one we should cultivate to the extent we can do so without compromising core principles.

But that means not at the expense of making a mockery of our laws — particularly the laws essential to our security. The ports transaction will be under review for the next 45 days. That probe must include an assessment of the UAE's ties to Hamas and PIJ.

If there is to be anything left of the Bush Doctrine, the United States cannot allow a country in violation of our counterterrorism laws to play a critical role in admitting, storing and transferring shipments into our country. Nor can we abide a lucrative financial arrangement for a country that uses its wealth to underwrite organizations our law designates as terrorists.

If the Bush administration showed "wilfull blindness" to terror links in this case, it might be worse than negligence, at a time of war it just might constitute an impeachable offense...

It's Official: No US Plan For Iraq

So says this article from the Republican-friendly Washington Times(ht War and Piece):

The Bush administration never drew up a comprehensive plan for rebuilding Iraq after the March 2003 invasion, which contributed to a severe shortage of skilled federal workers in Baghdad and to the mismanagement of the country's oil money, according to a new government report.
"There was insufficient systematic planning for human capital management in Iraq before and during the U.S.-directed stabilization and reconstruction operations," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, in a new "lessons learned" report released yesterday. "The practical limitations ensuing from this shortfall adversely affected reconstruction in post-war Iraq."
The Pentagon's initial plans for reconstruction crumbled when it encountered an unexpected foreign and domestic insurgency that looted the country, sabotaged electric and water service, and killed hundreds of Americans and Iraqis in 2003 after the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein.
The administration reacted by quickly establishing the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), directed by L. Paul Bremer, and pumped billions of dollars of United Nations-held oil cash into Baghdad.
But, Mr. Bowen concluded in a report focusing on the CPA's staffing, "[t]he unanticipated post-war collapse of virtually all Iraqi governing structures, substantially hindered coalition efforts to develop and rapidly execute an effective reconstruction program."

NYC Stand Up For Denmark! Rally on Friday March 3rd

Michelle Malkin has posted this announcement from Snarksmith:

There is no way that a city like New York should neglect to stand up for free speech, democracy and secular cosmopolitan values. So I am pleased to inform you that the rally for Solidarity With Denmark is indeed on for this week.

It will be held outside the Danish consulate at One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 885 Second Avenue, on FRIDAY, MARCH 3RD, FROM 12:00 PM TO 1:00 PM. (A fitting an emulation of the hugely successful D.C. version.)

I've been in touch with the consul-general himself, and he has graciously welcomed us. I promised the event would be as civilized and dignified as this noble cause demands, and in order to obviate a city permit, please note that NO electronically amplified sound equipment or bullhorns may be used. But signs and placards -- the cleverer the better -- are of course highly encouraged. Relevant cheeses, plastic toy building blocks and Shakespeare allusions also kosher...

Spread the word.

Manifesto: Islamism's Totalitarian Global Threat

From Denmark's Jyllands-Posten(ht lgf):

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

How come I didn't see this manifesto in today's Washington Post? Censorship or self-censorship?

More on this topic at MichelleMalkin.com

What Comes Next in Iraq?

Iraq the Model's Mohammed says there may be attempts to form a united front of Sunnis and Shia against the United States (ht Roger L. Simon):

Clerics will not stop and they will carry on with their plans and I suspect they will launch the next phase of their plan soon after they received instructions from Syria (the Muslim scholars) and from Iran (the Sadrists).
The objective of the second phase will to move the conflict from one on the streets to a conflict with America. That’s not my personal opinion, but it's what clerics themselves are saying including Muqtada who returned from Qum in Iran to organize a joint Sunni-Shia demonstration against the occupation!!

Now the government has rise to the level of the challenge and proceed to take the most important and critical step and disband religious militias of all sorts and limit the influence of clerics-of any sect-in the decision-making process.
I think this is the best time for the new government to tackle this issue as the government now has all the factors that make such a move legitimate and necessary.

John Fund on the Yale Taliban

John Fund (ht lgf) is not happy with the Yale Taliban featured in the New York Times Sunday Magazine:

I don't believe Mr. Rahmatullah had direct knowledge of the 9/11 plot, and I don't think he has ever killed anyone. I can appreciate that he is trying to rebuild his life. But he willingly and cheerfully served an evil regime in a manner that would have made Goebbels proud. That he was 22 at the time is little of an excuse. There are many poor, bright students--American and foreign alike--who would jump at the opportunity to attend Yale. Why should Mr. Rahmatullah go to the line ahead of all of them? That's a question Yale alumni should ask when their alma mater comes looking for contributions.

President Bush, who already has a well-known disdain for Yale elitism from his student days there, may also have some questions. In the wake of his being blindsided by his own administration over the Dubai port deal, he should be interested in finding out exactly who at the State Department approved Mr. Rahmatullah's application for a student visa.

When I was teaching in Uzbekistan, it was almost impossible for my students to get a visa to study in the USA. Even if they had money. Even if they were medical students. So, not only did Mr. Rahmatullah go to the head of Yale's line, my guess is that he jumped to the head of the US visa line, too.

Remember Ukraine?

Neeka's Backlog has new photos of Yulia Timoshenko's campaign. Will she depose Yushchenko to become the next President of the Republic? At this point, from Neeka's pictures, it certainly looks like she's well-organized and well-funded. Hell hath no fury...

UPDATE: The Times of London has this headline Ukraine Turns Back to Russia...

A Russian Anecdote

(Photo by And-rey)

Yesterday, I took a Russian friend to the airport. She was returning to Moscow. Before boarding her flight, while she was putting away her ticket and passport, she told me this story, which somehow seemed very Russian:

There once was a officer in the Soviet army. He was beginning his career, which seemed very bright. He had done well in school, and was a member of the Communist Party. The future stretched in front of him. Everything was possible. Perhaps he would become a general. Then, one day, he didn't know how it happened, he misplaced his Party card. He had to show it, and when he went through his pockets, it was gone.

Losing your Party card was a very serious offense in the USSR. It was interpreted to mean that you didn't care enough about the Party to know where your card was kept. The officer was reported, he was reprimanded, and a note was made in his permanent file. He knew that his career was over. His comrades rose to higher ranks, but he was not promoted.

So, he began to drink.

Years passed. 10, 20 years. Perestroika came and went. The USSR collapsed. The Soviet army became the Russian army. He retired, and lived on a very small pension.

He decided to quit drinking. He straightened himself up a bit. And then one day, he needed to show his documents for something official, and looked through papers in his desk. He would start a new life.

Suddenly, he found himself holding his Communist Party card. "Aha! So it was in my drawer all along."

He began to drink, again.

Some Differences Between the UK and UAE

Since the perceptually challenged President Bush and administration apologists like Frances Fragos Townsend can't see the obvious, Michelle Malkin quotes Walid Phares' list of some differences between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates:

a) Great Britain is listed as a target by al Qaida, not the UAE; b) Tony Blair was sitting in the US Congress when President Bush declared War on the Taliban in October 2001, not the monarchs of the UAE; c) The UK has a clear strategy against the Jihadist-Terrorists, not the Emirates; and last but not least, the Prime Minister of the Isles declared the ideology of al Qaida as terrorist and criminal, not Dubai’s rulers. These, plus many other considerations grants Britain a clear status of strategic ally in the War with the Jihadists over the UAE’s somewhat cooperation against al Qaida...

Saudi Arabia Behind Danish Cartoon Crisis

So say Dr. Ali H. Alyami and Colonel B. Wayne Quist, who explain the international political calculation underlying the Danish Cartoon Crisis :

Given Saudi influence with the Muslim faithful worldwide, the royal family
failed to exercise restraint in the cartoon controversy and placed its own
narrow self-interests before peace, stability, respect for law, and sanctity
of life. The Saudi regime demonstrated that it would risk plunging the world
into religious war if its domination or survival were perceivably
threatened.

The Saudi decision to initiate a protest against Denmark was based on
well-calculated principles of royal family self-preservation and helped
divert world attention from the Hamas Palestinian election victory,
uncomfortable Kuwaiti succession issues, and the extraordinary Asian
agreements.

The primary goal of the Saudi royal family is to ensure its religious
leadership by crowning itself as the only Muslim government willing and able
to challenge the West and defend Islam at any cost. When asked about his
country’s reaction to the cartoons while attending an Arab Interior Minister
meeting in Tunis, Saudi Prince Naif said, “Nobody can pressure the Kingdom
to change its stand on a basic issue like this. I don't think it is
reasonable for international press or any organization or state to oppose
the decision taken by an Arab and Islamic country on this issue.”

The Saudi government has continually re-emphasized to the international
community the power and control it possesses as presumed leader of the
Muslim community. In contrast to other Arab and Muslim countries, there were
no demonstrations or burnings of flags or embassies in Saudi Arabia because
all forms of public expression are prohibited, despite Interior Minister
Naif's argument to the contrary during his press conference in Tunis when he
said, “Saudi Arabia respects opinion. Everybody has the right to express his
opinion.”

A Question for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Adam Garfinkle, once a speechwriter for former Secretary of Stte Colin Powell, now editor of The American Interest, blogs here that Seth Cropsey--former director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty--was present at Chris Hitchen's Stand Up for Denmark! demonstration on Friday.

So, how come, when I googled Hitchens, I didn't find any stories from VOA or RFE/RL? Is the reason censorship, or self-censorship?

I'd say "Prominent Former Bush Administration official attends Christopher Hitchens' Pro-Denmark Rally" seems to be a newsworthy story, especially when the official in question had been the director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, responsible for America's official broadcasting--including to the Arab and Muslim world.

I applaud Seth Cropsey for attending the rally, and now hope that his international broadcastering colleagues will follow his example--and stand up for freedom of speech instead of Islamist extremism, on the air and off...

FYI, here's a link to a search for "Hitchens" at the RFE/RL website that shows nothing about Hitchens' Citizens for Denmark rally.

Dynamic Russia

In Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century: Regional Futures and US Strategy, a 1998 publication from the RAND Corporation's "Project Air Force" co-edited by Zalmay Khalilzad--currently American viceroy in Iraq--one paragraph jumps out as something Dick Cheney might want to pay attention to before he plans anything rash at the upcoming G-8 summit meeting in St. Petersburg:

Dynamic Russia. The essential feature of this outcome would be a Russian "economic miracle," perhaps analogous to that which occurred in West German, Italy, and Japan in the 1950s and 60s, or such has occured in the emerging markets of East Asia in recent years. With a stable political system, free markets, and abundant natural and human resources, Russia might begin an economic "takeoff" in the course of the next several years, and sustain 8-10 percent per annum GDP growth for a decade or more. A dynamic Russia might not have overtly hegemonic aspirations toward the countries on its periphery. Indeed, a focus on improved living standards, consumption and investment by individuals and firms could direct attention away from international aspirations and could facilitate the normalization of Russia as a nation-state, much the way Japan, France, Turkey and other countries redefined themselves in the period after empire. Nonetheless, a dynamic Russia inevitably would exercise a high degree of influence on its neighbors through trde and investment, particularly if some of these countries lagged Russia in economic performance. (p.289)

In other words, a "dynamic Russia" is in America's interest. This is something that I am sure President Putin would agree with, and provides a better blueprint for American policy at the G-8 summit than anything I've seen coming out of the Bush administration nowadays (at least anything that has been published the Washington Post).

Reese Schonfeld on CNN's Danish Cartoon-phobia

Ted Turner's co-founder of CNN, Reese Schonfeld, doesn't think much of CNN's non-coverage of the Danish Cartoon Crisis:

Does CNN journalism now duck provocation because someone involved may think the provocation was unnecessary? What kind of a standard is that? Does CNN conform its journalism to the “expectations to the audience as a whole?” Does CNN let its audience determine that a subject is of “no intrinsic news values.”

Rose defends his editorial decision but Verjee cuts him short and quotes The Guardian reporting that three years ago Rose’s paper “actually refused to run cartoons that essentially poked fun at Jesus Christ and the Resurrection” because “they would be offensive to readers. Is that true?” she snaps at him. Then she cuts him short and suggests his paper is guilty of “double standards.” . . .

. . . Throughout the interview Rose has attempted to show the cartoons that are the subjects of the interview. But every time he holds one up the camera tilts away. I assume that CNN is so concerned about the reaction in the Arab world that it censors itself. May it rue the day.

Maybe now that he's left AOL-Time Warner, Ted Turner and Reese can get back together again to develop a really balanced and objective news channel--if they did, I'd want to work there...

Hurrah for Christopher Hitchens!

Joel Gelman says Hitchens' stock is on the rise:

Christopher Hitchens seems to understand the titanic struggle of civilizations that is in its early stages and seems determined to come out on the right side of history this time.

Bush to Declare New Cold War?

That sounds like the bottom line of Peter Baker's article about America's relations with Russia, in today's Washington Post:

Critics charge that Putin's leadership of the G-8 summit makes a mockery of the organization, and some, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have called for the United States to boycott. Like their Washington counterparts, officials in London, Paris and Berlin worry the St. Petersburg summit in July will prove an embarrassment and are conferring about how to avoid appearing to endorse Putin's leadership.

"The G-8 summit in St. Petersburg is becoming the focal point for everybody to reconsider where we are in terms of Russia," said Anders Aslund, a Russia specialist at the Institute for International Economics who was among those who briefed Cheney last month. "Is this really where we want to be? Should we change policy?" ...

...In Washington, U.S. officials are discussing ways of expressing concerns about Russian democracy in advance of the summit. Among the possibilities: a comprehensive and blunt speech by a senior official, possibly Rice, laying out more explicitly the U.S. view of Russia's direction. Or perhaps a gathering of human rights, democracy and other civil society groups either inside Russia or outside the country to showcase U.S. support for those under pressure from the Kremlin.

Aslund suggested the other seven leaders of the G-8 meet elsewhere in Europe without Putin before the summit to demonstrate concern over Russia. "The U.S. administration is thinking that it needs to do something," he said, "but it doesn't know what yet."

I'd suggest America change policy all right--to a much more clearly pro-Russian policy. Make Putin a full partner in an all-out war on Jihadi states and terrorists (including Chechens).

After all, Russia is far more democratic than the United Arab Emirates. For example:

*Russia has multiple political parties. The UAE does not permit any political parties.
*Russia has an elected President. The UAE has absolute monarchs, called "Emirs" or "Sheiks."
*Russia is a secular state, the UAE are Islamic emirates.
* No Russian citizens participated in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Two citizens of the UAE did.

And so on.

So I have to smile, when the Bush administration criticizes the President of Russia as undemocratic--while defending the Emir of Dubai...

Mark Steyn on Paris' Halimi Murder

From SteynOnline(ht lgf):

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' In London, the Observer couldn't even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi's, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ''radical young Jewish men'' who'd attacked an ''Arab-run grocery.''

At one level, those spokesmonsieurs are right: It could happen to anyone. Even in the most civilized societies, there are depraved monsters who do terrible things. When they do, they rip apart entire families, like the Halimis and Selams. But what inflicts the real lasting damage on society as a whole is the silence and evasions of the state and the media and the broader culture.

This Book Looks Interesting . . .

Just found this as part of my research, and ordered a copy of this indictment of NGO neo-colonialism from Amazon.com. It reminds me of the debate over the Welfare Reform Bill that Bill Clinton signed. I wish the former President and much-mooted future UN Secretary-General would spearhead an equally strong effort to "end Foreign Aid as we know it."

Book Description
An informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West's efforts to date to improve the lot of the so-called developing world, with constructive suggestions on how to move forward.

William Easterly's The White Man's Burden is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty. The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it. We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second.

The ironies are many: We preach a gospel of freedom and individual accountability, yet we intrude in the inner workings of other countries through bloated aid bureaucracies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that are accountable to no one for the effects of their prescriptions. We take credit for the economic success stories of the last fifty years, like South Korea and Taiwan, when in fact we deserve very little. However, we reject all accountability for pouring more than half a trillion dollars into Africa and other regions and trying one "big new idea" after another, to no avail. Most of the places in which we've meddled are in fact no better off or are even worse off than they were before. Could it be that we don't know as much as we think we do about the magic spells that will open the door to the road to wealth?

Absolutely, William Easterly thunders in this angry, irreverent, and important book. He contrasts two approaches: (1) the ineffective planners' approach to development-never able to marshal enough knowledge or motivation to get the overambitious plans implemented to attain the plan's arbitrary targets and (2) a more constructive searchers' approach-always on the lookout for piecemeal improvements to poor peoples' well-being, with a system to get more aid resources to those who find things that work. Once we shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do that's focused and pragmatic to improve the lot of millions, such as public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives. We need to face our own history of ineptitude and learn our lessons, especially at a time when the question of our ability to "build democracy," to transplant the institutions of our civil society into foreign soil so that they take root, has become one of the most pressing we face.

About the Author
William Easterly is a professor of economics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. He was a senior research economist at the World Bank for more than sixteen years. In addition to his academic work, he has written widely in recent years for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, and Foreign Policy, among others. He is the author of the acclaimed book The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. He has worked in many areas of the developing world, most extensively in Africa, Latin America, and Russia.

Here's a link to his Washington Post article: The West Can't Save Africa. And here's a link to his Foreign Policy article, The Utopian Nightmare. Finally, Easterly's critique of Jeffery Sachs's book, also in the Washington Post:

"Success in ending the poverty trap," Sachs writes, "will be much easier than it appears." Really? If it's so easy, why haven't five decades of effort gotten the job done? Sachs should redirect some of his outrage at the question of why the previous $2.3 trillion didn't reach the poor so that the next $2.3 trillion does. In fact, ending poverty is not easy at all. In those five decades, poverty researchers have learned a great deal about the complexity of toxic politics, bad history (including exploitative or inept colonialism), ethnic and regional conflicts, elites' manipulation of politics and institutions, official corruption, dysfunctional public services, malevolent police forces and armies, the difficulty of honoring contracts and property rights, unaccountable and excessively bureaucratic donors and many other issues. Sachs, however, sees these factors as relatively unimportant. Indeed, he seems deaf to the babble and bungling of the U.N. agencies he calls upon to run the Big Plan, not to mention other unaccountable and ineffectual aid agencies.

New Sisyphus: Declare War Now on Jihadi States

The former US State Deparment Official blogging as New Sisyphus says President Bush has not been tough enough, and argues Andrew Jackson was a better wartime leader:

RESOLVED: That the Jacksonian approach described above is the only way to victory in the War on Terror, meaning that the immediate and full war mobilization of the United States should be ordered, war should be declared on the leading states supporting Jihadism-including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria-and merciless, unrelenting war should be waged on their homelands until the Arab world begs for peace or until eradicated.

Agree or disagree? Let the debate begin.

Neeka's Backlog

Saw a link to a post on this site on Neeka's Backlog, and thought I'd return the favor. Thanks, Neeka!

Video of Christopher Hitchens' Danish Cartoon Solidarity Speech

At the Age of Hooper blog (scroll down).(ht the Christopher Hitchens website).

Here's a transcript from The Adventures of Chester (ht Instapundit):

Brothers and sisters, I just thought I would thank everyone for coming and say how touching it is that people will take a minute from a working day to do something that our government won't do for us, which is quite simply to say that we know who our friends and our allies are, and they should know that we know it. And that we take a stand of democracy against dictatorship. And when the embassies of democracies are burned in the capital cities of dictatorships, we think the State Department should denounce that, and not denounce the cartoons.

[Cheers of support and applause]

And that we're fed up with the invertebrate nature of our State Department.

[Laughter, cheers, applause]

If we had more time, brothers and sisters, I think that we should have gone from here to the embassy of Iraq, to express our support for another country that is facing a campaign of lies and hatred and violence. And we would -- if we did that we would say that we knew blasphemy when we saw it, we knew sacrilege when we saw it: it is sacrilegious to blow up beautiful houses of worship in Samarra. That would be worth filling the streets of the world to protest about.

[Cheers and applause]

We are not for profanity nor for disrespect, though we are, and without any conditions, or any ifs or any buts, for free expression in all times and in all places

[applause]

and our solidarity . . . [inaudible]

[applause]

So, we said we would, I told the Danish embassy that we would disperse at one o'clock. I hope and believe we've made our point, I hope and believe that today's tv will have some more agreeable features, such as your own, to show, instead of the faces of violence and hatred, and fascism, and I think I can just close by saying, solidarity with Denmark, death to fascism.

And there's a long-ish and interesting biography of Hitchens on Wikipedia.

Washington Times story here.
Cox News Service story here.

"Solidarity With Denmark--Death To Fascism!" Conclusion

Not all the demonstrators were conservatives.   For example, this is Will Marshall, a Clinton Democrat, and BMOC at the Progressive Policy Institute. He was with Marshall Wittman, aka Bull Moose, also a progressive Democrat. And I met a Johns Hopkins physics professor there, who had driven down from Baltimore. So he and I made up an accidental delegation, and it was nice not to be the only one.
  And of course, here is Andrew Sullivan , who did a lot to publicize the demonstration on his blog. He arrived late, and was almost invisible under his watch cap, sunglasses, and beard. Luckily, he hugged Hitch, and that was a give-away. He didn't address the crowd, though.
  The mysterious woman in the sunglasses and hat seemed to be a close friend of Hitchens. His wife? Who knows. She wasn't the only one with sunglasses, which made celebrity-spotting a little difficult.
 In the end, the demonstration made it's point very well. And the spirit in the air at Chistopher Hitchens's solidarity demonstration in front of the Danish Embassy reminded me of Henry V's St. Crispin's day speech:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 

"Solidarity With Denmark--Death To Fascism!", Cont'd.

There were a number of reporters and photographers in the crowd in front of the Danish Embassy--yes, it is indeed across the street from Senator Hillary Clinton's house, but she was a no-show.  Here's Hitch speaking to the Atlanta Constitution.
 And here's Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol with Tony Blankley. I overheard this question answer between Kristol and a reporter:
"Did you get any threats after The Weekly Standard re-published the Danish Cartoons?"
"No."
 And here are some of the really home-made signs carried by the demonstrators. It was touching. I asked a few of them how they heard about it, and most of them seem to have found out from reading Andrew Sullivan or other bloggers, or by email. Didn't see too many rent-a-crowd types.
  

"Solidarity With Denmark--Death To Fascism!"

That was Christopher Hitchens' rallying cry to the hundred or so demonstrators gathered in front of the Danish Embassy at lunchtime in Washington, DC today to show solidarity in the Danish Cartoon Crisis. Hitch was in fine form as a speaker, jumping up on a big stone at the end to address the crowd, channelling a combination of George Orwell and La Pasionaria. It was really a solemn and moving occasion. Hitch said he did it so that Danish television viewers could watch something to make them feel better--and Danish TV was there... There were few glitterati or celebrities, but there were some. Here is Hitchens with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and someone who may have been Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
 Fox News covered the event, and interviewed Hitchens. He told the reporter that Karen Hughes should be "Fired!", and condemnned the US State Department for America's failure to stand with Denmark. I don't know if this is just local Fox 5 News or national Fox News Channel. I hope the News Channel runs the footage, so the country can see Hitch in action.
  Columnist Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich's former press secretary, who has written a controversial book about Islamism, was there. He wins my vote for best-dressed demonstrator. His coat must have been camel's hair, or vicuna, or something really expensive. It stood out in a crowd. Classy, as we say in the Bronx.
 Michelle Malkin has more links to more links, here. 

Chirac Attends Jewish Funeral in Paris

The deceased Ilan Halimi had been kidnapped, tortured, and then murdered by an anti-semitic Islamic gang, Ha'aretz reports:

PARIS - Cries of "vive la France" and "la justice" accompanied President Jacques Chirac, his wife Bernadette and Premier Dominique de Villepin last night as they left the memorial evening held here yesterday for Ilan Halimi.

The ceremony, which was held in the Grand Synagogue on rue de la Victoire, was seen by many in the Jewish community as the state leaders' formal declaration that anti-Semitism was to blame for the horrific kidnapping, torture and murder of the 23-year-old Parisian.

At 5 P.M., two hours before the ceremony's official opening, police cars surrounded the synagogue area. Police at roadblocks inspected the bag of everyone who entered the area. Hundreds of thousands of people crowded on either side of the street, waiting their turn to enter the synagogue. At the synagogue's entrance police used metal detectors and checked the identity cards and passports of all who pushed in.

The synagogue's 3,000 seats were full, dozens more mourners stood in the aisles and many thousands remained outside and could not get in.

During the chilling ceremony, an 8-year-old read the Psalm "I will raise my eyes to the mountains, whence will come my help?" near a giant picture of Halimi.

Halimi's family and others in the Jewish community said that had the authorities admitted earlier that the young man had been attacked for being a Jew, he could possibly have been saved.

Halimi was found dying, covered with burns and cuts, on Monday February 13. He had been kidnapped three weeks earlier, after a Muslim gang sent a blonde to seduce him. Halimi had agreed to meet with her after meeting in a chat room. Immediately after his abduction his mother went to the police, saying he was kidnapped by anti-Semites. Sources in the community said three Jewish youngsters had managed to escape similar abdications in recent months.

Indian Scientist Gets US Visa

The day after this Washington Post story appeared on page one, the Post reported that the US State Department has decided to grant Goverdhan Mehta a US visa, after all.