Martin Kramer on the Wilson Center's Iran Hostage Crisis

From Martin Kramer's Sandstorm article about Haleh Esfandiari:

The reinvention of the Wilson Center began in 1999, when Lee Hamilton took over. Coming straight from 35 years in Congress, he knew how to manage the critics on the Hill. But more important, he came with a vision of a different kind of Center, one closely attuned to informing foreign policy debates. When I returned to the Wilson Center as a public policy fellow in 2000, the Hamilton era was well underway. The Center had moved into spanking new quarters, and every program had been realigned with the mission of policy relevance. Personally, I liked it, and it's where I wrote about a third of my book Ivory Towers on Sand--to be precise, the chapter on the policy irrelevance of Middle Eastern studies.

The Wilson Center today is a privileged conduit between government and academe, and it's now urgent to defend that space against its enemies, foreign and domestic. Abroad, there are Middle Eastern governments like Iran's, which cannot imagine an institution like the Wilson Center as anything but a front for espionage and subversion. But the academic left in America is as doctrinaire as Iran's fanatics in shunning the United States government as though it were the Great Satan incarnate.

An example is Ervand Abrahamian, an Iran specialist at the City University of New York, who said this in response to Esfandiari's arrest: “It has to be stressed that scholars such as Haleh have nothing to do with U.S. policy of ‘regime change.' We academics need to distance ourselves from policy makers in D.C.” Abrahamian is right about Esfandiari--she hasn't been an advocate of regime change--but he's utterly ignorant of the Wilson Center's mission, which is to engage policy makers on a continuous basis. If Wilson Center fellows distanced themselves from policy makers, there would be no point in the taxpayer maintaining them in Washington. The Center's fellows and staff could be dispersed to the universities, where they could talk to one another and to Abrahamian--on someone else's tab.

So the Esfandiari affair is really about this: her right, and the right of all scholars, to enjoy open and private contacts with U.S. policy makers and U.S. public officials. This too is an element of academic freedom, and it's precisely this element that's under assault by Iran in Esfandiari's case. This is why I'm pleased to see the likes of the Middle East Studies Association rising to Esfandiari's defense: inadvertently, no doubt, they're defending the mission of the Wilson Center, and the right of every scholar to enter and inhabit that space between academe and government, without being accused, Iran-style, of espionage, collusion, or complicity.

One spin on the Esfandiari case actually undermines that right. Robin Wright of the Washington Post, who can be relied upon to get everything wrong, described the arrest of Esfandiari and other "soft hostages" as "an Iranian reaction to the Bush administration's $75 million program to promote democracy in Iran." The Wilson Center even felt compelled to note that it doesn't receive funding from that pot. Come on. For nearly thirty years, Iran's leaders have lived in the certainty that Washington is running a massive covert operation to subvert them, one that makes $75 million look like chump change. If they've decided you're a part of the plot, one more proof against you is that you don't get a share of the overt money. So repeat after me: It's not Bush's fault. If you split the responsibility for Esfandiari's fate, you're helping to seal it, and undercutting everyone else's academic freedom.

So what is to be done by the rest of us, beyond signing petitions? (I signed this one.) I don't support the idea of an academic boycott of Iranian scholars, but Iran's official representatives are another matter. For example, there's Iran's smooth-talking ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who's finishing his stint in New York. He did the rounds of universities and think tanks this spring, even as Iran barred Esfandiari from leaving his country. Zarif spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations (March 27), the Nixon Center (March 29), and Columbia University's Middle East Seminar (May 2), and I saw him perform via video link at Harvard University's Belfer Center (May 8--the day Esfandiari was thrown into prison). No academic institution or think tank should agree to host him, his successor, or any other Iranian official until Esfandiari is freed. Collegial solidarity demands no less, and allows no exceptions.

Beyond that, I recommend doing what I've just done: make a gift to the Wilson Center, from the sidebar here. You don't have to agree with everything it's sponsored over the last few years to cherish what it legitimizes: scholarship in the nation's service.

Finally, as someone who's appreciated the transformation Lee Hamilton has wrought at the Wilson Center, I'd like him to reassure the American people, as well as Ahmadinejad, that the Wilson Center won't depart from the course he set for it. Indeed, even as Esfandiari languishes in prison, it's incumbent on the Wilson Center to sponsor debate and analysis of what her arrest tells us about the situation in Iran (nothing good, I believe), and convey that to officials in Congress and the Executive Branch.

May Haleh soon be among us again.

Amnesty International Persecutes Israel

According to Gerald Sternberg in the New York Sun, while the NGO turns a blind eye to Islamist extremist terrorism, Amnesty International refuses Amnesty to the Jewish State (ht lgf):

For many journalists, diplomats, and political activists, Amnesty International is considered to be a highly reliable and objective source of information and analysis on human rights around the world. But the halo that surrounds its reports and campaigns is beginning to fray, as the evidence of political bias and inaccuracy mounts.

Recently, the Economist, published in Britain, noted that "an organisation which devotes more pages in its annual report to human-rights abuses in Britain and America than those in Belarus and Saudi Arabia cannot expect to escape doubters' scrutiny." Other critics, including law professor at Harvard, Alan Dershowitz, and the U.S.-based Capital Research Center, have been more pointed, providing evidence of Amnesty's systematic bias and reports based largely on claims by carefully selected "eyewitnesses" in Colombia, Gaza, and Lebanon.

As Amnesty releases its annual report on human rights for 2006, amid highly choreographed public relations events, and repeating the familiar condemnations of Israel and America, NGO Monitor has also published a report on Amnesty's activities in the Middle East. The result is not a pretty picture for those clinging to the "halo effect."

Using a detailed and sophisticated qualitative model for comparing relative resources devoted to the different countries, this report clearly shows that in 2006, Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation of human rights to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other chronic abusers of human rights.

During the year, Amnesty issued 48 publications critical of Israel, compared to 35 for Iran, 2 for Saudi Arabia, and only 7 for Syria. Many of the attacks directed at Israel took place during the war with Hezbollah, but this terror group and state-within-a-state also got relatively little attention from Amnesty.

Furthermore, as Amnesty has almost no professional researchers, many of the "factual" claims in these reports were provided by "eyewitnesses," whose political affiliations and credibility can be only guessed. And the language used in these reports also reflects an obsessive and unjustified singling out of Israel, with frequent use of terms such "disproportionate attacks," "war crimes," and "violations of international humanitarian law."

And while Amnesty International was founded to fight for the freedom of political prisoners, the officials in charge of this organization failed to issue a single statement calling for the release of the Israeli soldiers that were kidnapped by Hezbollah and Hamas, and who have not been heard from since their illegal capture.

These and many other details published in NGO Monitor's report on Amnesty provide further evidence that this powerful NGO has lost its way, and is no longer a "respectable" or credible human rights organization.

Washington Post on PBS Censorship of "Islam v. Islamists"

From Paul Farhi's story in today's paper:

In an uprecedented move, the agency that oversees public broadcasting has stepped in to arrange distribution for a TV documentary on Islam that PBS had rejected as unworthy.

The federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting helped find a new distributor for "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center" after seven Republican members of Congress and one Democrat demanded that CPB ask PBS to air it or release it elsewhere.

The 52-minute film contends that moderate Muslims are being intimidated by radical Islamists in several Western democracies, including the United States.

The dispute over the film thrust CPB into the middle of a politically charged affair. The film's producers claim that PBS and its producing station, WETA, both of Arlington, are kowtowing to conservative Muslims in "suppressing" the film. In an interview yesterday, Frank Gaffney Jr., one of the film's executive producers, said PBS and WETA were predisposed against it on personal and ideological grounds.

"I am a person they regard as a conservative, and they regard the airwaves as a liberal domain," said Gaffney, a former Reagan administration defense official who now runs the Center for Security Policy.

WETA and PBS officials denied this yesterday. "We had no problem with the concept or ideology," said WETA spokeswoman Mary Stewart. "It was about filmmaking and documentary standards. We had no problem with the argument laid out in the film."

Andrew McCarthy Responds to Bob Kerrey on Iraq

In National Review:

Senator Kerrey is a principled liberal. Only a principled liberal could so vividly capture the cynical irony here. Though conceived as vital to our national security, the Iraqi chapter in the war on terror has been conducted, since Saddam’s expulsion, as a Wilsonian experiment. It assumes — against all reason and experience — that we’re all one human family, that everyone craves freedom, that everyone would use freedom the same enlightened way, and that we, the superpower, have a special obligation to make it happen. If the experiment were being conducted by liberals, rather than by George W. Bush, Democrats would be its staunchest defenders (and conservatives its wariest skeptics).

Iraq, however, is a frustrating slog precisely because it is an exercise in democracy building, not mere jihadist repulsion. Sen. Kerrey wants to have both Bush’s grandiose democracy project and Webb’s Spartan terrorist smacking … all without occupying anyone. It can’t be done.

We want, of course, to believe that we can democratize Islamic radicals into submission — it’s much more congenial than killing them or cooling their jets in Guantanamo Bay so we can get the intelligence needed to kill them before they kill us. But it’s a fantasy. The cold record shows that jihadists are much better at using democracy to pursue their ends than democracy is at quelling jihadist pathologies.

But let’s say you can’t or won’t believe that. Let’s ignore that jihadists planned 9/11 for months in the safety of Germany, Spain, and the United States. Let’s pretend that they haven’t attacked New York, Virginia, Madrid, and London because democratic freedoms made those places easy operating environments. The stubborn fact remains: If democracy is going to be your counterterrorism strategy, you’d better be ready to occupy. To occupy for decades in places where it is anything but clear that real democratic culture will take root despite your best efforts.

Senator Kerrey is to be congratulated for admonishing his party to stop denigrating a war its traditions counsel supporting. But if the politicizing ever does end, some adult reality will need facing — and not just by Democrats.

Much of the Islamic world does not want true democracy — and that’s by no means just the militants. If we really respected these Muslim millions, as we say we do, we’d concede that they’re not ignorant. They have, instead, made a different choice. They have chosen a submissive path, anathema to our sensibilities. If democracy is why we fight, then long occupation will necessarily be the price. And the attendant blood and treasure cry out for the compelling case no one has yet made: The case that democracy is likely to defeat jihadism. Faith may move mountains, but it is not a national-security strategy.

On the other hand, if occupation is a price we have neither the cause nor the will to pay, we must shun democracy imposition. Our finite attention should instead be focused on determining what measures are necessary to eradicate jihadist networks, and on bluntly considering how such steps square with our regnant international law infrastructure — the legacy of a world that no longer exists … if it ever did.

Oregon Public Broadcasting to Distribute Islam v. Islamists

This just in:

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) announced on May 23 that it will distribute Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center to public television stations across the country under an agreement reached between The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

"Islam vs. Islamists addresses very difficult issues," said Steve Bass, president and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting. "We are pleased to facilitate a dialogue on one of the central issues in the world today in conjunction with the broadcast.”

"As stewards of the investment in public broadcasting, this fulfills our responsibility to the taxpayer," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Some OPB history:

OPB provides free access to programming for children and adults which is designed to give voice to community and connects Oregon and its neighbors to illuminate a wider world. Every week, over 1.5 million people tune in to or log on to OPB's Television, Radio and Internet services. OPB is one of the largest producers and presenters of national television programming through PBS, and is also a member station of NPR, Public Radio International (PRI), and American Public Media (APM). The OPB Web site is www.opb.org.

Washington Times story here.

Bob Kerry: Iraq & the Democrats

From the Wall Street Journal:

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week.

Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.

The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them.

Che's Idiots

Agustin Blazquez passed this event anouncement along for our readers in the Miami, Florida metropolitan area:

SPECIAL EVENT

"Every American should read this book." --David Horowitz

Meet
Humberto Fontova
Reading and discussing
Exposing the Real Che Guevara...And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him
(Sentinel, $23.95)
Monday, May 21, 8pm
Books & Books, Coral Gables

Who was Ernesto Che Guevara?
MYTH:  International man of the people. Humanitarian. Brave freedom fighter. Lover of literature and life. Advocate of the poor and oppressed.

REALITY: Cold-blooded murderer. Sadistic torturer. Power-hungry materialist. Terrorist who inspired terrorism and bloodshed through Latin America.  Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the mainstream media celebrate Che as a saint and a sex symbol--a selfless martyr with a love of humanity second only to Jesus Christ's.

But their ideas about Che--Fidel Castro's henchman whose face adorns hipsters T-shirts, posters, and ad campaigns--are based on a murderous communist regime's outright lies.

As Humberto Fontova reveals in this myth-shattering book, Che was actually a bloodthirsty executioner, a military bumbler, a coward, and a hypocrite. This biographical account proves it€'s no exaggeration to state that Che--who was captured and killed nearly forty years ago--was the godfather of modern terrorism.

And yet Che's followers naively swallow Castro's historical revisionism. They are classic 'useful idiots,' the name Stalin gave to foolish Westerners who parroted his lies about communism's successes.

Fontova interviewed the few people still alive who interacted with Che and can tell the truth about him, while overturning the myths and legends. You'll learn:

How Che longed to destroy New York City with nuclear missiles.

How Che promoted book burning and signed death warrants for authors who disagreed with him. (So why did Jean Paul Sartre praise him as a 'perfect' intellectual, and why did Time name him one of the 100 most influential people of the century?)

How Che made amazingly racist sentiments about blacks. (So why do Jesse Jackson, Jay-Z, and Mike Tyson say nice things about him?)

How Che persecuted gays, long-haired rock and roll fans, and religious people.

How Che, the devoted communist, loved material wealth and private luxuries. (So why do the mainstream media still depict him as an ascetic?)

After reading this book, the only question you'll still have is whether Che's fans are too ignorant to realize they've been duped--or too anti-American to care.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Humberto Fontova fled Cuba in 1961, at the age of seven, with his family. He is a journalist who resides with his family in the New Orleans area. Fontova holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree in Latin American studies from Tulane University. He is a frequent commentator on both English- and Spanish-language media and is the author of four books, including Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.For media inquiries, call Cristina Nosti at (305) 444-9044 or visit our virtual location at www.booksandbooks.com

Bernard Kouchner New French Foreign Minister

Dennis Broyles profiles the founder of Doctors Without Borders in National Review (ht lgf).

WSJ: Clean Up World Bank, or Shut It Down!

Which is why Wolfowitz thought he could get away with hanky-panky there, IMHO...

Today's editorial comment in the Wall Street Journal calls for greater scrutiny of the World Bank on the part of the USA. About time::

If there is a silver lining here, it is that the public has been able to get a glimpse of how the World Bank works and what it actually accomplishes. Among other lowlights, we've recently been reminded that the bank annually pushes billions in loans to countries like China and Mexico that can easily get credit in private capital markets. We've seen that many of those loans go to projects in places like India or Kenya that are riddled by corruption; the bank may have lost as much as $8 billion to corruption in 25 years of lending to the Suharto regime in Indonesia. We've also learned that the bank funds literally hundreds of projects from Albania to Niger that were ill-conceived and proved to be failures.

We've seen that senior bank personnel, such as former Indonesia country director Dennis de Tray, openly argue that corruption is no big deal and should not get in the way of the bank's "helping people." We've seen how the bank trashed the careers of longstanding and well-regarded employees such as Bahram Mahmoudi, who blew the whistle on a misamanaged project. We've seen how Shengman Zhang, the bank's No. 2 under former President Jim Wolfensohn, seems to think there's nothing amiss with calling for Mr. Wolfowitz's resignation despite the fact that Mr. Zhang's wife was swiftly promoted while working under him.

We've seen how the board of directors apparently covered for one of their own--British Executive Director Tom Scholar--when he was accused of having a conflict of interest because of a personal relationship with an employee at the bank. And we've seen how the bank has served as a well-paid sinecure for out-of-office politicians such as Dutchman Ad Melkert, who has moved comfortably within multilateral institutions making an enviable tax-free salary while performing incompetently and behaving dishonorably.

In a better world, the bank would shrink to perform only its core mission of helping the world's poorest nations. That's not going to happen, however, so the best that President Bush can do now to minimize the damage of the Wolfowitz putsch is by replacing him with someone who shares his agenda and will clean the place up. No European should have a chance to do that given what has transpired, not even Tony Blair. Nor should he name another well known member of the Council on Foreign Relations seminar circuit whom the Europeans and staff can quickly capture.

We've suggested former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who saw first-hand how these institutions function while investigating the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. But whoever it is, the core task of Mr. Wolfowitz's successor should be to clean the World Bank stables, or shut it down.

How To Save BBC Reporter Alan Johnston from his Gaza Kidnappers

Memo to the Director-General of the BBC:

Here's an idea to save BBC Reporter Alan Johnston's life that does not require giving in to Al Qaeda's demand to release its leader from a British prison: Journalists will simply announce that until Alan Johnston is released, the BBC and all sympathetic Westerm media outlets will no longer air any news from Gaza, nor any accounts sympathetic to any Palestinian cause.

If this embargo is activated, my guess is that Johnston will be released pretty soon--good p.r. from the BBC and other Western media is the oxygen these groups need to live. Cut it off, and they will die in short order.

So, rather than die, they will release Johnston.

Oh, what's plan B, if they behead Johnston, you ask? Simple: No p.r. for any Palestinian or Islamist cause, ever again. Total news blackout--and the end of the Palestian dream (IMHO, more of a delusion verging on nightmare).

Try it-unless the BBC is more dedicated to the Palestinian and Al Qaeda cause than to the life of its own staffer...

Heck of a Job, Wolfie...

Wolfowitz-gone.

Story from the BBC:

Mr Wolfowitz will step down after he was caught up in a bitter row surrounding the promotion and salary of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza.

The World Bank said that Mr Wolfowitz had acted in good faith, but admitted that a "number of mistakes" were made.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been mentioned as a possible replacement.

World Bank Sleaze Oozes Around Wolfowitz Scandal

In the light of Paul Wolfowitz's troubles, Bret Stephens reports in today's Wall Street Journal on a new allegation of hanky-panky at the World Bank:

"Please know," read the text of the email written by a bank employee, "that UK ED Tom Scholar is continuing an affair with [a bank employee]. This woman has been given preferential treatment in [the department] because of her relationship with this powerful ED, this affair is well known, and is in violation of the Bank Staff Rules and the Boards Standards of Conduct."

"ED" means executive director. There are 24 such directors at the World Bank; collectively, they form the board that oversees the bank's work on behalf of its 185 member countries. Mr. Scholar is the ED from the United Kingdom. This week, all eyes were upon these officials as they decided on Paul Wolfowitz's future as president of the bank. Whether their conclusion is fair is a subject for another time. But no less important is whether, while penalizing Mr. Wolfowitz, the board isn't also covering up its own multitude of sins.

I first became aware of the 37-year-old Mr. Scholar--a former private secretary to British Chancellor Gordon Brown who also serves as an executive director at the International Monetary Fund--following the publication of my May 1 column, "Notes on a Scandal." The column, which detailed the hypocrisy of some of Mr. Wolfowitz's public detractors, including former World Bank senior managers with conflict-of-interest issues of their own, clearly struck a nerve within the bank. Many former and current bank staff wrote me to share stories of other bank managers or directors who, they claimed, had violated staff rules with impunity. Mr. Scholar's name kept coming up.

In one email, a correspondent wrote to say that "just like Wolfowitz, Scholar has a romantic relationship with a female employee at the World Bank. Scholar has never officially disclosed this relationship even though it clearly interferes with his oversight responsibilities as a Board member." The author signed off by saying that he (or she) "regrets to have to stay anonymous for fear of reprisal and hope for your understanding in this respect." ...

...Why does any of this matter? For one thing, it suggests the board lacks the most basic institutional mechanisms to police the conduct of its own members. This ought to call into question its fitness--and particularly Mr. Scholar's fitness--to judge the conduct of others. For another, the Daily Telegraph has reported that Mr. Scholar is likely to become Gordon Brown's chief of staff once the latter moves to 10 Downing Street.

But it matters most of all because the departure of Mr. Wolfowitz is being demanded by his most vehement critics to show that the World Bank is serious about setting the right example when it comes to governance. If it's a spring cleaning they want, why stop there?

A Panda Sneezes

Just saw this on Google video...

William Stearman: Ken Burns Should Not Spotlight Latinos

The debate over Ken Burns' WWII film is heating up, it seems, from this letter published in the Washington Post:

'Red-Blooded Americans, Fighting for Our Country'
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14

As a World War II combat veteran, I was both disappointed and concerned that Ken Burns let himself be pressured into singling out Latino contributions in his World War II documentary [Style, May 11].

Our landing ship, which saw considerable action in the Pacific, had onboard people of ethnic origins including Italian, Polish, Latino, Greek, German, Irish, Armenian, British and African. Incidentally, the black sailors involved lived fully integrated with the white sailors, and all were on gun crews.

Had anyone sought, for example, to single out Radioman Campo for attention because of his Latino ethnicity, he, no doubt, would have been perplexed, if not affronted. We would all have described ourselves simply as true, red-blooded Americans fighting for our country.

As to Mr. Burns's documentary, I would support highlighting exclusively ethnic units such as the valiant and effective Army Air Corps/Force Tuskegee pilots in all-black formations, the brave and battle-savvy Japanese American infantry units (in Europe), and the invaluable Navajo "code talkers" attached to the Marine Corps.

WILLIAM LLOYD STEARMAN
North Bethesda

Agustin Blazquez Speaks!

On Google Video, about why he makes documentary films.

Daniel Pipes: Stop US Support for Turkish Islamists

Originally published in the NY Sun:

Each Turk must judge the AKP for himself, as must key foreign governments. If the polls show Turkish voters still quite undecided, foreign leaders have opted in Erdoğan's favor. The Council of Europe condemned military intervention and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has gone further, praising the AKP for "pulling Turkey west toward Europe" and specifically endorsed its efforts to make Turkey's laws conform to Europe's in the areas of individual and religious freedom.

But her statement ignores AKP efforts to apply the Islamic law by criminalizing adultery and creating alcohol-free zones, not to speak of its privileging Islamic courts over secular courts, its reliance on dirty money, and its bias against religious minorities as well as the persecution of political opponents. Further, European Union membership offers the AKP a huge side-benefit: by reducing the political role of Turkey's arch-secular military leadership, paradoxically, it eases the way to apply Islamic laws. Would the AKP's caution outlast its neutering the officer corps? Finally, Secretary Rice ignores AKP-induced tensions in U.S.-Turkish relations.

But her superficial analysis has one inadvertent benefit: given Turkey's fervid anti-Americanism these days, American support for the AKP might actually cause it to lose votes. Such cynical humor aside, Washington should stop bolstering the AKP and instead side with its natural allies, the secularists.

2nd Report of the World Bank Executive Directors Ad Hoc Group on Paul Wolfowitz

Read for yourself what the World Bank Executive Directors said about Paul Wolfowitz, here, as a PDF file.

Bernard Lewis on Al Qaeda's Political Strategy

In today's Wall Street Journal:

The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous. The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, "the students") began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world--some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden.

To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got. In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path. For a long time, the main enemy was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy. This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies.

Now the situation had changed. The more immediate, more dangerous enemy was the Soviet Union, already ruling a number of Muslim countries, and daily increasing its influence and presence in others. It was therefore natural to seek and accept American help. As Osama bin Laden explained, in this final phase of the millennial struggle, the world of the unbelievers was divided between two superpowers. The first task was to deal with the more deadly and more dangerous of the two, the Soviet Union. After that, dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility

From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

Byron York on the Republican Debate

From National Review:

It all started when Paul was asked how September 11 changed American foreign policy. “Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us?” Paul answered. “They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years…”

Questioner Wendell Goler, of Fox News, asked, “Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?”

“I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it,” Paul said. “They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there.”

Enter Giuliani. “May I comment on that?” the mayor said, interrupting the orderly flow of things for the first time in the debate. “That really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.”

The audience loved it. As the applause built, Giuliani added, “And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”

Paul didn’t back down, but by cutting in, Giuliani had scored some of the best, and perhaps easiest, points of the night. So much so that advisers from rival campaigns couldn’t quite hide their frustration that Giuliani had moved so quickly. “I don’t think it takes a lot of courage to use Ron Paul as a prop,” said Charlie Black, the longtime GOP strategist who is backing Sen. John McCain. “But he [Giuliani] got his 9/11 credential in there, so congratulations.”

The Ron Paul moment was just one of Giuliani’s strong points in the debate. He was solid on terrorism, solid on the war in Iraq, solid on taxes, solid on lots of things. On abortion, he was not exactly solid, but his answers were more coherent than they had been in the first debate, held May 3 at the Reagan Library in California. Put it all together, and Giuliani’s aides seemed genuinely happy with his performance Tuesday night, in contrast to the way they seemed to be faking their happiness in California. “He was better,” said Jim Dyke, a top Giuliani adviser. “9/11 is very personal to the mayor. You can’t coach something like that.”

IMHO it is interesting to note that in his debate comments Paul linked Iraq directly to 9/11--just as Dick Cheney did at the time.

St. Clair Bourne on Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez v. Ken Burns

The renowned African-American independent filmmaker, who helped bring Black Journal to PBS, is blogging about the Ken Burns scandal on Chambanotes.