High Minded Realists v Democracy Revolutionists

In a thoughtful essay, Dmitri Simes and Robert Ellsworth, writing in The National Interest, call for "high-minded realism" as a foreign-policy alternative to President Bush's democracy policy. It's worthwhile reading the whole thing. Here's a sample:

High-minded realists do not disagree with the self-appointed champions of global democracy (the neoconservatives and the liberal interventionists) that a strong preference for liberty and justice should be an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. But they realize that there are tradeoffs between pushing for democracy and working with other sovereign states--some not always quite democratic--to combat global terror. Realists also, following the advice of General Charles Boyd, understand the need to 'separate reality from image' and 'to tell the truth, if only to ourselves'--not to play fast and loose with facts to create the appearance of acting morally.

And they are aware that there are important differences in how the United States helps the world achieve freedom. Indeed, in his first press conference after his triumph at the polls, President Bush used three different terms in talking about America's global pro-democracy effort. He discussed the need 'to encourage freedom and democracy', to 'promote free societies', and to 'spread freedom and democracy.'

'Encouraging' democracy is not a controversial position. Nearly everyone in the world accepts that the sole superpower is entitled and indeed expected to be true to its core beliefs. 'Promoting' democracy is more vague and potentially more costly. Still, if the United States does so without resorting to military force and takes into account the circumstances and perspectives of other nations, then it is likely not to run into too much international opposition. 'Spreading' democracy, however, particularly spreading it by force, coercion and violent regime change, is a different thing altogether. Those who suspect they may be on the receiving end of such treatment are unlikely to accept American moral superiority, are bound to feel threatened, and cannot reasonably be expected to cooperate with the United States on other important American priorities, including the War on Terror and nuclear proliferation.

Roger L. Simon says CSPAN Finds "Balance"

Roger L. Simon reports that CSPAN has decided not to "balance" Deborah Lipstadt with David Irving, after all...

IRS Chief: Charities Cheat on Taxes

Today's Washington Post has a story about IRS Commissioner Mark Everson's complaint that non-profits are abusing their tax-exempt status:

"Charities and other nonprofits exempted from taxes because they serve a public purpose have become a hotbed of tax evasion and abuse, according to the head of the Internal Revenue Service.

'We can see that tax abuse is increasingly present in the sector,' and unless the government takes effective steps to curb it, such organizations risk 'the loss of the faith and support that the public has always given to this sector,' Internal Revenue Commissioner Mark W. Everson said in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee detailing abuses his agency has found.

Mark Steyn on the Terry Schiavo Aftermath

In The Chicago Sun-Times:

Once you get used to designating living, breathing bodies as 'non-human entities,' it's easy to bandy them ever more carelessly -- as they do in the eminently progressive Netherlands, where their relaxed attitude to pot and prostitution led to a relaxed attitude to euthanasia which looks like relaxing the Dutch people right out of business. It's all done quietly over there -- no fuss, no publicity; you go in to hospital with a heavy cold and you're carried out by the handles. (By 'handles,' I mean a coffin, not a ceremonial phalanx of Monteagles and Princetons.) But that's not the American way. This is a legalistic society, where grade schools can't have kids knocking a ball around without getting a gazillion dollars worth of liability insurance. I was in Price Chopper the other day and they had a little basket of Easter samples on display accompanied by a page of full print outlining the various sub-clauses of the company's 'tasting policy.' That's America. In Holland, you can taste a cookie without signing a legal waiver, and, if you get food poisoning from it, the doctor will discreetly euthanize you to avoid putting your family through the trauma of waiting six hours for the stomach pump to become available. That's not how the American cookie crumbles. Euthanasia here will be a 10-year court culminating in slow-motion public execution played out on the 24-hour cable channels.

The Republicans did the right thing here, and they won't be punished for it by the electors. As with abortion, this will be an issue where the public moves slowly but steadily toward the conservative position: Terri Schiavo's court-ordered death will not be without meaning. As to 'crack-ups,' that's only a neurotic way of saying that these days most of the intellectual debate is within the right.

If, like the Democrats, all you've got are lockstep litmus tests on race and abortion and all the rest, what's to crack up over? You just lose elections every two years, but carry on insisting, as Ted Kennedy does, that you're still the majority party. Ted's quite a large majority just by himself these days, but it's still not enough.

Roger L. Simon: Volcker Committee "Slimed" Witness

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter: "But I do know this. Mouselli had an 'identity confidentiality agreement' with the Volcker Committee while it conducted its investigation. One the eve of release of the report (March 25), the Committee asked that he waive it. After being assured that they regarded his testimony as 'reliable and credible' and would report it as such, Mouselli agreed to the waiver. Then the Committee slimed him, using ex-Baathist officials to do their dirty work. How shameful."

This book looks interesting...

Walter Isaacson reviews Stacy Schiff's 'A Great Improvisation': Our Man in Parisin the NYTBR:

After a year of playing both seductive and coy, Franklin was able to negotiate a set of treaties with France that would, so the signers declared, bond the countries in perpetuity. One French participant expressed the hope that the Americans ''would not inherit the pretensions and the greedy and bold character of their mother country, which had made itself detested.'' As a result of the arrangements made by Franklin, the French supplied most of America's guns and nearly all of its gunpowder, and had almost as many troops at the decisive battle of Yorktown as the Americans did.

Schiff scrupulously researches the details of Franklin's mission and skillfully spices up the tale with the colorful spies, stock manipulators, war profiteers and double-dealers who swarmed around him. Most delightful are the British spy Paul Wentworth, so graceful even as he is outmaneuvered by Franklin, and the flamboyant playwright and secret agent Beaumarchais (''The Barber of Seville'' and ''The Marriage of Figaro''), so eager to capitalize on the news of the American victory at Saratoga that he was injured when his carriage overturned while speeding with a banker from Franklin's home to central Paris. Least delightful is the priggish and petulant John Adams, ''a man to whom virtue and unpopularity were synonymous'' and whom Schiff merrily tries to knock from the pedestal upon which he was placed by David McCullough.

John Paul II Remembered...

From Reuters:

Another of the Pope's major achievements was to bring the Catholic Church to an historic rapprochement with Jews after 2,000 years of hostility when the Vatican formally recognized the state of Israel in 1993.

That led to the realization of a third dream in March 2000 when he made a long-desired trip to the Holy Land, visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories and calling for peace at every stop along the way.

In a momentous gesture that brought tears to many eyes, he left a personal note in the cracks of Judaism's sacred Western Wall in Jerusalem asking for forgiveness for the past sins of Christians against Jews.

Natan Sharansky's Case for Democracy

Sharansky's Case For Democracy

Michael Ledeen noted at his AEI panel on the democratic revolutionary movement last week that Richard Perle assigned those present to readNathan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror in order to understand what President George W. Bush is up to.

Well, I read it, and I see why Perle likes it, because the core argument of the book is that the Jackson-Vanik amendment was responsible for the collapse of the USSR as well as the release of dissidents and refuseniks like Sharansky. Since Perle was an aide to the late Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, and was involved with the issue, it must be nice to read such a grateful testimonial.

Obviously, Sharansky's account of his suffering and the importance of the Helsinki accords and Jackson-Vanik amendment are compelling.

The problem comes in applying the lessons to the current situation. Because Sharansky notes that his mentor, Andrei Sakharov, called for changing the fear society of the USSR to a freedom society (Sharansky's terms) in order to compete with the West in a comptetitive race to the future. That is, the USSR and the USA shared the same Western enlightenment goals of human progress, scientific and technological development, and education. The prestige enjoyed by scientists and academicians in the former USSR gave Sakharov the status to make his views widely known -- Sharansky had also studied physics. Thus, the USSR and USA were ostensibly headed towards the same end, just by different means. In the case of the USA the means required freedom, in the case of the USSR the means required fear. Dissidents in the USSR shared the same goals as their American adversaries.

This is not true of some anti-American dissidents in unfree societies today.

Sharanky describes his prison life with harrowing accuracy, and what really sticks out is that Sharansky describes his fellow inmates, whether Russian Orthodox, nationalists, democrats, or Jewish refuseniks as committed to non-violence, tolerance, and other values even Voltaire would understand and support. That is, supporting Russian dissidents meant supporting allies of freedom and democracy.

When it comes to Israel, Sharansky does an excellent job of describing the hostility of the "Human Rights" NGOs to the Jewish state. And he talks at length about the importance of ending the fear societies in the Arab world, for the sake of their Arab populations. He says the West should champion oppressed Arab advocates of freedom societies. No argument there.

But there is something important missing from the book--and from Perle, Ledeen, et al. when they talk about supporting democracy.

What is to be done with those opponents of the fear societies who don't want freedom societies, who don't want progress, who don't value science, who don't believe in tolerance? What is to be done with those, who under the cover of "democracy" are actually advocating tyranny--who want to turn back the clock to the Middle Ages? That is, Islamist extremists who are poised to exploit "democracy-building" projects through the practice of "taqqiyeh"?

For example, what should Russia do about Chechnya? Sharansky does not discuss this. Yet is was the Chechen crisis that caused the collapse of the liberal democratic consensus in Russian politics. Given a choice between security and democracy, the population chose security--because "democracy" led to an Islamist extremist rogue state, governed by Sha'aria, tield to the Taliban and Bin Laden, that practiced kidnapping, drug-dealing, and oppression--and then launched attacks on neighboring Russian lands.

If an independent Chechnya turned into a disaster, eventually leading to the Second Chechen War, what might prevent a new state of Palestine from following that dismal path?

So, while convinced in principle that America should support democracy, helping those who seek to build a freedom society rather than a fear society, I think Sharansky and his advocates need to better work out some distinctions between those who are truly commited to democracy -- including the protection of minorities -- and those who might use it as a tactic toward seizing power, making matters worse than they are today.

Sharansky is well worth reading, and I'm glad Perle mentioned it. The book is well-written and thought-provoking. But it marks the beginning of a discussion, not the end.

Victor Davis Hanson: Bush Was Desperate After 9/11

Victor Hanson admits that Bush's "Democracy Revolution" agenda is a Hail-Mary pass born of fear and desperation:

Only democracy was new. And only democracy -- and its twin of open-market capitalism -- offered any hope to end the plague of tribalism, gender apartheid, human-rights abuses, religious fanaticism, and patriarchy that so flourished within such closed societies.

It was not just idealism but rather abject desperation that fueled the so-called neoconservative quest to try something new.

Hanson's confession rings true, yet reminds one that while necessity may indeed be the mother of invention, "abject desperation" does not always lead to the correct solution to any particular problem.

Not to quibble with Hanson, but neither democracy nor capitalism are new to the Middle East, and they are no guarantee against terror. For example, Lebanon had both, before it was destroyed in a calamitous civil war, a base for fanatics, extremists, terrorists, and so forth.

Inside the Pew Charitable Trusts

Martin Wooster takes on the big foundation's multi-million dollar lobbying campaign: "What is striking about this confession has less to do with campaign-finance reform--a bust anyway--than with the stealth politics of Pew and foundations like it. There are certain do-good entities, and Pew is one of them, that enjoy a charmed life: On NPR and in David Broder columns, to take a couple of leading indicators, they are treated as benign truth-tellers, so high-minded as to be beyond politics. But they are, naturally, as partisan as any 'special interest' could be."

Bush Wins Nobel Peace Prize (April Fool!)

In a surprise announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced that George Walker Bush, President of the United States, has been selected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005.

In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Bush's lifelong commitment to world peace, democracy, and human development. He was congratulated for swiftly sending two US Presidents to South Asia with Tsunami relief; overthrowing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein; increasing trade with Africa; supporting democracy in formar Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan; and improving relations with the EU, Russia, and China. In addition, the Nobel Prize Committee said President Bush deserved special recognition for his work to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, noting "the American President's steadfast support for a Palestinian state living in peace with her Israeli neighbor."

President Bush will receive his award in Oslo this October from the King of Norway.

Instapundit on the Sandy Berger Scandal

Instapundit.com seems to think Clinton's former National Security Advisor is a crook who got off with a slap on the wrist: "So Berger stole, and destroyed, classified documents as part of a politically motivated coverup. Let's just be clear about that. Criminal penalties, aside, the man's career in public life should be over, and he certainly should never have access to classified documents again. Unfortunately, the penalty he'll actually receive looks rather light -- certainly lighter than most folks who stole and destroyed classified documents would undergo. That makes it all the more important that the details of his misbehavior get plenty of attention, and that they're remembered long-term."

House of Fools

Richard Perle's comment yesterday that he couldn't imagine anyone choosing slavery over freedom set me to thinking about Andrei Konchalovsky's stunning Russian dramaHouse of Fools. In the tradition of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and King of Hearts, it has a different mentality. For in this film, the mad are not sane and the sane are not mad. Rather, the mad are really mad. The sane are really sane. But the situation and the suffering they face when put into each other's worlds is the conflict that makes the movie. What they have in common is their humanity. Mad and sane, Russian and Chechen, they are all human.

House of Fools is set during the first Chechen War (1996), in a small mental hospital on the border of the breakaway republic. As fighting nears, the doctor and nurse abandon the patients--a cross-section of the Russian public including everyone from dissidents to poets to Armenians and Muslims--ostensibly to find a bus in order to evacuate the hospital. Left to their own devices, the patients run amok. Then, the Chechens arrive, occupying the hospital. Some Russian troops follow, return a dead soldier, and sell the Chechens ammunition in exchange for drugs. The Chechen and Russian commander discover that they had been comrades-in-arms in Afghanistan, so the Russian lets the Chechen keep the dollars he had promised him ("for your mullah"). A beautiful and sensitive mental patient falls in love with one of the Chechen fighters, and tries to marry him--betraying her personal icon, Canadian singer Bryan Adams, to whom she has erected a shrine in her hospital room. (Canadians are saints, apparently, and heaven is a song and dance party on a passing train).

In the end, fighting resumes, so the wedding is not completed.

Then a band of Russians takes over the hosptital, chasing out the Chechens. Blood and death everywhere. The gates of the hospital are open, the patients could escape--but they decide to stay, and wait for the doctor to return. He does, and the patients remain in their "House of Fools," as the Russian soldiers leave.

What is striking about this film is that the Russian mental patients find life in the hospital is preferable to life outside. That is, where Jack Nicholson chooses freedom in Milosz Forman's film, Yulia Vsotskaya chooses to stay in confinement rather than go into the raging war between Russians and Chechens. The Russian hospital is a true asylum, a shelter from the violence and fear of the outside world. And while the American hospital is run by sadistic nurse Ratched, Dom Durakov's Russian hospital is commanded by a kindly doctor, who really does have his patients at heart.

So, whether one chooses freedom or security, it seems to me, depends on what is happening outside. Compared to the Chechen insanity, the mental hospital, as crazy as it is, is better. Now, it is pretty clear that the hospital is a symbol of the old USSR, the doctor leaving the collapse of the old system, the insanity that followed the chaos of the "bandit captialist" period, and the Chechen War--the Chechen War. The cast of characters is just so Russian--poets, dancers, dissidents, whores. The old saying that Russia has two problems--Roads and Fools--this is about the fools that are Russia,and humankind.

I can't recommend "House of Fools" highly enough. It is the Clash of Civilizations on a truly human scale. It is tragic, comic, and profound in turns. And should be required viewing for all "democracy revolutionists..."

Bush's plunge in polls

... tied to domestic issues - The Washington Times: " Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, Gallup also found that only 35 percent of Americans approve of his handling of Social Security, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. While other surveys show greater approval of the president's Social Security stance, he generally polls worse on domestic issues than foreign."

Bottom Line: Bush is squandering his second honeymoon on an unpopular domestic agenda. If he can't deliver, it may even weaken his hand in foreign policy matters, because weakness is contagious. My 2 cents: Bush should pick a couple of battles he can win.

Victor Davis Hanson Talks to Saudi Arabia

VDH's Private Papers has an interesting interview by Idris A. Ahmed, editor of Al-watan, a Saudi newspaper, where Victor Hanson contemplates the state of the world without the United States (something some people in Saudia Arabia might be praying for?)...

Roger L. Simon: Oil-for-Food Cover-Up?

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter suggests the Volcker report may be just that: "To my knowledge the committee has never gone to Nigeria, or anywhere in the developing world, to pursue its investigation. They have restricted themselves to the more comfortable venues of New York, Paris, London and Geneva. But the heart of Africa and the Middle East is where the information on Oil-for-Food can be found."

You Say You Want A Revolution...(II)

John Fund, in today's Wall Street Journal, calls for an uprising--against President Hillary Clinton, after she's elected in 2008...

More on Kofi Annan from Roger L. Simon

He's not happy that the media is reporting that Annan has been "exonerated:"

The NYT has a superficially stern but also superficially naive editorial on the Volcker Committee interim report this morning. They assert that the panel "largely exonerated Mr. Annan of personal corruption in the awarding of a contract to a company that employed his son." But that's not quite true. They must realize the committee found no evidence of such corruption so far. Quite a different thing. And the Times' writers (you can be sure this was a thoroughly vetted editorial) were also aware (it is briefly alluded to near the bottom of the editorial) that three years' worth of Oil-for-Food documents were shredded by Annan's deputy. You don't have to be Woodward and Bernstein to smell a rat here.

That they do not call for Kofi's resignation is also interesting. The Times itself moved quickly to change executive editors when it was found that a reporter, Jayson Blair, had fabricated stories. Yet Oil-for-Food, even at the level that it is currently understood, is far worse than a few made up tales. It concerns mass thievery, the starvation of children and the very nature of Security Council decision-making leading up to war. If this isn't a firing-offense, what is?

You Say You Want a Revolution...

Well, you know, we all want to change the world... (in the words of Lennon-McCartney).

This morning I heard Richard Perle, Michael Novak, Michael Rubin, Laurent Murawiec,and Michael Ledeen discuss the worldwide democratic revolution at the American Enterprise Institute, at a symposium called Is It a Revolution or What?. I'll give them credit for this, they seemed committed to the proposition that liberty is spreading throughout the world, thanks to the Bush doctrine. But one had to pause when Ledeen concluded the session with words from a dead Bolshevik: "It's not a revolution in one country, for those comrades who remember these things..."

You should be able to watch the whole thing by clicking the "video" link on the AEI website. Perhaps David Horowitz might be able to tell us precisely where the Bush Democratic Revolution fits into the Marxist-Leninist theoretical paradigm of "Permanent Revolution."

Unfortunately, as the grand words rolled on and on during the session, I couldn't help remembering the German Democratic Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, not to mention Iran, which is officially a democracy.

At the seminar, Perle said he couldn't imagine people actually choosing slavery over freedom, but it has happened throughout history--especially when people fear for their safety and security. Unless America is very careful, there is a risk that some of today's "democrats" may develop into tomorrow's tyrants. You don't have to look far from home. For example, the United States supported Fidel Castro as a democratic reformer, against Batista, in the early days of the Cuban Revolution. And President Carter favored the overthrow of the Shah of Iran.

Remembering Harold Cruse

Today's New York Times has an obituary of the well-known author of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual:

Harold Wright Cruse was born in Petersburg, Va., on March 8, 1916, and moved with his father, a railway porter, to New York City as a young child. After graduating from high school, he worked at several jobs but was ambitious to become a writer. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II.

After the war, he attended the City College of New York briefly but never graduated. In 1947, he joined the Communist Party and wrote drama and literary criticism for The Daily Worker, although he was never doctrinaire. In the 1950's, he wrote several plays, and in the mid-1960's he was co-founder, with LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), of the Black Arts Theater and School in Harlem.The more he learned about the arts, the more he deplored what he saw as a white appropriation of black culture, particularly as exemplified by George Gershwin's folk opera "Porgy and Bess." He called for blacks to embrace their cultural uniqueness.

His later books include "Rebellion or Revolution?", "Plural but Equal: A Critical Study of Blacks and Minorities and America's Plural Society" and "The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader" edited by William Jelani Cobb with a foreword by Stanley Crouch.

Harold Cruse impressed me when he attended a symposium on the future of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities we organized in 1996 at New York University. He made a passionate and personal presentation, and permitted us to publish his text in our book, The National Endowments: A Critical Symposium. In our panel discussions, Cruse was intelligent, irreverent, and afraid of nobody. His very participation--at a time when we were being shunned by the intellectual and cultural establishment who would permit no criticisms of the cultural agencies--was a very much appreciated gesture.

His book Plural But Equal was not only thought-provoking and original, it probably will be read for many years to come. Interestingly, the writer who introduced his collected writings, Stanley Crouch, was also a member of our NYU symposium.

One didn't have to agree with everything he had to say, to agree that Harold Cruse said many things worth saying. It was a privilege to have met him.

Agustin Blazquez is Angry With His Local PBS Station...

Here's why, the Cuban-American filmmaker sent us a copy of his complaint:

Ms. Sheryl Lahti, Director of Audience Services

WETA Channel 26
2775 South Quincy Street
Arlington, VA 22206
703 998-3407
Slahti@weta.com

Dear Ms. Lahti,

On Saturday, March 26, 2005, while watching “Viewer Favorites” on your public television station, I was shocked and offended by the singer Eric Burton - formerly of the group “The Animals” – wearing a Che Guevara shirt while performing a song on a segment of your presentation.

As a Cuban American, as a writer and a filmmaker, I am acquainted with the Che as a mass murderer who executed, without trial, many Cubans at La Cabaña fortress in Havana as well as in the Sierra Maestra Mountains before 1959.

Below I enclose a recent open letter from the famous saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera to the famous guitarist Carlos Santana who sported a Che t-shirt while performing at the last Oscar Awards ceremony.

Below D’Rivera’s letter I am enclosing one of my published articles, this one about Che.

It is shocking that your educational public television station is not aware of Che’s criminal record and let pass such an insensitive and offensive display of disrespect to Che’s victims and the Cuban American community in the U.S. If Mr. Burton had worn a Hitler shirt, he wouldn’t have been presented – rightfully so - in order not to offend the Jewish victims and Holocaust survivors.

I think your public television station should apologize.

Sincerely,
Agustin Blazquez
Writer & filmmaker
Silver Spring, MD
ABIP.USA@verizon.net

cc. Michael Pack and John Prizer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Paquito D’Rivera and various publications

When is a TV Ad not a TV Ad? When it's on PBS...

I had to laugh, once again, at The New York Times (login required) today, reading Nat Ives' article about PBS's non-commercial commercials, and coming across this:

The 15-second commercial for Chipotle, a Mexican restaurant chain owned by McDonald's, will accompany 'How to Cook Everything: Bittman Takes On America's Chefs,' on some 150 public television stations across the country. The program features Mark Bittman, a cookbook author who writes a column for the Dining section of The New York Times, which is a sponsor of the program.

In the story, the Times repeats PBS's claims that their ads are not ads. How come?

The Chipotle spots had to toe some very fine lines. For example, the guidelines allow people in the spots to consume a product as long as they do not appear to enjoy it overtly. So the producer instructed the actors in its pledge drive spoof not to look too thrilled.

Maybe the New York Times is becoming a humor magazine...

Terri Schiavo's Case is an Exception

Andrew McCarthy says that the facts are unusual: "It is not for nothing that we say bad cases make bad law. We have no reason to believe Terri's situation is more a paradigm than an aberration. For most husbands in Michael Schiavo's shoes -- anxious to get on with new lives and aware that a stricken wife's family was willing and able to take on the burdens of care -- we can reasonably hope that ending the wife's life would not become an obsession. Most men or women in Michael's circumstances would step aside. Many, if they'd entangled themselves in new relationships, would avail themselves of the ready legal framework for ending the marriage. Most spouses would not suddenly remember, seven years after the fact, that their partners had evinced a carefully considered wish to die rather than be sustained if they were ever to become incapacitated."

Is Kofi Annan A Crook?

That's the main question underlying Roger L. Simon's story on the UN's Oil-for-Food Investigation. Paul Volcker's report is scheduled for release tomorrow. Simon claims it shows that Annan may have been closer to his son's scandalous business activities than previously revealed.

The Future Belongs to Blogs

Says Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter:

Let This Prediction Be True!

Buried several paragraphs down in an interesting World Peace Herald analysis of blog influence on the 2004 election is the following prediction by Scott Anthony:
...20 years from now, there will be an entirely new industry based on blogs. Just a few years ago, he noted, when eBay was launched, it was selling novelty items, such as Pez candy dispensers. Today, it is a major retail force that even sells automobiles.

Who's Scott Anthony, you ask? (I did.) He is the co-author of 'Seeing What's Next' (Harvard Business School Press, 2005), and a partner in Innosight LLC in Watertown, Mass. Let's hope he does - see what's next, I mean."

Bruce Thornton on "Dhimmitude"

From VDH's Private Papers
a review of Bat Ye'or's book on Islamism's triumph in Europe and aspirations in America : "As Ye'or documents, the key to Islamist terrorism is Israel, but not in the way most people think. For the jihadist mentality, Israel must be destroyed, if not by bombs and tanks, then by piece-meal concessions and sheer demography. It make take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but like the medieval Crusader kingdoms, this manifestation of the dynamic power of Western cultural ideals cannot be allowed to survive as a constant reminder of Islamic civilization's failure. Israel's war is our war, and until we forcefully assert that linkage in our public pronouncements and more important in our actions, everything else we do just buys some time, in which the forces of appeasement and the murderous energy of the jihadists will do their work."

James Q. Wilson: Living Wills Don't Help

From OpinionJournal : "But scholars have shown that we have greatly exaggerated the benefits of living wills. Studies by University of Michigan professor Carl Schneider and others have shown that living wills rarely make any difference. People with them are likely to get exactly the same treatment as people without them, possibly because doctors and family members ignore the wills. And ignoring them is often the right thing to do, because it is virtually impossible to write a living will that anticipates and makes decisions about all of the many, complicated, and hard to foresee illnesses you may face.

For example, suppose you say that you want the plug pulled if you have advanced Alzheimer's disease. But then it turns out that when you are in this hopeless condition your son or daughter is about to graduate from college. You want to see that event. Or suppose that you anticipate being in Terri Schiavo's condition at a time when all doctors agree that you have no chance of recovering your personhood and so you order the doctors to remove the feeding tubes. But several years later when you enter into a persistent vegetative state, some doctors have come to believe on the basis of new evidence that there is a chance you may recover at least some functions. If you knew that you might well have changed your mind, but after entering into a PVS you can make no decisions. It is not clear we would be doing you a favor by starving you to death. On the contrary, we might well be doing what you might regard as murder.

There is a document that is probably better than a living will, and that is a durable power of attorney that authorizes a person that you know and trust to make end-of-life decisions for you."

Egypt Will Test Bush's Democracy Policy

Kirk Sowell wonders if Egypt will mean triumph or tears for President George W. Bush (tip via Publius Pundit):

I say that Egypt, not Iraq, may be the democracy movement's toughest test because of the difference between the two countries. Iraq's most prominent religious figure, the Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has long been a genuine democracy advocate. So it is not so surprising that the United Iraqi Alliance, which ran with his endorsement, would show its democratic bone fides after winning an election, as they have now. But in Egypt the [Muslim] Brotherhood is by far the most powerful Islamist movement, and the most powerful and well-organized opposition group in the country. While the Brotherhood has renounced violence as a means of taking power in Egypt, they consistently push for Egypt to abrogate its peace treaty with Israel and go to war, and is brimming with enthusiasm for jihadism in the Al-Qaeda mode.

Of course, it is not certain that the Brotherhood would win. Mubarak might win a free election, and there is also a non-Islamist opposition movement whose most prominent leader, Ayman Nour, was recently released from prison. The belief that the Brotherhood can win is based largely on their repeated success in winning professional and student association elections (lawyers, teachers, etc.). But perhaps their organizational advantage would be less key in a national election. I will simply note that if there is a free election and the Muslim Brotherhood does win, the world could face its first democratically-elected terroristic government - since 1933.

Manzarali on Mark McGwire's Steroid Troubles

From This 'n' That: "Come on, Mr. McGwire. It's an easy question. If steroid use in major league baseball has already been determined to be illegal, why would it not be cheating? In other words, Mr. McGwire, it wasn't cheating in your heart and mind. But it's not too late. You still have time to become a true hero. And you don't have to be juiced to succeed. All you need is a clear conscience."

This Book Looks Interesting

The Myth of Islamic Tolerance...

Happy Easter

Here's a page of Easter links atEaster on the Net...

Not "Mission Accomplished" in Kyrgyzstan

Scraps of Moscow reminds us that it is too early to tell what will happen in the aftermath of the Kyrgyz revolution. Commenting on Daan van der Schreick's analysis in The Moscow Times, which argues that in the aftermath of the current revolt, Kyrgyzstan's 1990s-era experiment democracy may be viewed by leaders or neighboring countries as a cause of instability rather than an example to follow:

Probably this has idea has been mentioned elsewhere, but this is the first place I've seen it articulated in print. This sort of deflates the triumphalism I've seen on several US right-wing blogs, people crowing about the triumph of democracy. Sorry, guys, what happened in Bishkek is not really related to the 'liberation' of Iraq or to any US actions - in fact, I've seen reports that the US played on both sides of this game.

Well, I think it's pretty clear that the US supported the protesters, based on Ambassador Young's statements, as well as the way events played out. You could more reasonably conclude that Russia seems to have played both sides. But Lyndon's conclusion is worth thinking about:

As several more thoughtful bloggers have noted, the proof of the new government will be in the pudding - will we see democratic elections in the near future as promised, or will the opposition-turned-rulers get busy feeding themselves at the corruption trough, a rich tradition in the former Soviet space?

Easter Tourists Return to Jerusalem

From the San Jose Mercury News:

For people whose livelihood have depended upon the flow of tourists to Jerusalem's holy sites, the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, indeed has been a path of sorrows. Millennium celebrations at the start of 2000 helped bring more than 2.5 million visitors to Israel, perhaps half of them Christian pilgrims. After fighting broke out between Israel and the Palestinians in September of that year, that number plummeted, eventually falling nearly two-thirds.

The Israeli Tourism Ministry said visitors had increased about one-third over levels at this time last year, although numbers still lagged pre-intifada levels. The falloff in fighting over the past two months, though, reassured many people who had put off earlier travel. In Jerusalem, different faiths jostle up against one another every day, and [Good] Friday was no exception.

Washington Celebrates Walt Whitman

Today's Washington Post has an interesting guide to Walt Whitman's 10 years in Washington, DC, suitable for a walking tour. The article, detailing where he lived and worked from 1863-1873--military hospital, Department of the Interior, Attorney-General's office, and so forth-- begins with this verse from Leaves of Grass:

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooks you round the waist,

My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.

-- Walt Whitman, untitled version of 'Song of Myself' in 'Leaves of Grass,' 1855

The boarding houses he slept in have been torn down, but the government office buildings remain. There is a move to rename the street in front of the National Portrait Gallery after Whitman...

Bad Democracies, Good Dictatorships

Curzon considers the paradoxes of democratization in the light of the Kyrgyz crisis:

Clarrifying policy between good, established democracies and bad, corrupt dictatorships is easy. Regime change in France would be silly; regime change in Turkmenistan would be most welcome. But what we increasingly see is a messy choice between good and bad democracies. In an age where democracy is fetishized by politicians and NGOs alike and where the EU, the US, and the UN require third world countries to hold elections before the recieve aid, the emerging challenge for policymakers is to recognize when democracies are dysfunctional and when dictatorships are enlightened.

Robert Conquest on Democracy

From The National Interest (via TheRussianDilettante):

Another aspect of premature 'democracy' is the adulation of what used to be and might still be called 'the city mob' (noted by Aristotle as ochlocracy). In France, of course, in the 1790s, a spate of ideologues turned to the Paris mob, in riot after riot, until the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon's coup of 1799. The ploy was that, as A. E. Housman put it, a capital city with far fewer inhabitants could decide the fate of the country's millions.

That democracy is not the only, or inevitable, criterion of social progress is obvious. If free elections give power to a repression of consensuality, they are worse than useless. We will presumably not forget that Hitler came to power in 1933 by election, with mass and militant support. The communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was effected by constitutional intrigues backed by 'mass demonstrations.' We need hardly mention the 'peoples' democracies' and the 90 percent votes they always received.

As to later elections, a few years ago there was a fairly authentic one in Algeria. If its results had been honored, it would have replaced the established military rulers with an Islamist political order. This was something like the choice facing Pakistan in 2002. At any rate, it is not a matter on which the simple concepts of democracy and free elections provide us with clear criteria.

Herb Meyer Was Right

According to thisYahoo! News Report: Kyrgyzstan President Resigns.

Putin to Visit Israel

According to the BBC, Vladimir Putin will make his first visit to Israel at the end of April, a sign of improving relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv. (Though I doubt he'll pay a call on fugitive Yukos executives living there--unless he pardons Khodorkovsky, first).

How Do You Build Democracy?

Daniel Pipes worries President Bush may have the wrong theory of democracy-building:

The theory implied here is that running for office – with its emphasis on such mundane matters as fixing potholes and providing good schools – will temper Hezbollah and Hamas.

Count me skeptical.

The historical record does not support such optimism. When politically adept totalitarians win power democratically, they do fix potholes and improve schools – but only as a means to transform their countries in accordance with their utopian visions. This generalization applies most clearly to the historical cases (Adolf Hitler in Germany after 1933, Salvador Allende in Chile after 1970) but it also appears valid for the current ones (Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh since 2001, Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an in Turkey since 2002).

The Latest on the Crisis in Kyrgyzstan

Can be found on Nathan Hamm's Central Asian website: Registan.net...

Tony Blair's Revenge...

DG Mark Thompson will sack over 5,000 people at the BBC, says The Guardian:

More than one in five BBC staff now face losing their jobs as further details of director general Mark Thompson's radical revamp emerged yesterday, including the loss of 1,500 jobs in programme-making divisions such as news and sport.

Initial estimates of up to 5,000 job cuts are being hastily revised upwards by broadcasting unions, which are threatening strike action if compulsory redundancies are enforced.

Including jobs that will be lost as a result of redundancies, the outsourcing of some roles and the sell-off of commercial divisions such as BBC Broadcast and BBC Resources, up to 6,000 jobs are now expected to go in the biggest ever cull of staff at the corporation.

Why Dictatorships Fall

The riots in Kyrgyzstan led us to this article. Former CIA operative Herbert Meyer explains why dictatorships fall, in this interesting article I found at Publius Pundit. It is based on his work with Bill Casey in fighting the USSR in the Reagan administration. About current events, he is sanguine. He says Kyrgyzstan will go the way of the USSR because the generals won't shoot their own children. I don't know, there is a lot of regionalism in Kyrgyzstan, and although not a perfect democrat, Akayev really wasn't a dictator. Plus the question of Islamic extremism is a factor that needs to be considered, since instability can open the path to a fundamentalist takeover--viz., the Shah of Iran.

In addition, I saw Akayev on Russian television for the Moscow State University Anniversary celebrations (he's an alumnus of MGU), so I think the Russians might have something to say about what happens next. They didn't do anything in the Ukraine, but that isn't a guarantee they will do nothing now. Do they have the troops? Well, there are 25,000 Russian soldiers in Tajikistan.

It is always hard to make predictions, as Sam Goldwyn might have said, especially about the future...

Jeff Jacoby on Why America Ought Not Torture Terrorists

From The Boston Globe:

THE CONVENTION Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the United States ratified in 1994, prohibits the torture of any person for any reason by any government at any time. It states explicitly that torture is never justified -- ''no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification for torture.' Unlike the Geneva Convention, which protects legitimate prisoners of war, the Convention Against Torture applies to everyone -- even terrorists and enemy combatants. And it cannot be evaded by ''outsourcing' a prisoner to a country where he is apt to be tortured during interrogation.

In short, the international ban on torture -- a ban incorporated into US law -- is absolute. And before Sept. 11, 2001, few Americans would have argued that it should be anything else.

Catherine Johnson on Terry Schiavo

From Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter: "Terri Schiavo's parents have hope that their daughter's functioning can be improved or perhaps one day cured with treatment, therapy, and emerging knowledge. They may be right, they may be wrong. Or they may be ahead of their time, because one day brain damage will be repairable. That's my bet. In the meantime they choose to love and care for their daughter.

"Her legal husband chooses to starve her to death.

"If he starved his dog, he'd be arrested."

Buckley on George Kennan

William F. Buckley reminds us that not everyone admired George F. Kennan, who died last week at the age of 101. Here's his waspish farewell from National Review Online.

RAND Reports LAX Lines Terrorist Targets

I stood in one of these incredibly long lines at LAX (and finally understood why everyone I met in LA hates Bush). A RAND corporation study and a GAO report confirms what I thought while standing on the side of the road for half an hour, inhaling fumes (luckily it was sunny, a beautiful day in Southern California)--Long lines of people waiting to get to their flights can attract terrorists.

Here's the Los Angeles Times story. Money quote: "Long lines at airports are 'the single greatest vulnerability that we have in the domestic U.S. at the moment,' said aviation consultant Billie Vincent, a former Federal Aviation Administration security chief. The General Accounting Office released a report this week that said heightened screening procedures and truck-sized explosives-detection machines in airport lobbies — added after 9/11 — had created crowds that put passengers at risk. 'In the '70s, gangs in Europe entered airports and machine-gunned and killed people,' said Stephen Van Beek, policy director for Airports Council International-North America. 'Terrorists know if they did that today, it would be highly publicized.'"

BTW, A number of people missed flights due to the long lines and security hassles, so had to try to fly standby, and then one didn't even get on my flight, which was full, so he had to wait for the next one. Not too good for business or the LA tourist industry, I thought. And I wondered, after the humiliation of taking off my shoes, and my jacket, and taking my laptop out, and so forth: Whatever happened to constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, don't they apply to air travellers?

David D'Arcy's Last Moments at NPR

From an account by Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times:

A short time later, Rehm again called D'Arcy — this time with a lawyer listening in — and read him a termination notice, which said in part: "In reporting on this subject basic editorial standards of journalism were overlooked such as presenting the facts in a fair and balanced way. In addition the museum was not given an opportunity to respond to the harsh criticism raised in the piece."

D'Arcy's editor at "All Things Considered," Tom Cole, was suspended without pay for one day. Rehm, D'Arcy said, told him that "Cole agreed with all the criticisms and had showed the appropriate remorse."

Wolfowitz on the 60th Anniversary of Victory in WWII

Found something on the web from the US relating to the 60th Anniversary of Victory in WWIIand it is by Paul Wolfowitz!

Elie Wiesel teaches us that we must speak about unspeakable deeds, so that they will be neither forgotten nor repeated. Most of all, he offers personal witness to all humanity that in the face of the most horrific oppression, there is always hope that the goodness of the human spirit will prevail.

That is the larger meaning of why we gather here today. We’re here to reflect on the magnitude of the occasion, how totalitarian evil claimed millions of precious lives. But just as important, the member nations attending today are affirming their rejection of such evil and making a statement of hope for a more civilized future, a hope that “never again” will the world look the other way in the face of such evil.

For if there is one thing the world has learned, it is that peaceful nations cannot close their eyes or sit idly by in the face of genocide. It took a war, the most terrible war in history, to end the horrors that we remember today. It was a war that Winston Churchill called “The Unnecessary War” because he believed that a firm and concerted policy by the peaceful nations of the world could have stopped Hitler early on. But it was a war that became necessary to save the world from what he correctly called “the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister … by the lights of a perverted science.”

This truth we also know: that war, even a just and noble war, is horrible for everyone it touches. War is not something Americans seek, nor something we will ever grow to like. Throughout our history, we have waged it reluctantly, but we have pursued it as a duty when it was necessary.

America may need more of this sort of remembrance, along with restoration of the WWII alliance, to win the global war on terror.

Will Russia Tilt Towards Israel?

Mark Katz thinks so, writing in Middle East Quarterly, and says Chechen terrorists are one reason for Putin's move:

But what has motivated Putin to make this choice? Putin's history indicates a deep, emotional commitment to defeating the Chechen rebellion. He denies that the Chechen rebels have any legitimate basis for complaint against Moscow and refuses to negotiate with them. Putin does not appear to doubt the rightness of his hard-line policy toward Chechnya, even in the face of international outrage. Sunni Islamists see Russia as being as much of an enemy as the United States and Israel. European leaders criticize Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya. Even at the height of Russian collaboration with "Old Europe" to block United Nations approval for the U.S-led intervention in Iraq, French president Jacques Chirac raised the issue of Russian human rights violations in Chechnya while hosting Putin at a Paris banquet. After the September 2004 Beslan tragedy, the Russian foreign ministry "reacted with outrage" at the implied criticism of Moscow's policy in an EU statement asking "the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened." Very few have given the unequivocal support for Putin's Chechnya policy that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has.

Sharon, who is fluent in Russian, has established a genuine bond with Putin. Both share a similar mindset about their Muslim opponents: they are terrorists with whom there can be no negotiation. Both Putin and Sharon use force against opponents they believe undeserving of sympathy, and both share a bond formed by their resulting vilification in the West.

While Sharon is not the first or only Israeli official to express sympathy for Russia's Chechnya policy, Sharon's key role in the improvement of bilateral relations is suggested by the improvement under his watch. Prior to Sharon's accession, Putin was content to leave the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the hands of the strongly pro-Palestinian Russian foreign ministry. Only after his first meeting with Sharon in September 2001 did Putin's pro-Israel tilt emerge.