Today's Q & A with Victor Hanson

A Reader's Question:

Q. What reading would you suggest for someone wanting to understand the historical origins of the conflicts in the Middle East, as well as general reading on the history of the Middle East.

A. I reviewed Fouad Ajami's The Foreigner's Gift for the next issue of Commentary and found it very insightful. Michael Oren's Six Days of War has valuable information well beyond the 1967 war, and, of course, Bernard Lewis's, What Went Wrong was the first really to reject the 'colonialist, racist, imperialist' mantra of the 1980s. More controversial are the more recent Londonistan by Melanie Phillips and Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroy the West from Within.

There are roughly two schools of thought: Madrid, London, Beslan, India, Manhattan, Bali, and other jihadist attacks have no connection. Radical Islam is a figment of the paranoid ethnocentric Western imagination, while the real problem is U.S. and Israeli imperialism and the rise of the police state nurtured on Islamophobia, which sums up sentiment on the European street. In contrast, most in the U.S. accept that Islamic fascism is a disease spreading, like its autocratic precursors, throughout the Middle East and offering a cheap victimization and scapegoating for mostly self-inflicted miseries. So that is the great divide in the West, and I'm afraid the appeasers seem to be winning.

Do We Have What It Takes?

John Derbyshire points out John Podhoretz's must read column today.

July 25, 2006 -- WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

Derbyshire seconds Podhoretz with this quote of George Orwell written well before World War 2 began:

"You cannot be objective about an aerial torpedo. And the horror we feel of these things has led to this conclusion: if someone drops a bomb on your mother, go and drop two bombs on his mother. The only apparent alternatives are to smash dwelling houses to powder, blow out human entrails and burn holes in children with thermite, or to be enslaved by people who are more ready to do these things than you are yourself; as yet no one has suggested a practicable way out."

—George Orwell, reviewing Arthur Koestler's Spanish Testament for the magazine Time and Tide, Feb. 5, 1938.

It is what we have always been up against, not the means or numbers, but the will to win.

Hitchens: Think of the Trees!

I just now caught this article by Hitchens on Plamegate. It is good. In sum, in Hitchens' fashion:

When one thinks of the oceans of ink and acres of paper that have been wasted on this mother of all nonstories, one wants to weep for the journalistic profession as well as for the trees.

Read the rest here.

Dershowitz: "Civilian Casuality'?

Pajamas Media has a link to an Alan Dershowitz column in the LA Times. In it, he recommends that we need to think of casualities and deaths of civilians and terrorists who hide and work among civilians differently than we do. Says he:

We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: "the continuum of civilianality." Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished.

There is a vast difference — both moral and legal — between a 2-year-old who is killed by an enemy rocket and a 30-year-old civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets. Both are technically civilians, but the former is far more innocent than the latter. There is also a difference between a civilian who merely favors or even votes for a terrorist group and one who provides financial or other material support for terrorism.

Finally, there is a difference between civilians who are held hostage against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human shields, and civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm's way in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire.

Read it all here.

Michael Ramirez Says it All

Click to enlarge.

More here.

(ht: Powerline)

Bainbridge on Online Wine Shopping

His column at TCS is here. He lists sites to buy directly from wineries and from dedicated online stores and the states they ship to.

Grain of Salt with Hawaii as Target

Over at In From the Cold, Spook 86 advises we take with a grain of salt the report from Japanese papers that Kim Jong's TP 2 was headed to Hawaii. Read it here.

Online Encyclopedia of Wine and Sangria

Professor of the Vine shares this one: EncycloWine, the wiki encyclopedia for wine enthusiasts.

Here is their article on sangrias, a wine-punch I made for our 4th of July celebration. It was the rave of the party. Sugar might be nice, but we enjoyed it without. Here is the recipe I found and slightly modified. Besides being wine, it's a refreshing beverage for the hot weather. More, there are no rules for how you make it, or what you add.

An aside for you purists: EncycloWine points out that what distinguishes Sangria from wine coolers is the quality of wine. The important thing is that the beverage be still discernably a wine.

Kim Jong-il's Objective

Herb Meyer's "What Kim Jong-il is Really Up To" at The American Thinker:

. . . the unification of Korea under his control.

Eric Lichtblau's SWIFT Story: Did it Reveal Something Secret or Not?

John at Powerline has got the most devasting argument that I've yet read against the defense ("The terrorists knew") of NY Times' Eric Lichtblau's article which revealed the classified means of tracing terrorist's financial networking through the program called SWIFT.

He draws our attention to an earlier Lichtblau piece titled "U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds." It was published November 2005, a mere 8 months ago. So, you say, what's the beef? Eight months ago Lichtblau just didn't know what he knows now (thanks to the leaks, it must be said). Right. And that's the point: Lichtblau goes to great lengths to report all the authorities saying that the Bush Administration wasn't taking enough measures to chase down the terrorists' money and transaction channels.... In other words, no one knew about SWIFT in November.

John draws these conclusions:

What can we conclude from this? Several things. First, neither Lichtblau, nor the GAO, nor Lichtblau's "experts" knew anything about the secret SWIFT tracking program. This renders the Times' current defense untenable.

Second, both GAO and Lichtblau were quick to criticize the government's overall anti-terrorist finance efforts when, in fact, they had information on only one minor aspect of those efforts. This is not surprising: the federal bureaucracy and the New York Times' staff both consist overwhelmingly of loyal Democrats.

Third, Lichtblau and his "experts" were ill-informed. Hambali, the most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia and the architect of the Bali bombing, had been captured, with the aid of the SWIFT program, in August 2003. So readers who relied on the Times and Lichtblau's "experts" for information on how the administration was doing in fighting al Qaeda were misinformed.

Fourth, Lichtblau's current reporting is deeply dishonest. His statements to the effect that everyone knew about the SWIFT program are obviously false; neither he, his "experts" nor the GAO apparently were aware of it. Further, if Lichtblau were a reporter with integrity, his most recent story would have begun with an acknowledgement of his own prior, inaccurate reporting. An appropriate headline might have been: "We had it wrong: Bush administration doing great job in tracking terrorist financing." Don't hold your breath.

Finally, this episode casts light on the broader relationship between the Bush administration and the press. Here, the administration endured unjust, uninformed criticism first from the GAO, then, echoed and amplified, from the press. It must have been tempting, and surely would have been politically helpful, for the administration to leak the existence of the SWIFT program and the fact that its anti-terror financing programs have been successful--have, in fact, contributed to the capture of one of the world's most wanted terrorists. But the administration didn't do that. The administration endured unjust criticism and political damage rather than expose a program that was important to the nation's defense. How sad that Bill Keller and Eric Lichtblau didn't learn from President Bush's example.

See Villainous Company for more.

Are Reporters Above the Law? Bennett v. Safire

Despite cheap digs at Bennett on Meet the Press today, Bill Bennet wades into it with Bill Safire.

MR. BENNETT: Well, we’re still talking about basic right and wrong here. And is there any question that people—I think I’m the only one here who signed a nondisclosure agreement when I was—when I was director of national drug control policy, maybe some of you have—it’s a pretty serious matter. People who signed those agreements in government have violated the law, they have violated their oath, they have done so by talking to Dana Priest, talking to Risen and talking to Lichtblau.

MS. MITCHELL: Let, let me...

MR. BENNETT: We need to get after those people, and one way to get after those people is to talk to the reporters who—with whom they spoke.

MR. SAFIRE: Oh, you’re saying “get after them.” That means threatening reporters, and threaten them with contempt and put them in jail.

MR. BENNETT: Absolutely, absolutely.

MR. SAFIRE: And that’s wrong.

MS. MITCHELL: Bill, what, what...(unintelligible)...let me ask, Bill...

MR. BENNETT: Why is that wrong, Bill? Why are they above the law?

MR. SAFIRE: Because they’re affected...

MR. HARWOOD: Because it’s a big step toward tyranny, which is what we’re supposed to be withholding.

MR. BENNETT: It isn’t a step toward tyranny. And what about the AIPAC, guys? Is that a step toward tyranny? They’re being prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Isn’t that more a step toward tyranny?

(Emphasis mine.) Unfortunately, he doesn't get to finish, as John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal interrupted. Safire's answer would be more intersting.

They do return to it briefly at the end of the program.

MS. MITCHELL: The last word to you, Bennett. We only have about 15, 30 seconds.

MR. BENNETT: Yeah, I agree with Bill Safire. It’s in Congress’ court now, and they need to act on it. But I don’t agree with Bill Safire that the press has a right not to give testimony in a criminal trial. They are not above the law. And when you show your Pentagon Papers case, please read Black—Justice Blackman’s decision. He said, “No prior restraint. But if people get hurt, if people get killed as a result of this, the press is responsible.”

MS. MITCHELL: So the issue is whether people are hurt by something that had arguably been previously disclosed.

MR. BENNETT: That’s correct.

MR. SAFIRE: I disagree completely.

MR. BENNETT: You’re not above the law.

MR. SAFIRE: I will respect...(unintelligible).

But it doesn't get us any further to understanding Safire's argument. As it stands then, it looks like he is claiming reporters ought to be above the law in these matters.

Read the rest. (Begin roundtable transcript here, scroll to bottom of page.)

The President and the Press

From the guys at Powerline: which President do you suppose appealed to journalists and editors to apply two tests when it came to running stories dealing with national security? Consider:

I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future--for reducing this threat or living with it--there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security--a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.

This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President--two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

In other words:

Every newspaper now asks itself, with respect to every story: "Is it news?" All I suggest is that you add the question: "Is it in the interest of the national security?" And I hope that every group in America-unions and businessmen and public officials at every level--will ask the same question of their endeavors, and subject their actions to this same exacting test.

The press, afterall, has been negligent:

For the facts of the matter are that this nation's foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery or espionage; that details of this nation's covert preparations to counter the enemy's covert operations have been available to every newspaper reader, friend and foe alike; that the size, the strength, the location and the nature of our forces and weapons, and our plans and strategy for their use, have all been pinpointed in the press and other news media to a degree sufficient to satisfy any foreign power; and that, in at least one case, the publication of details concerning a secret mechanism whereby satellites were followed required its alteration at the expense of considerable time and money

St. John F. Kennedy himself, "The President and the Press" (April 27, 1961)

Reading Kennedy's speech prompts one of two conclusions for me: either the press doesn't take the threat, this so-called War on Terror, seriously, hence they run every leak that comes their way. And therefore, they need to be appealed to, maybe eventually threatened with legal recourse. Or, ala Eason Jordan (whose website elevates safety of journalist over truth-telling), they are taking the threat quite seriously but are looking to save their own butts by being favorable to an enemy that could easily do to them what they did to Theo van Gogh, RIP.

Dave Reinhard on Bill Keller's Bromides

Here, (via Powerline) from the Oregonian, is Dave Reinhard's great response to Keller's latest "press-convention bromides".

NY Times' Standards for Publishing

Guess what, NY Times does in fact have standards for publishing sensitive material after all, as Wretchard over at Belmont Club reminds us. After a painful and careful deliberation, they refused to publish the Danish cartoons lampooning Muhammed. Good for them. We were beginning to wonder if they would publish anything. Wretchard says:

New York Times editor Bill Keller said that he and his staff concluded after a "long and vigorous debate" that publishing the cartoon would be "perceived as a particularly deliberate insult" by Muslims. "Like any decision to withhold elements of a story, this was neither easy nor entirely satisfying, but it feels like the right thing to do."

Michael Barone's response:

The New York Times is, evidently, not afraid that the government or its supporters—not even rabid talk radio listeners or right-wing blog readers—would wreak violence on 229 W. 43rd Street. But aggrieved Muslims—more accurately, Muslims purporting to be aggrieved—might. It's nice that Keller feels a responsibility to protect his staff. It's too bad he doesn't feel a similar responsibility to protect his fellow citizens after they've had the effrontery to re-elect George W. Bush.