SOPHISTICATED STUPIDITY
As an Army General, Colin Powell knows how to wage war. Unfortunately, the kind of war he knows how to wage best is bureaucratic, not military. Worse than unfortunately, the war he is waging is against his own president.It is tempting to hurl accusations of treason or something close to it in the face of the State Department’s chronic obsession of coddling America’s enemies. But with rare exceptions, the Pinstripes are far from traitors and look upon themselves as loyal Americans. Conservatives need to resist the urge to question their patriotism, and examine instead their method of diplomatic reasoning - which can be characterized as Sophisticated Stupidity.
DON’T EXPECT ARAB APOLOGIES
In Moslem culture, during the Daheyah (Sacrifice) feast, Moslems bring a lamb into the home for a ritual slaughter accompanied by the invocation Allahu Akbar, “God is great,” in the presence of the family and the children. Now we see the Daheyah of radical Islam to be Jews such as Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, who were beheaded with no mercy, accompanied by the same pious invocation. This is a perversion of Islam, but don’t expect an apology. To expect the Arab and Moslem leadership to apologize for the barbaric murder of Nick Berg is a reflection of the West’s naive and wrong expectations of Arab culture. In the Arab world to take responsibility and say “sorry” is taken as an unmanly sign of weakness that may get one into more trouble.
THE DISGRACE OF KARPINSKI
We received a deluge of comments regarding
NO WAY OUT: Iran is at war with us
Meet Hassan Abbasi, a well-known Iranian political scientist, longtime top official of the Revolutionary Guards, and currently "theoretician" in the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (how does one get a job description like that, I wonder) and the head of the National Security and Strategic Research Center. Abbasi holds special responsibility for North American affairs.Speaking at the Technical College of Tehran last Sunday, May 23, he proclaimed:"We have identified some 29 weak points for attacks in the U.S. and in the West, we intend to explode some 6,000 American atomic warheads, we have shared our intelligence with other guerilla groups and we shall utilize them as well. We have set up a department to cover England and we have had discussions regarding them. We have contacted the Mexicans and the Argentineans and will work with anyone who has an axe to grind with America."
THE REAL SCANDAL IN IRAQ
In order to understand what is going on in Iraq right now, it is simply imperative that you do a quick re-read of Childishness in Iraq written in August of 2003 and posted in Classics. This will give you the initial background on Ahmad Chalabi and the source of the vendetta Jordan’s King Hussein, the CIA, and the State Department have been conducting against him.What’s changed is that the line in the second paragraph about Jerry Bremer following the lead of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz rather than “his putative bosses at State” is no longer true. Bremer’s real boss is Robert Blackwill, Deputy National Security Advisor at the White House. He is directly in charge of US policy and operations in Iraq, and he has sold out to the squishes at State and the CIA. Which means he has sold America out to the UN.This is a first-class disaster, folks. It is the real scandal in Iraq, not the humiliation of Baathist thugs by seven yahoos in one cell block of Abu Ghraib. The trashing of Ahmad Chalabi, epitomized by Newsweek’s cover story this week entitled “Our Con Man in Iraq,” means that State and the CIA have staged a coup in Iraq - and that only Chalabi had the guts to oppose it. So he had to be destroyed.Here’s the sordid deal.
A EUROWEENIE STRIKES BACK!
This is the funniest email I have received in years. I thought about putting it in the Humor File because you’ll collapse laughing so hard when you read it. But it’s not a gag - the guy is serious! He’s from Switzerland - a place we all thought had some respect for freedom and dissent. This email displays just how far Europe has sunk into Terminal Weeniedom. It is also a cold shower reminder that the totalitarian ideologies of Communism, Fascism, and Naziism originated in Europe - and how Europeans are once again trashing their own freedoms. This letter is hilarious - but it’s also a sobering reminder of just how unique and precious our American freedom is. The letter is in full, with my comments in italicized brackets ---JW From: Kurt BrülisauerTo: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 11:50 AMSubject: Some comments concerning the content of your web siteSir, Looking for comments on the Iraq prisoner abuse issue, I found your site. With growing disgust I've read some of your articles that are freely accessible. The first one I read, "Why can't she take it like a man?", shows a dumb macho behavior but your attitude concerning the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal is not uncommon in right circles. Having read other comments of so called "patriot" sites I was not very surprised about your putting the blame on a single person, but you are the only one who insults at the same time the officer in charge just because she is a woman. A new quality of baseness. Nevertheless I find your article about what you call the Pogo Press worse. Like the Nazis during the Weimar Republic you abuse the freedom of press and of speech just to fight the free press. Unfortunately there is a swamp of fascist American sites on the internet that do the same thing every day without being sanctioned. [Note carefully: Any criticism of the liberal press is Nazi, fascist, and must be “sanctioned,” i.e., made illegal. This is truly Orwellian.]
A COUPLE OF DISAPPOINTMENTS. WE DO IT OURSELVES.
In my first column I mentioned a powerful tool to protect and ‘clean’ your computer. It’s called System Mechanic Pro. I advised against using it because it was overzealous. Unless you really knew what you were doing, the tool could delete files and registry entries than could render your computer unusable.
WHY KERRY’S ELECTION IS POSSIBLE
My view has been that this man, who is a quasi-traitor and anti-American as well as a vacuous, arrogant snob, could not be elected president, unless perhaps his opponent were falling apart before our eyes, and Bush hasn’t reached that stage yet. Regardless of the polls, regardless of what’s going on in the world of politics, it would be unimaginable and unprecedented for the U.S. to elect such a man. That’s been my position. But now it occurs to me that there is another way of seeing it:
THE LIBERAL’S IRAN
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has been to Iran for a few days, and he's full of deep thoughts about it. But, in keeping with the ideology of his social set, they are his thoughts, not those of the Iranian people.
SONIA GHANDI’S MASTERSTROKE
India’s stock market collapsed this week in a panic free fall after the return of the Congress Party in last week’s elections. The investor freak-out increased when it seemed that Congress would have to include India’s Communist Party of Marxism-Leninism in its ruling coalition. Then came Sonia Gandhi’s masterstroke.