Apr 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Mark Steyn observes:
Eleven months ago I was in Fallujah. What a dump -- no disrespect to any Fallujans reading this. I had a late lunch in a seedy cafe full of Sunni men. Not a gal in the joint. And no Westerners except me. As in the movies, everyone stopped talking when I walked through the door, and every pair of eyes followed me as I made my way to a table....
Would they have liked to kill me? Well, I'll bet one or two would have enjoyed giving it a go. And, if they had, I'll bet three or four more would have beaten my corpse with their shoes. And five or six would have had no particular feelings about me one way or the other but would have been generally supportive of the decision to kill me after the fact. And the rest might have had a few qualms but they would have kept quiet.
That's the point to remember: The Iraqi people don't want to be on the American side, only on the winning side....
[I]n the Arab world, the indifferent are the biggest demographic. They sit things out, they see which strong horse has jostled his way to the head of the pack, and they go along with him. The Turks. The British. The British-installed king. The thug who murders the king. The thug who murders the thug who murders the king. [Sun Times]
Apr 16, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto passed this on from blogger James Lileks on Kerry's blaming George Bush for making the world mad at us. (Leave aside the implicit altruism of the alleged complaints):
Is the world angry at Russia, which spends nothing on AIDS and rebuffed Kyoto? Is the world angry at China, which got a pass on Kyoto and spends nothing on AIDS for other countries?
Is the world angry at North Korea for killings its people? Angry at Iran for smothering that vibrant nation with corrupt and thuggish mullocracy? Angry at Syria for occupying Lebanon? Angry at Saudi Arabia for its denial of women's rights? Angry at Russia for corrupt elections? Is the world angry at China for threatening Taiwan, or angry at France for joining the Chinese in joint military exercises that threatened the island on the eve of an election? Is the world angry at Zimbabwe for stealing land and starving people? Is the world angry at Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets? Is the world angry at Libya for having an NBC program?
Is the world angry at the thugs of Fallujah?
Is the world angry at anyone besides America and Israel?
But even if you admit that the world is angry at America - so angry that the poorest of them can't wait to come here and stake a claim - you have to stand in awe at the sheer political idiocy of Kerry's conclusion. Boiled down:
There are countless numbers of things that we could be do minimize the kind of anger and ... almost recruitment that has taken place in terrorist organizations as a result of the way the administration has behaved.
By toppling the fascists in Baghdad without French seal of approval, we have encouraged recruitment in terrorist organizations. It's not the invasion that ticked off the Man in the Arab Street, it's the lack of a 17th UN resolution on Iraq. Right now in a café in Beirut an educated man, a chemist by trade, schooled in the ways of the West, is reading an article about how the US will only spent $15 billion on AIDS and probably won't reduce its carbon emissions to 1817 levels, and he throws down the paper in disgust: bastards! I must join Al Qaeda, move to Iraq and kill the contractors who are upgrading their outmoded infrastructure!
If there is such a man, well, I'm angry at him. Do I get to be angry at him? No? Okay. I'll sit down now.
But who goes on to ask: Why are they angry at the U.S. and not at the others?
The answer is: Because we are big and powerful, and they're not--it's the implicit premise of altruism, where the successful are wrong because they're successful, and the unsuccessful are right because they're unsuccessful. But don't count on conservatives to identify that premise.Apr 16, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Once again, I had the featured letter in the New York Sun--the issue is an extra-long, special second anniversary edition, with a front-page photo showing Mayor Bloomberg marking the anniversary by proclaiming "New York Sun day." Five minutes after I had emailed it in (a few days ago), the Sun called and said they'd run the letter as soon as they had space. It's a follow-up to my last one:***
On February 5, it was an extra $7 billion, requiring the largest tax increase in state history. By March 2, it was $9.6 billion. On March 26, it was an extra $16.5 billion for New York City alone. And still they're not satisfied ["The Plaintiff in Schools Case Asks $10B More," William F. Hammond Jr., April 13, 2004]. Dare I say "I told you so?"
What makes this feeding frenzy possible is the premise that coercion is justified in the service of the needy, and that the taxpayers' lives and incomes belong first to society, which may help itself to as much as it sees fit.
But educators who have something of value to offer do not need to demand compensation at gunpoint. All the extra loot that the educrats grab will simply serve to make them more effective at miseducating children.
Parents choose to have children; for them to use the power of the government to force others to pay for their children's education is to evade the responsibility for the costs of their own decisions, and to try to foist those costs on unwilling victims.
If people can't afford to educate their own kids, they shouldn't have them.
Apr 14, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto points out that no Trent Lott-style ruckus is being raised over the praise by Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd of West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd--who used to be a member of the KKK. Here's what Dodd said:
It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great Senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time.... He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this Nation.... I cannot think of a single moment in this Nation's 220-plus year history where he would not have been a valuable asset to this country. Certainly today that is not any less true.
The Junkyard blog reports on some of what Byrd has said:
So, according to Dodd, Byrd was right even when he said this?
[T]here are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time, if you want to use that word. But we all--we all--we just need to work together to make our country a better country and I--I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much. [March 2001]
And this?
The New York Times reported in 1971 on a letter Mr. Byrd wrote in 1946, after leaving the Klan. Writing to the Klan's Imperial Wizard, Mr. Byrd identified himself as a former Kleagle and recommended a person to serve as state Klan coordinator. He wrote, "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. . . . It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the Union. Will you please inform me as to the possibilities of rebuilding the Klan realm of W.Va?"
And this?
And in a 1947 letter, after Mr. Byrd had been elected to the state senate, he wrote that he would "never submit to fight beneath that banner (the American flag) with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
Apr 11, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum: 
CNN reports: Bush: Memo had no 'actionable intelligence'.
The memo contains mostly historical information, such as bin Laden's desire to retaliate for Clinton's air strikes, but there's also new information, such as the FBI's notice of "suspicious activity" related to hijacking preparation. This latter is no small thing in hindsight. But prior to 9/11 virtually no one had imagined much less planned for planes being used as missiles. And within minutes after such an attack was known to be possible, passengers of Flight 93 immediately acted to prevent the further use of planes as missiles, and died trying. Now, if everyday citizens would take such measures, does anyone really beleive that President Bush, the Commander in Chief, would not have acted to prevent 9/11 had he had any specific information?
Some members of the media seem intent on giving exactly that impression, if only with their headlines: from Reuters (Bush Was Told of Al Qaeda Hijack Activity) to The Economic Times (Bush may have known about 9/11).
If this memo is the climax of the 9/11 commission, then if nothing else it is proof that the political opponents of President Bush are much more concerned with smearing him than in truly discovering what it would take to prevent another 9/11.Apr 10, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
China has unilaterally asserted a new "interpretation" of Hong Kong's constitution:
China claimed the right yesterday to veto any form of democratic development in Hong Kong in its toughest assertion of power over the territory since its handover from Britain seven years ago. China's parliament, the National People's Congress, ruled that only Beijing could reform the former British colony's electoral system....Hong Kong opposition figures said the ruling amounted to an illegal amendment of the basic law, which was agreed by Beijing and London before the 1997 handover. [UK Telegraph]
