Should you wish to annoy contemporary architects--and why not?--here is a word you will want to incorporate into your active vocabulary: 'Euclidean.' They hate that. What, you might ask, can they possibly have against the Alexandrian geometrist Euclid, author of one of the noblest books ever written? Well, in the humbug of contemporary architectural discourse, to describe someone or something as 'non-Euclidean'--which essentially means using curves, rather than angles, especially the supremely evil right angle--suggests that that person embraces the feminine as opposed to the patriarchy, multi-culti as opposed to Western colonialism, intuitions and feelings as opposed to overweening rationalism.

Now no architect, not even David Childs of SOM, will come right out and admit to being Euclidean for the same reason that few people eagerly embrace labels like imperialist or racist....

While President Bush was right to criticize the Palestinian Authority for not acting against terrorism directed at Israel, he should be ashamed of criticizing Israel for building a security fence.

Note the absurdity of the criticism's moral equivalence: while the Palestinian Authority does absolutely nothing to stop terrorists from organizing, training and slipping into Israel to murder and maim, Israel is criticized for building a fence to protect itself from such attacks!

Such criticism is no different, in principle, than criticism directed against a man who builds a fence to protect his family from criminal neighbors.

President Bush's misguided criticism implies a moral equivalence between those who act in self-defense and the terrorists who initiate violence against them, and it can have only one result: to facilitate the terrorists' attacks while undermining their victims' ability to defend themselves.

Recommended Reading:

• Israel Has A Moral Right To Its Life by Yaron Brook
  Morally and militarily, Israel is America's frontline in the war on terrorism. If America is swayed by Arafat's latest empty rhetoric, and allows him to continue threatening Israel, our own campaign against terrorism becomes sheer hypocrisy and will, ultimately, fail.
• Bush's Vision For Peace for the Middle East: A Prelude To War by Onkar Ghate
  As Israel reenters the West Bank in another attempt to drive out the terrorists, President Bush offers his vision for peace in the Middle East. Israel, he says, should withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and the Palestinians (under "new leadership") should be awarded a state. Tragically but inevitably, Bush's proposal, like the many "peace" plans before it, will bring, not peace, but more war.
• Israel or the Palestinians? Making the Moral Choice by Wayne Dunn
  Israel is doing what a free nation's government is supposed to do when its citizens' lives are threatened with force: it's responding with force.
• Moral Inversion in the Middle East by David Holcberg
  When the Israelis found themselves being attacked by groups of children and youngsters, and by adult snipers and shooters hiding behind them, they had no other recourse but to defend themselves and shoot back.

Almost without public notice, the two sides have declared war on each other. President George W. Bush stated in June 2003 that "the free world, those who love freedom and peace, must deal harshly with Hamas" and that "Hamas must be dismantled." Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage announced in September 2002 that "Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists and maybe Al-Qaeda is actually the B-team. … They have a blood debt to us, which you spoke to; and we're not going to forget it and it's all in good time. … We're going to take them down one at a time."

These ambitious sentiments have been accompanied by a shift in resources. The Washington Post reported in May that the FBI, "Confident that its efforts to track the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in this country are beginning to pay off, … is devoting more resources to the two Middle Eastern groups, which command more widespread support in Arab and Muslim communities" in the United States. The Post article tells about a November 2002 ruling from a secretive three-judge appeals panel that authorized federal agents pursuing criminal prosecutions of terrorist suspects to exploit the previously inaccessible vast backlog of classified wiretaps and intelligence reports from foreign security agencies. This has led to "stepped-up investigations in at least two dozen U.S. cities." The first public result came in February 2003 with the indictment of Sami Al-Arian and seven others. Current investigations are focused on the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and several individuals, including Abdelhaleem Ashqar, Mohamad Hammoud, and Ali Nasrallah.

Today, Hezbollah gave its fullest retort to date, in an interview by its leader Hassan Nasrallah to the Times of London. Nasrallah overtly threatened American interests around the world if the U.S. government does attempt to eradicate Hezbollah. "In such a case Hezbollah has a right to defend its existence, its people and its country through any means and at any time and in any place." To back this up, he noted that "There are many people throughout the world who love Hezbollah, who like Hezbollah and who support Hezbollah," he said. "Some may not sit idly by when seeing a brutal aggression against Lebanon."

Comment: It appears that Hamas and Hezbollah are no longer just Israel's problem but increasingly America's as well.