Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
As US-led coalition forces liberate Iraq and Old Europe desperately tries to claim a piece of the post-war action through the United Nations, this news today from the legislatures of Germany and the United States.
This morning the US House of Representatives voted to cut taxes (the Senate is expected to follow suit shortly). And today the German parliament voted to raise taxes.Liberation, and the willingness to take risks to invest in the future, isn't just about war and peace.
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen in "Hollywood's Darling, Liberals' Blind Spot":Just recently the government of Fidel Castro arrested about 80 dissidents and almost instantly brought them to trial -- if it can be called that. Foreign journalists and diplomats were excluded from the proceedings, in which 12 of the accused face life sentences. All of them are undoubtedly guilty of seeking greater freedom and on occasion meeting with visiting human rights activists. In Cuba, those are crimes...[Castro] can rely also on the unswerving naivete and obtuseness of the American left, which consistently has managed to overlook what a goon he is. Instead, [the Left] concentrates on his willingness to meet with American intellectuals and chatter long into the night...I'd like to see anyone interrupt one of Fidel's marathon soliloquies to ask about human rights violations...[Washington Post, April 8, 2003]
Perhaps this is because to Leftists, freedom of speech is not a mean and ends toward freedom, but only useful as a means to establishing the opposite: socialism--or some variant thereof, i.e., fascism, communism, etc. Once the socialist state is a reality, as in Cuba, freedom of speech becomes a liability that can only undermine the Leftist's totalitarian dream.
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Update: Or perhaps it is because they are too busy gushing over Castro...
Barbara Walters on Why Cuba is the Freest Nation on Earth: "For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth. The literacy rate is 96 percent." -- [ABC's 20/20, October 11, 2002]
Of course, given that it is illegal to disagree with Cuban government statistics in Cuba and illegal to lend books which makes makes the ability to read fairly useless in practice. Here is Dan Rather being "controversial" by speaking his mind on the morning of the Elian raid:
Dan Rather's Very Small Mind: ". . . there is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba. And, I recognize this might be controversial, but there's little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, 'listen, we really want this child back here.'"
Where is my bucket?The Multicultural Approach to Totalitarianism: "What is deprogramming? What is reeducation? The young man [Elian] will go back into the, into the school system in Cuba. The school system inCuba teaches that Communism is the way to succeed in life and it is the best system. Is that deprogramming or is that national heritage? That's certainly what he'll be learning. He'll also be living in a different kind of society, a society that many people here in Cuba like. The CIA, in fact, says that if the borders were open that most, 90 percent of the population here in Cuba would stay in Cuba because they like it."-- NBC News reporter Jim Avila from Cuba
Yeah and 100% of them would vote for Castro...
Why Elian's Mom Died for Nothing: "To be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami and I'm not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously."- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift
It is a shame Elian's mother, Elizabet Broton, did not read Eleanor's column at Newsweek, perhaps she would not have risked her life to bring her son to the U.S.
By the way, these are all actual quotes (Hat Tip: MRC). I am not making this stuff up.
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Bob Getman, whom I know by acquaintance, has a nice letter in the Sun today:
The New York Sun has done a great job of alerting New Yorkers to the political skirmishes concerning the coming post-war period ["The British Worth," Andrew Sullivan, Opinion, April 9, 2003]. It would be moral treason for America to allow the United Nations or anti-war countries any role whatever, directly or indirectly, in the post-war liberation of Iraq. The anti-war nations, some of whose citizens now defile the graves of American war dead from earlier wars, opposed the ends of the war and are unworthy (let alone untrustworthy) of carrying them out. The United Nations is full of countries with tyrannical governments similar to Saddam's and opposite to what we aim to establish in Iraq.
What our men and women die for in a war is what comes after victory; the end of a war must bring the ends for which it was fought: freedom and man's rights. [New York Sun, 4/10/03]
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Iranian Amir Taheri looks to be another commentator worth reading on the Middle East. Here's from his London Times article titled "Don't listen to the Arab elites, the Iraqis didn't and they're the ones cheering today":
The Arab masses... as yesterday's scenes of jubilation showed in Baghdad, are happy to see at least one of their oppressors kicked into the dustbin of history. The so-called "Arab street" did not explode in countries outside Iraq, thus disappointing the "Don't-Touch-Saddam" lobby in the West...Much of the Arab media went hysterical about imaginary battles in which resisting Iraqis supposedly inflicted massive losses on "the invaders". They forecast a war that would last "for years", if not "until the end of time"...These days the Arab media are full of articles about how the Arabs feel humiliated by what has happened in Iraq, how they are frustrated, how they hate America for having liberated the people of Iraq from their oppressor, and how they hope that the Europeans, presumably led by Jacques Chirac, will ride to the rescue to preserve a little bit of Saddam's legacy with the help of the United Nations. Thank God, the peoples of Iraq, not deceived by Arab hyperbole, are ignoring such nonsense. [Times (London), 4/10/03]
Hear! Hear!Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Arab and Muslim leaders say retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner's involvement with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs--including the document he signed and a trip he took to Israel--raises questions about whether he is the right person to oversee Iraq's reconstruction. Garner was one of more than 40 retired U.S. military leaders to sign his name to a letter 2 1/2 years ago amid renewed Mideast violence. The letter strongly supported Israel for exercising "remarkable restraint" and blamed the crisis on Palestinian leaders. A Palestinian tactic to "use civilians as soldiers in a war is a perversion of military ethics," the statement said. Palestinian leaders taught children the mechanics of war while "filling their heads with hate," and Palestinian police and military commanders were "betting their children's lives on the capabilities and restraint" of Israeli defense forces, the statement added....Sarah Eltantawi, spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, called the choice of Garner "very unwise--it will not reinforce among the Iraqis the sentiment that their leadership is representative." [Associated Press, 4/8/03]
Taranto: "Given the Palestinians' open sympathy for the Iraqis' oppressor, we'd be surprised if the Iraqis have any sympathy at all for the Palestinians."
But let's suppose that's what the Iraqis think--if so, then their leadership shouldn't be representative. We are conducting this war to forcibly prevent Iraq from conducting and supporting terrorism. If the Iraqis are really going to insist on supporting terrorism, that will merely prove to us that we haven't killed enough of them. Such an outcome would put me squarely behind everything Leonard Peikoff said the other night: Target as many of them as it takes--including civilians--until they are terrified of twitching a single muscle that even looks like supporting terrorism. There is no such thing as a right to assist the use of force against a free state--and no right means no protection: No principle forbids using as much force as it takes to suppress your action.
