Apr 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
It appears that Arnett is no longer only working for Saddam...DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Peter Arnett, fired by NBC earlier this week for giving an interview to state-run Iraqi television, is reporting for pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, the station said Saturday. "He (Arnett) is an able reporter who has covered wars before and who knows Iraq well," the Dubai-based station's editor-in-chief Salah Nejm told The Associated Press. "I think he is unbiased and has a lot of experience," Nejm said. [April 5, 2003, AP]
What next? Arnett acting as Gollum in the Lord of Rings too! At least he won't need makeup--and, like Gollum, the weasel Arnett has the traitor part down too!
Related: Is Peter Arnett guilty of treason?" and Peter Arnett: Saddam's Useful Idiot.
Apr 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Brunswick, GA--After much debate over the issue of whether passenger airline pilots can be trusted to carry firearms into the cockpit, the first group of pilots will begin training at FLETC next week. The pilot training program allows volunteers who meet federal "screening" requirements and pass arbitrary psychological evaluations to carry .40 caliber semiautomatic weapons during flight. Why revolvers or other calibers aren't allowed is anybody's guess.
"Not every plane is going to have a pilot who is armed," Airline Pilots Association spokesman John Mazor explained, "but you won't know if your pilot is armed or not, and that's the deterrent."
Hmmm. I wonder if firearm possession only works as a criminal deterrent when you're above 10,000 feet...
Apr 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Dr. Leonard Peikoff's lecture yesterday, "America versus Americans" at the Ford Hall Forum was incredibly provocative (Links: Audio Only, Video Modem, Video Broadband). I had felt myself getting complacent recently with my nice neoconservative New York Sun--I was even beginning to feel downright mainstream. Sure enough, Dr. Peikoff showed once again how radical Objectivism is compared to anything else out there, even on a subject like the war.
I didn't take notes, but here's a brief--and I hope accurate--summary: We're fighting the wrong wars, for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way. While Dr. Peikoff supports the troops, and believes that attacking Iraq was better than sitting on our hands and doing nothing, he argued that we've taken on Iraq because George W. Bush lacks the moral courage to identify and go after the true enemy, Islam. (He did at one point say "Islamic militancy," but he also maintained that the militants were the consistent practitioners of Islam, so I believe I've got his intention correct here.) If we had done so, we'd be attacking Iran.
Dr. Peikoff maintained that in war our only concern should be victory and the destruction of the threat--and that we should then leave Iraq and the Iraqis to their own devices rather than being concerned with forming their next government. Our ultimate goal should be simply to create an overwhelming fear in that part of the world--a fear of what would happen if any terrorist act were ever tried again. This goal warrants an utter lack of concern for civilian casualties, including the deliberate targeting of civilians if necessary. (He illustrated the point with a description of the Allied firebombing of Tokyo--and in general contrasted our conduct of the current war with our actions in WWII.) Needless to say, he believes the groveling before the UN, the humanitarian aid to the enemy, the concern with civilian casualties, and the desire to be seen as liberators all reflect a fear of being seen as conducting a war for our own selfish reasons. (In the question period, when asked about the "No Blood for Oil" slogan, he answered: "If we are going to conduct a war, oil would be a pretty damn good reason..."--though he went on to say that this isn't Bush's reason.)
The overarching theme of the talk, however, was that the American people have compliantly followed along behind George Bush in all this because altruism has completely swamped the remnants of the original American sense of life. It isn't just the intellectuals any more; it's everybody.
The talk prompted one indignant outburst--when Dr. Peikoff came out in favor of deliberately targeting civilians, a man in front shouted "That's disgusting!" and then angrily left the auditorium. Other than that, the audience was civil.
I wish I had the text of the talk in front of me--I'm still not sure if I agree with it entirely, or if my uneasiness is just a lack of nerve. I certainly don't believe civilians should be spared if doing so endangers American lives, and I agree that the battle orders have put American lives needlessly at risk. But is fear the only motivator we need, or should want? All other things being equal, wouldn't it be in our long-term interest to have a free Iraq at the end of the war, if it's possible? Wouldn't that make it less likely that we'd have to go in again in the future? And so wouldn't it be preferable to refrain from destroying people and things we don't need to destroy?Apr 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From UPI:Three Iraqis who aided the CIA in the March 20 attempt by the United States to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were executed this week by Iraqi counterintelligence, former and serving U.S. officials told United Press International. A super-secret U.S. intelligence operation, working in Baghdad for weeks before the war, provided the crucial targeting data for the attack on Saddam and his sons, launched in an effort to pre-empt a full-scale war, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The war had been scheduled to start Friday, March 21, U.S. officials told UPI. But -- after getting intelligence that a brief target opportunity presented itself to decapitate the Iraqi leadership -- President George W. Bush instead announced at 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 19 -- 6:15 a.m. March 20 Baghdad time -- that hostilities had begun...Sources told UPI that Iraqi counterintelligence killed the three, shooting two and cutting out the tongue of a third, who bled to death. They said U.S. intelligence had learned this from their forces on the ground in Iraq.
Apr 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Democratic Presidential hopeful...Regardless of how successful the United States is in waging war against Iraq, it will take a new president to rebuild the country's damaged relationships with the rest of the world, Sen. John Kerry said Wednesday. [AP]
Are we to presume that that new President is supposed to be you? And what "damaged relationships" are you talking about? The terrorist supporters on the United Nations Secuirty Council? Saddam's military suppliers and cheering squad in Russia and France? Shouldn't it be they who have to repair the relationship, since America's actions are right and their actions are morally despicable? (Hat Tip Chip Joyce)
Apr 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is urging President Bush to install an interim Iraqi government immediately--even as the war continues. The new authority would be made up of Iraqi opposition groups in exile, including the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi....[T]he defense secretary makes the case that Iraqi and Kurdish expatriates are better equipped to take over Iraq than are opposition leaders still inside the country. Rumsfeld's reason: The exiles have experienced democracy while living in the West; the indigenous anti-Saddam Hussein forces have not....The view expressed by Rumsfeld is hotly disputed by others inside the U.S. government, and the issues surrounding an interim government have become a real source of infighting between the Pentagon on one side and the State Department and CIA, which believe the expatriates have no credibility in Iraq, on the other...
...Rumsfeld's proposal is likely to infuriate European allies who oppose a U.S.-dominated administration of Iraq...Rumsfeld followed with a second memo Wednesday. It called for the president to ask Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command, to announce that the expatriates are in charge. Rumsfeld quotes Gen. George Patton to the effect that a good plan executed rapidly is better than a perfect plan executed too late. [US News and World Report, 4/3/03]
Notice the State Department's implicit premise that the Iraqis would naturally oppose an American occupation. Sez who? Sure, any provisional government we help installing will be viewed as American-influenced. So what? What the State Department is saying is that our influence on the formation of Iraq's next government will taint its "purity"--in effect, that it will only be legitimate if it "springs from the will of the Iraqi people." This is implicit collectivism based on disregard of what in fact makes a government legitimate: the protection of individual rights. The important thing is not so much who rules as to what the rules will be. There is no point to having a "democratic" Iraq that votes itself back into dictatorship.