Apr 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's the latest development after Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggested removing troops from the front lines in North Korea:South Korea's National Assembly on Wednesday authorized the dispatch of non-combat troops to support the U.S.-led war on Iraq....For days, [President Roh Moo-hyun] has struggled to muster support for the deployment of 600 South Korean military engineers and 100 medics in the Gulf, as the parliament wavered amid anti-war sentiment and delayed voting on the bill twice last week...."I came to the conclusion that helping the United States in difficult times and maintaining friendly U.S.-South Korean relations will help a lot in peacefully resolving the North Korean nuclear issue," he [told Parliament]. [Associated Press, 4/3/03]
Remember, the new South Korean president got elected on an somewhat anti-American, peacenik platform.
Apr 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Letter to the editor in today's New York Sun from State Senator Martin Golden of Brooklyn:
Question: What should happen to an untenured professor, who calls for the defeat and death of the American military, at a university that receives very significant amounts of government funding ["Professor Is Condemned for Speech, But Likely Will Keep Post at Columbia," Julie Satow, page 2, 2003]? Answer: He should be relieved of his duties immediately. It's as simple as that. [...] On April 9, Columbia University is organizing "Lobby Day" in our nation's capital. Students are set to meet with Congress and staff members on Capitol Hill to express their support for federal student aid and urge funding for projects that will enhance their educational opportunities. I urge members of Congress to keep in mind Mr. De Genova's remarks as they are asked by Columbia students for assistance. In the past, the federal and state governments have been extremely generous in funding school projects and assistance programs. While I do not challenge--and actually support--our government's funding of educational institutions such as Columbia, I must say that if Columbia is unappreciative of our troops, maybe we should consider spending the money elsewhere. Maybe we can use this money to increase the pay for our military servicemen and women who have for so long sought an increase in salary.
Two things.
First: Are people really so blind as not to realize that you can't fire professors for their views without a major institutional change taking place? Even if the guy's not tenured, you're never going to get it through until the universities adopt a rational notion of "academic freedom." Golden probably thinks he's being radical by advocating De Genova's firing--but how about something really radical, say abolishing tenure as a first step?
Second, here we have a vivid example of the threat posed by government funding of ideas. Initially, the government provides money more or less indiscriminately, providing support for people who couldn't earn it by offering something of value to willing customers. Then when the irresponsibility of this policy becomes too outrageous, the government cracks down: It inevitably gets drawn into becoming the arbiter of ideology, by means of the threat to withdraw funding. Of course the man supports government funding of institutions like Columbia. Look at the power it gives the government.Apr 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Apr 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider... a long-time friend of [Iraqi] Foreign Minister Naji Sabri... was asked if Sabri could count on refuge in Carinthia, where Haider is governor, if the Iraqi leadership is forced to flee. "There is always room in my home for a friend," Haider told the Austrian magazine News....Haider accused the United States of going to war for Iraq's oil. "I personally would be delighted if the Iraqis succeed in defending themselves from this aggression," Haider told News. [Reuters, 4/3/03]
Apr 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From BBC News Online, Kuwait:Kuwaitis watch Arab satellite TV channels beamed in from across the Middle East. In recent weeks, most of the output has made for uncomfortable viewing in a nation which stands almost alone in the region in its active support for the US-led war in Iraq. One Arab channel recently aired a film montage of air strikes on Baghdad, dead civilians, distraught survivors, and British soldiers storming Iraqi homes. Particularly gruesome sequences were run in slow motion and repeated. The film was accompanied by a doleful 'cello solo. Such coverage of the war a few miles to the north has enraged many Kuwaitis. Al-Arabiya, based in Dubai, has reportedly been told its operation in the emirate might be closed down by the authorities if it does not remedy alleged "bias" in its war reports. "Some Arab channels are not showing the good, they do not show when the Americans bring help to the Iraqi people. They show just one side," says Balqis Aziz, who joined up to 2,000 other Kuwaitis at an open air meeting to reaffirm their support for the efforts to unseat Saddam Hussein. [...] Many Kuwaitis admit to being annoyed that little attention was given to the missiles lobbed at civilian targets in this country, further confirmation in their eyes that the war against Saddam Hussein is just.
However, not is all well in Kuwait:
[...] not all Kuwaitis are so happy to be a closely allied with the US. Local newspapers have quoted one Islamic charity worker who fears the real aim of the war is to "flood" the region with western values and culture. Already, affluent Kuwaiti teens appear to be drawn more to McDonald's than to Mecca. However, leading Muslim cleric Mohammed Hagif Al-Mutairi - a fierce opponent of innovations such as female suffrage - says he is confident the American influence is "limited" and that Kuwait's social and religious traditions can be maintained.
Not when the two--"American influence" (freedom and its results) and "religious traditions" (theocratic totalitarianism) explicitly contradict each other.
[...] "America's support for Israel is disturbing. How can America liberate Iraqi people on one side and support the denying Palestinians of freedom on the other? This contradiction needs to be resolved. But oppression in Palestine is no excuse for oppression in Iraq." [BBC News, "Kuwaitis in no mood to be labelled poodles", 2003/04/04]
Perhaps this is because Palestine is the oppressor--after all are they not in bed with Saddam? After all who funds there suicide missions?
Apr 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"The Iraqi people have not been mobilized by the coalition because the opposition was excluded from the initial phases. They have to feel this is liberation, not occupation. The people have to feel they are allied with the United States. They have to feel confident Saddam is gone and that he will not kill them," [Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi said from northern Iraq]... Mr. Chalabi also spoke out against the efforts of some who are pushing for a big role for the United Nations in post-war Iraq. He prefers that America head up the effort. Mr. Chalabi said there is no love for the U.N. among Iraqis because the international body has let them down so many times over the years. In particular, Mr. Chalabi said the Iraqi people remember the U.N.'s failure to implement Security Council Resolution 688, passed in 1991, demanding an end to repression by the Saddam's regime. "The U.N. has been hostile. They have little credibility in Iraq," Mr. Chalabi said, adding that the U.N.'s record of exposing Saddam's brutal human rights violations is "abysmal." Of the U.N.'s officials, Mr. Chalabi said: "They have expensive salaries and do little work...The Iraqi people would rather deal directly with the U.S. and with President Bush, who has helped with their liberation rather than U.N. bureaucrats who don't share their agenda." [New York Sun, 4/3/03]
Meanwhile, there's a struggle between the State Department and Defense Department as to who will get the funds provided for Iraqi reconstruction after the war. From the same article:
The White House prefers that money for Iraq's reconstruction, included in Mr. Bush's $75 billion supplemental budget request, be given to the Pentagon. But Tuesday, congressional appropriators in committee moved to give the $2.5 billion earmarked for postwar Iraq to Secretary of State Powell. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, objected to the decision and said the issue is not dead. "We disagree with the committees about whether it should be the State Department or the Defense Department that should be authorized to expend the funds. And that is an issue that we'll take up with the House and the Senate when it comes to the floor," Mr. Fleischer said yesterday.
An editorial elaborates:
To get a sense of just how deliberately and enormously the State Department is maneuvering against the White House's policy on Iraq, just follow the money....It strains credibility to think that Congress moved this money to State without checking with State first--or without pressure from State to do so, contravening the president's wishes....[I]n the struggle for influence in postwar Iraq, the State Department is pushing a man, Adnan Pachachi, who has proclaimed that he has a "soft spot for Khrushchev"... The State Department, and particularly the deputy state secretary, Richard Armitage, is so desperate to smear Mr. Chalabi and undercut the Pentagon that it has gone beyond lobbying congressional appropriators. It has, we're told, resorted to leaking confidential government documents to the newspapers. These documents, we are told, may be an attempt to dredge up a phony decade-old banking "scandal" involving Mr. Chalabi, or they may try to claim that he has weak support among the Iraqi people. Don't be fooled. [New York Sun, 4/3/03]
