Mar 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ..., listing mistakes he said had brought the Arabs to "this dangerous stage," started with Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which he said "opened the door wide for an intensive foreign presence in the region."
That was followed by "the absence of any real Iraqi efforts to address the crisis of trust" with its neighbors, Mubarak said in the nationally televised address.
"My hope is that the Iraqi government will realize the seriousness of the situation in which it put itself in--and us in--and that the different international forces will realize the dangerous repercussions of any military action on the safety and stability of the Middle East region as well as on the safety and stability of the world as a whole," Mubarak said. [Associated Press, 3/19/03]
Does he have a glimmer? Not really. He went on to reject the prospect of ousting Hussein, saying "the ruling regime is an internal affair that concerns every state taking into account its cultural, religious and social peculiarities and its political and economic development without external intervention to impose a certain type or model."
Wrong. Dictatorships quite simply have no right to exist and no legitimate claim to sovereignty; any free nation has a moral right to invade them and topple their governments.
Mubarak's statement merely betrays his own autocratic sympathies. We're taking notes.Mar 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
As a Canadian, I strongly condemn the decision of our prime minister, Jean Chretien, not to support America and its allies in the justified war against Iraq. By adhering to the U.N. charade, he effectively and shamefully placed Canada on the side of abject appeasers, anti-American leftists, brutal dictators, and Islamic terrorists.
History demonstrates that the root cause of war is dictatorship and its appeasement. Only a dictatorship can force its people to attack other countries. Only a dictatorship can extort money from its citizens to buy weapons of mass destruction and support terrorist organizations.
The United Nations is an inherently destructive organization -- the worst enemy of global peace and prosperity -- because it legitimizes dictatorships and grants them the power to undermine a free country's sovereignty and right to self-defense. The United Nations should be the next to go after Saddam Hussein.
America is on the side of peace and prosperity because it is on the side of liberty and the right to selfdefense, which includes the right to strike against threatening dictatorships, especially if they possess weapons of mass destruction. America is Canada's -- and the world's -- greatest benefactor. It deserves our wholehearted support and gratitude.Mar 21, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told the Security Council on Wednesday that no U.N. resolution authorized military action or "the violent overthrow of the leadership of a sovereign state." [Associated Press, 3/20/03]
Wrong. Iraqi sovereignty is a fiction. No government that rules its people by force has any legitimate claim to sovereignty; in fact, it is the obligation of its people to overthrow it. If they are unable, and if a foreign power has reason to help, it has every right to do so. The article continues:
... Declaring that military intervention "has no credibility," Germany's Joschka Fischer also stressed, "There is no basis in the U.N. Charter for a regime change with military means."
If that's true, then all it means is that the charter has to be changed. Any putative law that recognizes the legitimacy of dictatorships is an oppressive, unjust law that deserves no respect. When government becomes destructive of the ends for which it is established, as our founders wrote, it is the right of the people "to alter or abolish it."
There are also "no indisputable facts" to demonstrate that Iraq threatens the United States, [Ivanov] said. If there were, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush could exercise its right under the U.N. Charter to respond in self-defense.
What does "indisputable facts" mean? The fact that foreign powers are unwilling for their own political reasons to accept evidence put before them doesn't invalidate that evidence. Ivanov's standard means that we would have to wait until Manhattan was a smoking hole in the ground before we could act, and even then we wouldn't be allowed to do anything unless we had "indisputable" proof that Saddam Hussein had orchestrated the attack. But no further justification is needed for overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime than that he is a murderous dictator.
Does this mean we should go and overthrow every dictatorship in the world? It means that doing so is permissible--not that it is obligatory. Only someone on the false premise of altruism would confuse the two.Mar 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Open acts of defiance by opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime have intensified in the past week, with saboteurs carrying out attacks against Iraq's railway system and protesters openly calling for the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator.
The most blatant act of sabotage took place 20 miles south of the north Iraqi city of Mosul when members of the Iraqi opposition blew up a stretch of track on the Mosul-Baghdad railway, causing the derailment of a train....
Demonstrations were also reported to have taken place in Kirkuk, where an estimated crowd of 20,000 marched on the Ba'ath party's main administrative headquarters demanding Saddam's overthrow. Three posters of the Iraqi leader were torn down and a grenade was thrown at the government building. One senior Ba'ath official was reported killed in the attack.
There were also unconfirmed reports that another demonstration by Iraqi Shi'ites in the holy city of Kerbala last weekend was violently suppressed after the intervention of militiamen loyal to Saddam.
The escalation in attacks by Iraqi opposition groups has also been accompanied by widespread acts of anti-Saddam vandalism. Posters of the Iraqi president, which adorn every public building, are being openly defaced and vandalized throughout the country.
Until recently anyone caught carrying out such acts would have received the death sentence. [Daily Telegraph, 3/16/03]
The report also includes a graphic description how Saddam's thugs killed a civil servant who was accused of preparing to leave the country; I'll spare you. I'll also spare you the graphic descriptions of other Iraqi tortures reported by Ann Clwyd, a British Labour MP. If you have the stomach, read them. As a friend wrote, "OK, now I'm convinced."
Mar 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
There's drama and some heroism in this story of a Clinton-like opportunist who grasps a fact and is willing to hold to it against all comers:
Tony Blair secured the backing of Parliament last night to send British troops to war against Iraq. An anti-war motion was defeated in the Commons by 396 votes to 217, a majority of 179, despite a substantial Labour rebellion. As many as 139 Labour MPs voted for the rebel amendment....Opening the most critical Commons debate since he became Prime Minister, [Blair] indicated he was ready to resign if MPs voted against military action....
Mr Blair said Britain could not afford to back down in the face of the "clear and present danger" to its national security posed by Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction, particularly a "dirty" radiological bomb.
If troops were pulled back "at the point of reckoning", Saddam and other tyrants would know the will confronting them was decaying and feeble. To retreat now would "tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination, that Britain faltered.
"I would not be party to such a course," Mr Blair said. It was time "to show that at the moment of decision we have the courage to do the right thing". As he ended, many Tory MPs and Labour backbenchers, waved their order papers in admiration and support.
MPs on both sides of the Commons said it was the most powerful speech Mr Blair had delivered, and he departed from his prepared text to deliver an emotional, hand-written peroration appealing for backing for military action. [Daily Telegraph, 3/19/03]
I hold no brief for most of Blair's politics, nor for his attachment to the UN. But his backing of the US position in Iraq despite great opposition within his own party deserves much praise.
Mar 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Unlike the New York Sun, I oppose tuition vouchers, which amount to public funding of private schools--a move that would destroy what little independence they have left as they came under the regulation that inevitably accompanies government money. However, I do support tuition tax credits as a way of letting people keep their own money to pay for education. Here's what's happening in New York:The only bit of movement--and it is slight--comes in a modest education tax-credit bill that has been introduced in the state Assembly and Senate. The bill has 18 sponsors in the Senate and 11 in the Assembly, and would provide a modest tax credit for 50% of the value of donations to public schools (including charter schools), school districts, and scholarship funds that pay for private schools. Under the bill, individuals could get up to $250 for a $500 donation, and corporations could get up to $25,000 for a $50,000 donation.
The bill does not allow donations directly to private schools, however, because, as one of the architects of the bill, the president of United New Yorkers for Choice in Education, Timothy Mulhearn, told us, "That would be the kiss of death…You have to be public-school friendly in Albany."[New York Sun, 3/18/03]
