Concerted Effort

Nov 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

[Condoleezza] Rice, considered more of a foreign policy hard-liner than [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, whom she calls a "dear friend and mentor," has been Bush's national security adviser for four years. ... Rice has long been Bush's most trusted foreign-policy adviser, leading to concerns that her elevation to secretary of state might not leave room for dissent within the administration.

"When Rice travels as secretary of state to other capitals, everyone will know that what she says represents with great fidelity what the president thinks" and vice versa, former presidential adviser David Gergen told FOX News.

"I think it does ensure closer cooperation within the administration," Gergen added, but if you "essentially purge the administration" of other voices, that would leave little room for alternative perspectives.

"Colin Powell and his group were often dissenters within the administration, but on some issues they turned out to be right," Gergen continued. He envisioned that Rice would bring in a "hard-line team" of lower-level officials to help her run State.

Good Riddance Arafat!

Nov 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

At long last, Arafat is dead. Unfortunately, the mass murderer responsible for decades of terrorism died of a health problem, not an act of justice. 

But why did Arafat survive to old age? Why didn't his victims--Palestinians, Israelis and Americans--kill him long ago?

Palestinians, who lived for years in fear under his tyrannical regime, didn't strike him down, because their desire to exterminate Jews was greater than their desire for freedom. Israelis, who lived for years in fear of Arafat's terrorist attacks, didn't kill him, because their desire to satisfy "world opinion" was greater than their desire to live. Americans, who saw their fellow citizens murdered by Arafat's orders, didn't touch a hair of Arafat's, because their desire to appease the "Arab street" and hostile Arab regimes was greater than their desire for justice. Palestinians, Israelis and Americans paid dearly for their cowardice.

Should we draw a lesson? Yes, that freedom, justice and life are worth fighting for--and killing for. Hopefully, Americans will have the moral courage to kill Bin Laden and his associates--and not wait until they too die of disease or old age.

Fight breaks out in a room full of rappers

Nov 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Van Gogh’s “Submission”

Nov 16, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Van Gogh's assailant, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch and Moroccan citizenship, has been linked to an organization of Islamic terrorists recruiting youth in the Netherlands. The murder is thought to be in retaliation for van Gogh's recent anti-Islamic film, entitled "Submission," in which a Muslim woman is forced into a violent arranged marriage, raped by a relative, and punished for adultery. 

Watch Your Six

Nov 16, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

The judge advocate general heading the investigation, Lt. Col. Bob Miller, told NBC News that depending on the evidence, it could be reasonable to conclude the Marine was acting in self-defense. "The policy of the rules of engagement authorize the Marines to use force when presented with a hostile act or hostile intent," Miller said. "So they would have to be using force in self-defense, yes."

"Any wounded -- in this case insurgents -- who don't pose a threat would not be considered hostile," said Miller.

Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst with Jane's Consultancy Group in Britain, defended the Marine's actions, saying it was possible the wounded man was concealing a firearm or grenade.

"You can hear the tension in those Marines' voices. One is showing, 'He's faking it. He's faking it,'" Heyman said. "In a combat infantry soldier's training, he is always taught that his enemy is at his most dangerous when he is severely wounded."

If the injured man makes even the slightest move, "in my estimation they would be justified in shooting him."

Some 40 Marines have just lost their lives cleaning out one of the world's worst terror dens, in Fallujah, yet all the world wants to talk about is the NBC videotape of a Marine shooting a prostrate Iraqi inside a mosque. Have we lost all sense of moral proportion? The al-Zarqawi TV network, also known as Al-Jazeera, has broadcast the tape to the Arab world, and U.S. media have also played it up. The point seems to be to conjure up images again of Abu Ghraib, further maligning the American purpose in Iraq. Never mind that the pictures don't come close to telling us about the context of the incident, much less what was on the mind of the soldier after days of combat. ...

When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?

In what universe is it "horribly wrong"--even criminal--for a Marine Corps rifleman to shoot a wounded Iraqi militiaman lying on the floor of a mosque in a combat zone (a shooting that was captured on video by an NBC cameraman)? Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office felt the need to issue a statement that the Iraqi leader "is very concerned by allegations of an illegal killing by multinational forces in Fallujah." The interim prime minister brought up the incident with General George Casey, commander of the multinational force.

To make matters worse, US Ambassador John Negroponte told the press that "no one can be happy" about the incident "but the important point is that the individual in question will be dealt with."

This whole line of thinking comes from the rejection of war, as such.

The Powell Lesson for the State Department

Nov 15, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Powell said Bush accepted the resignation Friday, adding, "It has always been my intention that I would serve one term." But a senior State Department official characterized Powell's departure this way: "He was not asked to stay."

[The State] department's idea of public diplomacy too often amounted to spinning itself to an obliging media as the supposed last bastion of sanity amid an Administration overrun by neocon crazies. In one example that somehow went unpunished, Mr. Powell's own chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, described his colleagues at Defense and in the White House this way: "I call them utopians. I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it." That kind of talk may have hurt the Administration, but it hurt State far more. The first task of whoever replaces Mr. Powell (as we went to press, Condoleezza Rice's name was being whispered) will be to ensure that the department acts as an arm of executive power and not as the in-house opposition.