Don't forget to buy their book!

The story of Sarah Saga, an American citizen holed up with her two children in the American Consulate at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has a ring that is all too familiar. Ms. Saga, kidnapped in 1985 at the age of 6 by her Saudi father when she was on a visit to Saudi Arabia, faces a choice: Go home to America without her son and daughter or leave the consulate to face beating or even death at the hands of her father or the husband to whom she was married off. [NY Sun, "Sarah's Saga", June 25, 2003]

Within two hours, Sergeant Tim and the five other members of the Royal Military Police would be dead...

...attempts by troops to seize weapons in house searches in the two months since the dictator was toppled had started to incur the wrath of locals, many of whom see the possession of weapons as a fundamental right, particularly amid the insecurity that has plagued Iraq since the war ended.

Which makes sense given the instability in post-war Iraq, at a bare mininmum Iraqis need weapons of sufficient power to fend off those who would attack them. To be weaponless in Iraq is equivalent to being a surgeon with your hands chopped off.

The army's use of sniffer dogs, an animal regarded by the Shia as unclean and therefore offensive, is thought to have exacerbated the tensions, as is the fact that troops would have seen unveiled wives and daughters as they carried out their raids - breaking a taboo among the Islamic faithful....

Observe that if Saddam did this they would not have reacted in the same manner--this is not because they liked Saddam, but they "respected" or rather feared him. If sniffer dogs are necessary to keeping the peace, then silly religious dogma has no say in the matter.

...When British troops initially entered this town, a Shia stronghold which had suffered greatly under the rule of Saddam Hussein, they were treated as liberators.

Apparently a mob of stone throwers had confronted a British patrol, which led to shots being fired and four people being killed. The British patrol "extricated" themselves from the mob, but left "six colleagues were training Iraqi police nearby" whom they apparently forgot about; unfortunately the mob did not:

According to the 25-year-old Mr Bairphy, who spoke to several British newspapers, two of the British policemen went up on to the roof to try to fend off the attackers, while the others took up positions on the ground floor. He said that after he told Sergeant Tim that there was no radio, he begged the British men to flee with them through the back of the building.

But they refused him. Sergeant Tim, he said, told him it was the duty of the British policeman to hold their ground.

It appears they did just that for two hours but by 1pm, all six were dead, "executed", according to one army spokesman. The exact nature of their deaths may never be clarified, but the burnt, bullet-ridden and bloody shell of the building where they died is testimony to the post-war carnage which could be unleashed in a town which did not see a single bullet fired during the conflict.

The proper response to this is that until law is established the British must use enormous and "overwhelming" force and martial law until a stable Iraq society can be created. The idea that Iraqis can gather together as a mob and attack the British troops should not be considered even a remote possibility in the minds of Iraqis. However, British leaders must not try to disarm Iraqi citizens leaving them without the proper means of defending themselves.

In the early evening of Friday, March 14, 2003, two inspectors from the city's Department of Consumer Affairs entered Swing 46, a small restaurant featuring live bands on Manhattan''s Restaurant Row. They immediately spotted the illegal activity they had been sent to snuff out: dancing. After witnessing this "unlicensed activity," the inspectors ordered everyone to leave at 7:00 p.m. and padlocked the doors. Knowing this would cost the restaurant both a $5,000 fine and its crucial weekend receipts, one inspector shrugged and said, "We told you before to stop dancing." Yesterday, the Department of Consumer Affairs held a hearing to consider whether it will continue making such busts, which are carried out under New York's cabaret laws. In 1960, the city had some 12,000 bars and restaurants that allowed dancing; today, there are fewer than 300, at least in part because of the indiscriminate enforcement of laws passed in the 1920s to suppress jazz. ["Clubbing the Economy"]

Hat Tip: Paul Blair.

A new poll from the Washington Post reveals that a majority of Americans want to use military force against Iran to stop its nuclear program. I agree. The U.S. government should do everything to encourage and actively assist the pro-freedom fighters in Iran to launch a revolution to expel every terrorist-supporting official from their government. But if those freedom fighters are unable to do this, the United States must use its military power to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program. The threat from a nuclear-armed, insanely hate-driven Iranian theocracy is too horrific to contemplate.

It's not just that members of the two parties disagree. It's that the disagreements have recently grown so deep that liberals and conservatives don't seem to perceive the same reality. Whether it is across the ocean or across the aisle, powerlessness corrupts just as certainly as power does. Those on top become overly self-assured, emotionally calloused, dishonest with themselves, and complacent. Those on the bottom become vicious. Sensing that their dignity is perpetually insulted, they begin to see their plight in lurid terms. They exaggerate the power of their foes. They invent malevolent conspiracy theories to explain their unfortunate position. They develop a gloomy and panicked view of the world. Republicans are suffering from many of the maladies that afflict the powerful, but they have not been driven into their own emotional ghetto because in their hearts Republicans don't feel that powerful. Democrats, on the other hand, do feel powerless. And that is why so many Democratic statements about Republicans resemble European and Middle Eastern statements about America. [Weekly Standard]