Feb 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
At the Department of Defense website, you can give your thanks online to all of the members of the U.S. Armed Forces for defending our rights. Here's the link: www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html. I think it's a great idea, and I added my name to the list, which is already over 4.2 million names long.
Considering how the protesters of the anti-America left always get their time on the news despite their numbers, I think it would mean a lot to our men and women in uniform to know, as they rise to the defense of our freedom yet again, that the people of America and the world understand what they do for us, and that we honor them for it.
Feb 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
South Korean Prime Minister Kim Suk-soo told parliament Monday there is no proof the North has produced nuclear weapons despite U.S. assertions that Pyongyang has one or two atomic bombs.
"North Korea is believed to have extracted enough plutonium to make one or two bombs before 1994," Kim said. "Since there has been no confirmation that it actually has produced nuclear weapons, we believe that they do not have any." [Associated Press, 2/10/03]
It's true that if there's no evidence for something, there's no warrant for saying it exists, even possibly exists. But with regard to North Korea we're way past that stage.Feb 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
An eye-opening article in Asia Times Online claims that Germany has made up the bulk of suppliers for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, even after the Gulf War. Furthermore, German national intelligence is well-informed of these programs. As just the most recent example,
In April 2001, [intelligence chief August] Hanning told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Iraq was developing a new class of chemical weapons, reiterated his alert on Iraq's missile and nuclear programs, and said that several German companies had continued to deliver to Baghdad components needed for the production of poison gas. In March 2002, he told the New Yorker magazine that, "It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years." [Asia Times Online, 2/5/03]
The entire article is worth reading, if you want to see just how much they know--and how much Schroeder is trying to evade.Feb 9, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Reports the Associated Press,
The U.N. chief weapons inspectors emerged from key talks with Iraq officials Sunday, saying they saw signs of a "change of heart" from Baghdad over disarmament demands and that further U.N. inspections were preferable to a quick U.S.-led military strike.
In two days of meetings with Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Iraq officials handed over documents on anthrax, VX nerve gas and missile development....
Both Blix and ElBaradei avoided saying they were convinced Iraq now was ready to cooperate fully with the inspection program. Blix quipped that the "proof is in the pudding...."
And Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country holds veto powers on the council--reiterated his strong opposition to military action against Baghdad.
"We are convinced that efforts for a peaceful resolution of the situation regarding Iraq should be persistently continued," Putin told journalists after talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin.
Putin also rejected U.S. goals of a "regime change" in Iraq. "The task of reckoning with Saddam Hussein does not stand before us," Putin said in an interview with France-3 television, part of which was aired on Russian television Sunday. "There is nothing in the U.N. Charter that would allow the U.N. Security Council to make a decision to change the political regime of one country or another -- whether we like that regime or not."
To such mentalities, a threat isn't real unless it has already been carried out, and effects can be obtained without addressing the causes. It's as if the police were arguing about apprehending a known criminal because "there wasn't enough evidence" that he would use his cache of automatic weapons--with the Russian position being tantamount to saying that at the utmost we might disarm the criminal, but on no account arrest him.
The agent's criminal nature is all the evidence that is needed to establish a threat and to warrant action. For those who say, "What evidence do you have that Saddam will use these weapons or pass them on to terrorism?" The response is: Such evidence is unnecessary and irrelevant. We had enough evidence long ago to prove he posed a threat. The only thing delay does is encourage this kind of irresponsible temporizing.Feb 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Daily Tar Heel, [1/22/03]:
Protesters settled in front of Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards' Raleigh office Tuesday awaiting arrest for their efforts to make a statement that the senator has not gone far enough to oppose war with Iraq. But despite the fact that protesters were breaking the law by blocking an entrance into a government building, the police on site chose not to intervene. Three participating UNC students, Anna Carson-Dewitt and Sascha Bollag, both freshmen, and senior Scott O'Day, said they were disappointed when the police refused to arrest them. All three have prior arrests for civil disobedience. O'Day said the police response undermined the protest. "I am disappointed that the police de-escalated the situation to the point that we were not able to continue with the protest," he said. "We were more or less sure that we would be arrested, but the police weren't cooperating...." "If one action does not provoke arrest, we will step it up and step it up until we provoke arrest."
Civil disobedience means disobeying an unjust law to protest its injustice, and being willing to go to jail for it. But there is nothing unjust about laws against blocking entrance into buildings. These little thugs want to violate people's rights and then dress themselves up in the mantle of martyrdom by getting themselves arrested. But since the nature of this con is now clear to everyone, their arrests would gain them no moral respect from anyone who isn't stupid or dishonest. The police should just go ahead, and the law should impose punishment that would actually discourage such behavior.Feb 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
I sent the following letter to the New York Sun last weekend, in response to Michael Kinsley's column (from Slate.com) accusing George Bush of being "morally unserious" and confused in his State of the Union address. The Sun did not print the letter.
To the Editor:
As much as Michael Kinsley wants to show off how clever he is at George Bush's expense, it is Kinsley who is confused. That Saddam Hussein's regime is evil, maintaining itself by terror and repression, means that it has no claim to represent its people, no legitimacy, and no right to exist. Ethically, Saddam's "sovereignty" means nothing; it is morally permissible for any free country to topple him by force.
But we are not obliged to go to war merely because it is morally permissible to do so. Morality, properly conceived, is not a means of sacrificing our interests but a system of principles for upholding them. The need for us to take out Saddam Hussein arises not out of altruistic concern for Iraqis but out of the threat he poses to us. In this regard the president's position is moral, coherent and correct.
Feb 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the New York Sun, 2/5/03:
The five top men in power in Iran today--Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; the president of the assembly on the discretion of the state, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the head of the judiciary, Mohammad Hashemi Shahroudi; the secretary of the guardians council, Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, and President Mohammad Khatami--[have] occupied the highest positions in government for the past 24 years.
They held high positions when the American Embassy was taken over in Tehran in 1979 and 52 Americans were held hostage for 400 days; they held high positions when the American and French Embassies were attacked in Kuwait City in 1983, killing and wounding 91; they held high positions when a suicide bomb attack killed 49 and injured 120 at the American Embassy in Beirut that same year; they held high positions when 241 Americans and 56 French were killed at the American Marine base and French military barracks in Beirut in 1983; they held high positions when 16 Americans and seven others were killed as a result of a car bomb explosion next to the American Embassy annex in Beirut in 1984; they held high positions when in 1985 and 1986 a Kuwait Air flight, two TWA flights, and a Pan Am flight were hijacked in the Middle East, resulting in the death of 28 people, and they held high positions when the truck bomb explosion took place at the Khobar Towers, killing 19 American servicemen in 1996.
All of the above terrorist attacks were carried out at the instigation of Tehran's ruling mullahs....
Since the 1980s the mullah regime has sought to acquire long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. These include chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.... Today, North Koreans, Russians, and nuclear scientists and aeronautic engineers from other Eastern European and Central Asian countries are hard at work in Iran to make this dream come true....
The clerics are known to have executed over 120,000. According to Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, they executed 3,000 people in one night in 1988....
Today, more than 60% of Iranians live below the poverty line. Annual per capita income stands at $1,200.00. In 1978 it stood at $2,400.
The author of the column, Monouchehr Ganji, is founder and secretary-general of the Flag of Freedom Organization of Iran and author of Defying the Iranian Revolution.Feb 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
A perfect example of why the International Criminal Court represents an injustice and should be repudiated. The headline is, "Blair faces war crimes trial after Iraq war":
A group of lawyers aims to prosecute Prime Minister Tony Blair for war crimes at the new International Criminal Court (ICC) if an Iraqi war goes ahead....
"There is a 100 percent certainty that Blair will be investigated by the ICC for war crimes if he attacks Iraq," said Phil Shiner of the Public Interest Lawyers firm in Birmingham....
"The ICC brings a new international context to war -- Blair now has to consider his individual accountability...."
The United States fiercely opposes the ICC, saying it would infringe U.S. sovereignty, but Britain has ratified its treaty and would have to give up any citizen the court wanted to try.
Nicholas Grief of Bournemouth University, who specialises in international law, said November's U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 on Iraq did not authorise the use of force.
He said the resolution used the term "serious consequences" if Iraq did not comply with weapons inspectors, and not "use all necessary means", which has previously been used as a diplomatic code for authorising military force.... [Reuters, 2/5/03]
Feb 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes John Diaz, in the San Francisco Chronicle, (2/4/03):
Several readers have called or written to complain about the selection of letters we have printed about the space shuttle Columbia tragedy.
Where, they asked, was the universal outpouring of grief for the seven brave astronauts and their families? Why were so many of the letters tinged with gratuitous bitterness toward President Bush or otherwise infused with cynicism or conspiracy theories?
Frankly, my colleagues and I were asking the same questions Saturday as we sorted through the several dozen e-mails and faxes that came in after the disastrous breakup of the shuttle on its final descent home....
Even more startling was the cynical, even hateful, tone of many of the letters. The outtakes were considerably harsher and more jaded than the selection we printed....
Perhaps it is idealistic to assume that a tragedy would prompt us to draw on our common humanity, rather than to trigger unprovoked animus based on racial, national or political differences. And these were not anonymous tirades. The above e-mails were sent for publication, with names, addresses and phone numbers.
This week I myself met a teenager who asked, "What's so special about the Space Shuttle disaster? If seven people had died in Africa nobody would be concerned about them."
I eventually realized the underlying egalitarian premise, telling her: "The difference is that we care more about some people than others." We don't rejoice in the death of seven Africans; but the Shuttle astronauts were engaged in an endeavor that is important to those of us who care about human achievement. It's not true that we should care about everyone equally; the idea that we should is yet another ugly consequence of the corrupt ethics of altruism.Feb 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From London's Guardian:Tony Blair yesterday admitted he was risking everything politically on his determination to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, as he briefed MPs on his belief that President George Bush and the rest of the UN security council will endorse a second resolution backing the claim that Iraq is breaching UN resolutions.
That, Mr. Blair, is statesmanship, and it is heroic.
Feb 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The Iraqi officials keep saying they can't force their scientists to submit to private interviews. Iraq is a totalitarian dictatorship! Force is the modus operandi of the regime. During their numerous interviews, why doesn't just one reporter confront one of the Iraqi thugs on this fact?Feb 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Today I sent the following to J.P. Avlon of the New York Sun, in response to his column Thursday entitled "Eagle Foreign Policy":
Dear Mr. Avlon:
In your column Thursday, "Eagle Foreign Policy," you argue that by appeasing dictators we make it appear that "America is just another great power motivated solely by self-interest." Yet your whole argument is that it's not in our self-interest to appease dictators. So which one is it?
Is it in our self-interest to support pro-freedom forces? Isn't that what we would do if we were "a great power motivated solely by self-interest"? By your argument, then, wouldn't we be hurting our image abroad by doing so?
Too many people thoughtlessly blame all the world's evils on the pursuit of self-interest. But the terrorists who attacked us did not do so for any conceivable selfish reason. They did not want to live; they wanted us to die. In the past century, both fascism and communism denounced self-interest as the ultimate evil, and aimed to create a society based on altruism. Yet both slaughtered human beings in numbers unprecedented in human history.
Meanwhile, the changes that have improved life immeasurably for billions of people across the world--rail transport, electricity, the automobile, air travel, refrigeration, the computer--these and many more are the products of self-interest. Where is the Mother Theresa who could hold a candle to the life-giving power of Edison, Ford, or Bill Gates?
The generally accepted idea of self interest as involving sacrificing others to one's aims is incoherent and needs to be completely rethought; otherwise, we will face nothing but ethical false alternatives. Case in point: Later in your column, you quote George W. Bush: "We've got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom... If we are an arrogant nation, they'll view us in that way, but if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us."
George Bush is wrong. The only "humility" that will satisfy our critics is our total abdication of leadership, for to them any projection of strength or assertiveness by a world power is selfish and arrogant. To try to win respect by catering to such a viewpoint is to sacrifice our interests and our security.
But arrogance vs. humility is a false alternative--and until we reject these kinds of stale philosophical commonplaces we are going to be led around by the nose, following those who would use such ideas to manipulate us.
Feb 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
It's reassuring to think that God will protect us from tragedy or defeat. But that belief has two dangerous implications. One is that courage is unnecessary and unreal. The crews of Challenger and Columbia weren't actually taking risks or showing bravery... because their fate was in God's hands.
The other implication is that tragedies are God's will.... "God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans," Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi, an Iraqi government employee, told Reuters. That statement is certainly false and despicable. But on a day when six Americans and an Israeli have fallen from the heavens, if you think God is fighting for America against Iraq, Mr. al-Quraishi has a better case than you do....
In the skies over Baghdad, as in the skies over Texas, God's non-neutrality is a guide, not a promise. If Iraq insists on building weapons of mass destruction, we must fight not because God will protect us, but because He won't. [William Saletan, Slate.com, 2/1/03]
In short, belief in God makes no sense. But belief in a lawful reality that can be understood and conformed to--that does make sense. Such a reality, in the long run, rewards those who conform to it and destroys those who rebel against it. That is the truth hidden behind the phrase "God's non-neutrality."Feb 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Former South African President Nelson Mandela continues to discredit himself. Quoting the January 30, 2002 edition of the Washington Post,
Former South African President Nelson Mandela lashed out at U.S. President George Bush's stance on Iraq on Thursday, saying the Texan had no foresight and could not think properly....
"It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq," Mandela told an audience in Johannesburg. "What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust...."
"Both Bush as well as Tony Blair are undermining an idea (the United Nations) which was sponsored by their predecessors," Mandela said. "Is this because the secretary general of the United Nations (Ghanaian Kofi Annan) is now a black man? They never did that when secretary generals were white."
Mandela said he would support without reservation any action agreed upon by the United Nations against Iraq....
"Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?..." he asked.
"lf there is a country which has committed unspeakable atrocities, it is the United States of America...They don't care for human beings."
Mandela's comment about "unspeakable atrocities" is coming from someone whose followers used to burn their opponents to death in flaming automobile tires. Perhaps he thinks these acts pale in comparison to the "innocent people" who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But no civilian who remained in Japan or supported the wartime Japanese government can be considered innocent. Moreover, to the extent that any actual innocents did die in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their deaths were the moral responsibility of the Japanese government who put them in harm's way. Civilians have no right to expect to live unharmed in an aggressor nation.
To give the devil his due, however, Mandela's comment about "wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust" was not about war in Iraq, for he claims to support any U.N.-sanctioned action against Iraq. Presumably, what he thinks would plunge the world into a holocaust is the undermining of the U.N.
Of course, abandoning the U.N. would be probably the best thing the U.S. could do for world peace. But Mandela's remark is worth noting because it is a clue to the left's agenda. Their denunciations of unilateralism are increasingly hysterical because, like the courtiers in the tale, they know the emperor has no clothes, and they think they can keep everyone else from finding out by means of moralistic intimidation.
But the crucial point is that they are threatened. They have no rational basis for their beliefs, they know it, and they're afraid everyone else will find out.Jan 30, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Last week it was Libya heading up the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. This week it's... well, like I said, you can't make this stuff up:
Iraq is in line to take over as chairman of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in May, prompting one U.S. official Wednesday to say: "The irony is overwhelming." [Associated Press, 1/29/03]
Just what is it going to take for people to wake up and throw the U.N. overboard?Jan 30, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The Wall Street Journal is announcing on-line this evening that its paper edition tomorrow will carry an open letter from the leaders or Spain, Britain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Portugal calling for unity with the US in the struggle to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.Jan 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Henry Paulson, "I don't want to sound heartless, but in almost every one of our businesses, there are 15% to 20% of the people that really add 80% of the value.... Although we have a lot of good people, you can cut a fair amount and still be well-positioned for the upturn." [New York Sun, 1/29/03]Jan 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From today's Washington Post:"If [Saddam Hussein] were to leave the country, and take some of his family members with him, and others in the leading elite that have been responsible for so much trouble during the course of his regime, we would, I'm sure, try to find a place for them to go," [Colin] Powell said at the State Department.
Saddam Hussein must be killed--not imprisoned, and certainly not allowed to retire to some villa.
