Sometimes, when I'm weary of the intifada, the occasional terror attacks, the stumbling economy or the political scandals that seem to dominate the public agenda in Israel, I look at the weekend's newspaper magazines and start to breathe again.
Ariel Sharon’s announcement on February 4, that the 7,500 Jews hunkered down amidst 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have to leave, is giving heartburn to Israel supporters like Mort Klein, head of Zionists of America.
Mort thinks Arik (Sharon’s nickname) has lost his nerve and is selling out. The reality is that Mort only sees the settler’s trees and not a sovereign Israeli forest. Sharon is a strategic genius and just as Machiavellian as ever.
What Sharon’s critics and all supporters of Israel need to understand is this: Sharon is building his Security Fence in order to precipitate a Palestinian Civil War.
One of the meta-reasons America won the Cold War is that Russians play chess, while Americans play poker.
Chess demands great skill and intelligence, particularly at developing complex long-range strategies and anticipating your opponent's moves. But it bears little resemblance to life in the real world. It is completely static and open. Nothing is hidden. Poker is very different. You have to guess what your opponent has and the extent to which he is bluffing. In business, in politics, in life in general, the folks who know how to play poker will almost always fare better than those who know how to play chess.
Something had better jog the liberal mind from its obsessive Bush-hatred. The liberals, on both sides of the Atlantic, are in imminent danger of repeating the great shame of many of their ideological grandparents in the middle of the last century, who became unthinking apologists for Stalin's terror and tyranny.
This coming Sunday, the Iraqi people are holding an election -- the first real election in the 6,000-year history of this ancient people. But the cynicism and indifference of liberals to this extraordinary event should shock the conscience of decent people, because Iraqis are marching through shot and shell to gain this first chance at self-government.
A year from now you and I will be celebrating George W. Bush’s re-election. It’s in the bag, and the reason why is deeper than the economy or Iraq. It’s because GW figured out Bill Clinton’s secret while the Dems forgot it.
As Tony explains here, the just-passed intelligence reform bill is a dog’s breakfast. The best news about its passage is that Duncan Hunter (House Armed Forces Committee Chairman) managed to neuter it at the last moment. By inserting the wording that the NID - the new National Intelligence Director or Intelligence “Czar” -- in carrying out his duties "shall respect and not abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the heads of the departments," Duncan made sure that a good General Counsel from a subordinate
Agency/Department can drive a Humvee through an NID directive if need be. --JW
So it is to be a Czar of all the Intelligence Services. All the president's men have engulfed the remaining opposition to the intelligence reform bill and seen it passed with strong bipartisan support. Like its namesake, The Czar of all the Russias, our new czar is likely to begin what will become a very mixed record.
This is a black day, a day for anyone associated with the Republican Party to be ashamed and embarrassed. Piling a new trillion-dollar Medi-Pander entitlement to appease geezer-beggars on top of all the others that the Republicans should be busy eliminating is way, way beyond scandalous. Why, then, has the Republican Party from President Bush on down become determined to betray its basic principles?
If you think the fighting has been rough in Fallujah, wait until you see Washington in the springtime. President Bush's early personnel decisions for the second term suggest that he is preparing, unilaterally, to take on not only our foreign enemies, but also the Democrats and Washington's most cunning and vicious bureaucracies-all at the same time.
With the nominations of Condoleezza Rice at State, Porter Goss at CIA, Donald Rumsfeld (or an equally tough replacement) at Defense and Stephen Hadley at NSC, the president has created an all-Patton foreign and defense team. Moreover, he has a team that understands that among the necessary targets of their firepower must be, not only our foreign enemies, but also the slouching, sly, insubordinate bureaucrats under their chain of command.
Let’s play fill-in-the-blanks. In general, Americans and Europeans are Christians. Arabs are Moslems. Indians are Hindus. Chinese are _________?
If you have trouble filling in the last blank, it’s because the answer is blank. From time immemorial, the Chinese have been the least religious of any of history’s major civilizations. Daoism, Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism are rationalistic quasi-religions lacking any personal relationship with a transcendent deity or deities. The ancestor- and spirit-worship of Chinese folk religion is individualized to families only.
Whether he intended it or not, John Kerry's much commented upon statement - that terrorism should be reduced to a nuisance like prostitution or gambling -- has engaged the central issue of this presidential campaign. His statement was neither an accident nor as easily dismissed as many people have asserted. Rather, it reflects the institutional policy of the CIA, and is at the heart of the almost open warfare between the Bush White House and the CIA.
The political class's Edwards-huffing is like a summer heat rash -- it is mildly irritating but should subside in about a week: Wear loosely fitted clothes, keep out of the heat and ease your way through an adequate provision of gin, tonic, limes and bitters. Tropical drinks served with little umbrellas are acceptable substitutes. Now would be an excellent time to catch up on your genuine summer fiction reading (in other words, avoid Edwards media commentary for a week, which is not quite fiction, nor quite non-fiction. It is not so much fiction as it is faction.)
If I ask you to think of India, the image that most likely appears in your minds eye would be the Taj Mahal. Arguably the most famous building in the world and considered by many to be the most beautiful structure mankind has ever created, it was completed in 1648 by the ruler of India, Shah Jehan, to immortally entomb his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
There is a painful problem with this image, however, for the great majority of folks in India: the Taj Mahal isnt an Indian building. Its Moslem, and thus for Indians a symbol of Islamic imperialism.
Jack Kennedy would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe." For Kennedy: "Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it."
It is ironic that in this time and in this place, the direct descendent of those words, and the virile passions they convey, can be found coming from the mouth and heart not of the Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, but of his opponent, the Texas Republican George W. Bush.
Yesterday, addressing the den of jackals, thieves, petty dictators and other international flotsam -- which goes by the name of the United Nations General Assembly -- President Bush echoed the brave, necessary words of the once Prince of Camelot:
The founder of the Palestinian terrorist movement was Amin al-Husseini. As Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, he organized Arab rampages killing Jewish settlers in Palestine throughout the 1920s, formed an alliance with the Nazi Party of Germany in the 1930s, met with Adolph Hitler in Berlin in November 1941 to encourage him to slaughter Jews in Europe so they couldn’t escape to settle in Palestine, ordered Arab families to flee Israel upon independence so Arab armies could invade in 1948, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, mentored his nephew Rahman Abdul Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, and turned the leadership of the PLO over to him. His nephew assumed the alias of Yasser Arafat.
Bill Safire is normally the only thing worth reading in the New York Times, and he proved it with his latest column (datelined 12/8/03), which is devoted to completely messing up the mind of every Bush-hating Democrat in America.
