Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Could anyone say it better than this??
IRAQ THE MODEL
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
The "patriotic resistance" struck another strategic target in Iraq today.They attacked Iraqi's hope and Iraq's reserves and future; they murdered Iraqi children again.Those pathetic terrorists are afraid of the future and of the children that are going to grow up to build, plant, serve and protect their country.No words can describe the ugliness of the massacre, no words can wipe the tears of the mothers who lost their loved ones today and no words can describe the difference between those handing sweets to the children and those handing death and pain.The insane murderous servants of the tyrants think they can defeat us and protect their evil masters this way but they're wrong, the hand of justice will reach them just like it pulled their master from the rat hole.The blood that was spilled today shall not go in vain and terrorists will lose and that is not going to be far from now.
IRAQ THE MODEL
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
The "patriotic resistance" struck another strategic target in Iraq today.They attacked Iraqi's hope and Iraq's reserves and future; they murdered Iraqi children again.Those pathetic terrorists are afraid of the future and of the children that are going to grow up to build, plant, serve and protect their country.No words can describe the ugliness of the massacre, no words can wipe the tears of the mothers who lost their loved ones today and no words can describe the difference between those handing sweets to the children and those handing death and pain.The insane murderous servants of the tyrants think they can defeat us and protect their evil masters this way but they're wrong, the hand of justice will reach them just like it pulled their master from the rat hole.The blood that was spilled today shall not go in vain and terrorists will lose and that is not going to be far from now.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
The Export of DemocracyJefferson's ideas presaged the Bush doctrine.
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Tuesday, July 12, 2005 12:01 a.m.
All through the years 2003 and 2004 one used to hear it: "So, you think your Iraqi friends are about to adopt Jeffersonian democracy . . ." (pause for hilarious nudge, sneer, snigger or wink). After a bit too much of this at one debate in downtown New York, I managed to buy some time, and even get a laugh, by riposting that Iraqi democracy probably wouldn't be all that "Jeffersonian," since none of my Iraqi comrades owned any slaves. But I was conscious, here, of trading partly in the stupid currency of my opponents. (I would now phrase matters a little more assertively: The United States has yet to elect a black or Jewish president, while the Iraqi Parliament chose a Kurd as its first democratically selected head of state, and did so even while the heaped corpses of his once-despised minority were still being exhumed from mass graves.)
If hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, then the frequent linkage of the name "Jefferson" with the word "democracy" is impressive testimony, even from cynics, that his example has outlived his time and his place. To what extent does he deserve this rather flattering association of ideas?
To begin with, we must take the measure of time. The association would not have been considered in the least bit flattering by many of Jefferson's contemporaries. The word "democratic" or "democratical" was a favorite term of abuse in the mouth of John Adams, who equated it with populism of the viler sort and with the horrors of mob rule and insurrection. In this, he gave familiar voice to a common prejudice, shared by many Tories and French aristocrats--and even by Edmund Burke, often unfairly characterized as an English reactionary but actually a rather daring Irish Whig. "Take but degree away, untune that string," as it is said in "Troilus and Cressida," "and hark what discord follows." The masses, if given free rein, would vote themselves free beer and pull down the churches and country houses that had been established to show the blessings of order. I cannot find any non-pejorative use in English of the Greek word "democracy" until Thomas Paine took it up in the first volume of "The Rights of Man" and employed it as an affirmative term of pride.
Jefferson was a great admirer of this book, but since it was not published until 1791 it cannot have helped animate his writing of the Declaration. For that document, he was obliged to be slightly more feline. In the celebrated opening sentences, he replaced John Locke's emphasis on "life, liberty and property" with a more lapidary phrasing that I do not need to restate. His choice of words was a pregnant one. The property qualification for voting was to endure for a considerable time in many European countries, and property itself was to be reasserted at Philadelphia in the debates on the Constitution, but the link between property ownership and ownership of natural rights had been undermined for all time. A second phrase--"the consent of the governed"--alerted any reader of the Declaration to the idea that the people were ultimately sovereign, and that their "happiness" trumped any divine or oligarchic presumption.
In the long run, therefore, it did not matter as much as it might have done that so many of "the people" were at first left unprotected by the great, formal, classical roof of the Constitution. Jefferson was absent in Paris when the secret voting on this grand instrument took place (he was often very fortunate in his temporary absences) but the principles of his Declaration were to be potent enough to subject the Constitution itself to repeated revisions. When Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, his opening reference to "four score and seven years ago" was to Jefferson, and not to the Federalist Papers. Within a few years after Gettysburg, the women of America had met at Seneca Falls and set out their demands in a form of words modeled on the Declaration. Almost every extension of rights and franchise has followed the same pattern of emulation. Jefferson himself was convinced that emancipation of slaves should be followed by their deportation, and his view of the capacity of women was decidedly low. But the essence of the "democratical" is that it is unpredictable, so that once the enterprise is launched it is difficult to keep it within bounds.
In other respects, Jefferson certainly hoped that democracy would not be bounded at all. Some argue to this day that there can be Christian or Muslim or Jewish democracies, but Jefferson was insistent that democracy meant religious pluralism, and consequently the separation of church and state. His Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which banned the imposition of any religious test or the raising of any religious tithe, is the basis of the all-important First Amendment to our Constitution. There might perhaps have been a Protestant democracy in the Americas, stretching like Chile down the East Coast, and hemmed in by the ocean and the mountains, but in order to have a multiethnic and multiconfessional electorate on a larger scale, it was essential that secularism be inscribed at the beginning.
It was also necessary that democracy be "for export," and that it be able to defend itself. "May it be to the world," wrote Jefferson in his last letter, on June 24, 1826, "what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government." It cannot be said that Jefferson himself was entirely consistent on this--the Haitian revolution filled him with dread, even if that slave revolt induced Napoleon to offer the sale of the Louisiana territory--but he did identify with democrats in other countries and did believe that America should be on their side. His long friendships with Lafayette, Paine and Kosciusko are testimony to the fact.
The most successful "export" was Jefferson's determined use of naval and military force to reduce the Barbary States of the Ottoman Empire, which had set up a slave-taking system of piracy and blackmail along the western coast of North Africa. Our third president was not in a position to enforce regime change in Algiers or Tripoli, but he was able to insist on regime behavior-modification (and thus to put an end to at least one slave system). Ever since then, every major system of tyranny in the world has had to run at least the risk of a confrontation with the United States, and one hopes that the Jeffersonians among us will continue to ensure that this remains true.
Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America" (HarperCollins, 2005).
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Tuesday, July 12, 2005 12:01 a.m.
All through the years 2003 and 2004 one used to hear it: "So, you think your Iraqi friends are about to adopt Jeffersonian democracy . . ." (pause for hilarious nudge, sneer, snigger or wink). After a bit too much of this at one debate in downtown New York, I managed to buy some time, and even get a laugh, by riposting that Iraqi democracy probably wouldn't be all that "Jeffersonian," since none of my Iraqi comrades owned any slaves. But I was conscious, here, of trading partly in the stupid currency of my opponents. (I would now phrase matters a little more assertively: The United States has yet to elect a black or Jewish president, while the Iraqi Parliament chose a Kurd as its first democratically selected head of state, and did so even while the heaped corpses of his once-despised minority were still being exhumed from mass graves.)
If hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, then the frequent linkage of the name "Jefferson" with the word "democracy" is impressive testimony, even from cynics, that his example has outlived his time and his place. To what extent does he deserve this rather flattering association of ideas?
To begin with, we must take the measure of time. The association would not have been considered in the least bit flattering by many of Jefferson's contemporaries. The word "democratic" or "democratical" was a favorite term of abuse in the mouth of John Adams, who equated it with populism of the viler sort and with the horrors of mob rule and insurrection. In this, he gave familiar voice to a common prejudice, shared by many Tories and French aristocrats--and even by Edmund Burke, often unfairly characterized as an English reactionary but actually a rather daring Irish Whig. "Take but degree away, untune that string," as it is said in "Troilus and Cressida," "and hark what discord follows." The masses, if given free rein, would vote themselves free beer and pull down the churches and country houses that had been established to show the blessings of order. I cannot find any non-pejorative use in English of the Greek word "democracy" until Thomas Paine took it up in the first volume of "The Rights of Man" and employed it as an affirmative term of pride.
Jefferson was a great admirer of this book, but since it was not published until 1791 it cannot have helped animate his writing of the Declaration. For that document, he was obliged to be slightly more feline. In the celebrated opening sentences, he replaced John Locke's emphasis on "life, liberty and property" with a more lapidary phrasing that I do not need to restate. His choice of words was a pregnant one. The property qualification for voting was to endure for a considerable time in many European countries, and property itself was to be reasserted at Philadelphia in the debates on the Constitution, but the link between property ownership and ownership of natural rights had been undermined for all time. A second phrase--"the consent of the governed"--alerted any reader of the Declaration to the idea that the people were ultimately sovereign, and that their "happiness" trumped any divine or oligarchic presumption.
In the long run, therefore, it did not matter as much as it might have done that so many of "the people" were at first left unprotected by the great, formal, classical roof of the Constitution. Jefferson was absent in Paris when the secret voting on this grand instrument took place (he was often very fortunate in his temporary absences) but the principles of his Declaration were to be potent enough to subject the Constitution itself to repeated revisions. When Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, his opening reference to "four score and seven years ago" was to Jefferson, and not to the Federalist Papers. Within a few years after Gettysburg, the women of America had met at Seneca Falls and set out their demands in a form of words modeled on the Declaration. Almost every extension of rights and franchise has followed the same pattern of emulation. Jefferson himself was convinced that emancipation of slaves should be followed by their deportation, and his view of the capacity of women was decidedly low. But the essence of the "democratical" is that it is unpredictable, so that once the enterprise is launched it is difficult to keep it within bounds.
In other respects, Jefferson certainly hoped that democracy would not be bounded at all. Some argue to this day that there can be Christian or Muslim or Jewish democracies, but Jefferson was insistent that democracy meant religious pluralism, and consequently the separation of church and state. His Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which banned the imposition of any religious test or the raising of any religious tithe, is the basis of the all-important First Amendment to our Constitution. There might perhaps have been a Protestant democracy in the Americas, stretching like Chile down the East Coast, and hemmed in by the ocean and the mountains, but in order to have a multiethnic and multiconfessional electorate on a larger scale, it was essential that secularism be inscribed at the beginning.
It was also necessary that democracy be "for export," and that it be able to defend itself. "May it be to the world," wrote Jefferson in his last letter, on June 24, 1826, "what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government." It cannot be said that Jefferson himself was entirely consistent on this--the Haitian revolution filled him with dread, even if that slave revolt induced Napoleon to offer the sale of the Louisiana territory--but he did identify with democrats in other countries and did believe that America should be on their side. His long friendships with Lafayette, Paine and Kosciusko are testimony to the fact.
The most successful "export" was Jefferson's determined use of naval and military force to reduce the Barbary States of the Ottoman Empire, which had set up a slave-taking system of piracy and blackmail along the western coast of North Africa. Our third president was not in a position to enforce regime change in Algiers or Tripoli, but he was able to insist on regime behavior-modification (and thus to put an end to at least one slave system). Ever since then, every major system of tyranny in the world has had to run at least the risk of a confrontation with the United States, and one hopes that the Jeffersonians among us will continue to ensure that this remains true.
Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America" (HarperCollins, 2005).
Monday, July 11, 2005
Safer at Safari
Reassessing things post-7/7.
Last Thursday, my son and I returned home after two weeks in Africa, having been blessedly isolated from television, newspapers, and Internet. No one could reach us on magical Eagle Island, in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, or in the burnt winter bush of Timbavati, on the western border of Kruger Park in South Africa, and we never turned on the TV in our hotel in Maputo, Mozambique. We flew from Hoodspruit to Johannesburg and then to London Heathrow, arriving at half past seven in the morning, took a shower, changed our clothes, and went into the lounge to await our British Airways flight to Washington's Dulles Airport. And there we learned of the attack. "Welcome back to civilization," I quipped. It was safer in the wilderness, where the main concerns are hippos and mosquitoes, both of whom kill lots of people, but don’t wage war against us.
There was no excitement at the airport — although our flight was slightly delayed because a couple of crew members got blocked in the city — and for eight hours we had time to ponder. I found myself wondering if other European capitals — especially Rome — would be hit that day, and was relieved to find that it was "only" London on 7/7. No doubt others will follow; the terrorists want us dead or dominated.
Ever since Thursday evening we’ve been subjected to the usual flow of instant analysis and data, and as usual most of it has been wrong. Wrong, as always, in the details, from the number of bombs to the number of victims, and then wrong — or, at a minimum, unconvincing — about the "meaning" of it all. First came speculation that the terrorists were locals, buttressed by a leak from the British government asserting that al Qaeda was recruiting among university students in the United Kingdom. Or maybe not. Shortly thereafter, it seemed that the terrorists were foreigners who sneaked into the country in order to carry out the operation. This was similarly reinforced by stories claiming that the Brits were looking for the same terrorist who had planned the Madrid train bombings.
Inevitably, writers on a short deadline felt obliged to look for the greater significance of the killings in London. The usual suspects, led by the New York Times, blamed it all on Bush and Blair and their perverse willingness to fight back against our murderers. On the other hand, a small cottage industry has grown up around the theory that, bad as it was, the operation is actually good news because, just as the terrorists killed fewer people in Madrid than in New York and Washington, they killed fewer still in London. This was said to "mean" that al Qaeda’s capacity for violence was ebbing. The argument is simple: If al Qaeda could have done worse, they’d have done it. Since they didn’t, they probably couldn’t.
That may be right. But we really don’t know, and I don’t see the value in guessing about something so important. Suppose, as I fear, there is a more violent attack in Rome in the near future. What, if anything, would that prove? That there are more explosives in Italy than in England? It pays to be a bit more humble when analyzing fragments of information, and none of the analysts has spoken of the enormously important "luck" factor. There were reportedly at least two unexploded bombs in London, just as there were unexploded bombs in Madrid. Bad luck for the terrorists. There was a failed suicide mission in the skies over Pennsylvania on 9/11. Unlucky — the infidels fought back. There is also considerable reason to believe that al Qaeda did not anticipate that the assault against the Twin Towers would bring them down. That time they got lucky. Maybe they were unlucky in London. Or maybe, as Sunday reports suggest, there are further bombers waiting to act. Thursday’s event is too small a "sample" to permit us to generalize on the terror universe. And I’m afraid that those who are doing it are looking too hard at a single event, and not hard enough at the overall situation. Policemen are being beheaded in Thailand, Christian missionaries are kidnapped in the Philippines, some of our finest fighting men are being killed in Afghanistan, and bombs are going off again in Turkey.
Indeed, it would be most surprising if the terror masters were cutting back on their jihad, at a time when rising oil prices are pumping vast sums of money into their war chests. The mullahs and the Assads are rotten with cash, and a lot of it is going into the war against us. The theory that our splendid military performance in Iraq has shrunken the pool of terrorists available for operations in the West doesn’t convince me, in large part because we know from their past performances that the terrorists set up these actions years in advance. I am quite certain that they have sleeper cells in every major Western country, and these cells wouldn’t be crippled by events in Iraq in the past several months. The timing doesn’t add up to me. For extras, I think most of the terrorists in Iraq came from the outside, and there’s still a very large pool of potential volunteers throughout the Persian Gulf and North Africa, not to mention the non-trivial number of Western citizens who find fulfillment through acts of terrorism.
Unfortunately, the overall situation remains very dicey, precisely because our focus is too narrow. By concentrating compulsively on Iraq, we are failing to take the battle to the enemy, who finds haven, money, weapons, training and intelligence in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran. Over and over again, you read articles about "the Sunni insurgency," with a passing reference to "foreign jihadis," even though Zarqawi himself is a Jordanian who is known to operate with Iranian support.
Meanwhile, Iranian leverage inside Iraq seems to be growing. The recent visit of the Iraqi defense minister to Tehran, which produced a truly frightening agreement by which Iran will be training Iraqi forces, went virtually unnoticed. And there are some scary signs that suggest the mullahs are ginning up a mini civil war in the south, where they are financing both Shiites and Sunnis (the so-called Army of Omar).
I do not know if, as some commentators have suggested, the Iranians were involved in the London bombings, but it really does not matter, for Iran is the most potent force in the terror network, from which the killers in London undoubtedly drew succor. As of 9/11, the terror masters were five: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Today they are three, which is certainly good work on our part. But it isn’t nearly good enough. We cannot possibly have decent security in Iraq unless we end the murderous tyrannies in Tehran and Damascus, and convince or compel the Saudi royal family to shut down the global network of terrorist brainwashing centers they spend billions of dollars to operate.
All this should convince us that it is a mistake to microanalyze the London operation. It is just another event in the terror war, one of many, with many more to come. Its real significance should be seen as a further wake-up call to us and our allies. Our enemies know they are at war, and they are attacking us everywhere they can, in every way they can. Do we really know we are at war, and that we cannot win it within the parameters we have set for ourselves?
All in all, I felt safer in the African wilderness.
Reassessing things post-7/7.
Last Thursday, my son and I returned home after two weeks in Africa, having been blessedly isolated from television, newspapers, and Internet. No one could reach us on magical Eagle Island, in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, or in the burnt winter bush of Timbavati, on the western border of Kruger Park in South Africa, and we never turned on the TV in our hotel in Maputo, Mozambique. We flew from Hoodspruit to Johannesburg and then to London Heathrow, arriving at half past seven in the morning, took a shower, changed our clothes, and went into the lounge to await our British Airways flight to Washington's Dulles Airport. And there we learned of the attack. "Welcome back to civilization," I quipped. It was safer in the wilderness, where the main concerns are hippos and mosquitoes, both of whom kill lots of people, but don’t wage war against us.
There was no excitement at the airport — although our flight was slightly delayed because a couple of crew members got blocked in the city — and for eight hours we had time to ponder. I found myself wondering if other European capitals — especially Rome — would be hit that day, and was relieved to find that it was "only" London on 7/7. No doubt others will follow; the terrorists want us dead or dominated.
Ever since Thursday evening we’ve been subjected to the usual flow of instant analysis and data, and as usual most of it has been wrong. Wrong, as always, in the details, from the number of bombs to the number of victims, and then wrong — or, at a minimum, unconvincing — about the "meaning" of it all. First came speculation that the terrorists were locals, buttressed by a leak from the British government asserting that al Qaeda was recruiting among university students in the United Kingdom. Or maybe not. Shortly thereafter, it seemed that the terrorists were foreigners who sneaked into the country in order to carry out the operation. This was similarly reinforced by stories claiming that the Brits were looking for the same terrorist who had planned the Madrid train bombings.
Inevitably, writers on a short deadline felt obliged to look for the greater significance of the killings in London. The usual suspects, led by the New York Times, blamed it all on Bush and Blair and their perverse willingness to fight back against our murderers. On the other hand, a small cottage industry has grown up around the theory that, bad as it was, the operation is actually good news because, just as the terrorists killed fewer people in Madrid than in New York and Washington, they killed fewer still in London. This was said to "mean" that al Qaeda’s capacity for violence was ebbing. The argument is simple: If al Qaeda could have done worse, they’d have done it. Since they didn’t, they probably couldn’t.
That may be right. But we really don’t know, and I don’t see the value in guessing about something so important. Suppose, as I fear, there is a more violent attack in Rome in the near future. What, if anything, would that prove? That there are more explosives in Italy than in England? It pays to be a bit more humble when analyzing fragments of information, and none of the analysts has spoken of the enormously important "luck" factor. There were reportedly at least two unexploded bombs in London, just as there were unexploded bombs in Madrid. Bad luck for the terrorists. There was a failed suicide mission in the skies over Pennsylvania on 9/11. Unlucky — the infidels fought back. There is also considerable reason to believe that al Qaeda did not anticipate that the assault against the Twin Towers would bring them down. That time they got lucky. Maybe they were unlucky in London. Or maybe, as Sunday reports suggest, there are further bombers waiting to act. Thursday’s event is too small a "sample" to permit us to generalize on the terror universe. And I’m afraid that those who are doing it are looking too hard at a single event, and not hard enough at the overall situation. Policemen are being beheaded in Thailand, Christian missionaries are kidnapped in the Philippines, some of our finest fighting men are being killed in Afghanistan, and bombs are going off again in Turkey.
Indeed, it would be most surprising if the terror masters were cutting back on their jihad, at a time when rising oil prices are pumping vast sums of money into their war chests. The mullahs and the Assads are rotten with cash, and a lot of it is going into the war against us. The theory that our splendid military performance in Iraq has shrunken the pool of terrorists available for operations in the West doesn’t convince me, in large part because we know from their past performances that the terrorists set up these actions years in advance. I am quite certain that they have sleeper cells in every major Western country, and these cells wouldn’t be crippled by events in Iraq in the past several months. The timing doesn’t add up to me. For extras, I think most of the terrorists in Iraq came from the outside, and there’s still a very large pool of potential volunteers throughout the Persian Gulf and North Africa, not to mention the non-trivial number of Western citizens who find fulfillment through acts of terrorism.
Unfortunately, the overall situation remains very dicey, precisely because our focus is too narrow. By concentrating compulsively on Iraq, we are failing to take the battle to the enemy, who finds haven, money, weapons, training and intelligence in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran. Over and over again, you read articles about "the Sunni insurgency," with a passing reference to "foreign jihadis," even though Zarqawi himself is a Jordanian who is known to operate with Iranian support.
Meanwhile, Iranian leverage inside Iraq seems to be growing. The recent visit of the Iraqi defense minister to Tehran, which produced a truly frightening agreement by which Iran will be training Iraqi forces, went virtually unnoticed. And there are some scary signs that suggest the mullahs are ginning up a mini civil war in the south, where they are financing both Shiites and Sunnis (the so-called Army of Omar).
I do not know if, as some commentators have suggested, the Iranians were involved in the London bombings, but it really does not matter, for Iran is the most potent force in the terror network, from which the killers in London undoubtedly drew succor. As of 9/11, the terror masters were five: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Today they are three, which is certainly good work on our part. But it isn’t nearly good enough. We cannot possibly have decent security in Iraq unless we end the murderous tyrannies in Tehran and Damascus, and convince or compel the Saudi royal family to shut down the global network of terrorist brainwashing centers they spend billions of dollars to operate.
All this should convince us that it is a mistake to microanalyze the London operation. It is just another event in the terror war, one of many, with many more to come. Its real significance should be seen as a further wake-up call to us and our allies. Our enemies know they are at war, and they are attacking us everywhere they can, in every way they can. Do we really know we are at war, and that we cannot win it within the parameters we have set for ourselves?
All in all, I felt safer in the African wilderness.
