Heretics' almanac

Is Nayef Abu Sharkh's death a setback for terrorism?

The Western press doesn't quite know how to describe the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Some describe it as a spin-off from Fatah, others describe as current the link between Fatah and the Martyrs Brigade. In either case, the organization takes responsibility for murdering Israeli civilians, and it has now promised that the "revenge will come like an earthquake for the state of Israel, maybe hitting the citizens, maybe the soldiers, maybe the government. But at the right time and the right place they will be hit."

It seems to me that Hamas, PIJ, and the Brigade will never publicly say "uncle" and sue for peace. Groups like that sort of evaporate when their adherents lose their commitment to the cause. They'll continue to issue battles cries to the very end.

Winning the Intifadah

Charles Krauthammer (toh to Bjørn Stærk) has declared the second intifadah as over, with Israel the victor. Frustrated by the heavy losses and utter lack of gains, the Palestinians are turning on Arafat.

For Israel, a cessation in successful terrorist attacks is a kind of victory - certainly enough to get back to the kind of business that interests them rather than the life of self-defense.

But what's missing - as always - is a treaty. Whether terms of peace are imposed on the losing part, as with Germany and Japan during WW2, or negotiated, as happens far less often, a war ends when both parties agree to stop fighting. Giving up is not the same as making peace.

Krauthammer hopes that this defeat will bring responsible Palestinian leaders back to negotiating. But I'm not sure the Palestinians have the means for negotiating. It's not as if Hamas, Hizballah, PIJ, the terrorist wing of Fatah will agree to a less radical agenda. And as far as I can tell there is no vocal Palestinian moderate mainstream. Everyone with any power is either corrupt or murderous, in Arafat's case even both.

Israel has little reason or inclination to trust the Palestinians, anyway.

I am sure things can be negotiated, but the two have to start with small, simple-to-verify things that give each side an opportunity to show some commitment. But I can guarantee the barrier will continue to be built, rockets will drop down in the general vicinity of Israeli towns, and Hamas leaders will have a hard time getting life insurance.

We've got a ways to go.

Sent from my Blackberry

With enemies like this...

Back in the TV Nation days, I thought Michael Moore was funny. Now I think he's a jerk, and it's not because I've gotten more conservative. He's a jerk because he's more concerned about being heard than he does about actually improving things - he's a self-promoting narcissist imposing himself as a social activist, embodying the worst anyone thinks about liberals. With enemies like him, Bush scarcely needs friends. I'm sure Karl Rove is delighted over Fahrenheit 9/11.

My lithmus test for a newspaper, writer, or whatever, is to see what they've written about issues that I'm familiar with. Moore fails on issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, economics, and intellectual honesty. Christopher Hitchens's pretenses aren't that far afield from Moore's, but I have to agree with his disembowelment of Moore's movie.

It says quite a bit about Europeans, Australians, and other fad-driven Ameriphobes that they adore Moore - this is a crowd looking to confirm their convictions rather than to inform their opinions. Moore is obviously cultivating an image of an all-American slob who has seen the light. Thoughtful, educated Americans - and especially those of us who are labeled as "liberal" - see him as an embarrassment to his country, to the political wing he says he belongs to, and to legitimate criticism of conservative politics.

The UN farce on antisemitism

Smarter people than me have pointed out that the United Nations should be renamed United Governments, or better yet United Regimes. For all the wonderful aspirations the organization has put in writing, it's workings serve better as an illustration why there continues to be war, rather than how wars could be avoided.

It's still worth having, of course. But we'd all be better off if we recognized the limitations of the UN rather than clinging to the ideal as if the clinging would make it more real.

The UN conference on anti-Semitism is long overdue and much needed, but I'm forced to assert that it won't do anything to reduce antisemitism and may even increase it. There'll be a lot of talk, and then everyone will get back to hating Jews.

Murder and revelation

Jon Krakauer links the murderers Dan and Ron Lafferty with the origins and history of the Mormon church, drawing connections between the polygamy of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the polygamy of modern-day FLDS; the Mountain Meadow Massacre and the murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty.

Whether or not this linkage is accurate or even fair, Krakauer does raise a more interesting question about religion in general. As you read this book, you can't help but wonder about the origins of all religions. Did they all start out as fundamentalist sects, only to moderate their positions in order to capture mainstream interest?

Baseless hatred of Israel

My friend Lars and fellow blogger Bjørn Stærk recently attended an anti-terrorism event in Norway and have accounts of the event here and here.

The event was widely condemned in the Norwegian press because anything "anti-terrorist" was considered equivalent to "pro-Israeli." And that, according to one local government official:

...is really a rally to support the Israeli government’s politics, which includes illegal occupation, massacres, and harassment and execution of innocent children. We will therefore call upon everyone not to attend this meeting.

At about the same time, there was a "pro-Palestinian" rally in San Francisco, which has attracted commentary (and a jarring but telling photograph) from LGF, Michael Totten and Imshin, among others.

Anybody notice a pattern here?

Biden chews out Ashcroft for the wrong thing

When John Ashcroft was asked by Congress to produce documents related to all the awfulness in Abu Ghraib, he said "no." Asked if he was invoking executive privilege, the attorney general said - if memory serves me - that he wasn't invoking anything at all, only that (according to the New York Times) "it was simply not good policy to openly debate what powers a president had in wartime."

Now I'm not a constitutional attorney, but it seems to me that Ashcroft's opinion of good policy does not trump Congress's right to subpoena documents. I can only imagine what would have happened if Janet Reno had refused to disclose any documents related to the Whitewater/Jones/Lewinsky fishing expedition to Al D'Amato's committee, and that was only related to allegations of the president's personal misconduct. We'd have contempt citations and impeachment proceedings against Ms. Reno within hours.

Congress and the American public has a right to know whether anyone in the Bush administration implicitly or explicitly authorized the use of torture against prisoners in Iraq. And certainly Congress has a right to know whether executive branch attorneys tried to find a legal basis for opting out of treaties the United States has ratified.

Saperstein: "Stop Being Jewish!"

Indulging in quite a bit of hyperbole with his premise (or conclusion, I'm not sure which), Jeffrey Goldberg recently published an article in the New Yorker about the threat against Israeli society posed by the so-called "settlers." I read this article a few weeks ago and have thought about it a lot since then. One passage has stayed with me. Goldberg is interviewing Moshe Saperstein, a resident of Neveh Dekalim in Gaza:

I suggested that he try to imagine himself in the place of a Palestinian. "You're Palestinian, you're here, you have your farm, your grandparents are from here, and - "

But Moshe interrupted me. "Stop being Jewish!" he yelled. "Stop being Jewish! Only a Jew would say 'Imagine yourself as a Palestinian.' Could you imagine a Palestinian imagining himself as a Jew?"

Is it all Tenet's fault?

Anyone who wants to learn the importance of prepping the president before an announcement should see the recording of Bush announcing Tenet's resignation recently. (It was even worse than when he thanked Clinton for "his service," even when Bush knew that if Clinton could have run again he would have beat Bush so soundly he'd still be crying.)

People wonder why Tenet lasted so long, and there's buzz that he fought the good fight against the neocons for a while and then gave up. It honestly seems hard to believe that the Director of Central Intelligence would stay with his job, simply because "it's a job, after all." I don't think a memoir is forthcoming, but this is a bizarre story.

If you believe other buzz, the CIA is in bad shape because Clinton had too many scruples about putting shady characters (e.g., Noriega) on US payroll, and the agency came to rely on satellite reconaissance instead of human intelligence.

We'll never know whether and how badly the CIA screwed up.

Smoking bans and Kyoto

Another Bjørn Stærk logroll: This time about "passive smoking." Legislation went into effect June 1st that prohibits smoking in bars, restaurants, etc., out of consideration for employees and others whose health might be affected by secondhand smoke.

Bjørn's point - which he stresses in the discussion thread - is not to argue whether there should be a smoking ban, but whether the government can use "dodgy science" to justify it. He points to numerous studies that show only weak evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous to your health. And then there are sites that denounce the second hand smoke issue as a fraud.