Category: War – Peace – Foreign Affairs

The Wages of Publicity

From the Devil’s handmaidens at The New York Times:

Group Tries to Block Program Giving Data to U.S.

By DAN BILEFSKY, International Herald Tribune Published: June 27, 2006

BRUSSELS, June 27 — A human rights group in London said today that it had lodged formal complaints in 32 countries against the Brussels-based banking consortium known as Swift, contending that it violated European and Asian data protection rules by providing the United States with confidential information about international money transfers.

It speaks for itself.

The New York Times: A Hot-Bed of Post-Americanism

Proof, if any were needed, that The New York Times‘s publication of details of classified defense programs is politically motivated:

The New York Times, 9/24/01

by Hugh Hewitt

The New York Times, editorializing a long time ago, when the Trade Center ruins were still burning:

The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America’s law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies….If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.

(HT: LegalXXX who posted this in June, 2004, and to e-mailer Mary Beth S. who pinged me as to the existence of the editorial, which she found on this FreeRepublic thread.)

Permalink

What has changed since September 24, 2001? Only this: The New York Times has become ever more partisan — so much so that the Times feels compelled to oppose and undermine the war on terror simply because Bush is commander-in-chief. How post-American.

ADDENDUM: From WorldwideStandard.com:

Courtesy of The New York Times

From the International Herald Tribune:

BRUSSELS Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium has asked the Justice Ministry to investigate whether a banking consortium here broke the law when it aided the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism activities by providing it with confidential information about international money transfers.

The group, known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or Swift, has come under scrutiny following a report last week by The New York Times….

Heather MacDonald and Gabriel Schoenfeld explain the recklessness of the New York Times here and here.

Posted by Daniel McKivergan on June 27, 2006 12:10 PM |

But why worry, if you’re a post-American? The terrorists surely will spare the Times. Hah!

Post-Americans and Their Progeny

What are post-Americans? Mark Krikorian, writing at NRO, explains:

Let me be clear what I mean by a post-American. He’s not an enemy of America — not Alger Hiss or Jane Fonda or Louis Farrakhan. He’s not necessarily even a Michael Moore or Ted Kennedy. A post-American may actually still like America, but the emotion resembles the attachment one might feel to, say, suburban New Jersey — it can be a pleasant place to live, but you’re always open to a better offer. The post-American has a casual relationship with his native country, unlike the patriot, “who more than self his country loves,” as Katharine Lee Bates wrote. Put differently, the patriot is married to America; the post-American is just shacking up.

Now, there are two kinds of post-American. David Frum, in his “Unpatriotic Conservatives” article for NR last year, highlighted what I think is the less important kind: Those who focus on something less than America, whether white nationalists or neo-Confederates, etc. The second, more consequential and problematic kind are those who have moved beyond America, “citizens of the world,” as the cliché goes — in other words citizens (at least in the emotional sense) of nowhere in particular.

What does post-Americanism lead to? Among other things — such as The New York Times‘s deliberate efforts to sabotage the war on terror) — it breeds home-grown al Qaeda wannabes. Consider this, by Jim Wooten (ThinkingRight):

So who’s surprised, then, that we see the emergence of the well-fed, well-clothed, no-worry wannabes, bored and “angry,” willing to join al-Qaida in worldwide revolution? “They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy,” said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in announcing the seven arrests.

We live in a country where immigrants are invited to have dual loyalties, where a liberal’s “highest form of patriotism” is trashing the President and the nation’s military efforts in Iraq, where being “worldly” is granting no favoritism, nor making any distinction, between dictators and democracies, or considering a room that’s too warm and terrorist butchery to be equally-condemable forms of “torture.” All the recordable anger of the Left is directed inward, not at themselves, but at this country.

That’s because the post-American Left is just waiting for a better offer. But it will never come. We “buried” Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Tojo, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Ulbricht, Jaruzelski, Ceauşescu, Saddam, etc., and we will “bury” Castro, Putin, the Chinese cabal, Kim jong-il, Osama and his supporters — and all the rest of Hitler and Stalin’s spiritual heirs — as long as we do not succumb to post-Americanism.

Related posts:
Getting It Wrong: Civil Libertarians and the War on Terror (A Case Study) (05/18/04)
The Illogic of Knee-Jerk Privacy Adocates (10/06/04)
Treasonous Blogging? (03/05/05)
I Dare Call It Treason (05/31/05)
Shall We All Hang Separately? (08/13/05)
Foxhole Rats (08/14/05)
Treasonous Speech? (08/18/05)
Foxhole Rats, Redux (08/22/05)
The Faces of Appeasement (11/19/05)
We Have Met the Enemy . . . (12/13/05)
More Foxhole Rats (01/24/06)
Calling a Nazi a Nazi (03/12/06)
What If We Lose? (03/22/06)< A Political Compass (03/24/06)
Moussaoui and “White Guilt” (05/03/06)
In Which I Reply to the Executive Editor of The New York Times (06/25/06)

In Which I Reply to the Executive Editor of the New York Times

UPDATED THROUGHOUT, 06/26/06

From The New York Times, Sunday, June 25, 2006. Reproduced in its entirety. My comments in brackets and italic boldface. The underlying story is here.

June 25, 2006

Letter From Bill Keller on The Times’s Banking Records Report

The following is a letter Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, has sent to readers who have written him about The Times’s publication of information about the government’s examination of international banking records:

I don’t always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government’s surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I’d like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government’s anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that’s the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) [Because, you idiot, you’ve already let the cat out of the bag. The damage is done.] Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror. [A public debate that divulges the details of a classified anti-terror program that has been effective? Anyway, you forgot to mention the Lefties — yourself and your staff included — who simply want to shut down the war on terror because it offends your sensibilities.]

It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish. [But it is neither wise nor patriotic to undermine the government’s lawful efforts to prosecute a war, and that is precisely what the Times and other publications have done.]

The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. [But you have done just that in your zeal to sell newspapers, win Pulitzer prizes, and push your writers’ books.] The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I’ve only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I’ve faced as an editor. [Because your “agonizing” always seems to lead to the same conclusion (publish), I doubt that it’s really agonizing at all.]

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. [Why should that be, unless you place the Times’s interests — don’t give me that baloney about “pubic interest” — above the nation’s.] The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. [Strawman alert!] For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. [Irrelevant. Kennedy was second-guessing his failure of nerve. He was responsible for the Bay of Pigs fiasco.] Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration’s claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not “why publish?” but “why would we withhold information of significance?” We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so. [This entire paragraph is off the point. What the government might have liked — or not liked — in various cases isn’t in question. What is in question is why the Times and other media outlets have chosen to divulge very real, very secret, and probably very effective measures, such as the surveillance of international communications and the tracking of financial transactions.]

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it’s the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements. [In other words, those who are enraged by the Times’s actions are nothing more than right-wing hotheads.]

Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. [The government has acted in accordance with already existing legislation.] Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government’s actions and over the adequacy of oversight. [So, the Times favors disgruntled leakers over national security. Well we knew that, and the reasons for it, namely, the Times’s zeal to sell newspapers, win Pulitzer prizes, and push its writers’ books.] We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them. [Actually, your purpose — among others not so lofty — was to discredit a Republican administration by running scare headlines.]

Our decision to publish the story of the Administration’s penetration of the international banking system followed weeks of discussion between Administration officials and The Times, not only the reporters who wrote the story but senior editors, including me. We listened patiently and attentively. We discussed the matter extensively within the paper. We spoke to others — national security experts not serving in the Administration — for their counsel. [Yeah, but you knew all along what you were going to do, didn’t you?] It’s worth mentioning that the reporters and editors responsible for this story live in two places — New York and the Washington area — that are tragically established targets for terrorist violence. The question of preventing terror is not abstract to us. [Oh, play that violin! New York and Washington aren’t the only potential targets, you narcissistic jerk. By your words and actions you have revealed that the question of preventing terror is abstract to you.]

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don’t know about it. [If they don’t know about it, it’s for a very good reason: Loose lips sink ships. Wars aren’t won by discussing battle plans in town meetings.]

We weighed most heavily the Administration’s concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don’t know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling. First, the bankers provide this information under the authority of a subpoena, which imposes a legal obligation. Second, if, as the Administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it. The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere. And while it is too early to tell, the initial signs are that our article is not generating a banker backlash against the program. [No, but it does give the bad guys — and potential bad guys — better information about how to avoid the tracking of their banking transactions.]

By the way, we heard similar arguments against publishing last year’s reporting on the NSA eavesdropping program. We were told then that our article would mean the death of that program. We were told that telecommunications companies would — if the public knew what they were doing — withdraw their cooperation. To the best of my knowledge, that has not happened. While our coverage has led to much public debate and new congressional oversight, to the best of our knowledge the eavesdropping program continues to operate much as it did before. Members of Congress have proposed to amend the law to put the eavesdropping program on a firm legal footing. And the man who presided over it and defended it was handily confirmed for promotion as the head of the CIA. [Off the point again. You fail to mention the bad guys and how your stories helped them avoid detection. Or don’t you care about them?]

A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way. [Who says? Are you into reading body language?] It has been widely reported — indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department — that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. [But not precisely how.] Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. [How do you know that? How can anyone know that? All one can do is track what can be tracked, but you’ve probably told terrorists more than they knew about how their money is tracked.] But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash. [Though they may use it less than before, or in more devious ways, thanks to you.]

I can appreciate that other conscientious people could have gone through the process I’ve outlined above and come to a different conclusion. But nobody should think that we made this decision casually, with any animus toward the current Administration, or without fully weighing the issues. [Regardless of your smug justifications, you did come to the conclusion that it was your right and responsibility to endanger American lives by exposing programs that help track terrorists. The First Amendment gives you the right to publish; it doesn’t say that you must publish. Use your head, if you can retrieve it from the orifice at the other end of your torso.]

Thanks for writing.

Regards,
Bill Keller

[P.S. I pay the President to defend the country, not you. If you want the job, run for it. Until you’ve been elected and inaugurated, keep your mitts off the war effort. You’re on a par with a drunk who aspires to direct traffic, and about as qualified for the job.]

ADDENDUM: See this excellent fisking of Keller’s letter by Hugh Hewitt.

ADDENDUM 2: See this “indictment” by Mark Henry Holzer of the Times and the leakers who have been passing classified information to the Times since 9/11.

ADDENDUM 3: Michelle Malkin has a roundup of blogospheric reactions.

ADDENDUM 4: Michael Barone asks (about those gentle folk of the Times) why do they hate us?

ADDENDUM 5: The American Spectator Blog reports that Keller has been caught lying about the amount of contact the NYT had with the White House and the vehemence of the government’s objections to the story.

ADDENDUM 6: Treasury secretary John Snow piles on (in effect repeating some of what I say above).

Those UN Gun Grabbers and the Second Amendment

Michelle Malkin joins the list of bloggers and other who are alarmed by the upcoming UN conference on global gun control. She points to a release by the Second Amendment Foundation, which includes this:

The U.N. Conference on Global Gun Control, scheduled June 24- July 7, poses a direct threat to our constitutionally-protected individual right to keep and bear arms, said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). Gottlieb will attend the conference, but he suggests that this may be an opportune time for Congress and the White House to reconsider this nation’s level of financial support for an international organization that now wants to write a treaty that specifically attacks a cornerstone of our federal constitution, and the lynchpin to our liberty. . . .

“Yet, as we celebrate our 230th anniversary, global anti- gunners, under the guise of reviewing a U.N. program of action on small arms and light weapons, want to create a binding international agreement that could supersede our laws and constitution,” Gottlieb said. “We have done much for the U.N. and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself. And now comes an attack on our constitution, on our national holiday.

Gottlieb and other defenders of Americans’ right to bear arms are justifiably alarmed by the UN’s blatant anti-Americanism, of which the upcoming conference is but the latest manifestation.

It is my view, however, that the U.S. cannot effectively amend the Constitution and do away with the right to bear arms simply by virtue of its membership in the UN. I have made that point in connection with our right to declare war regardless of the UN’s position on such a declaration. (See this, this, and this.) The same logic applies to the Second Amendment.

I am not counseling complacency in the face of enemies abroad and dupes at home. I am saying that — in the end and given the right Supreme Court (which we probably have on this issue) — the Second Amendment will survive.

I Wish I’d Said That

A few choice bits from today’s reading:

Skating on the floor of the roller rink is an example of what Friedrich Hayek called spontaneous order. The process is beneficial and orderly, but also spontaneous. No one plans or directs the overall order. Decision making is left to the individual skater. It is decentralized.

— Daniel B. Klein, “Rinkonomics: A Window on Spontaneous Order,” The Library of Economics and Liberty

Killing the #2 man in al Qaida just means everybody in the organization moves up one notch. The former #3 guy is the new #2 guy, the former #10 guy is now the #9 guy, and the new #48 guy is Howard Dean.

Just so you know, I’m ashamed that the Dixie Chicks are from America.

— Ann Coulter, in an interview at FrontPageMag.com

If the fact that a man who regards his son’s butcher as a better man than the American president is rewarded with a party’s nomination to Congress does not tell you all you need to know about the morally twisted world of the Greens, nothing will.

— Dennis Prager, writing of Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, at FrontPageMag.com

The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society except their constant criticisms can feel both intellectually and morally superior.

“”We are a nation of immigrants,” we are constantly reminded. We are also a nation of people with ten fingers and ten toes. Does that mean that anyone who has ten fingers and ten toes should be welcomed and given American citizenship?”

— Thomas Sowell, “Random thoughts,” Townhall.com

After the London tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:

“British Muslims fear repercussions over tomorrow’s train bombing.”

An adjective here and there, and that would serve just as well for much of the coverage by the Toronto Star and the CBC, where a stone through a mosque window is a bigger threat to the social fabric than a bombing thrice the size of the Oklahoma City explosion.

— Mark Steyn, “You can’t believe your lyin’ eyes,” Macleans.ca

Carnival of Links

Tomorrow I will post Carnival of Liberty XLIX. While you’re waiting for that, try these:

Cornel West’s Favorite Communist, by David Horowitz (FrontPageMag.com)

Guest workers aren’t cheap; they’re expensive, by Phyllis Schlafly (Townhall.com)

Clinton Links GOP Policies to More Storms (wrongly, of course), from the Associated Press (via Breitbart.com)

A review of Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics, by John Cornwell (Times Online)

Libertarianism and Poverty, by Arnold Kling (TCS Daily)

Coulter clash on LI, at Newsday

Favorite passage:

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called the book a “vicious, mean-spirited attack,” and said, “Perhaps her book should have been called ‘Heartless.'”

Coulter responded to Clinton on the radio show yesterday: “I think if she’s worried about people being mean to women she should have a talk with her husband.”

(More here and here.)

Why Do We Spend So Much on Defense?, by Justin Logan (Cato@Liberty)

Answer: Because, in addition to fighting terrorists, which you wrongly think can be done on the cheap, we must be prepared to ensure that the next generation of ambitious regimes (e.g., Russia) doesn’t try to pull a “Munich” on us. That’s why, you libertarian nay-sayer.

Starving the Beast, by Greg Mankiw (Greg Mankiw’s Blog)

See especially this linked article. See also my post, Starving the Beast, Updated.

More Saddam Terrorist Ties Discovered, by Lorie Byrd (Wizbang!)

Next: WMD. Bush lied?

Motives, by Don Boudreaux (Cafe Hayek)

Haditha: Backtrack Baby, Backtrack, by Mary Katharine Ham (Hugh Hewitt)

Why I cannot trust the Democrats, by Jon Henke (QandO)

Just Say When

Left-wing dingbat Jeralyn Merritt has a problem with the successful anti-terrorist operation that led to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

It was an act of retaliatory terrorism. By our government. And I don’t want it to be in my name. Even if he was, as we’re told, the devil incarnate. Violence begets violence. It’s time for the war and the killing to stop.

I guess she wouldn’t want U.S. forces to rescue her if she were being held by terrorists, if it meant that terrorists had to die as a result.

If you bother to read Merritt’s post, you must also read this one.

In Defense of Ann Coulter

You’ve read about Ann Coulter’s book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, and the controversy that surrounds it because of a passage quoted by Today‘s Matt Lauer in his recent interview of Coulter. The passage is embedded in one of Lauer’s questions (quoted at this Leftist site):

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.” And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death [sic] so much.” Because they dare to speak out?

In the aftermath of the Today interview much has been said about what Coulter wrote — and about the reactions to what she wrote. See, for example, this, this, this, this, this, and especially this, where Fran Porretto of Eternity Road quotes from Godless to put in context the infamous “enjoying their husbands’ deaths” passage:

After 9/11, four housewives from New Jersey whose husbands died in the attack on the World Trade Center became media heroes for blaming their husbands’ deaths on George Bush and demanding a commission to investigate why Bush didn’t stop the attacks. Led by all-purpose scold Kristen Breitweiser, the four widows came to be known as “the Jersey Girls.” (Original adorable name: “Just Four Moms From New Jersey.”) The Jersey Girls weren’t interested in national honor, they were interested in a lawsuit. They first came together to complain that the $1.6 million average settlement to be paid to 9/11 victims’ families by the government was not large enough.

After getting their payments jacked up, the weeping widows took to the airwaves to denounce George Bush, apparently for not beaming himself through space from Florida to New York and throwing himself in front of the second building at the World Trade Center. These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. The whole nation was wounded, all of our lives reduced. But they believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process. These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.

Ed Morrissey’s reaction (linked above) exemplifies that of the conservative tut-tut brigade:

[I]f one ever needed proof that the political spectrum resembles a circle where the extremes meet, this should provide it. In fact, it reminded me of another pundit whom the Left lionizes and the Right reviles: Ted Rall. Why Rall? Three years ago, Rall made essentially the same point in one of his crude cartoons and got rightly panned for it. It became one of the reasons that the Washington Post ended its association with Rall in 2004.

Whether Rall or Coulter says it, impugning the grief felt by 9/11 widows regardless of their politics is nothing short of despicable. It denies them their humanity and disregards the very public and horrific nature of their spouses’ deaths. The attacks motivated a lot of us to become more active in politics in order to make sure our voices contribute to the debate, and it is impossible to argue that the 9/11 widows (and widowers, and children, and parents) have less standing to opine on foreign policy than Ann Coulter or Ted Rall.

It is simply absurd to link Coulter and Rall. Coulter writes in defense of America and its ideals. Rall disdains America and its ideals; he roots for the bad guys.

More importantly, Coulter did not impugn the grief of 9/11 widows in general, she impugned the self-centered, money-grubbing, partisan actions of “the Jersey Girls.” Their grief gives them no license to tax Americans. Life is full of tragedies — preventable and unpreventable — but why should the survivors of the victims of one particular tragedy be singled out for special attention and recompense? Was there a “12/7 Fund” in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor? Have we lavished millions on each of the widows of the servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Where did we (or so many of us) get the idea that we are owed munificent recompense for every bad thing that happens to us? Stuff happens — that’s why we buy insurance.

But demanding tribute was not enough for the Jersey Girls. They went on to scold the 9/11 Commission and then to engage in partisan politics, as if wisdom accompanies grief. It is true that the Jersey Girls have no less standing than anyone else to speak their minds. But neither do they have more standing than anyone else. But that is what they have claimed — and been granted, by many. Their “credibility” arises solely from the fact that they are 9/11 widows, not because they have thought long, hard, and productively about issues of war and peace. Ann Coulter, by contrast, has done the long, hard, thinking — which she does convey in a rather polemical style. (Ted Rall’s thinking, on the other hand, is as deep as the ink on a page of The New York Times.)

With that out of the way, I will explain why Coulter is right to say that “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” Enjoy means (among other things) “have benefit from; ‘enjoy privileges’.” And that’s precisely what the Jersey Girls have done. They have exacted tribute from us and exercised unwarranted influence in politics — simply because of the manner of their husbands’ deaths. Boobs who criticize Coulter would do well to improve their command of English.

Jihad in Canada

The Globe and Mail reports (yesterday):

A plan to storm the House of Commons, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper is among the sensational allegations to emerge yesterday after 15 men and youths charged in an anti-terrorism sweep appeared in court.

The startling revelations include purported plans to bomb power plants in Southern Ontario and take control of the CBC building in Toronto. The targets were on a shortlist the group had allegedly discussed in brainstorming sessions, before deciding on three: an unspecified Canadian military base, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in downtown Toronto.

Who are these people? Michael Barone nails it:

Canadian officials deserve great credit for breaking up this terrorist ring. But they and all of us need to state plainly what we are up against. “Islamofascist-
murderingnutjobs” is not elegant, but it has the advantage of accuracy.

There’s a certain amount of denial, however, as Michelle Malkin reports:

Canadian law enforcement officials should be proud of busting a reputed Islamic terrorist network that may span seven nations. Instead, our northern neighbors are trying their damnedest to whitewash the jihadi ties that bind the accused plotters and their murder-minded peers around the world.

We live on a doomed continent of ostriches.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official coined the baneful phrase “broad strata” to describe the segment of Canadian society from whence Qayyum Abdul Jamal and his fellow adult suspects Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid came. . . .

Undeterred by the obvious, Toronto police chief Bill Blair assured the public that the Muslim suspects “were motivated by an ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith. . . . I am not aware of any mosques that these individuals were influenced by.” Well, Chief Blindspot, try the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education. That’s the Canadian storefront mosque where eldest jihadi suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal is, according to his own lawyer, a prayer leader and active member — along with many of the other Muslim males arrested in the sweep.

Ralph Kinney Bennett addresses the “profiling” aspect of the case:

Hooray for Canadian law enforcement!

Hooray for profiling!

As the story unfolds of the arrest of 17 suspected Islamic terrorists and the seizure of a huge cache of explosive materials, Canadians, Americans, and free men everywhere can be thankful that the Canadian police and intelligence services had the courage to profile. . . .

As we have pointed out before here despite all the pretended piety over profiling, it continues to be one of the most important tools of preventive law enforcement. . . .

[T]he fact is law enforcement must discriminate as never before. It must make clear distinctions. It must differentiate. It must perceive the distinguishing features of terrorists and would-be terrorists. Unfortunately, thanks to the Islamofascists and the indelible and undeniable fingerprints they have left in New York, Washington, London, Madrid and elsewhere around the globe, square one in this exercise is usually at some mosque, where Muslims, usually of Arabic descent, gather.

In this particular case, a “store front” mosque in Mississauga, Ontario, the Al Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, has been reported as the regular meeting place of 6 of the 17 persons arrested in the alleged terrorist plot to blow up various important sites in and around Toronto. . . .

The imam of a suburban Toronto mosque told the New York Times “we are being targeted not because of what we’ve done, but because of who we are and what we believe in.”

Well… no. And… yes. Canadian Muslims are not being “targeted.” Certain Muslims in Canada are being singled out because they appear to have been targeting the Canadian people and their institutions. They are being singled out because they believe in the cold-blooded murder of anyone who does not share their beliefs. They are being singled out because of their quaint belief that a solidly packed container of ammonium nitrate with a detonator attached is somehow a petition for redress of imagined grievances. They are the profile within the profile.

Just as many innocent Muslims must put up with the unfair onus of guilt by association and the blind anger of a small corner of the public (mosques vandalized etc.), so Canadian law enforcement must put up with the unfair and ignorant accusations that they are somehow, preying on Muslims as a whole. In the fetid atmosphere of political correctness that seems to have settled over much of Canada, that takes real courage.

The point is, even if this whole Canadian investigation somehow were to unravel, the grim, quiet, veiled and sometimes untidy life-and-death struggle that the security services have been waging — a struggle that involves profiling and skillful discrimination — is right, vital and necessary and must continue.

The defense of life, liberty, and property requires us to address hard facts. One of those hard facts is that a certain subset of the populace is more likely than other subsets to indulge a peculiar taste for bombing and beheading its chosen enemies. Remember, they chose us as enemies, not vice versa.

62 Years Ago Today

June 6, 1944:
If we Americans could be united against Nazi Germany, why can we not be united against equally evil Islamic terrorists and their enablers, at home and abroad? What has happened to us in the last 62 years? Think about it. The answers will come to you, if you let them. (Here’s a hint.)

(Photo courtesy of Hot Air.)

A Flawed Defense of Anarcho-Capitalism

Here’s yet another flawed defense of anarcho-capitalism, by yet another of the Rothbardians who write at the Mises Economics Blog:

We tend to assume that without an interventionist government, life would fall into chaos. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

In the nineteenth century, French economist Frédéric Bastiat remarked on the wonder of that phenomenon by exclaiming, “Paris gets fed!” The same can be said of New York, Tokyo, Mexico City, etc. It’s doesn’t take the intervention of a governmental planning board to ensure adequate food for all of us. Entrepreneurs seeking profit make certain that eggs and milk are readily available for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Consider the alternative:

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s I spent three weeks in the then-socialist countries of Yugoslavia and East Germany. If it wasn’t for the illegal food market there would have been nothing to eat other than cookies, Vodka, and stale bread. Keep in mind that the brightest minds planned these economies. Not much to be said for central planning.

But we tend to forget these real-world examples of governmental planning. Maybe we assume that our bureaucrats are more omnificent and brighter than those of Yugoslavia and East Germany. Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian School of Economics proved over 80 years ago that all attempts at central planning lead to chaos. He was correct then, and he is still correct today. . . .

Remember, it’s the entrepreneur who will truck the eggs and milk so that you can eat tomorrow.

First, interventionist government isn’t the only possible kind of government. There’s the nightwatchman state that exists only to defend life, liberty, and property. It’s the kind of state envisioned by the Framers. It’s the kind of state toward which we could return with the replacement of a few more Supreme Court justices.

Second, being well and reliably fed, clothed, housed, etc., by market institutions depends very much on the protection of life, liberty, and property. That is to say, markets operate far more effectively in an environment where the rule of law is enforced.

Third, private institutions cannot enforce the rule of law without descending into warlordism. It is far better to rely on an accountable state than it is to empower “private defense agencies” to enforce contracts and settle disputes. People are people, and power is power. Private defense agencies are run by the same kinds of power-hungry people who gravitate toward government. The result of competition among such people can be seen in gang warfare. Constitutionally limited power — entrusted to a few accountable institutions — affords a more stable environment for the effective operation of market forces than does a regime of competing warlords private defense agencies.

Related posts:
Defense, Anarcho-Capitalist Style
But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?
My View of Warlordism, Seconded
Anarcho-Libertarian Stretching
QandO Saved Me the Trouble
Sophomoric Libertarianism
Nock Reconsidered

International Law vs. Homeschooling

An international treaty — which the U.S. Senate has not ratified — could nevertheless be used to bar parents from homeshooling their children. An article at LifeSite explains:

The Home School Legal Defense Association’s (HSLDA) Chairman and General Counsel, Michael Farris, warns that even though the U.S. has never ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the convention may still be binding on citizens because of activist judges.

According to a new “interpretation” of what is known as “customary international law,” some U.S. judges have ruled that, even though the U.S. Senate and President have never ratified the Convention, it is still binding on American parents. “In the 2002 case of Beharry v. Reno, one federal court said that even though the Convention was never ratified, it still has an ‘impact on American law’,” Farris explained. “The fact that virtually every other nation in the world has adopted it has made it part of customary international law, and it means that it should be considered part of American jurisprudence.”

Under the Convention, severe limitations are placed on a parent’s right to direct and train their children. As explained in a 1993 Home School Court Report by the HSLDA, under Article 13, parents could be subject to prosecution for any attempt to prevent their children from interacting with material they deemed unacceptable. Under Article 14, children are guaranteed “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” – in other words, children have a legal right to object to all religious training. And under Article 15, the child has a right to “freedom of association.” “If this measure were to be taken seriously, parents could be prevented from forbidding their child to associate with people deemed to be objectionable companions,” the HSLDA report explained.

The HSLDA report points out that

the U.N. Convention would:

[1] transfer parental rights and responsibilities to the [s]tate,
[2] undermine the family by vesting children with various fundamental rights which advance notions of the child’s autonomy and freedom from parental guidance; and
[3] establish bureaucracies and institutions of a national and international nature designed to promote “the ideas proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations” and to investigate and prosecute parents who violate their children’s rights. . . .

The State Will Determine the Child’s “Best Interest’

Article 3: “In all actions concerning children,” the courts, social service workers and bureaucrats are empowered to regulate families based on their subjective determination of “the best interest of the child.” This article shifts the responsibility of parental judgment and decision making from the family to the State (and ultimately the United Nations).

There is hope, however, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) (summary here, full opinion here). The summary:

Facts of the Case

The Compulsory Education Act of 1922 required parents or guardians to send children between the ages of eight and sixteen to public school in the district where the children resided. The Society of Sisters was an Oregon corporation which facilitated care for orphans, educated youths, and established and maintained academies or schools. This case was decided together with Society of Sisters v. Hill Military Academy.

Question Presented

Did the Act violate the liberty of parents to direct the education of their children?

Conclusion

Yes. The unanimous Court held that “the fundamental liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”

In reaching its decision, the Court wrote that

we think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state. The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

Pierce v. Society of Sisters dates from the era of Lochnerian (substantive) due process, which ended during the New Deal. But a new era of substantive due process may be upon us. Moreover, given the Court’s present makeup (four conservatives, one waffler, and five Catholics) I am hopeful that a test of parents’ rights would be decided in favor of parents. Given Justice Kennedy’s quirkiness, I would be even more sanguine if Justice Stevens or Justice Ginsburg were to retire soon.

(Thanks to my daughter-in-law for the link to the LifeNet article.)

In Memoriam

I dedicate today’s blogging to the eight of my mother’s siblings (all seven of her brothers and one of her two sisters) who served in the armed forces of the United States. Seven of them served during World War II. To Joe, Louis, Lawrence, Helen, Charles, Chet, George, and Fred: Born 1905-1922, Died 1947-2004.

“All, all, are sleeping on the hill.”

Well Said

By Maverick Philosopher:

There are anarchists and others who dream of a world in which good order arises spontaneously and coercive structures are unnecessary. I want these anarchists and others to be able to dream on in peace. For that very reason, I reject their dangerous utopianism.

Moussaoui and "White Guilt"

UPDATE 05/05/06 @ 10:52 am: Read this, by Gerard Vanderleun, and this, by Daniel Henninger.

UPDATE 05/04/06 @ 9:20 pm: Read this, by Peggy Noonan.

UPDATE 05/09/06 @ 11:45 am: Read this, by Mark Steyn.

REVISED 05/04/06 @ 9:45 am

It seems that the jury in Zacarias Moussaoui’s sentencing trial has opted to spare the slimeball’s life. Nevertheless, he’ll be dead meat within a year if a fellow prisoner gets a shot at him.

What really bothers me is that, according to an AP story, “the jury was not convinced that Moussaoui, who was in jail on Sept. 11, deserved to die.” The jury’s verdict is yet another sign of what Shelby Steele calls “white guilt.” Steele, writing recently at OpinionJournal, observes that

[t]here is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II.

For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along–if admirably–in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even as we seem unable to stop it. Yet no one–including, very likely, the insurgents themselves–believes that America lacks the raw power to defeat this insurgency if it wants to. So clearly it is America that determines the scale of this war. It is America, in fact, that fights so as to make a little room for an insurgency.

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy. . . .

Today words like “power” and “victory” are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, “might” can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism. But in today’s atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so. . . .

Whether the problem is race relations, education, immigration or war, white guilt imposes so much minimalism and restraint that our worst problems tend to linger and deepen. Our leaders work within a double bind. If they do what is truly necessary to solve a problem–win a war, fix immigration–they lose legitimacy.

To maintain their legitimacy, they practice the minimalism that makes problems linger.

The best way to deal with a problem is . . . to deal with it. Being “nice” doesn’t make an enemy any less dangerous; it only encourages more acts of aggression against Americans. That should have been the lesson we learned when we ended the war with Japan so decisively.

Moussaoui is an enemy of the United States who was prepared to kill Americans by committing an act of war against them. He should be treated as we used to treat enemies, decisively and terminally. The jury in Moussaoui’s case has opted instead to let him linger — at least until a fellow prisoner decides to do what the jury should have ordered done. Until then, the sentence handed to Moussaoui will be seen, rightly, by our enemies as yet another sign of weakness.

Disposing of a Few Idiocies

Late Friday afternoon, fresh from a nap after a delightful lunch at a lakeside restaurant. I can muster only a few quick comments.

Dale Carpenter, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy, asks “Why So Few Gay Marriages?” He fails to suggest the main reason: “Gayness” is mostly about sex, not about lifetime bonding centered mainly around children.

Publius (with a little “p”), of legal fiction, chastises Americans for their obliviousness to history. His aim — which he disavows, of course — is to suggest that Americans are somehow responsible for Islamic terrorism because of their ignorance of the “villainy” of (some of) their European ancestors during the Crusades. According to publius, Americans’ obliviousness to history also blinds them to the fact that America’s efforts to “export democracy” have been failures, though he somehow fails to mention Germany and Japan. Nor does he acknowledge that our real aim in the Middle East isn’t so much to export democracy as it is to establish friendly regimes that are (at least) not oppressive.

Publius goes on to say that “Americans just haven’t had to internalize defeat, loss, and humiliation in the same way that other people have.” But in the next paragraph he contradicts himself by acknowledging “two [sizeable] groups of people in America that do have a collective consciousness of resentment . . . white Southerners and blacks. Say what you will about both groups, they don’t forget.” I’m not sure whether little “p” objects to the defeat of the Confederacy or to the failure of the effort to remove all freed slaves to Liberia.

E Pluribus Unum?

In the preceding post bemoaned the fact that the United States has become

a geographically defined collection of regionally, ethnically, politically, and culturally diverse identity groups. In that respect, what we ironically call the United States has become less coherent than at any time since the Civil War.

All of that splintering would be all right, if it weren’t for the fact that most of the splinter groups try to use the power of the state to bring the other splinter groups to heel. What’s so desperately needed is a return to federalism, in its original conception. As I wrote here,

[t]he constitutional contract charges the federal government with keeping peace among the States, ensuring uniformity in the rules of inter-State and international commerce, facing the world with a single foreign policy and a national armed force, and assuring the even-handed application of the Constitution and of constitutional laws. That is all.

With the federal government as a protective shield, citizens could “vote with their feet,” choose their associates, and argue among themselves about the role of government. I explore that topic in “Finding Liberty,” where I say that

[a]s long as there is meaningful exit there can be a race to the top. Exit serves liberty because it enables each person to find that place whose values come closest to his or her preferred way of life. Places deemed among the most attractive will grow in numbers and prosper; places deemed less attractive will wither, economically if not in terms of population. Under the right conditions . . . , the balance will tilt toward liberty, that is, toward a modus vivendi that seems, for most people, to offer happiness. That is the essence of federalism, as it was envisioned by the Framers.

That post is part of a series, “The Meaning of Liberty,” the several parts of which are consolidated here . The bottom line of the series:

  • Liberty suffers when a central government does more than make war, conduct foreign affairs, and regulate inter-State commerce for the sole purpose of ensuring against the erection of barriers to trade.
  • Liberty suffers when a central government imposes rules on all at the instigation of the majority or coalitions of minorities.
  • Liberty thrives when the rules that govern relations among the members of a group are agreed among the members of the group — even if those rules vary from group to group. One group’s liberty may be another group’s strait-jacket, and vice versa.

The motto of the United States — e pluribus unum (out of many, one) — will not be realized unless and until “Blue Staters” embrace true federalism.

P.S. Think of true federalism as being like a family in which all the children are grown. (No, I am not positing an all-wise, all-caring government as parent.) In most such families, the members get along best when each goes his or her own way, which is why Ma and Pa live in Michigan, Junior lives in Virginia, Sis lives in Iowa, and The Twins have split their act and gone to Oregon and Texas. They keep in touch, and they help each other through personal crises, but otherwise they stay out of each other’s hair (as the saying goes).

The State of the Union . . .

. . . is truly abysmal, when I think about it. And I was prompted to think about it by Mike Rappaport’s post, “The Decline of American Civilization,” at The Right Coast. Rappaport says that

the criticisms of Donald Rumsfeld by retired generals are another example of the violation of traditional norms that have served our country. Such criticisms both undermine civilian control of the military and can be exploited by our enemies. Norms of this sort are important and valuable but are increasingly ignored. Retired Presidents used to avoid strongly criticizing the current President, especially when the criticisms would be made on foreign soil and would be about foreign relations. But Presidents Clinton and Carter are happy to do it.

I suppose that the country will continue to exist, even though these norms are violated. But the nation will change for the worse. It will be harder to stay unified and to deal with one another in a civil way. And that, in the long run, is a big concern.

My reaction: The generals’ criticisms of Rumsfeld won’t make the nation worse off. Rather, they are symptoms of the already decrepit condition of the nation. In fact, as nationhood used to be understood, we no longer have a nation — as evidenced, to take but one example, by the Left’s resistance to the war on terror. What we have is a geographically defined collection of regionally, ethnically, politically, and culturally diverse identity groups. In that respect, what we ironically call the United States has become less coherent than at any time since the Civil War.

Hang Her High

UPDATED BELOW

(If she’s guilty, of course.)

CIA Officer Fired for Leaking Classified Info to Media

P.S. to Bush-bashers: A leak is an unauthorized disclosure of information. The head of the executive branch is authorized to authorize disclosures.

P.P.S. (from Wizbang!):

[T]he CIA officer’s name is Mary McCarthy. She worked at the Inspector General’s office and testified in front of the 9/11 Commission.

Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA’s inspector general’s office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and and George W. Bush administrations.

The leak pertained to stories on the CIA’s rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.

Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.

Update II: The Jawa Report says that McCarthy gave $2,000 to Kerry’s 2004 campaign [emphasis mine, all mine].

MY UPDATE (04/22, 1:15 PM):

McCarthy may have been a serial leaker, and — hah! — she may have been caught in a sting operation.