The Week - Column

National Review, Sept 16, 2002

-- Hosni Mubarak, president-for-life of Egypt, called Ariel Sharon a "fatso," saying, "I hear he eats an entire lamb for dinner." Well, actually, if you read the Arab press, you know that Sharon really bloats himself on the blood of Arab children.

-- It's bad enough that the New York Times is using both its news and ededitorial pages to crusade against Bush administration policy toward the "axis of evil." It has run front-page stories on the negative economic effect of a war with Iraq and on the "setbacks" caused by "Bush hard-liners" to warmer ties with North Korea. Now the Times has gone further, trying to recruit Henry Kissinger to its side of the argument. In a confused front-page story, the former secretary of state was said to have made a "break" with the administration over Iraq. But Kissinger has expressed his support for preemptive action against Iraq. His "break" with the administration consisted merely of an admonition that an attack on Iraq should not be contemplated unless America is willing to do what it takes to ensure that a postwar Iraqi government is both peaceful and viable. Bush, Rumsfeld, et al. have hardly disavowed such a goal. There is, however, one respect, not mentioned by the Times, in which Kissinger differs from the administration. He believes that a demand for weapons inspections should be the prelude to an attack on Iraq. Vice President Cheney believes, as we do, that inspections would provide only "false comfort," since the Iraqi regime has evaded them in the past. But this is a tactical, not a strategic, difference. Kissinger has not joined the anti-war hard-liners at the Times, and they will simply have to find a new story. May we suggest a piece on the economic effect of Saddam's taking over the Arabian peninsula?

-- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., France) recently trotted out the most shshameless of all peacenik arguments. Referring to famous Iraq hawk Richard Perle, Hagel wondered aloud: "Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad." Now, is it Hagel's position that no one should have a view on American foreign policy who isn't a member of the U.S. military? (If so, fine -- we would have been in Baghdad long ago.) Or does he think that no one should advocate a position that he doesn't carry out himself? In which case, Hagel should stop merely saying that growing corn is a good thing and go grow it himself; stop saying that arresting criminals is a good thing and go bust some himself; quit voting for AIDS funding for Africa and go minister to the ill there himself. Or, the last, and simplest, possibility, was Hagel simply at a loss for a reasoned criticism of Perle's position, and so resorted to the ad hominem?

-- We were browsing our files recently, and came across the first ededitorial NR ran after Iraq invaded Kuwait twelve years ago. Among other things, it said: "The immediate American goals are the restoration of Kuwait and the defense of Saudi Arabia; but our eventual objectives must be deeper: the overthrow of Saddam and the permanent reduction of Iraqi military power. . . . Better a crushing blow now than any peaceful solution that leaves Saddam free in five years' time to renew his bid for supreme power in the Arab world, armed with nuclear weapons and a prestige born of outwitting the United States" (emphasis in original). You can't say we haven't been consistent.

-- Georgia primary voters have kicked out two congressmen. ReRedistricting threw Republican congressmen Bob Barr and John Linder into the same House district, and Linder won handily. Barr had earned a national profile for his numerous and vituperative TV appearances. His views were often correct -- he was one of the first public figures to call for Bill Clinton's impeachment -- but they were delivered in an abrasive fashion that often had the messenger killing the message. Also, he was a black-helicopter civil libertarian who opposed even commonsense security measures. (Outraged that Zacarias Moussaoui wasn't better surveilled by the FBI? See the ACLU and Bob Barr.) Meanwhile, Democratic representative Cynthia McKinney was ousted by primary voters, in no small part because of her conspiratorial accusations about the 9/11 attack. McKinney was a useful tool with which to embarrass Democrats, but the toxicity of her race baiting and general nuttiness make her defeat a welcome one.

-- How scary is John Ashcroft? Consider this: Our current attorney gegeneral is such a powerful right-wing zealot that he is responsible for abuses of civil liberties that took place well before he set foot in the Justice Department. At least that's the impression one might have gotten after a secret federal court dressed down the Justice Department for submitting misleading information in order to win approval for wiretaps and other surveillance measures. The Washington Post ran a front-page story headlined, "Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft." The only problem was, the story contained a sentence saying that the Justice Department "discovered the misrepresentations and reported them to the [court] beginning in 2000." That, careful readers might have noted, was during the Clinton administration, although the Post never used the "C" word. The New York Times was a bit more honest, writing that the court opinion "documented the 'alarming number of instances' during the Clinton administration in which the FBI might have acted improperly." So which newspaper's lead did the networks follow? Naturally. ABC's World News Tonight reported, "A federal court tells the Bush administration it is abusing its power in the campaign against terrorism." Well, no. But the media are abusing their power in the campaign against the Bush administration.