articles 12/30

W. Post
Terrorism on the Web

Misinformation Age
More computers, less learning
by David Gelernter

Satan's Micro Minions
Is Radio Frequency Identification a tool of the Antichrist?
By Dave Shiflett

Travels with Cheney
The Vice President visits the front lines of the war on terror
by Stephen F. Hayes

Disorder in the Court
by David Tell, for the Editors

Another Cloning "Breakthrough"
The world's first phony stem cells
by Wesley J. Smith

The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff
How a Well-Connected Lobbyist Became the Center of a Far-Reaching Corruption Scandal
By Susan Schmidt & James V. Grimaldi
The Abramoff Galaxy
This graphic maps out lobbyist Jack Abramoff's web of contacts.
Unraveling Abramoff
Key players, the money trail and a timeline of Abramoff's rise and fall
More Coverage on Abramoff

USA Today
Whatever happened to thank- you notes?

Decline of Congress
by Robert Novak
Typical of what ails Congress was consideration of the Patriot Act last week as Congress finished for the year.

War for the Homeland
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster, 944 pp., $35)
ARTHUR HERMAN

What an irony that just as George W. Bush’s presidency and reputation reach their low point, liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin comes riding to his rescue. By far her best book, Team of Rivals is Goodwin’s account of how President Abraham Lincoln managed to turn a cabinet full of bitter former foes into his supporters’ club and an indispensable instrument of victory in the Civil War. But the real theme is greatness under trial, and how an underestimated man, the object of scorn and hate to millions, did a job no one else in the country could, and led it through a crisis unlike any other in its history. The book thus sheds an unexpectedly penetrating light on Bush, who ends up resembling Lincoln more than any president has in our lifetime. “The man is not equal to the hour”: Such was political pundit Charles Francis Adams’s judgment of Lincoln when the Civil War began. Indeed, the deck was stacked against him the moment he decided to run for president. New York’s William Seward, Ohio’s Salmon P. Chase, and Missouri’s Edward Bates were the Republican party’s most distinguished leaders in 1860, grizzled men of gravitas and influence compared with the tall, gawky attorney from Illinois best known for the elections he had lost. Goodwin reveals that even as Seward and Chase were confidently awaiting their party’s nod, Lincoln turned to a savvy quartet of Karl Roves — Illinois lawyers Norman Judd, Leonard Swett, and Stephen Logan, and 330-pound circuit judge David Davis — to work behind the scenes at the Republican convention to make sure Lincoln was everyone’s second choice. When the steam ran out of the Seward candidacy on the second ballot, and Chase and Bates failed to catch fire, Lincoln was the last man standing. Republicans and Democrats on the Hill, and the press, were incredulous. They dismissed Lincoln as “a third rate Western lawyer” and an “illiterate partisan” incapable of uttering a grammatical sentence. But the Democrats were in worse shape: They were self-destructing over slavery and secession, and ended up running three separate presidential tickets. Lincoln’s victory in November became a foregone conclusion; but whether he could govern a country that was literally pulling itself apart was not — especially when his cabinet included his three bitter rivals, Seward, Chase, and Bates, ready to pounce on his first misstep. Yet as this book shows, Lincoln’s genius first revealed itself in his handling of these touchy egomaniacs. Lincoln humbly reached out to all three, and later to secretary of war Edwin Stanton, for help but not for guidance; and by a combination of beguiling magnanimity and gentle firmness, he was able to show them who was boss. He turned them from doubters into believers in the Lincoln presidency, with the same skill and adroitness that George W. Bush would later show in turning Rumsfeld, Powell, and Cheney into an effective team, and even bringing in former foe John McCain as a useful ally after the 9/11 attacks. Like Bush, Lincoln had no time for a presidential learning curve. The very first piece of paper he was handed as president was a dispatch from Fort Sumter in South Carolina, saying time was running out for a relief expedition to keep it from surrendering to the secessionists. Pundits like Adams assumed Lincoln would be too weak and ignorant to face the crisis and that Seward would take charge; every member of Lincoln’s cabinet except one, including the vaunted Seward, said saving Fort Sumter would be a waste of time and needlessly provoke war. But Lincoln saw more clearly: He knew that Fort Sumter’s fate was the nation’s fate. Giving in to the threat of force at the start meant giving in for good. Seward was stunned when Lincoln decided to send a relief force to South Carolina. “Thunder, George!” he said to an aide when he learned Lincoln had rejected his advice. “It cannot be.” Lincoln was unable to save Fort Sumter or to stop Virginia, the crown jewel of the South, from joining the Confederacy. But as Goodwin points out, the incident taught Seward a powerful lesson: His president was a man willing to act when others hesitated, for the sake of principle. Seward soon became Lincoln’s staunchest ally in the cabinet. When war did come, Lincoln was hammered, as Bush would be, for not having adequate plans or preparations, especially after the opening defeat at Bull Run in July 1861, and for not having an exit strategy if things went wrong. But Lincoln believed there could be no substitute for victory. What a commentator on CNN might dismiss as his “stubbornness” led him to shut his ears to critics who were less committed to defeating the South, not because they were wiser, but because they refused to confront what was truly at stake: the survival of the United States itself. For four long years, Lincoln endured attacks from a hostile press, clamorous opposition in Congress, threats of intervention by foreign powers, and a constant stream of bad news from the battlefield. The skill and daring of southern generals like Lee and Jackson disguised the Confederacy’s deteriorating position, as the Union death toll mounted day by day. Yet through it all, Goodwin observes, “Lincoln remained remarkably calm, good natured, and self-controlled.” The deaths of young men in the war that he and he alone had started, haunted him; but, secure in the knowledge that he had done the right thing by going to war, he persevered to the end. He put up with the petty rivalries between Seward and Chase, and Bates and postmaster general Montgomery Blair, and forced them to work together; he ignored whisperings that Seward was Lincoln’s Dick Cheney, “the president de facto” who was running the war into the ground, and had to deal with a resolution passed by his own party in Congress practically begging him to kick Seward out. Lincoln knew the truth. “They wish to get rid of me,” he told a friend, “and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them.” But Lincoln did not quit, as the editor of the New York Herald and others urged him to do. He even raised the war’s ideological stakes by pushing ahead his Emancipation Proclamation, against the opposition of even his most staunchly anti-slavery cabinet members. He went ahead with plans to arm and train black soldiers, even though the experts said that the blacks couldn’t fight and that their presence on the battlefield would only make the southerners fight harder. Lincoln had understood, even before Bull Run, that “if the issue be distinctly presented — death to the American republic or death to slavery, slavery must die,” and with it the America that had supported and tolerated slavery for 250 years. In Washington, however, this kind of moral clarity grew more unpopular as the war dragged on. The summer of 1864 brought even Lincoln’s staunchest supporters a feeling that the nation was stuck in a quagmire. “Our troops have suffered much and accomplished but little,” Navy secretary Gideon Welles wrote on June 20, after battles in which 10,000 or 15,000 men would fall in a single day. Everyone missed the significance of the victory at Gettysburg, and complained that Lee had been allowed to get away; there was also little notice of Lincoln’s speech afterward, with its affirmation that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Even Lincoln told a friend his Gettysburg address had been a “flat failure.” Anti-draft riots had burned through New York City, resulting in nearly 1,000 dead and injured; when Democrats met at their presidential convention that summer, they put together a peace platform so conciliatory that one observer said it read as if Jefferson Davis had written it: “It contemplates surrender and abasement.” But the collapse of the Confederate army in front of Atlanta was the “September Surprise” that saved Lincoln’s reelection. If the Confederate army had hung on another eight weeks, a Democratic president in 1865 would have given us an intact Confederacy and continued slavery. Instead, as the light at the end of the tunnel approached, Lincoln’s own mood turned inward and became more religious. This shift was reflected in his Second Inaugural Address, with its suggestion that God had given “to both North and South, this terrible war,” as punishment for the sin of slavery. This made many in the press furious. The New York World accused him of “substituting religion for statesmanship,” and the Tribune said the Biblical overtones would only prolong the war (the South surrendered little more than a month later). Lincoln did not care. After the address, he greeted well-wishers at the White House. One was black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, who had begun the war considering Lincoln a pro-slavery imbecile and ended up realizing, as Leo Tolstoy would say later of Lincoln, that “his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. . . . Our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.” No persons of color were supposed to enter the reception; but Lincoln saw him, and exclaimed, “Here comes my friend Douglass!” They shook hands and the president asked Douglass how he had liked the speech. “Mr. Lincoln,” Douglass said, “that was a sacred effort.” Lincoln grinned with delight and said, “I’m glad you liked it!” Six weeks later Lincoln was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. But it was too late: The new America had begun. Goodwin’s fine book makes an important contribution to our national understanding of this crucial era.

Mr. Herman’s latest book, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, was released in paperback in November.

Eyes Only: An Exclusive Inside Look At The National Counterterrorism Center

An Exclusive Interview with NCTC Director, John Redd, Vice Admiral, USN (Ret.). The interview aired at 10:30 a.m. ET, Dec. 29 on Federal News Radio, 1050 AM in Washington, D.C.

National Counterterrorism Center
Everything you're allowed to know, plus a cool calendar.

articles 12/29

Where The Boys Aren't
The gender gap on college campuses
by Melana Zyla Vickers

You Choose: Civil Liberties or Safety?
by John Pinkerton

'05's Big Five
by Peggy Noonan

W. Post
Abrahamoff's Fall Is Surpassing His Rise

W. Times
Bush, Cheney Remain Close

The Inventor of Modern Conservatism
Disraeli and us.
by David Gelernter

The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism
by William Kristol

Constitutional Spying
The solution to the FISA problem
by Gary Schmitt

Top 10 List of Foolish Myths
by John Stossel

The New Spymasters

Neighborhood Watch
Yes, Iran is meddling in Iraqi affairs, but maybe the influence works both ways.
By Christopher Hitchens

Is God an Accident?
Human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena—and this predisposition is a by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry
by Paul Bloom

Wired for Creationism?
Paul Bloom, the author of "Is God an Accident," on why—ironically—belief in Intelligent Design may be an inherited trait
by Jennie Rothenberg

What Went Wrong?

By all standards of the modern world—economic development, literacy, scientific achievement—Muslim civilization, once a mighty enterprise, has fallen low. Many in the Middle East blame a variety of outside forces. But underlying much of the Muslim world's travail may be a simple lack of freedom

by Bernard Lewis

.....

n the course of the twentieth century it became abundantly clear that things had gone badly wrong in the Middle East—and, indeed, in all the lands of Islam. Compared with Christendom, its rival for more than a millennium, the world of Islam had become poor, weak, and ignorant. The primacy and therefore the dominance of the West was clear for all to see, invading every aspect of the Muslim's public and even—more painfully—his private life.

Muslim modernizers—by reform or revolution—concentrated their efforts in three main areas: military, economic, and political. The results achieved were, to say the least, disappointing. The quest for victory by updated armies brought a series of humiliating defeats. The quest for prosperity through development brought in some countries impoverished and corrupt economies in recurring need of external aid, in others an unhealthy dependence on a single resource—oil. And even this was discovered, extracted, and put to use by Western ingenuity and industry, and is doomed, sooner or later, to be exhausted, or, more probably, superseded, as the international community grows weary of a fuel that pollutes the land, the sea, and the air wherever it is used or transported, and that puts the world economy at the mercy of a clique of capricious autocrats. Worst of all are the political results: the long quest for freedom has left a string of shabby tyrannies, ranging from traditional autocracies to dictatorships that are modern only in their apparatus of repression and indoctrination.

Many remedies were tried—weapons and factories, schools and parliaments—but none achieved the desired result. Here and there they brought some alleviation and, to limited elements of the population, some benefit. But they failed to remedy or even to halt the increasing imbalance between Islam and the Western world.

There was worse to come. It was bad enough for Muslims to feel poor and weak after centuries of being rich and strong, to lose the position of leadership that they had come to regard as their right, and to be reduced to the role of followers of the West. But the twentieth century, particularly the second half, brought further humiliation—the awareness that they were no longer even the first among followers but were falling back in a lengthening line of eager and more successful Westernizers, notably in East Asia. The rise of Japan had been an encouragement but also a reproach. The later rise of other Asian economic powers brought only reproach. The proud heirs of ancient civilizations had gotten used to hiring Western firms to carry out tasks of which their own contractors and technicians were apparently incapable. Now Middle Eastern rulers and businessmen found themselves inviting contractors and technicians from Korea—only recently emerged from Japanese colonial rule—to perform these tasks. Following is bad enough; limping in the rear is far worse. By all the standards that matter in the modern world—economic development and job creation, literacy, educational and scientific achievement, political freedom and respect for human rights—what was once a mighty civilization has indeed fallen low.

"Who did this to us?" is of course a common human response when things are going badly, and many in the Middle East, past and present, have asked this question. They have found several different answers. It is usually easier and always more satisfying to blame others for one's misfortunes. For a long time the Mongols were the favorite villains. The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century were blamed for the destruction of both Muslim power and Islamic civilization, and for what was seen as the ensuing weakness and stagnation. But after a while historians, Muslims and others, pointed to two flaws in this argument. The first was that some of the greatest cultural achievements of Islam, notably in Iran, came after, not before, the Mongol invasions. The second, more difficult to accept but nevertheless undeniable, was that the Mongols overthrew an empire that was already fatally weakened; indeed, it is hard to see how the once mighty empire of the caliphs would otherwise have succumbed to a horde of nomadic horsemen riding across the steppes from East Asia.

The rise of nationalism—itself an import from Europe—produced new perceptions. Arabs could lay the blame for their troubles on the Turks, who had ruled them for many centuries. Turks could lay the blame for the stagnation of their civilization on the dead weight of the Arab past, in which the creative energies of the Turkish people were caught and immobilized. Persians could lay the blame for the loss of their ancient glories on Arabs, Turks, and Mongols impartially.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries British and French paramountcy in much of the Arab world produced a new and more plausible scapegoat—Western imperialism. In the Middle East there have been good reasons for such blame. Western political domination, economic penetration, and—longest, deepest, and most insidious of all—cultural influence changed the face of the region and transformed the lives of its people, turning them in new directions, arousing new hopes and fears, creating new dangers and new expectations without precedent in their cultural past.

But the Anglo-French interlude was comparatively brief, and ended half a century ago; Islam's change for the worse began long before and continued unabated afterward. Inevitably, the role of the British and the French as villains was taken over by the United States, along with other aspects of Western leadership. The attempt to transfer the guilt to America has won considerable support but, for similar reasons, remains unconvincing. Anglo-French rule and American influence, like the Mongol invasions, were a consequence, not a cause, of the inner weakness of Middle Eastern states and societies. Some observers, both inside and outside the region, have pointed to differences in the post-colonial development of former British possessions—for example, between Aden, in the Middle East, and Singapore or Hong Kong; or between the various lands that once made up the British Empire in India.

Another European contribution to this debate is anti-Semitism, and blaming "the Jews" for all that goes wrong. Jews in traditional Islamic societies experienced the normal constraints and occasional hazards of minority status. Until the rise and spread of Western tolerance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were better off under Muslim than under Christian rule in most significant respects. With rare exceptions, where hostile stereotypes of the Jew existed in the Islamic tradition, Islamic societies tended to be contemptuous and dismissive rather than suspicious and obsessive. This made the events of 1948—the failure to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel—all the more of a shock. As some writers observed at the time, it was humiliating enough to be defeated by the great imperial powers of the West; to suffer the same fate at the hands of a contemptible gang of Jews was intolerable. Anti-Semitism and its image of the Jew as a scheming, evil monster provided a soothing antidote.

The earliest specifically anti-Semitic statements in the Middle East occurred among Christian minorities, and can usually be traced back to European originals. They had limited impact; during the Dreyfus trial in France, for example, when a Jewish officer was unjustly accused and condemned by a hostile court, Muslim comments usually favored the persecuted Jew against his Christian persecutors. But the poison continued to spread, and starting in 1933, Nazi Germany and its various agencies made a concerted and on the whole remarkably successful effort to promote European-style anti-Semitism in the Arab world. The struggle for Palestine greatly facilitated the acceptance of the anti-Semitic interpretation of history, and led some to attribute all evil in the Middle East—and, indeed, in the world—to secret Jewish plots. This interpretation has pervaded much of the public discourse in the region, including that seen in education, the media, and even entertainment.

An argument sometimes adduced is that the cause of the changed relationship between East and West is not a Middle Eastern decline but a Western upsurge—the discoveries and the scientific, technological, industrial, and political revolutions that transformed the West and vastly increased its wealth and power. But this is merely to restate the question: Why did the discoverers of America sail from Spain rather than from a Muslim Atlantic port, out of which such voyages were indeed attempted in earlier times? Why did the great scientific breakthrough occur in Europe and not, as one might reasonably have expected, in the richer, more advanced, and in most respects more enlightened realm of Islam?

more sophisticated form of the blame game finds its targets inside, rather than outside, Islamic society. One such target is religion—for some, specifically Islam. But to blame Islam as such is usually hazardous and not often attempted. Nor is it very plausible. For most of the Middle Ages it was neither the older cultures of the Orient nor the newer cultures of the West that were the major centers of civilization and progress but the world of Islam. There old sciences were recovered and developed and new sciences were created; there new industries were born and manufactures and commerce were expanded to a level without precedent. There, too, governments and societies achieved a freedom of thought and expression that led persecuted Jews and even dissident Christians to flee Christendom for refuge in Islam. In comparison with modern ideals, and even with modern practice in the more advanced democracies, the medieval Islamic world offered only limited freedom, but that was vastly more than was offered by any of its predecessors, its contemporaries, or most of its successors.

The point has often been made: If Islam is an obstacle to freedom, to science, to economic development, how is it that Muslim society in the past was a pioneer in all three—and this when Muslims were much closer in time to the sources and inspiration of their faith than they are now? Some have posed the question in a different form—not "What has Islam done to the Muslims?" but "What have the Muslims done to Islam?"—and have answered by laying the blame on specific teachers and doctrines and groups.

For those known nowadays as Islamists or fundamentalists, the failures and shortcomings of modern Islamic lands afflict those lands because they adopted alien notions and practices. They fell away from authentic Islam and thus lost their former greatness. Those known as modernists or reformers take the opposite view, seeing the cause of this loss not in the abandonment but in the retention of old ways, and especially in the inflexibility and ubiquity of the Islamic clergy, who, they say, are responsible for the persistence of beliefs and practices that might have been creative and progressive a thousand years ago but are neither today. The modernists' usual tactic is not to denounce religion as such, still less Islam in particular, but to level their criticism against fanaticism. It is to fanaticism—and more particularly to fanatical religious authorities—that they attribute the stifling of the once great Islamic scientific movement and, more generally, of the freedom of thought and expression.

A more common approach to this theme has been to discuss a specific problem: the place of religion and of its professional exponents in the political order. In this view a principal cause of Western progress is the separation of Church and State and the creation of a civil society governed by secular laws. Another approach has been to view the main culprit as the relegation of women to an inferior position in Muslim society, which deprives the Islamic world of the talents and energies of half its people and entrusts the other half's crucial early years of upbringing to illiterate and downtrodden mothers. The products of such an education, it has been said, are likely to grow up either arrogant or submissive, and unfit for a free, open society. However one evaluates the views of secularists and feminists, their success or failure will be a major factor in shaping the Middle Eastern future.

Some solutions that once commanded passionate support have been discarded. The two dominant movements in the twentieth century were socialism and nationalism. Both have been discredited—the first by its failure, the second by its success and consequent exposure as ineffective. Freedom, interpreted to mean national independence, was seen as the great talisman that would bring all other benefits. The overwhelming majority of Muslims now live in independent states, but this has brought no solutions to their problems. National socialism, the bastard offspring of both ideologies, persists in a few states that have preserved the Nazi-Fascist style of dictatorial government and indoctrination through a vast security apparatus and a single all-powerful party. These regimes have failed every test except survival, and have brought none of the promised benefits. If anything, their infrastructures are even more antiquated than those of other Muslim states, their armed forces designed primarily for terror and repression.

At present two answers to the question of what went wrong command widespread support in the Middle East, each with its own diagnosis and corresponding prescription. One attributes all evil to the abandonment of the divine heritage of Islam and advocates return to a real or imagined past. That is the way of the Iranian revolution and of the so-called fundamentalist movements and regimes in various Muslim countries. The other condemns the past and advocates secular democracy, best embodied in the Turkish Republic, proclaimed in 1923 by Kemal Atatürk.

For the oppressive but ineffectual governments that rule much of the Middle East, finding targets to blame serves a useful, indeed an essential, purpose—to explain the poverty that they have failed to alleviate and to justify the tyranny that they have introduced. They seek to deflect the mounting anger of their unhappy subjects toward other, outside targets.

But growing numbers of Middle Easterners are adopting a more self-critical approach. The question "Who did this to us?" has led only to neurotic fantasies and conspiracy theories. And the question "What did we do wrong?" has led naturally to a second question: "How do we put it right?" In that question, and in the various answers that are being found, lie the best hopes for the future.

During the past few weeks the worldwide exposure given to the views and actions of Osama bin Laden and his hosts the Taliban has provided a new and vivid insight into the eclipse of what was once the greatest, most advanced, and most open civilization in human history.

To a Western observer, schooled in the theory and practice of Western freedom, it is precisely the lack of freedom—freedom of the mind from constraint and indoctrination, to question and inquire and speak; freedom of the economy from corrupt and pervasive mismanagement; freedom of women from male oppression; freedom of citizens from tyranny—that underlies so many of the troubles of the Muslim world. But the road to democracy, as the Western experience amply demonstrates, is long and hard, full of pitfalls and obstacles.

If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another alien domination—perhaps from a new Europe reverting to old ways, perhaps from a resurgent Russia, perhaps from some expanding superpower in the East. But if they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies, and resources in a common creative endeavor, they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being, the choice is theirs.

Politics Get Smaller: Washington's Year of Living Unseriously

There are many criticisms one can make of Washington, and most of them, the result of the intended imperfection of our politics, fall under the heading of "it was ever thus." But the men and women we send to the nation's capital have always purported a certain pretense to seriousness on things that mattered--foreign policy and the larger domestic issues. The year 2005 was a large fall from seriousness.

Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, kicking off the campaign theme on which the Democrats say they will ask for the people's vote in 2006, has just called this Congress "the most corrupt in history." "Corrupt" is a word with more meanings than Senator Reid intended. In the world of software, something that is "corrupt" doesn't work.

Pick a subject: Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, national spending, advice and consent. The larger the challenge, the smaller our politics becomes. Washington's man of the year is Jack Abramoff.

Washington's response to Hurricane Katrina, a national catastrophe, was the clearest example of our incredible shrinking politics. The August hurricane reduced much of New Orleans to muck, ruin and misery. Almost as quickly, a floodtide of media-made melodrama and political recrimination broke the levees of perspective that once helped to keep volatile public events in manageable context. One recalls how TV's anchors and reporters covered the Challenger disaster or even the Kennedy assassination. Now the media weeps along with the nation.

With images of the city's bereft black population replaying hourly, the aftermath of a natural disaster was reprogrammed into an act of man-made racism. The nation's politicians, rather than damp down this falsity, exploited it, falling on each other with long knives and hurling charges of incompetence, neglect and again, racism.

With TV and the press focused on politicians spitting at each other amid a natural catastrophe, average people in communities across the nation, aided by many can-do private companies, opened their doors to the genuine homeless people of New Orleans.

Episodes in the Year of Unseriousness abound: The bipartisan highway bill with its Bridge to Nowhere; the Abramoff lobbying sleaze; a truly feckless year-long media hunt to identify who "outed" Valerie Plame, a story with virtually no resonance beyond the Beltway and whose special prosecutor charged no violation of the supposed underlying crime; and now pretend outrage from the likes of Senators Reid and Arlen Specter over the "exposure" of the Bush surveillance program, which much of official Washington knew about and which turns out not to have violated anything. Like radio's six-second delay to catch obscenities, maybe Washington needs a 12-hour delay on the public comments of senators to spare the public's ears of offensive inanities.

Normally these deformations might be seen as the system's unavoidable flotsam. But the deal is that the people are supposed to get something in return for enduring the debris of politics. What happened to the public's side of the bargain this year? Doing something about the out-year costs of Social Security and other entitlements is much needed (the elderly are beside themselves over the incoherence of the new Medicare drug entitlement). But at the mere suggestion of Social Security reform, the idea was simply swept off the table. Washington's ability to govern seriously falls now as the challenges of public life rise.

The patronizing derision around Capitol Hill of the effort to build a democratic order in Iraq is especially ironic. Some proportion of Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leadership spent the past year, such as during their November reconciliation conference in Cairo, in painstaking conversations to reach the accommodations that allowed the extraordinary parliamentary election on Dec. 15. Here, members of Congress read illustrated front-page accounts of bomb stories and call for "withdrawal." They know more about the "politics" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi than about any of Iraq's organized national parties. I suspect there have been more serious, good-faith conversations toward a common national purpose among Iraq's leading political figures this past year than have occurred on any subject in Washington.

The rank politicizing of foreign policy is unfortunate because functional bipartisanship in this realm once served as ballast to the predictable divisions over domestic policy. Now, with the ballast gone, the two sides of our politics hardly ever touch. Even if the government informs senior Democrats such as Senator Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of a sensitive policy decision like the surveillance of suspected terrorist phone calls, their only comments on the leaked press reports are feigned expressions of denunciation and outrage. America's enemies and competitors will be popping their champagne corks next weekend in celebration of a Washington whose first response to undeniable threats is to disadvantage the other political party.

What makes this standoff disturbing is that it comes at a critical turn in history, and neither side seems able to climb down from it. The quick rise of new communications technologies like the Internet has made it possible to wage total political war 24/7. Both sides use the Internet daily to thwart, impede and kneecap the other side. There's no downtime anymore, no space to reassess one's position or arguments. Fight or die, every day. More than at any previous time, much of political life now consists of feeding propaganda into this combat machinery.

The U.S. remains the sole superpower in a world beset by organized Islamic terror, by nations such as Iran and North Korea that are actively proliferating nuclear bombs and long-range ballistic-missile delivery systems, by a China with strategic ambitions, and by a geographically important Russia of profoundly amoral political intent. For men and women seeking the high challenge of a serious public life in Washington, this should be a golden age. On the evidence of 2005, we are heading toward the Stone Age.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

Complacency Threatens Civil Liberties - by James Taranto

Complacency Threatens Civil Liberties

"Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security," reports Donald Lambro of the Washington Times:

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues.

"I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it," said Mr. O'Hanlon, who says the Patriot Act is "good legislation."

PowerLine's John Hinderaker doubts the party leadership will heed these warnings:

One basic question is how many centrist Democrats still exist. My guess is that most of those who could legitimately be termed centrist, especially on foreign policy, have left the Democratic Party, or at least stopped voting for its candidates. The party's leadership team of Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi must be the most extreme in modern American history. But I've seen no indication that their extremism hurts them with the party's rank and file. So I don't see much prospect that the Democrats' leftward march will be halted; the question, I think, is whether they are marching off a cliff.

Perhaps tellingly, Lambro does not quote any elected officials who are unhappy about their party's solicitude for the "civil liberties" of terrorists.

It's worth pondering just what it is that the Democrats are arguing here. They claim not that President Bush isn't doing enough to keep America safe from terrorism, but that he's doing too much. The implication is that the threat of terrorism within America is not all that serious and never was--that 9/11, horrific though it was, was a one-off.

There is, at the very least, a tension between this blasé approach and the oft-heard Democratic claim that liberating Iraq increased the threat of terrorism. If that threat still isn't serious enough to justify the merest attenuation of "civil liberties," then this argument against Iraq, even if true, is trivial.

In any case, it strikes us that the Democrats' current approach to terrorism is a dangerously complacent one. The 9/11 attacks plainly were not a one-off; even before Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center had been hit in 1993, and Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called blind sheik, had gone to prison in a plot to blow up New York City bridges and tunnels.

True, there hasn't been a major terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, but it would be stunningly fatuous to conclude therefrom that the threat is negligible. It may be that we are out of danger for now because of the efforts the Bush administration has taken to prevent attacks, and that the Democrats, by opposing those efforts, are inviting another mass murder of Americans. Or it may be--heaven forbid--that the administration's efforts have not been sufficient, and another terrorist attack is only a matter of time.

Either way, if there is another attack on the scale of 9/11, complacency about terrorism would be wholly untenable. The public would demand much tougher measures. By fretting about imagined threats to civil liberties today, the Democratic left may be helping to endanger real civil liberties tomorrow.

Lemmings of the Press
Our fellow journalists should not escape blame for attempting to foster a climate of complacency that could prove catastrophic. Click on the link atop this item and check out MSNBC's gallery of political cartoons about "domestic spying." Of 24 cartoons spread out over eight pages, 23 take essentially the same position: that civil liberties are in danger, Bush is another Nixon, the government is spying on ordinary people, etc. The only exception is Michael Ramirez, recently fired from the Los Angeles Times.

Although these cartoonists fancy themselves independent-minded rebels, they are in reality a bunch of dull conformists. Fully one in four of the 24 cartoons uses the same gag, a play on "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" ("gonna find out who's naughty and nice," that kind of thing). Let us hope these sheep do not succeed in leading the rest of us to the slaughter.

Meanwhile, here's a Reuters headline that reveals something of the journalistic mindset: "Secret Surveillance Up Since 9/11." The government stepping up its antiterror efforts after a major terrorist attack ought to be a dog-bites-man story, but to the denizens of Reuterville it apparently is surprising enough to be news.

Hail the Tribune, Swat the Bee
A pair of editorials from medium-size newspapers provide a nice contrast between responsible and irresponsible criticism of the Bush administration. The Chicago Tribune conducts a dispassionate "inquest" of the Bush administration's case for liberating Iraq. It finds some of them wanting ("In putting so much emphasis on illicit weaponry, the White House advanced its most provocative, least verifiable case for war when others would have sufficed") and others compelling ("The White House was correct in predicting that long subjugated Iraqis would embrace democracy").

On balance, the Trib comes down on the side of the president: "After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege." The paper acknowledges that "people of patriotism and integrity" can disagree. But if they do, they ought to admit where the administration has been right.

By contrast, the Sacramento Bee attacks the administration by repeating a proven lie:

Then there's the story reported in The Standard-Times newspaper in Massachusetts of a University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, student doing a research paper for a history class on fascism and totalitarianism. He requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" through interlibrary loan for a paper on communism. Two agents of the Department of Homeland Security later showed up at his parents' home in New Bedford, Mass., to interrogate him, telling him they were there because the book was on a "watch list" and the student had spent time abroad.

What else is on that "watch list"--Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" or "Das Kapital"? Hitler's "Mein Kampf"? Other staples in the history of political thought courses?

This editorial ran yesterday, three days after the Standard-Times acknowledged it had been snookered by the story, which was never plausible to begin with.

Book recommendation - Bernard Lewis

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War & Unholy Terror

What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East

The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years

articles 12/19

President's Address to the Nation
12.18.2005

President's Press Conference
12.19.2005

Why Bush Approved the Wiretaps
by Byron York

Have the Democrats Walked Into A Trap...Again

A War Without Heroes?
Only if you're reading the mainstream media.
by Fred Barnes

"Happy Days!"
The Iraqi elections really could be a turning point.
by Robert Kagan and William Kristol

Democracy At War
by Joseph Epstein

Reporting For Duty
The U.S. military tells Iraqis the truth, and some call it a "scandal."
by John Guardiano

Our Friends The Pakistanis
by Husain Haqquani & Kenneth Ballen

Here Come the Brides
Plural marriage is waiting in the wings.
by Stanley Kurtz

Time
Persons of the Year



The Constant Charmer
The inside story of how the world's biggest rock star, Bono, mastered the political game and persuaded the world's leaders to take on global poverty. And he's not done yet

In The Name of Love
U2's lead singer made debt relief the thing to do


We Just Go Off
Q&A with Bono and Bill Gates

On Friday the House voted 279-109 in favor of a resolution "expressing the commitment of the House of Representatives to achieving victory in Iraq," which means that 108 Democrats and socialist Bernie Sanders are now on record opposing victory. (Fifty-nine Dems voted for victory, and 32 of them, along with two Republicans, voted "present.")


The Defeaticrats
Of hearts and minds, at home and in Iraq
by MARK STEYN

Hands up, everyone who thinks Iraq’s a quagmire.

Not the Iraqi people: According to the latest polls, 70 percent think “life is good,” and 69 percent are optimistic that things will get even better in the year ahead. For purposes of comparison, they took a similar poll in Europe a while back: In France, 29 percent said they were optimistic about the future; in Germany, 15 percent. Sixty-three percent of Iraqis say they feel “very safe” in their own neighborhoods, which is more than the residents of Clichy-sous-Bois can say.

Well, okay, those cheerful Iraqis are probably Shiites and Kurds and whatnot. How about the Sunnis? For a small minority group that held a disproportionate and repressive grip on power for decades, they’ve been getting a more solicitous press from Western “liberals” than the white Rhodesians or South Africa’s National party ever got. But it turns out, after their strategically disastrous decision to stay home in last January’s vote, the Sunnis are participating in Iraq’s democratic process in ever greater numbers.

Oh, okay, so the Shiites and Kurds and Sunnis are feeling chipper, but in the broader Middle East the disastrous neocon invasion has inflamed moderate Arab opinion against America. Well, it’s true the explosive Arab street finally exploded the other day — with 200,000 Jordanians protesting in Amman, waving angry banners and yelling, “Burn in hell, Rumsfeld,” and, “You are a coward, Bush.” Whoops, my mistake: They were yelling, “Burn in hell, Zarqawi,” and, “You are a coward, Zarqawi.” If you want to hear someone yelling, “You are a coward, Bush,” you’ve got to go to Cindy Sheehan’s stakeout. And, in fairness to the network news divisions, it may be because so many of their camera crews have taken up permanent residence at the otherwise underpopulated Camp Cindy that they were unable to cover what was the largest demonstration against terrorism ever seen on the streets of the Middle East.

Oh, well. So the Shiites and Kurds and Sunni Iraqis and the Arab street are all on board, but come on, what about the insurgents? Everybody knows they’re winning . . . but, er, apparently they don’t. The Baathist diehard insurgents have split from the foreign al-Qaeda insurgents. While the latter denounced the Iraqi election as “a Satanic project,” the Saddamite remnants urged Sunnis to participate and said they’d protect polling stations from attacks by the foreign terrorists so that citizens could vote for their approved candidates (the leftover bits of Uday and Qusay, now running on the Psychotic Dictatorship Nostalgia Party ticket). This division between the foreign nutcakes and the domestic nutcakes is the biggest strategic split over the insurgency since Joe Lieberman respectfully distanced himself from Nancy Pelosi.

INSURGENCY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
On the other hand, this does belatedly prove the anti-war crowd’s long-held view that Saddam’s secular Baathists and Osama’s theocrat terrorists would never collaborate, even if it took until last month for the participants themselves to get wise to it. And, alas, unlike the Dems with Hillary, in the Sunni Triangle there’s no Sunni triangulator to craft a more nuanced position to hold both the Lieberbaathist and Pelosama wings together.

So the Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, the Arab street, and the Baath party have figured Iraqi democracy’s winning. That leaves al-Qaeda. Well, not exactly: Ayman Zawahiri, the number-two honcho in al-Qaeda while they’re maintaining the polite fiction that bin Laden’s still functioning, recently rapped terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on the knuckles and called on him to cut out killings that “the masses do not understand or approve.” (The twitchy Mr. Zawahiri was presumably thinking of, for example, the assassination of the septuagenarian grand imam of Fallujah for urging Sunnis to get out and vote.)

So the Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, the Arab street, the Baath party, and bin Laden’s deputy think the insurgency’s a bust. Hands up, who thinks it’s winning?

Well, there’s Howard Dean: “The idea that we are going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.” And look over there, it’s Jack Murtha, and he’s a veteran, and he thinks we need to scramble for the last chopper over the embassy compound right now! “There’s a civil war going,” he says. “Our troops are the targets of the civil war. They’re the only people that could have unified the various factions in Iraq. And they’re unified against us.”

By “us,” I think he means him and Zarqawi. And no, I’m not “questioning his patriotism”; I’m questioning his sanity. It was famously said that the Vietnam War was lost on television. In this instance, the Iraq War’s being lost only on television. In Iraq, it’s a tremendous victory. Indeed, it has the potential to be one of the most consequential, transformative victories of the modern age; but even if it doesn’t ever fulfill that potential, it’s still a huge success.

DAZED AND CONFUSED
I’ve never been one for “winning the hearts and minds” of Iraqis. Heart-wise, an awful lot of them dislike infidels and Jews and American soldiers, and, while one may deplore that, it’s just a fact of life. But, in their minds, as those poll numbers indicate, the Iraqis are rational enough to work out where their best interest lies. And, quite reasonably, they figure it doesn’t lie with a psychotic death cult that nowadays mainly blows up Muslims on buses, in shopping markets, schools, and even mosques. That’s the worst corporate diversification since Seagram’s bought Universal Pictures. And at least Seagram’s still made whisky; Zarqawi isn’t killing a lot of infidels these days.

So Iraq’s hearts and minds are operating far more rationally than the Democrats, who these days are both heartless, in their indifference to the aspirations of ordinary Arabs, and mindless, in their calculation of their own best interests. I find Chirac-Schroeder obstructionism easier to understand than the Dean-Boxer variety. For EU politicians, as those French and German poll numbers indicate, there’s not a lot of good options when half the babies in your maternity wards are Muslim. But what’s the thinking behind what the Democrats are doing?

Easy, you say: It’s naked partisan politics. And, to be sure, the broader culture has kind of internalized it as such, to the point where, for example, Dan Balz can publish a huge piece in the Washington Post that from its headline down — “Hillary Clinton Crafts Centrist Stance on War” — assumes that it’s perfectly natural to talk about the foreign policy and national security of one’s own country entirely in political terms. For Balz and for everyone he quotes in the piece, the point of a “policy on Iraq” is not to have a policy that affects Iraq in any real sense but to have a policy that advances domestic political fortunes. “Iraq” might as well be a board game you’re in the national playoffs of.

Example: “Her refusal to advocate a speedy exit from Iraq may reflect a more accurate reading of public anxiety about the choices now facing the country.” Note that Balz takes it for granted that Senator Rodham Clinton should have no principled position on Iraq, no strategic view of the Muslim world, no philosophical preference as to America’s mission abroad, no genuine concerns about security, etc. Indeed, he’s implicitly arguing that the greatest strength of Hillary as a viable Democratic presidential candidate — poor Joe Lieberman’s “Joementum” won’t even place him in the Top Ten in the Iowa caucus — is that she’s the least encumbered with anything that will prevent her from agreeing with whatever the 10 p.m. internal polling numbers are showing.

Take that headline: What would a “centrist stance” be on, say, the Second World War? Every few days, some media outlet or other runs a piece about how Bush is “in a bubble” — and no doubt he is, to one degree or another, as busy world leaders tend to be, by definition. But the American media raging that Bush is in a bubble are the equivalent of that famous British newspaper headline: “Fog in Channel. Continent Cut Off.” Whatever bubble Bush is in, it’s a vast jostling metropolis of diverse peoples stretching to the horizon compared with the shrunken little bubble the Democrats and the media inhabit, reinforcing each other’s illusions, like two madmen playing Chinese whispers. No serious person — by which I mean a fellow who’s aware there’s a real country called “Iraq” and it’s in a part of the world called “the Middle East” — could read that Balz analysis without weeping with laughter. Pseudo-policies are soberly considered as if they had any meaning in reality: Should we withdraw from Europe six months after D-Day? Or commit ourselves to a phased drawing down over three to nine months? Clearly, if we announce we’ll be leaving the Continent by October 27, that might embolden Herr Hitler. But, if we say 10 percent of our forces might remain until February 1947, that will give us a more flexible exit strategy with strong centrist appeal.

REALITY CHECK
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, even the media are occasionally obliged to explain the disconnect between received wisdom on Iraq and the actual physical territory that goes by that name. “85 percent of people in the capital are looking to the future with great enthusiasm,” noted Der Spiegel, as impeccably anti-Bush as any publication on the planet, but nonetheless reporting the economic boom, rising incomes, etc., now enjoyed by many Iraqis. The magazine went on: “How does this happily expectant mood fit in with the bloody scenes of bombings and shootings, the reports of kidnappings, curfews, and shortages?” How indeed? Over to you, media-ethics professors.

It’s not difficult: I said a year and a half ago that the way to look at Iraq is that the Sunni Triangle is Northern Ireland, Kurdistan is Scotland, and the Shiite south is England. Don’t let a pub bombing in Ballymena prevent you from investing in that privatized telecom company in London.

I’m not one of those fellows minded to defer to Jack Murtha because he was a hero in the last war. You could have said the same of Marshal Pétain, and Churchill never listened to him. But I carelessly assumed Murtha did, in fact, have something to say. Instead, as he told Newsweek — in one of those “Bush in the Bubble” stories — he’s piqued because the president didn’t reply to his memo, which, rather than getting hoots of derision, is now regarded as the greatest affront to constitutional propriety since Jim Jeffords failed to land an invite to the White House’s Teacher of the Year reception, for which slight he flipped control of the Senate to Tom Daschle. (Remember him?) If Murtha and Newsweek weren’t trapped in their own bubble, they might understand that a “principled stand” has to be more than a guy whining that the president of the United States won’t return his calls: “The White House has made no attempt to reach out to Murtha since then. ‘None. None. Zero. Not one call,’ a baffled Murtha told Newsweek. ‘I don’t know who the hell they’re talking to. If they talked to people, they wouldn’t get these outbursts. If they’d talked to me, it wouldn’t have happened.’”

I know who the hell they’re talking to: On Iraq, the White House is talking to rather a lot of people. They’re called “Iraqis.” But Murtha is now the lion of the moment, Cindy Sheehan and Joseph Wilson IV merged into the Murtha of all anti-war heroes. So what if there’s no crushing of his dissent, only a sad man who was crushed by being dissed.

But let’s take it as read that I’m a neocon hack clinging to my feeble Wolfowitz-Perle script as Kurdistan secedes and Shiite theocrats seize the south and Zarqawi commands overwhelming support from the Sunni people. Assume that John Kerry is right that “young American soldiers” are “going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women” and that those rampaging Rumsfeldian torturers have brutalized so many of the Iraqi people that they’re unified against us.

Even so, even as crude political finessing, will this pitch work for the Democrats? No. Listen to Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi. They didn’t become leaders because some freak accident took out the other contenders. They head the party because they speak for it. It’s one thing to be defeatist, but the perverse triumphalism of Dean’s defeatism will keep his party mired in the minority through 2006 and 2008. Even if they were right, what’s the “meta-story,” as they say, of Mad How’s soundbite? We’re the party that glories in defeatism? “Vote for us. We told you Americans were losers and we’re right.” Even as shameless self-interest, the Defeaticrat position is a flop.

Unlike those depressed Continentals, Americans are not a pessimistic people, especially when they’ve got nothing to be pessimistic about. The tragedy is that, on so-called “liberal” terms, this is a war Democrats ought to be gung-ho for: More Iraqis participate in the democratic process than Americans; Afghanistan has more women in electoral politics than Canada. Meanwhile, in the most powerful nation on the planet, the two-party system is seizing up because one party’s gone nuts. From Murtha’s “We’re all doomed unless we quit by Tuesday” to John Kerry’s “I was against setting deadlines before I was for them,” the Defeaticrats simply have no serious contribution to make to the most pressing issue of the age. Shame on them, trapped in a quagmire of the mind with no exit strategy in sight.

Mr. Steyn is NR’s back-page columnist, and a writer for many other publications. His website is www.MarkSteyn.com.

'Twas the fight before Christmas

by Suzanne Chamberlin Bowdey
Dec. 17, 2005

If you're wondering what tops Santa's list this year, try job security. Despite the "clause" in his contract, St. Nick could fall victim to Corporate America's newest Ebenezer: holiday pluralism. And what's worse, with Christ on the outs and "X-Mas" on thin ice, charities may suffer their worse yuletide to date. This year, the war for goodwill has enlisted new troops: the Salvation Army and Religious Right.
In the bulls-eye of this holiday controversy (which is as old as the season itself) is Target Corporation, one of the country's largest retailers. Religious activists are up in arms about the company's decision to ban the Salvation Army from soliciting on its premises. The charity was ordered to stop ringing its bells at collection kettles, citing, "an increasing number of inquiries from nonprofit organizations . . . to open its doors to other groups that wish to solicit."
Some act surprised that the stores are more concerned about their bottom dollar than underprivileged families. But let's face it -- corporate America will dump competition faster than you can say "figgy pudding." To them, there's no business like snow business. And according to reports, it's a booming one for the industry, which stands to make 20 percent of its revenue in November and December.
Believe it or not, one spokesperson justified the decision by saying that the noise of the bells "is a bit too nerve-racking for the people [working]." But if the sound was truly their motivating factor, then the solution is easy -- lose the chime and keep the change. Instead, it's just another day in the commercialization of Christmas -- with the retail pot is calling the Army kettle black.
But before you put Target on your naughty list, it should be noted that the retail giant has tried to make amends for giving the Salvation Army the silent treatment, though precious little has been written about their new partnership. And with good reason). According to their recent announcement, "From Nov. 25, 2005 through Jan. 25, 2006, visitors to Target's Web site can view and purchase clothing, household items, personal products, and Gift Cards to be donated to [hurricane victims] across the country. The Salvation Army will distribute the purchases. . . ."
In other words, Target's latest "charitable" effort still stands to make a sizeable profit -- and on the less fortunate to boot. The company, in all of its benevolence, didn't offer to donate the merchandise but would be more than willing to take the money of those who would. Obviously the "ring" of the bells is more disturbing than the "cha-ching" they've come to expect from consumers.
As for the claim that stores like Target, Sears, Home Depot, Costco and K-Mart are bah-humbugging "Merry Christmas" in favor of "Happy Holidays," most chains insist that they have no policy against the greeting. Still, chalk it up to another victory for Generation Generic, whose list of politically correct victories is as compelling as their paranoia. Rather than accommodate all religions, these so-called pluralists have marginalized America's largest. Businesses everywhere are sending the message that when it comes to tolerance, 86 percent of the population need not apply.
Proponents of the move suggest that the store's decision has less to do with the bottom line and more to do with drawing it against church and state. But does protecting the feelings of a few customers at the expense of the majority really serve anyone's best interests? All we want for Christmas is consistency.
Even the Jewish community -- a demographic that retailers insist this measure "protects" -- has chimed in to say that this annual debate does a disservice to 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Don Feder, president of the Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, said that major chains ought to be more accommodating to a season that accounts for one-fifth of their earnings. Yet away goes the manger, gone are the carols, and all those wise men? Well, after this debacle, we're still looking.
To be fair, Christmas had been hijacked by plastic reindeer and eggnog lattes long before this latest transgression. For decades people have mistakenly believed that the gospel of pluralism will make up for a lack of true belief, that inclusivity will balance the moral ledger.
That's the snag in chasing parity. Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan -- they're all legitimate holidays, but that legitimacy is derived from the history and tradition of their faith -- not by a group of hypersensitive CEOs. Who says the grinches on Wall Street have cornered the market on holiday meaning? Maybe the real problem is that we are looking for validity in all the wrong places. Christmas isn't theirs to take -- it's ours to lose.
And perhaps the biggest rival for faith isn't Target after all, but the reason we go there in the first place. Is there too much rum in the wassail or have we forgotten that it's our fascination with the latest electronic gadget and newest fad toy that the stores are catering to? The gifts on their shelves compete more with Christmas than religious diversity ever will.
So when it comes to defining the season, ask not for whom the bell tolls . . . it tolls for thee.

Suzanne Bowdey is the projects director at the American Conservative Union.

What Planet Are The Eco-cultists On?

By Mark Steyn

Is it just me or are the global warming headlines starting to overheat a little? The Independent on Sunday gave its report on the Montreal climate conference the somewhat overwrought title: "What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (And do you care, Mr Blair?)" Nothing in the rather dull article underneath justified the hectoring hysteria.

And, to be honest, I've no real idea what it means. Is the IoS asking whether Mr Blair cares what planet Mr Bush is on? Well, no doubt he'd be startled to hear the President's moving to Pluto, but I expect he'd take it in his stride.

As to what planet Mr Bush is on, he's not on Pluto but on planet Goofy, a strange lost world where it's perfectly normal for apparently sane people to walk around protesting about global warming in sub-zero temperatures. Or, as the Canadian Press reported: "Montreal - tens of thousands of people ignored frigid temperatures Saturday to lead a worldwide day of protest against global warming."

Unfortunately, no one had supplied an updated weather forecast to the fellow who writes the protesters' chants. So, to the accompaniment of the obligatory pseudo-ethnic drummers, the shivering eco-warriors sang: "It's hot in here! There's too much carbon in the atmosphere!" Is this the first sign of the "New Ice Age" the media warned us about last week?

The story originated in Nature, the hitherto distinguished scientific periodical whose environmental coverage increasingly resembles that celebrated Sunday Sport scoop about the London double-decker bus found frozen in the deepest ice of the Antarctic. That, of course, is absurd - in reality, as the trained scientists at Nature would be the first to point out, the Clapham omnibus would be lucky to make it as far as Tulse Hill before being embedded in a glacier.

The eco-doom-mongers were speculating on possible changes in thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic - or, as the Daily Mail put it: "Is Britain on the brink of a New Ice Age?" Europe could get so chilly that shivering Muslim rioters might burn the entire Peugeot fleet on the first night. Which would be good for the environment, presumably. After that, they'd be reduced to huddling round the nearest fire-breathing imam for warmth.

But the point is, as Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace puts it: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with." Got that? If it's hot, that's a sign of global warming, and, if it's cold, that's a sign of global warming.

And if it's just kind of average - say, 48F and partially cloudy, as it will be in Llandudno today - that's a sign that global warming is accelerating out of control and you need to flee immediately because time is running out ! "Time is running out to deal with climate change," says Mr Guilbeault. "Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don't have a lot of time."

Really? Ten years ago, we had a lot of time? That's not the way I recall it: "Time is running out for the climate" - Chris Rose of Greenpeace, 1997; "Time running out for action on global warming Greenpeace claims" - Irish Times, 1994; "Time is running out" - scientist Henry Kendall, speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, 1992. Admirably, Mr Guilbeault's commitment to the environment extends to recycling last decade's scare-mongering press releases.

"Stop worrying about your money, take care of our planet," advised one of the protesters' placards. Au contraire, take care of your money and the planet will follow. For anywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown

45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America's emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan's best efforts to destroy the planet.

Had America and Australia ratified Kyoto, and had the Europeans complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C - a figure that would be statistically undectectable within annual climate variation. In return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by $97 billion to $397 billion - and those are the US Energy Information Administration's somewhat optimistic models.

I've mentioned before the environmentalists' ceaseless fretting for the prospect of every species but their own. By the end of this century, the demographically doomed French, Italians and Spaniards will be so shrivelled in number they may have too few environmentalists to man their local Greenpeace office. Is that part of the plan? To create a habitable environment with no humans left to inhabit it? If so, destroying the global economy for 0.07C is a swell idea.

But even the poseurs of the European chancelleries are having second thoughts. Which is why, in their efforts to flog some life back into the dead Kyoto horse, the eco-cultists have to come up with ever scarier horrors, such as that "New Ice Age". Meanwhile, the Bush Administration's Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate brings together the key economic colossi of this new century - America, China and India - plus Australia, Japan and South Korea, in a relationship that acknowledges, unlike Kyoto, the speed of Chinese and Indian economic growth, provides for the sharing of cleaner energy technology and recognises that the best friend of the planet's natural resources is the natural resourcefulness of a dynamic economy.

It's a practical and results-oriented approach, which is why the eco-cultists will never be marching through globally warmed, snow-choked streets on its behalf. It lacks the requisite component of civilisational self-loathing.

Wake up and smell the CO2, guys. Sayonara, Kyoto. Hello, coalition of the emitting.

articles 12/10

Secretary Rumsfeld's Remarks to the John Hopkins, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
"The Q&A period which followed rises above his prepared remarks by considerable margin. No transcript is available, a Real Player audio file is available here and it is worth every one its 44 minutes. The subjects he covers run the gamut. What is torture? Are military contractors necessary in Iraq? Why does the perception of the same event differ between segments of the American public? What is military transformation? What are the key advantages of the enemy? If they are not to be called insurgents, then what should they be called? How many troops are enough?"

C. S. Lewis Superstar
How a reserved British intellectual with a checkered pedigree became a rock star for evangelicals.

The Man Behind the Wardrobe
An interview with Douglas Gresham, stepson to the famous writer.

Does Criticism of the War Undermine Troop Morale?
James H. Joyner, Jr., Ph.D.

The Strongest Economy You've Never Heard Of
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
43% of Americans say they believe that the national economy is in a recession...Nothing could be further from the truth.

Bush turned the tables on the Democrats
By Victor Davis Hanson

Narnia & Its Enemies
Sexist, racist, intolerant Lewis?

Democratic Implosion
Can the party of the people be saved from itself?
By Victor Davis Hanson

Lieberman Wins Republican Friends, Democratic Enemies With Support For War
By Shailagh Murray

Lieberman's Pro-War Views Concern Dems
by Andrew Miga

Remarks of Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment Forum on Next Steps for Successful Strategy in Iraq
by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)

Saddam's Chief Apologist
by Christopher Hitchens

The Panic Over Iraq
by Norman Podhoretz

Fighting to Win
With the proper strategy, victory in Iraq is far more likely than people think.
by Frederick W. Kagan

Down the Memory Hole
The Pentagon sits on the documents of the Saddam Hussein regime.
by Stephen F. Hayes

The Party of Sam's Club
Isn't it time the Republicans did something for their voters?
by Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam

Eighty Percent of What?
A questionable poll on what Iraqis really want.
by Fred Barnes

Kyoto's Dead Hand
Even signatories are giving up on their emissions targets.

What if . . . . . . Saddam were still in power?
by Holman Jenkins

U.S. Faces Hard Road In World Cup
Team's First-Round Draw Features Italy, Czech Rep.
Advancing will be an achievement

Reds' Casey inspired local teen
By Kevin Garvey

articles 12/7

President Bush's Speech on the War on Terror, Rebuilding Iraq
Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.
12/7/2005

'Do Some Soul Searching'
Why aren't the media telling the whole story about Iraq?
by Donald Rumsfeld
Entire speech

The Wisdom of Solomon
Law schools adopt an Orwellian theory in an effort to keep the military out.

Rally Round the (White) Flag, Boys!
Democrats finally find an Iraq policy they can get behind.
by Edward Morrissey

Sex, Please--We're Young and Chinese
A generation after Mao suits, China is coping with an epidemic of free love

It's All Bad News. . .
Except for the economic reality on the ground.
by Irwin M. Stelzer

Salesman-in-Chief
Bush is talking up the economy and the war. At last.
by Larry Kudlow

The Battle for Narnia
by Adam Kirsch

Global cool
by David Warren

Iraq and the Corruption Trap
by Arnold Kling

It Ain't That Easy, Folks
by Michael Fumento
Iraqi withdrawal is harder and more dangerous than it first appears.

Some Megachurches Closing for Christmas
This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.

The Promise-Driven Life
by Michael S. Horton

Saddam's Shop of Horrors

articles 12/3

USA Today
Will that be cash, credit — or finger?

What, Me Worry?
Bush abandons the Alfred E. Neuman school of public relations.
by Daniel Henninger

Pouting Pundits of Pessimism
Every bit of good economic news gives them reason for despair.
by Brian Wesbury

'A Beacon on the Summit'
Foreign policy "realists" aren't always very realistic.
by Eliot Cohen

Let There Be Light . . .
. . . in the murkiest recesses of the United Nations.
by Bret Stephens

Truth or Consequences
If the war is to be lost, it will be a collapse of stateside civilian morale that loses it. Everything else is secondary.
by David Tell

Leaking At All Costs
What the CIA is willing to do to hurt the Bush administration.
by John Hinderaker

Pump Up the Volume
Finally the "nonpolitical" White House gets wise.
by Fred Barnes

President Outlines Strategy for Victory in Iraq United States
Naval AcademyAnnapolis, Maryland
National Strategy for Victory in Iraq
Fact Sheet: Training Iraqi Security Forces
In Focus: National Security


Vice President's Remarks at the Frontiers of Freedom Institute 2005 Ronald Reagan Gala
The Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Most of you know, I have spent a lot of years in public service, and first came to work in Washington back in the late 1960s. I know what it’s like to operate in a highly charged political environment, in which the players on all sides of an issue feel passionately and speak forcefully. In such an environment people sometimes lose their cool, and yet in Washington you can ordinarily rely on some basic measure of truthfulness and good faith in the conduct of political debate. But in the last several weeks we have seen a wild departure from that tradition. And the suggestion that’s been made by some U.S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city. (Applause.)

Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions. They arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions that -- made by this Administration and by the previous administration. There was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he had violated U.N. Security Council Resolutions, and that, in a post-9/11 world, we could not afford to take the word of a dictator who had a history of weapons of mass destruction programs, who had excluded weapons inspectors, who had defied the demands of the international community, whose nation had been designated an official state sponsor of terror, and who had committed mass murder. Those are the facts. (Applause.)

What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war. The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out. American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures –- conducting raids, training Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers –- and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie.
The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone -– but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. (Applause.)

We’re going to continue throwing their own words back at them. And far more important, we’re going to continue sending a consistent message to the men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts. We can never say enough how much we appreciate them, and how proud they make us. (Applause.)

They and their families can be certain that this cause is right and just, and the performance of our military has been brave and honorable. And this nation will stand behind our fighting forces with pride and without wavering until the day of victory.

Chamberlin splits from Chase to join Edelman in China

by Hamilton Nolan, PR Week USA

Dec. 2, 2005, 14:22

NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase is experiencing some turnover as the head of external communications for the Chase card division departs to become head of Edelman's Shanghai office.

David Chamberlin, who was at Bank One until it merged with Chase in 2004, will begin his new post in January. Director of internal communications Paul Hartwick will succeed Chamberlin temporarily.

Fred Hill, the head of communications for JPMorgan Chase, said the company has recently downsized its corporate advertising group and its design group, and cut jobs in the philanthropic area. He added, however, that the communications department is not being downsized.

Melinda McMullen, an SVP of communications and public affairs who is leaving the company at the end of the year, will not be replaced.

When Jamie Dimon takes over as CEO on January 1, Hill will begin reporting to chief strategist Jay Mandelbaum.

"If you look at where [Dimon] has been in his career, he has never had communications report directly to him," said Hill. "Obviously I don't agree with that, but he's the boss."

articles 11/28

Debunking the myth of the underprivileged soldier
by Tim Kane and James Jay Carafano

articles 10/29

A new credit card of Chase Bank with 'blink' technology that lets users wave their cards near a computer reader instead of having to swipe them through a device, is shown Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005 in New York.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Paying in a blink

News-Journal
Chase unveils Wawa credit card
‘Contactless’ device frees customers of PINs, signatures

NY Post
New Card To Make Spending As Easy As A "blink"

Internet News
Gotham Can Purchase Without Contact

WPVI-TV, ABC Philadelphia
New Hi-Tech Credit Cards

Information Week
Chase Rolls Out RFID Credit Cards in NY and Philadelphia

A new credit card and card reader from Chase Bank with 'blink' technology that lets users wave their cards near a computer reader instead of having to swipe them through a device, is shown Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005 in New York.


Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview

Toledo Blade
Bono and U2 ask God some tough questions

Native of Sidney now topples terror

By JARED STRONG
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
October 25, 2005

A little background:

It's a long way from Depot Street in Sidney to the halls of the National Counterterrorism Center. Scott Redd made the trip like he does everything else: one step at a time.

Redd, a 61-year-old retired vice admiral, has held numerous high-level government jobs since 1998, when he left the Navy after 36 years. He's led an intelligence commission on weapons of mass destruction and last year directed programs to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.

In the news:

Redd was confirmed by the U.S. Senate earlier this year as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He's been on the job 90 days. The center is the primary organization for analysis of terrorism intelligence, and it helps plan counterterror activity. Redd answers to the director of national intelligence — and to the president. But first, he answers 10 (or so) Questions:

Q. Did you spend your entire childhood in Sidney?
A. Yes, indeed. We lived on what was commonly called Depot Street — no street numbers in those days — which later was christened Fillmore Street. I remember making up a street number for my ham radio license application.

Q. How often could you be seen at the famous Penn Drug Store? Do you miss their vanilla phosphates?
A. Penn Drug was the place to be, and I spent my fair share of time there downing more than a few vanilla phosphates. I wonder if they still make them.

Q. When did you graduate from Sidney High School?
A. 1962. We had, as I recall, 36 in our graduating class.

Q. Did you get along with those guys in Shenandoah?
A. They were OK, but then they were "city boys" compared to those of us from Sidney.

Q. Do you miss the Sidney Rodeo?
A. Of course. Every former resident of Sidney misses the rodeo. I remember that no matter from which direction you entered town, it seemed there was a large sign proclaiming Sidney as the "Largest Outdoor Rodeo in the World."

Q. Were you ever a rodeo participant?
A. No. My skill set didn’t run in that direction. However, I suppose everyone would like to be a bull rider.

Q. Did you play high school sports?
A. I certainly wasn’t a great athlete, but with 36 students in the class, you almost had to play every sport or there wouldn’t be a team. The game I remember most was playing a much larger high school baseball team from Council Bluffs and beating them 1-0. I pitched a one-hitter and won it with a home run. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Q. What is the worst part about growing up in southwest Iowa?
A. Putting up hay on my uncle’s farm in the middle of summer and walking to school in the midst of those Iowa winters.

Q. Hawkeyes or Cornhuskers?
A. Hawkeyes, of course.

Q. How do you plan to stop terrorism from hitting a small town like Sidney? Are there any targets in particular the town should safeguard?
A. Our mission at NCTC is difficult, but it’s straightforward: do everything possible to stop each and every attack.
I’d rather not get into a discussion of what specific locations or site might be tempting targets for terrorists. What I would say is that residents of Sidney, all other Iowans, and everyone in the country should remain vigilant. Report anything suspicious or out of the ordinary to the appropriate authorities.
We need to keep looking out for each other.

Q. Are there any lessons you learned growing up in Sidney that stick with you?
A. Lots of them. I learned the importance of values and integrity there. I also learned the value of hard work, making your world your bond, and getting along with people from varied backgrounds.

Q. How does a man who grew up in small-town Iowa become an important part of the safety net for our country?
A. I guess it sounds trite, but the answer is "one step at a time." Do your best, bloom where you’re planted, take care of those entrusted to your leadership, have a vision for where you want to go. And always be able to look yourself in the mirror.