Posted Wednesday, July 14, 2004 by Rick
Bay Window on the Middle East


In late March, Austin Bay, author, columnist and U.S. Army Reserve Colonel, wrote that this summer might well "determine the Middle East’s political course for the next century:"

Start with this fact: Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority has no authority. It's a corrupt, moribund shell. . . .

Arafat's rejection of the summer 2000 peace deal crafted by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. President Bill Clinton ultimately made him the West Bank's chief thief [sending Palestinian funds to Switzerland], rather than independent Palestine's first statesman.

Any deal would have ignited a Palestinian Authority versus Hamas battle, but instead of waging that necessary civil war with the support of the United States, Arafat chose renewed intifada with Israel. . . .

The Arab world is watching, with fascination, Iraq's looming experiment in democracy. . . . An Iraqi democracy completely changes the Middle Eastern calculus. Terrorist cadres will blame Israel for the region's ills, but the elephant in the room -- the repression and robbery of Muslim people by corrupt Muslim elites -- can no longer be ignored. . . .

The Israelis bet the next generation of Palestinians, with terrorist cash gone and rejectionist guns removed, will look to democratic Iraq as a model -- and then help create a resilient, just and fruitful Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Earlier this week, Austin Bay sent an important email from Iraq to Glenn Reynolds, discussing the idea, broached by Peggy Noonan and Mickey Kaus, that the American people might vote for Kerry to take a "time out" or "break" from the war on terror, or to otherwise seek a "return to normalcy." Bay thought we should stay the course:

"Time out" is a mirage of the chattering class. . . . Hate to say it, but the call for "time out" . . . may be another case of Baby Boomers who can't separate Hollywood war from the real thing. Hollywood wars end in a couple of hours. Real earthly hells have no intermission.

Bay’s email produced an email in response, and a fascinating post by blogger Dave Justus on why Spider-Man 2 supports the war. Both worth reading (IMHO). (Mickey promises a longer response soon).


Jay Nordlinger has a reminder this morning about how much George W. Bush has already changed the basic perspective regarding the Middle East:

[I]t must be a shock for the most frequent visitor to the White House during the years 1993-2001 to be kept out of it altogether, from Jan. 20, 2001, to now. Bush is often called a "neocon" and other not-quite-friendly things, but he is supremely realistic, certainly about the Middle East, certainly about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, certainly about Arafat.

Posted Monday, July 12, 2004 by Rick
Watchmen on the Walls


A few weeks ago, John Kerry gave a foreign policy speech in Seattle -- another of his criticisms of the Bush Administration for "going it alone" instead of "assembling a team." The speech ended with Kerry’s assurance that he would again lead a great alliance:

"We do not have to live in fear or stand alone. We don't have to be a lonely watchman on the walls of freedom."

The American Spectator noted that Kerry had actually cribbed the ending -- without acknowledgment -- from the final paragraph of the speech John F. Kennedy was to have given on the day he was assassinated, in which Kennedy's words were:

"We, in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than by choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom."

But the indispensable Yael noted last week that the actual source of the sentence went back much further -- to Isaiah 62:6-7:

"I have set watchmen upon your walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day nor night; you who make mention of the Lord, take no rest."

Yael then noted a more critical point: Kerry had reversed the meaning of the biblical injunction, turning it into a portrait of a "lonely" watchman, watching over a people living in "fear," standing "alone," something they did not "have to be."


Kerry had not plagiarized Kennedy; he was actually saying something that was virtually the opposite of what the patron saint of the modern Democratic Party had sought to convey.


And thereby hangs a tale.


Kennedy was scheduled to give his speech on November 22 to a joint luncheon of the Dallas Citizens Counsel and the Dallas Assembly -- the two symbols of progressive leadership and learning in Dallas.


His prepared remarks began by saying it was inevitable that there would always "be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side . . . ." The speech ridiculed those who thought the Nation was "headed for defeat through deficit," and then turned to national security, to "the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend:"

In less than 3 years, we have increased by 50 percent the number of Polaris submarines scheduled to be in force by the next fiscal year, increased by more than 70 percent our total Polaris purchase program, increased by more than 75 percent our Minuteman purchase program, increased by 50 percent the portion of our strategic bombers on 15-minute alert, and . . . increased by 60 percent the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe. . . .

We have radically improved the readiness of our conventional forces -- increased by 45 percent the number of combat ready Army divisions, increased by 100 percent the procurement of modern Army weapons and equipment, increased by 100 percent our ship construction, conversion, and modernization program . . . increased by 30 percent the number of tactical air squadrons, and increased the strength of the Marines. . . .

We have increased by 175 percent the procurement of airlift aircraft, and we have already achieved a 75 percent increase in our existing strategic airlift capability. Finally, moving beyond the traditional roles of our military forces, we have achieved an increase of nearly 600 percent in our special forces . . . .

In the remainder of his speech, Kennedy noted that in less than 1,000 days the Nation had surged ahead of most of Western Europe in corporate profits -- which had risen 43% in less than three years -- by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by huge amounts.


Finally, he said he cited all these facts and figures to "make it clear" that we now had the military and economic strength "to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom." And then he concluded with this paragraph:

We in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

There were thus three biblical references in Kennedy’s concluding paragraph. The reference in the last sentence was to Psalm 127:

Except the Lord build the house,
They labor in vain that build it;
Except the Lord keep the city,
The watchman waketh but in vain.

It was a time when the Democratic Party could reference the Bible without irony or ostentation; when the Democratic Party was proud of mobilizing the country after a decade of ignoring gathering threats; and when the Democratic Party believed in bearing any burden in the service of a righteous cause throughout the world.


Some of us still registered as Democrats still wish that the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy still existed.

Posted Friday, July 09, 2004 by Rick
A Little Friday Miscellany


Truth has been taking a little while to get its boots on, but James Lileks' utter destruction of Michael Moore’s recent thoughts whipped around the Internet yesterday as fast as anything I’ve ever seen. Here it is, for the few of you who missed it, and the rest who want to read it again.


And today he has a sobering reflection on "what’s keeping Israel from taking out Iran’s nuclear bomb-making plants."


I like this title for Michael Moore's movie.


Driches at Crossfiah! was not wrong when he linked yesterday to this as "one of the funniest pages on the web." The best since Dean-O. Just keep scrolling.

Posted Wednesday, July 07, 2004 by Rick
Kerry, Edwards and Israel


The Jerusalem Post editorializes on the new Democratic ticket ("Doubts About Kerry"), and the position paper the Kerry campaign recently distributed to Jewish community leaders:

Now the Democrats have a ticket, and that ticket has a pro-Israel position paper that, like the candidates' voting record, is reportedly "second to none." . . .

Let's take a closer look. Kerry's paper claims he "has been at the forefront of the fight for Israel's security during his 19 years in the US Senate."

Indeed, he has signed on almost every pro-Israel letter and voted for every pro-Israel resolution. But so have 80 or so other Senators. Yet hopping on such measures after most of the Senate is on board can hardly be characterized as being in the "forefront," unless the train is being driven from the caboose.

It is a happy fact, but a fact, that a Senator must go out of his way to rack up a record considered to be anti-Israel. Kerry did not. We are happy that Kerry dutifully followed the pro-Israel pack, but spare us the "forefront" rhetoric.

Kerry’s record is in fact not "second to none," as this article in the Jewish Press noted last month. Moreover, the Kerry paper distributed to the Jewish community has not been posted on his website (which has only this bland statement), suggesting the paper is not for general consumption. As the Jerusalem Post notes:

We cannot but welcome any pro-Israel manifesto, but Kerry's paper doth protest too much. . . .

Let's get this straight: the American contribution to the security of Israel, and of Jews around the world, for that matter, depends almost entirely on how successfully the US fights the global jihad, of which Israel is the leading and most long-standing target.

If America is losing, we will feel it here; if Israel is losing, America is likely to feel it there.

If Kerry really wants to be "pro-Israel" he should not just follow Bush, but outflank him on the need to drive the regimes in Teheran, Damascus, and Riyadh either out of power (a la Saddam) or out of the terror business (a la Qaddafi). If the war against jihad devolves into a September 10-style police action, Israel -- and America -- will be in trouble.

Posted Tuesday, July 06, 2004 by Rick
The Islamic Leonardo


Stephen Schwartz (who is a Sufi) writes that Islam needs to find its way to modernity, "but in my view that way lies through a Renaissance, not a Reformation, and by way of a Leonardo, not a Luther:"

What does a Muslim Renaissance mean? It means the restoration of the Islamic pluralism that was abolished in Mecca and Medina in the 1920s, less than a century ago, when Wahhabism conquered the Holy Sites.

Before then, all of the hundreds of Islamic legal schools, and all of the differing sects, and all of the Sufi orders, were represented in Mecca, and the Hajj pilgrimage . . . was a celebration of Islamic diversity.

In those days, also, Christian churches were open in Jiddah, and Jewish synagogues were found all over Yemen. Indeed, today only Saudi Arabia bars non-Muslims, and even non-Wahhabi Muslims, from openly practicing their faith. The rest of the Gulf states allow Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist worship; and Bahrain still has a synagogue. . . .

I believe an Islamic Renaissance will come, and an Islamic Leonardo will come, fit to stand alongside the Islamic mathematicians, astronomers, and scientists of the past, and that Wahhabism and everything like it will be defeated.

I also believe that many Westerners will be surprised when they find out that ordinary Muslims are not very different from ordinary Catholics, and represent no danger to them. How tragic it is that all this seems so far away today; yet is so near.

(Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily).


Perhaps the Islamic Leonardo will be an Iraqi, born in 2004 in free Iraq, someone with parents like Iraqi bloggers Alaa and Mohammed (whose moving posts are essential reading).

Posted Friday, July 02, 2004 by Rick
Anwar Chemseddine and Czeslaw Milosz


A footnote in Robert Satloff’s article that I posted Wednesday referred to a "brilliant essay" contributed by Anwar Chemseddine (the pseudonym of an Arab professor of English literature at a university in North Africa) to an Internet-based "virtual symposium" on Arab views of the Holocaust.


It is worth reading, as are the companion articles by Rami Khouri, Abdou Filali-Ansary, and Berel Lang.


Chemseddine’s article described the Arabs’ view of the Holocaust as "troubled," because the Holocaust is "almost invariably regarded through the foggy prism of the Middle East conflict" -- which obscures its significance as "the archetype of the crime against humanity:"

Anti-semitism is a modern European phenomenon in which Jews, assimilated or unassimilated, secular or religious, liberal or radical, are made the political, cultural, ideological and social scapegoats of modernity. . . .

And this is the basic definition of a crime against humanity: a crime perpetrated for no other reason than the victim being singled out as a human being.

The continued significance of the Holocaust is that it persistently asks the questions: . . . [H]ow is it that in the name of modernity such savagery and abomination are allowed to occur?

. . . And this is why revisionism or negationism of the Holocaust are pernicious and must be denounced: they aim at nothing less than weakening the debate on human rights, culture, democracy, and all the issues we associate with the Enlightenment and modernity.

The "virtual symposium" appeared on the website of The Legacy Project-- a "global exchange on the enduring consequences of the many historical tragedies of the 20th century."


The Project also offers excerpts from great literature on violence and memory, including this extraordinary poem by Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize winning poet born in Lithuania in 1911, who spent World War II working for the underground presses in Poland, and who moved to the United States in 1960 to teach at Berkeley:

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.

All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.

That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.

Notice: I say we; there, every one separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Czeslaw Milosz’s 1980 Nobel Lecture is an extraordinary address, providing a biographical perspective that makes the above poem all the more remarkable:

It is good to be born in a small country where Nature was on a human scale, where various languages and religions cohabited for centuries. I have in mind Lithuania, a country of myths and of poetry. . . . A bizarre city [Vilna] of baroque architecture transplanted to northern forests and of history fixed in every stone, a city of forty Roman Catholic churches and of numerous synagogues.

In those days the Jews called it a Jerusalem of the North. Only when teaching in America did I fully realize how much I had absorbed from the thick walls of our ancient university, from formulas of Roman law learned by heart, from history and literature of old Poland, both of which surprise young Americans by their specific features: an indulgent anarchy, a humor disarming fierce quarrels, a sense of organic community, a mistrust of any centralized authority.

Milosz’s speech included a warning that now seems prophetic:

Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion . . . .

[E]vents of the last decades, of such primary importance that knowledge or ignorance of them will be decisive for the future of mankind, move away, grow pale . . . . We are surrounded today by fictions about the past, contrary to common sense and to an elementary perception of good and evil. . . . [T]he number of books in various languages which deny that the Holocaust ever took place, that it was invented by Jewish propaganda, has exceeded one hundred.

If such an insanity is possible, is a complete loss of memory as a permanent state of mind improbable? And would it not present a danger more grave than genetic engineering or poisoning of the natural environment?

And Milosz’s speech has a single sentence that reverberates, at a time when the mere use of the word "evil" by an American president -- first in 1982, and then again 20 years later -- shocked the elites:

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

It is a speech to be studied. Essential reading.

Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004 by Rick
Villains and Heroes, and the French


Robert Satloff has an important article in the July issue of Commentary that is at once heartening, disheartening, and sobering.


He writes in "In Search of ‘Righteous Arabs’" about his investigation of the "hidden history" of the Arab encounter with the Holocaust:

[F]or the past two years, while living in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, I have tracked down stories of Arabs who played a role in the Holocaust, be they villains or heroes. With the help of researchers and investigators in ten different countries, I have been able to unearth the stories of dozens of such individuals.

The stories of the heroes are heartening; why they are not likely to be told is disheartening; and Satloff’s encounter with Ahmed Kamal Abulmagd, a prominent moderate Egyptian theologian, is very sobering. Essential reading.


One of the things Satloff uncovered during his search is the role of the French in exporting the Holocaust to North Africa:

For three years -- from the fall of France in June 1940 to the expulsion of German troops from Tunisia in May 1943 -- the Nazis, their Vichy French collaborators, and their Italian Fascist allies applied in these areas many of the same tools that would be used to devastating effect against the much larger Jewish populations of Europe. . . Virtually no Jew in North Africa was left untouched. . . .

[O]f the three European countries that brought the Holocaust to Arab lands, the most malevolent by far was France. In Morocco and, especially, Algeria, France implemented strict laws against local Jews, expelling them from schools, universities, and government employment, confiscating their property, and sending a number of local Jewish political activists to harsh labor camps.

In some respects, Vichy was more vigorous about applying anti-Jewish statutes in Arab lands than in metropolitan France. . . . . The collaborationist government established in 1940 under Marshal Pétain turned the Jews, both foreign and native-born, into ready scapegoats for France’s shameful collapse at Nazi hands.

Posted Monday, June 28, 2004 by Rick
A Kerry Miscellany


John Kerry, speaking to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials on Saturday, presented the latest idea in his Don’t-Call-It-War on Terror:

I will also create a "North American Security Perimeter" to better facilitate the legitimate travel of law-abiding citizens and crack down on bad actors trying to enter the United States.

The crackdown is overdue, there being way too many such actors in Hollywood already.


Teresa Heinz Kerry on her husband, as reported by Russ Smith, writing in the New York Press:

"He actually does feel at ease in the world," she said. "He likes people, in spite of whatever people [perhaps voters?] might think. He'd make the best nursery school teacher in the world, bar none." . . .

Teresa also said that Kerry would get the U.S. back in good with the United Nations [swell] and "will never, ever, ever send any children, or men -- as he was with young men in Vietnam -- into harm's way without being the first one to go out on the boat." . . .

His wife added . . . "We're not going to fight terrorism with missiles, we're going to fight terrorism with ideas. And I think that John knows that, deep down."

It would be nice if he not only knew it deep down, but could tell us the ideas up here.


Kerry campaign spokesperson Phil Singer on Friday issued the following statement in response to a web video on President Bush's website featuring images of Adolph Hitler:

"The Bush Campaign should immediately remove these hateful images from its website and apologize for using them. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong.”

The video (“This is not a time for pessimism and rage”) featured Democrats making wild statements about Bush, and included segments of ads from a website sponsored by MoveOn.org that showed pictures of Hitler and compared “war crimes in 1945” to “foreign policy in 2004.”


It would be nice if -- instead of asking the Bush campaign to apologize for demonstrating the deepening descent of the Democratic Party -- Kerry could find a Sister Souljah moment to criticize:

Al Gore for his reference to “Bush’s gulag” and his use of Nazi references ("The Administration works closely with a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops."), or

George Soros for his Nazi allegations ("When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans."), or

Michael Moore for his comparison of the Patriot Act to Mein Kampf ("The Patriot Act is the first step. 'Mein Kampf' - 'Mein Kampf' was written long before Hitler came to power.").

These statements rob words of their moral meaning. Kerry should condemn them: it would show us there is a there deep down there.


UPDATE: John Leo, writing in U.S. News and World Report, notes that "Comparing Bush to Hitler [is] No Longer Confined to Loonies." (Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds).

Posted Friday, June 25, 2004 by Rick
What Might Have Been


Ron Rosenbaum, editor of "Those Who Forget the Past," writes about staying up all night reading the 390-page pre-publication galleys of Philip Roth’s new novel -- "The Plot Against America" -- to be published in October.


The book is another of Roth’s "alternative-future novels," in which Charles Lindbergh runs for President in 1940, beats FDR and makes a pact with Hitler shortly thereafter. The result is that America becomes "a silent partner in the Axis takeover of the rest of the world."


Earlier this year, the New York Times published a report on the novel, noting that "[Roth’s] Lindbergh blames Jews in a radio address for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany." In response, Roth wrote a letter to the Times:

No, Roth wrote to The Times, it isn’t just "my" (fictional) Lindbergh who attacked an alleged Jewish cabal, it’s the Lindbergh of history.

Mr. Roth quoted from the actual ["Who Are the War Agitators?"] speech attacking Jews . . . a speech Lindbergh made at an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 11, 1941 . . . [in which] Lindbergh warned against American Jews, whom he depicted -- along with F.D.R. and British agents -- as a sinister cabal trying to manipulate America into opposing Hitler:"

"No person of honesty and vision can look on [the Jews’] pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them . . . . We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction. . . .

"[The Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government . . . ."

Rosenbaum notes that Lindbergh’s speech was delivered at a pivotal moment in history:

Sept. 11, 1941, when the U.K. alone was still holding off Hitler, in what increasingly looked like Churchill’s futile fantasy of resistance now that Nazi armies were sweeping towards Moscow.

If Lindbergh had succeeded in his aim, Hitler may have had a solid foundation for his Thousand Year Reich, rather than the 12 years he got.

Rosenbaum thinks Roth’s novel "has the makings of a thrilling, suspenseful and profound movie." He wants Steven Spielberg to make it.


(Hat tip: Nextbook).

Posted Wednesday, June 23, 2004 by Rick
Only in America





Norman Podhoretz will be at the White House today, to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation's highest civilian honor.


The White House description of him is as follows:

Norman Podhoretz has been at the forefront of American intellectual thought for the last half-century, as the longtime editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, and as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Paul Johnson, the eminent British historian, describes him as:

[A] thinker and writer and polemicist, a geopolitician and student of religious ideas, an autobiographer of genius, a man who reacts sharply to the news as it pours from the press and the airwaves, who thinks deeply, angrily, and sincerely about it, and commits his thoughts into vivid and penetrative argument.

His skill at combining autobiography, political argument, and vivid writing are reflected in this anecdote about his childhood from "My Love Affair with America:"

I was born in this country, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, but as a very small child I spoke -- or so family tradition has it -- more Yiddish than English.

[M]y English was so marked by a Yiddish accent that I was often mistaken for a recently arrived immigrant. . . . This accent created a problem when at the age of five I was sent to the local public school, P.S. 28 . . . .

My recollection of the incident is naturally dim. But it is clear enough to confirm the general accuracy of another favorite family tale, this one about a teacher who came upon me climbing alone up a staircase, apparently lost and in search of my class which had peeled off in some other direction while I was distractedly looking elsewhere.

"Where are you going, little boy?" this teacher asked. "I goink op de stez," I am reputed to have replied. At this the teacher instantly marched me off to the principal’s office and had me placed in a remedial-speech class. . . .

[T]his teacher, like most of her colleagues, was a middle-age Catholic woman, of Irish ethnicity, and (in the lingo of the day) an "old maid." . . . . [These teachers] were something like (and may even have seen themselves as) secular nuns. . . This was the very height of the age of the "melting pot," and one of the main jobs of our teachers was to throw us into it and heat it up to as high a temperature as it might take to burn out our foreign impurities and turn us into real Americans. . . .

In the age of multiculturalism that dawned on America a half century later, any teacher doing to a black or Latino or Asian kid what that teacher did to me would (I exaggerate only slightly) have been surrounded in a trice by federal marshals materializing out of the very walls of the school, arrested for attempted cultural genocide, read her Miranda rights, and carted off in handcuffs to the applause of the child’s parents . . . .

Son of an immigrant milkman, in a family that was dirt poor, Podhoretz famously wrote that "One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan."


His journey from left to right was longer still. He became the editor of Commentary at age 30 -- and immediately took the magazine straight to the left. In the early 60s, he became one of the patrons of the New Left.


By the beginning of the next decade, he became one of the founders of Neoconservatism -- and sustained and expanded that movement through the sheer intellectual force of his writing.


The force continues. He charted the significance of George W. Bush’s presidency with startling clarity in his September 2002 article in Commentary -- "In Praise of the Bush Doctrine" -- an essay that, two years later, is worth re-reading as a guide to the historical significance of current events.


He arrives at the White House today to receive from President Bush a formal acknowledgment of how far he has traveled in his life, bringing a generation with him.

Posted Monday, June 21, 2004 by Rick
Wieseltier is No W.


Leon Wieseltier, in this week’s New Republic, recalls the thinking that led to his support of the Iraq War last year:

I assumed Saddam Hussein possessed the sort of arsenal that made him a clear and present danger: The alarming intelligence estimates were shared by many Western governments, so that the debate in the months preceding the war concerned the methods for disarming Iraq, not the reasons for disarming it.

And to my certainty of Saddam's capability I added my certainty of his depravity. I required no intelligence estimates to demonstrate that Saddam stood out darkly in the discussion of weapons of mass destruction, because he had employed them, against soldiers and against civilians, and thereby demonstrated his immunity to the cold and saving rationality on which the art of deterrence has always been based.

A man who could use these obscene materials was also a man who could proliferate them. . . .

In the case of Saddam Hussein, then, the benefit of the doubt did not seem like an exercise in critical thinking.

Wieseltier’s words are a summary, in literary language, of the explanation that George W. Bush gave on Friday in his speech to soldiers at Ft. Lewis:

We will remove threats before they arrive, instead of waiting for the next attack, the next catastrophe. That is one of the lessons of September the 11th we must never forget.

Iraq was a country in which millions of people lived in fear, and many thousands disappeared into mass graves. This was a regime that tortured children in front of their parents. This was a regime that invaded its neighbors. This is a regime that had used chemical weapons before. It had used weapons not only against countries in its neighborhood, but against its own citizens. This is a regime which gave cash rewards to families of suicide bombers. This is a regime that sheltered terrorist groups. This is a regime that hated America.

And so we saw a threat, and it was a real threat. And that's why I went to the United Nations. The administration looked at the intelligence, saw a threat, and remembered the facts and saw a threat. The Congress, members of both political parties, looked at the intelligence. They saw a threat. The members of the United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence and saw a threat, and voted unanimously to send the message to Mr. Saddam Hussein, disarm or face serious consequences.

The UN’s unanimous message was not that inspectors should be required to traipse around the country trying to find WMD, or to search sanitized files to find documents disclosing where they had gone. The obligation of Saddam in the final resolution was to come forward with the information immediately, or face "serious consequences" (which no one reasonably thought meant another resolution).


And so, after umpteen UN resolutions, the umpteenth one was enforced (although not by the UN).


It is still not clear whether Saddam hid or disposed of his WMD during the long run-up to the war (which consumed nearly a year as Congress debated and voted, and then as the UN heard from President Bush, and then as the UN debated and voted on resolutions and heard reports) -- or whether Saddam moved the WMD to Syria or Lebanon, or whether he simply converted them to just-in-time inventory or to an R&D program to be resumed once the inspectors were gone -- or what.


But even if there were no WMD in Iraq, the war was, as Jonathan Rauch has written ("The War in Iraq Was the Right Mistake to Make"), a "justified mistake:"

A policeman shoots a robber who has killed in the past and who brandishes what seems to be a gun. The gun turns out to be a cellphone. . . .

In the end, if [the policeman] is exonerated, it is not because he made no mistake but because his mistake was justified. Reasonable people, facing uncertainty, would have thought they saw a gun.

George W. Bush and the CIA thought they saw a gun. So did French President Jacques Chirac, who last February warned of Iraq's "probable possession of weapons of mass destruction." So did Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, a former Vermont governor, who last February said, "My personal belief is that Saddam may well possess anthrax and chemical weapons. That being the case, he must be disarmed." . . . .

So [Saddam] waved what looked like a gun and got shot.

Last year, just before the war began, Wieseltier wrote that the war was "A Liberal’s War, Too."

The only genuine solution to the problem of proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological arms is political development. It comes in many kinds, and often with assistance from the outside. . . . And the theory of deterrence cannot be responsibly applied to a dictator who has already used weapons whose use is famously not rational. . . .

How can any liberal, any individual who associates himself with the party of humanity, not count himself in this coalition of the willing? . . . . Dominique de Villepin, in a breathtakingly obtuse phrase that brought down the house at the Security Council last week, called for "disarmament through peace." There speaks the collapse of modern memory. . . .

[T]he doctrine of preemption . . . in the case of certain threats really is nothing more than prudence ("Be early to kill a man who is coming to kill you," runs an ancient Jewish adage.).

In his current essay, Wieseltier summarizes his thinking from a year ago, but only for the purpose of announcing how much he thinks has changed (since only a cell phone has been found in Iraq):

If I had known there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I would not have supported this war. . . . But I was deceived. . . . I have come to despise some of the people who are directing it.

If he had known. But he knows now (or thinks he does), only because George W. Bush had the courage to act when he thought he saw a gun. Without the war, he would not know.

He was deceived (he means by Bush, not Saddam). He despises the people directing the war (he uses no such emotion-laded words about Saddam).

Deceived. Despises. These are the words of the Angry, Bush-Hating Left. One expects more from the literary editor of The New Republic, and much more from Leon Wieseltier.

Posted Friday, June 18, 2004 by Rick
Hamas and Our Friends the Europeans.


Earlier this week, the Council on Foreign Relations released the "Second Report of an Independent Task Force on Terrorist Financing."


The Task Force is composed of a bipartisan group of experts from the foreign policy, business, law enforcement, and intelligence communities -- including Richard A. Clarke (the former White House National Coordinator for Counterterrorism), Stuart E. Eizenstat (former Under Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to the E.U.), Geoffrey Kemp (former member of the National Security Council), Matthew Levitt (former counterterrorism analyst for the FBI), William F. Wechsler (former chair of the interagency group charged with disrupting al-Qaeda’s financial network), and 12 others.


It is an eye-opening report, worth reading in its entirety. Saudi Arabia is a focus, and is definitely a problem.


Here are some significant excerpts relating to Hamas:

On June 26, 2003 . . . at the annual U.S.-EU Summit, President Bush took the important step of publicly urging European leaders to criminalize all fundraising by Hamas . . . . Extensive work by the State and Treasury Departments preceded and followed up the president’s strong remarks. . .

Targeting the financial support network of Hamas is an important part of the overall war on terrorist financing, affecting both the Middle East peace process and the larger U.S.-led war on terrorism.

However, in Saudi Arabia, whose people and organizations may contribute as much as 60 percent of Hamas’s annual budget, the government still does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization . . .

The EU has now officially added Hamas to its list of terrorist groups. But to date, the EU has designated only a small number of Hamas-affiliated entities.

Britain and only a handful of other European states have joined U.S.-led enforcement actions against Hamas leaders and fronts, although Britain has not yet taken effective action to close the Palestinian Relief and Development Front (Interpal), perhaps the largest Hamas front organization in Europe.

No such action has been taken by other European countries that are home to other Hamas front organizations, such as Austria, France, and Italy.

The EU’s decision to ban Hamas will remain meaningless until such time as the EU and its constituent member states act aggressively to restrict Hamas financial activities to the maximum extent possible.

Last Friday, the EU issued a press release trumpeting its actions "to help prevent the financing of terrorism." Hamas is not mentioned.


Suggestions can be sent to:

European Commission Delegation
2300 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Phone (202) 862-9553
FAX (202) 429-1766

Attn: Anthony Gooch (202-862-9523)

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2004 by Rick
What Could Explain It?


David Wolpe has a compelling essay ("Because They Are Jews") on European hatred of Israel combined with the strange absence of any objections to (much less hatred of) other countries in the region:

Where were the vituperative voices when the Jordanians controlled Jerusalem and turned the Western Wall into a garbage dump? There was no UN resolution about that sacrilege.

Where were they when the Arab countries prevented Jews from entering the old city of Jerusalem?

For that matter, where were those voices when Assad killed thousands of his own people, or when the late King Hussein of Jordan slaughtered thousands of Palestinians? . . .

I have heard calls for the end of this or that government but never for the end of the state. No one said Germany after two world wars should cease being a state. The world did not agitate for the end of Uganda under Amin. Only Israel. Only the state populated by and run by Jews. Remarkable coincidence, is it not?

. . . . It may be happenstance that people who live in countries where Jews were hated for millennia are saying that only Jews should not have a country, or criticize that country exclusively, or ignore atrocities perpetrated by other countries, or have deep understanding of those who are moved to murder Jews.

Rabbi Wolpe includes a quotation from an essay by the Polish critic Konstantyn Jelenski, published in Kultura in Paris in 1968 (and quoted later by Abraham Brumberg in the New York Review of Books):

Poles have never come out against Jews "because they are Jews" -- but because Jews are dirty, greedy, mendacious, because they wear ear-locks, speak jargon, do not want to assimilate; and also because they do assimilate, cease using their jargon, are nattily dressed, and want to be regarded as Poles.

Because they lack culture and because they are overly cultured.

Because they are superstitious, backward and ignorant, and because they are damnably capable, progressive, and ambitious.

Because they have long, hooked noses, and because it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from "pure Poles."

Because they crucified Christ and practice ritual murder and pore over the Talmud, and because they disdain their own religion and are atheists.

Because they look wretched and sickly, and because they are tough and have their own fighting units and are full of chutzpah.

Because they are bankers and capitalists and because they are Communists and agitators.

But in no case because they are Jews.

The incomparable Yael posts part of her email correspondence with a reader who made the mistake of starting with "Israel isn't perfect, by any means" -- which set her off:

Israel not perfect? No, but it's a helluva lot better than most countries on this earth.

Considering that it was largely founded by refugees from Russian pogroms, the Holocaust and persecution in Arab countries, that most everyone arrived speaking a foreign language and with only the clothes on their backs, that it's been under constant attack from Arab terrorists since even before it became a country, and hasn't had a moment's peace, I'd say they're doing extremely well.

They've accommodated immigrants from 100 countries on five continents, over a million just since 1990, and 23,000 last year. And for crying out loud, in terms of democracy, they just appointed a Christian Arab woman to their supreme court! They house a mosque in the Knesset building for the Arab Muslims who are elected representatives.

Israel has more political parties, museums and newspapers per capita than any other country in the world, produces more scientific papers and files more patents (both per capita) than any country in the world, has The Highest Average Living Standard in the Middle East, and a per capita income which exceeds that of the UK.

Their economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined (perhaps because over 95% of the population is literate, 24% of the workforce has university degrees and 12% hold advanced degrees). . . . And they're the only country to have come out of the 20th century with more trees than it began with. . . .

Maybe it's not perfect, but you have to admit, it's miraculous. If it survives, it's only going to get better.

Because they are Jews.

Posted Monday, June 14, 2004 by Rick
Peace Plans.


Bret Stephens, editor of The Jerusalem Post, responds to Richard Ben Cramer’s assertion that "any Jew who's not an Israeli, and not on psychotropic drugs, could solve this Peace-for-Israel thing in about ten minutes of focused thought."

This is a common theme among the dull-minded: that the solution to all our strife is so blazingly evident that only knaves or fools could fail to grasp it. . . .

But Israel's conflict with the Palestinians is not so simple, and one needs to be a simpleton to believe that it is, or that malice or stupidity or greed prevent Israelis from grasping what they so obviously yearn for, or that a conflict that did not begin with the occupation can be ended by ending the occupation.

Hillel Halkin has an important article in Commentary on Sharon's disengagement plan: "Does Sharon Have a Plan?"


Halkin concludes that a unilateral partitioning of Palestine along the lines of the security fence (which he says is Sharon’s ultimate plan) is the best option:

Israel cannot swallow the Palestinians. It cannot drive them out. It cannot arrive at a peaceful settlement with them. All it can do is disengage itself from them.

It is not an ideal solution. A better one would have been a negotiated partition in which Israelis and Palestinians would live in two separate but friendly states within the geographical framework of one, mutually accessible country.

But such an arrangement, if it was ever feasible, is so no longer. Four years of Palestinian terrorism, and the lawlessness of a Palestinian society that has come to be dominated by fanatically Israel-hating gunmen and religious groups, make it evident that a Palestinian state friendly to Israel is an impossibility in our time.

And since Israelis have no particular interest in an unfriendly Palestinian state, it is enough for them to concentrate on being a Jewish state with militarily and demographically defensible borders while letting the Palestinians fend for themselves.

Isabel Kershner has an long article in The Jerusalem Report on "Palestinian Affairs: Death of an Intifada."


She concentrates on Tul Karm, where numerous mass murderers emanated during 2002 (including the one who carried out the Park Hotel massacre in Netanya in March 2002, and the one who in November 2002 killed five Israelis at Kibbutz Metzer, including a mother and her two boys, aged four and five):

Not long ago Aweideh and his comrades from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- the armed cells, affiliated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, that sprung up with the intifada -- would have been swaggering through the streets of this West Bank market town, inspiring admiration in some residents, terrorizing others and plotting what they call "military operations" against nearby Jewish settlements or Israeli cities that lie over the Green Line, the pre-1967 border that skirts Tul Karm to the west.

But the armed men are not walking around here anymore, certainly not in broad daylight. The few of them left after the army’s frequent raids, targeted killings and arrests are said to be feeling hunted and alone. And while predictions of calm times ahead may be premature, many here are already declaring Tul Karm’s intifada over. . . .

Residents of Tul Karm are no longer willing to provide refuge for the armed men in their houses, local sources say, for fear of ending up on the army’s demolition list. . . .

Aweideh attributes the difficulty in launching attacks to the recently constructed security barrier that now seals Tul Karm off from Israel, as well as the strict checkpoint regime that controls movement between the city and the rest of the West Bank and "the pressure put on us by the PA." He says that the people he deals with in Ramallah "are scared for Arafat" following Prime Minister Sharon’s veiled threats on the Palestinian leader’s life.

The Halkin and Kershner articles are worth reading in their entirety.

Posted Thursday, June 10, 2004 by Rick
Ronald W. Reagan.


Dick Cheney gave a moving and eloquent eulogy last night at the State Funeral for Ronald Reagan.

For decades, America had waged a Cold War, and few believed it could possibly end in our own lifetimes. The President was one of those few.

And it was the vision and will of Ronald Reagan that gave hope to the oppressed, shamed the oppressors, and ended an evil empire. More than any other influence, the Cold War was ended by the perseverance and courage of one man who answered falsehood with truth, and overcame evil with good.

Ronald Reagan was more than an historic figure. He was a providential man, who came along just when our nation and the world most needed him. And believing as he did that there is a plan at work in each life, he accepted not only the great duties that came to him, but also the great trials that came near the end.

When he learned of his illness, his first thoughts were of Nancy. And who else but Ronald Reagan could face his own decline and death with a final message of hope to his country, telling us that for America there is always a bright dawn ahead.

Fellow Americans, here lies a graceful and a gallant man.

Jason Maoz, senior editor of The Jewish Press, has a fascinating article entitled "Ronald Reagan and the Jews."

If Reagan’s landslide victory over Carter was greeted by a less than enthusiastic response from American Jewry -- then even more than now one of the Democratic party’s most loyal constituencies -- the reaction was entirely different in Israel, where there were real fears of what another four years of a Carter administration would bring.

Maoz covers Reagan’s role in scrapping Jimmy Carter’s defeatist foreign policy, his appointment of persons such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick and George Shultz in his administration, his strategic cooperation with Israel, and his fixation on the release of Soviet Jewry.


He also has some perceptive remarks about the inevitability of disagreement between Israel and even the friendliest of U.S. presidents. Worth reading in its entirety.


Natan Sharansky, convicted in the Soviet Union in 1978 and sentenced to 13 years in the Siberian gulag, now a minister in the government of Israel, interviewed about Ronald Reagan:

It is hard to imagine two people more different in life experiences than Natan Sharansky and Ronald Reagan. Did you feel those differences on a human level?

We both saw the world similarly. That is what matters. Not the experiences themselves but what is learned from them.

People used to say that Reagan's jokes exposed him as a simpleton. To me they revealed his strengths and convictions. He took great joy in telling me the old joke about the time Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev and his deputy Alexei Kosygin discussed what would happen to the USSR if it really did conform to the Helsinki Accords and adopted a truly open emigration policy.

"You and I would be the only two citizens left in the USSR," Brezhnev said. "Speak for yourself," answered Kosygin.

Ronald Reagan understood the power of this joke. He stood up to evil. He had the courage to fight evil and the wisdom to defeat it.

Posted Tuesday, June 08, 2004 by Rick
The Great American Yiddish Novelist.


Jonathan Rosen, formerly the culture editor of the Forward and author of "The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds," has an extraordinary essay in The New Yorker on Isaac Bashevis Singer ("American Master: How I.B. Singer Translated Himself into American Literature").


Rosen writes of biographer Janet Hadda's suggestion that, in "The Family Moskat," Singer portrayed his Polish Jews, whether assimilated or pious, as spiritually exhausted, and he illustrates the point with an excerpt from the book -- set amidst the virulent anti-Semitism unleashed after the devastations of World War I, when "neither assimilation nor a return to former piety was possible."

Singer captures this sense of futility perfectly in "The Family Moskat." When, during the First World War, an order of expulsion comes to the shtetl where the hero grew up, the pious rabbi finds himself fleeing next to the town atheist:

Reb Dan’s wagon drew up alongside the cart on which Jekuthiel the watchmaker sat, the tools of his trade piled around him. He looked at the rabbi and smiled sadly. "Nu, rabbi?" he said.

It was clear that what he meant was: Where is your Lord of the Universe now? Where are His miracles? Where is your faith in Torah and prayer?

"Nu, Jekuthiel," the rabbi answered. What he was saying was: Where are your worldly remedies? Where is your trust in the gentiles? What have you accomplished by aping Esau?

Rosen describes the heroes of Singer’s novels as "unbound Jews" whose freedom comes with remorse for what they have achieved in liberation:

Most of his characters, despite Orthodox childhoods, began their rebellion against God and Judaism before the Second World War, in the nineteen-teens and twenties, when many Polish Jews were stepping out of traditional Jewish culture for the first time, as Singer himself had. The Holocaust brought the curtain down on their unresolved rebellion, and left them quarrelling with murdered parents and a culture that had been annihilated, punishing themselves for having wished to be rid of what was now gone.

Rosen takes Singer and his characters through contemporary America, and places Singer in the mainstream of American literary tradition, from Hawthorne on:

The greatest American novel of the nineteenth century, after all, tells the story of a whaling ship -- a whole civilization, really -- that sinks; everyone dies except one solitary survivor with a Biblical name, who narrates the story.

Or consider the novels of Hemingway, steeped in a postwar bleakness so deep that distraction alone holds despair at bay -- a condition with which Singer’s survivors, a truly lost generation, are intimately acquainted.

These lost souls would not be out of place in the novels of Faulkner, where the past is so tormenting that, as one character says, it’s not even past.

Rosen ends his essay with a moving reference to Singer’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which itself is worth reading again with the introduction Rosen’s essay provides.


The Library of America is currently in a year-long celebration of Singer and his work.

Posted Monday, June 07, 2004 by Rick
Well, No One is Right 100% of the Time.


Abner D. Goldstine, good friend, strong supporter of Israel, all-around mensch -- and generally right about 99% of the time -- has a letter in the The Jewish Journal. He asserts a recent article in the Journal -- which Jewish Current Issues frankly found compelling -- "reflected some skewed reasoning:"

The May 21 issue of The Jewish Journal carried an opinion piece by Rick Richman titled "Kerry’s Flip-Flops on Israel Stir Concern." . . . .

Here are the facts. Throughout his 19 years in the Senate, John Kerry’s pro-Israel voting record has been second to none. Kerry has consistently supported the foreign aid critical to Israel and fought the attempt by Bush the elder in the early 1990s to slash the loan guarantees program that would have restricted aid to Israel.

Kerry endorses Israel’s need to maintain military superiority and supports Israel’s action to defend the safety and security of its citizens, including its recent actions taken against leaders of Hamas and other terrorist groups. Kerry has expressed unequivocal support for Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza. Beyond defense and security, Kerry has expressed his intent to work to bolster the economy of Israel, so key to Israel’s future strength. . . .

We were intrigued by Abner’s suggestion that Kerry’s pro-Israel record is "second to none," so we looked it up.


The Jewish Virtual Library lists Kerry’s vote on 60 Senate bills, resolutions and other matters: "Legislative Record of Senator John Kerry on Issues of Concern to the Pro-Israel Community."


We disregarded the 17 measures that passed with 90 or more votes (out of a possible 100), on grounds that these were not exactly profile-in-courage moments.


(That includes Kerry’s "fight" for loan guarantees to Israel, which consisted of his joining 98 other senators in 1992 in voting for Sen. Lautenberg's resolution of support).


Then we discounted the 18 measures that garnered between 82 and 89 votes. You don’t get a "second to none" rating by simply hanging around the 80+% crowd.


We decided the best indicator of Kerry’s support would be the instances where the pro-Israel position got 60 votes or less -- by definition the most controversial situations, the ones where Kerry’s vote mattered most.


There were 10 of those votes, and Kerry’s record there was . . . envelope please . . . six votes in favor of the pro-Israel position, and four votes against. So in the chips-are-down category, Kerry is a 60-40 guy.


With respect to Hamas, Kerry failed to join the 55 senators who signed the 1993 Grassley/Lautenberg letter demanding that the State Department include Hamas in the annual report on terrorism.


And on the killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin, Kerry exasperated even the Forward -- the paper that in February, two weeks before the New York primary, had reported to the Jewish community Kerry’s assertion that a "staff mistake" was the reason he had named Jimmy Carter as his prospective Middle East envoy. The Forward reported on March 30, 2004 that:

John Kerry’s campaign last week used the excuse that the senator was on vacation in Idaho to dodge repeated requests from the Forward for a statement from him on Israel’s assassination of Hamas head Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. It is still dodging the matter.

Perhaps Abner relied on an unreliable source, such as the horse’s mouth. In mid-April, campaigning in Florida, Kerry assured his audience, according to the Washington Post, that his record on Israel was second to none:

"For 20 years, Joe [Lieberman] will tell you, I have a 100 percent record -- not a 99, a 100 percent record -- of sustaining the special relationship, the friendship that we have with Israel."

His actual record is more nuanced.

Posted Wednesday, June 02, 2004 by Rick
Holocaust 2004.


Leon Wieseltier, writing in this week’s New Republic, argues we should connect the Holocaust to current events, rather than argue for its uniqueness:

If no adversity can be likened to the Jewish adversity of the 1930s and 1940s, then all the instruction about the moral centrality of the Holocaust will have the perverse effect of stripping the Holocaust of its moral centrality, since it will no longer serve as a reference point in the analysis of contemporary evil.

He says the view that "Omarska was not Auschwitz was partly responsible for the idleness of the Clinton administration during most of the Bosnian genocide."


So when we see this headline -- "Stories of Refugees From Sudan's Darfur Echo Horrors of Holocaust" -- we should not calculate differences but respond accordingly, especially after reading this:

[M]ore than 2 million people have been affected by the conflict; more than one million people have been internally displaced; more than 100,000 people are now living on the Sudanese-Chad border; and more than 100,000 people will die of disease and starvation this year, excluding deaths from the conflict.

And this:

[Darfur involves] a deliberate effort [by the Government of Sudan] to eliminate three African tribes in Darfur so Arabs can take their land. The Genocide Convention defines such behavior as genocide, and it obliges nations to act to stop it.

That is why nobody in the West wants to talk about Darfur -- because of a fear that focusing on the horror will lead to a deployment in Sudan. . . .

[George W. Bush] sent aides to speak forcefully at the U.N. and raised the matter with Sudan's leaders. That's more than the Europeans or the U.N. has done. Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac? Where are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn't John Kerry speaking out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent?

[W]e have repeatedly failed to stand up to genocide, whether of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians or Rwandans. Now we're letting it happen again.

Here are two examples from the UN Fact-Finding Commission’s April 25, 2004 Report:

The original population of Kailek was some 5,000 persons. As the campaign to cleanse the entire Kass-Shattaya-Kailek triangle of its mainly Fur population progressed, villagers sought towards Kailek after other locations were destroyed by [Government of Sudan] and Jenjaweed [Arab militia] forces, at times backed by [Government of Sudan] aerial bombardment . . .

The 23 Fur villages in the Shattaya Administrative Unit have been completely depopulated, looted and burnt to the ground . . . Meanwhile, dotted alongside these charred locations are unharmed, populated and functioning ‘Arab’ settlements.

. . . Today, Kailek is completely destroyed with virtually no complete buildings left in the entire town area. . . . The last village before Shattaya is Abruminoa which . . . housed some 6,000 people . . . The village is now completely obliterated . . .

The examples in the report go on.


New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof gives George W. Bush credit for diplomacy that has just ended a 20-year civil war between Sudan's north and south -- "hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of refugees will return home" -- although he seems to think it springs from special interests:

The Sudan has been a very important issue for evangelical voters, because most of the repression historically involved northern Muslims repressing southern Christians, even enslaving them.

So the Christian right became very active in helping Sudanese Christians, and in pressing for justice in the north/south Sudan civil war. That’s why President Bush got involved, but there’s no question that he did.

Shouldn’t that "but" be "and"?


The Jewish right and left should become very active in helping the people of Darfar in Western Sudan. The Holocaust makes us sensitive to genocide, but -- or should that be "and"? -- there’s no question we should get involved. It is happening again and we should stand with them.


The way to help is to call or email Kofi Annan, the EU, and George Bush. Emma Talal El Makdessi and William Shawcross argue in "Darfur`s Agony is the World`s Shame" that the EU and the UN are critical to stopping Sudan:

Europe needs to . . . acknowledge the severity of the situation in Darfur and use its weight in the UN Security Council. That weight is considerable: In addition to the permanent members -- France and the UK -- EU member states Germany and Spain are also currently on the Security Council, as is Romania, an EU applicant.

They need to push for an emergency session of the Security Council to take up the Darfur issue . . . . The Security Council should . . . warn Khartoum of international military intervention if it does not alter its course. Only such an ultimatum will demonstrate that the international community means it when it says "never again" -- that we are not going to stand by as another mass slaughter of innocents unfolds before our eyes.

Posted Monday, May 31, 2004 by Rick
Thank You for Sharing; Another Staff Mistake.


David Postman, chief political reporter for The Seattle Times, lists the "20 Things Sen. Kerry Taught Us" during his visit last week to Seattle:

15. Kerry must have gone to a really good grade school. In his Wednesday speech he said:

"Well, let me share a scientific fact with this president that most children in school learn very quickly. God only gave the United States 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. The Middle East has 65 percent, Saudi Arabia alone has 46 percent. We import 60 percent of our fuel oil from other countries and growing."

The public schools I attended didn't offer Introduction to Comparative Worldwide Distribution of Petroleum Reserves until middle school.

Well, Bush probably wouldn’t have learned this in Middle School, or at Yale, or even at Harvard Business School, because, you know, he eschews complexity.


Meanwhile, in another report on Kerry’s trip to Seattle, we learn that:

On Thursday, at the conclusion of his speech in Seattle, Kerry said, "We do not have to live in fear or stand alone. We don't have to be a lonely watchman on the walls of freedom."

In a speech that his staff had billed as a "major" policy address, but which broke no new ground and read like Kerry's stump speech, the watchman line is the most evocative and stands out.

But it turns out that Kerry -- or his speechwriters -- lifted it from a speech President John F. Kennedy was to give on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, at the Trade Mart in Dallas -- on the day Kennedy was shot and killed on his way to the event. . . .

"He'll probably blame it on his speechwriters, the way he blames them for everything else," says a former staffer for Wesley Clark.

Another day, another staff mistake.

Posted Sunday, May 30, 2004 by Rick
Memorial Day.


George W. Bush’s eloquent remarks at the World War II Memorial dedication are worth reading in their entirety -- as an act of memory and appreciation:

In the history books, the Second World War can appear as a series of crises and conflicts, following an inevitable course -- from Pearl Harbor to the Coast of Normandy to the deck of the Missouri. Yet, on the day the war began, and on many hard days that followed, the outcome was far from certain.

There was a time, in the years before the war, when many earnest and educated people believed that democracy was finished. Men who considered themselves learned and civilized came to believe that free institutions must give way to the severe doctrines and stern discipline of a regimented society.

Ideas first whispered in the secret councils of a remote empire, or shouted in the beer halls of Munich, became mass movements. And those movements became armies. And those armies moved mercilessly forward -- until the world saw Hitler strutting in Paris, and U.S. Navy ships burning in their own port.

* * *

These were the modest sons of a peaceful country, and millions of us are very proud to call them Dad. They gave the best years of their lives to the greatest mission their country ever accepted. They faced the most extreme danger, which took some and spared others, for reasons only known to God. . . .

On this Memorial Day weekend, the graves will be visited, and decorated with flowers and flags. Men whose step has slowed are thinking of boys they knew when they were boys together. And women who watched the train leave, and the years pass, can still see the handsome face of their young sweetheart. America will not forget them, either.

At this place, at this Memorial, we acknowledge a debt of long-standing to an entire generation of Americans: those who died; those who fought and worked and grieved and went on. They saved our country, and thereby saved the liberty of mankind.

Fortunately, the Greatest Generation did not insist on an exit strategy as a condition of staying the course.

Posted Friday, May 28, 2004 by Rick
The Nuanced Winston Churchill.


Josh Levin, writing in Slate, summarizes stories in the current issues of Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly:

Newsweek says that while President Bush consciously draws parallels to the WWII leaders -- he sits at FDR's old desk and has a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office -- the comparisons aren't so apt: "Bush eschews complexity; FDR and Churchill embraced it .. . .”

The [Atlantic Monthly] cover story's criticisms of Tony Blair -- he's not much of an intellectual, he's too much of a moralist, he misled his country on the case for war -- sound like the boilerplate arguments against the prime minister's Iraq war partner, George W. Bush.

What will we learn next -- that Blair eschews complexity?


If one is in the midst of a war, it is instructive to consult Volume II of Churchill’s History of the Second Word War: "Their Finest Hour." After Volume I's chronicle of years of appeasement and ignoring of threats, Volume II picks up with the actual war that resulted.


Here is a condensation of the first two paragraphs:

Now at last the slowly-gathered, long-pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us. Four or five millions of men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept.

Within a week the front in France, behind which we had been accustomed to dwell through the hard years of the former war and the opening phase of this, was to be irretrievably broken. Within three weeks the long-famed French Army was to collapse in rout and ruin, and our only British Army was to be hurled into the sea with all its equipment lost.

Within six weeks we were to find ourselves alone, almost disarmed, with triumphant Germany and Italy at our throats, with the whole of Europe open to Hitler’s power, and Japan glowering on the other side of the globe.

It was amid these facts and looming prospects that I entered upon my duties as Prime Minister . . . .

Five years later almost to a day it was possible to take a more favorable view of our circumstances. Italy was conquered and Mussolini slain. The mighty German Army had surrendered unconditionally. Hitler had committed suicide. . . . France was liberated, rallied, and revived. Hand in hand with our Allies . . . we advanced to the swift annihilation of Japanese resistance.

The contrast was certainly remarkable. The road across these five years was long, hard and perilous. Those who perished upon it did not give their lives in vain. Those who marched forward to the end will always be proud to have trodden it with honor.

Five years. And to think he did it all without any nuance.

Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2004 by Rick
History Without End.


From Ron Rosenbaum's Introduction to "Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism" -- discussing the reasons for anti-Semitism:

[P]erhaps -- and this might sound at first like a radical suggestion -- it doesn’t matter anymore.

The reasons, like the origins, no longer matter. At this point anti-Semitism has become so embedded in history . . . that it will always be there, a template for whatever hurts need to find an easy answer, a simple-minded balm: the Jews are responsible.

The explanation of renewed anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism . . . . It has become its own origin. . . .

One important thing [Leon Wieseltier] said is that those who consider that anti-Semitism is a problem only for Jews ought to reconsider:

"If anti-Semitism is to vanish from the earth it will be from the transformation of non-Jewish rather than Jewish [peoples] . . . . In this sense it is not a Jewish problem at all . . . it is a prejudice whose object is not its cause . . . if you wish to study racism, study whites, not blacks."

This really is an essential book. It includes Fianna Nirenstein’s remarkable essay, "How I Became an ‘Unconscious Fascist’" -- which itself is worth having the book for.


And Cynthia Ozick’s Afterword is an essay that burns with -- in Rosenbaum’s words -- the "incandescent clarity of a biblical prophet."

Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2004 by Rick
Shavuot.


Stewart Weiss, director of the Ohel Ari-Jewish Outreach Center in Ra'anana, Israel, writes on the meaning of Shavuot, which begins at sunset this evening:

Shavuot is the Jewish holiday that "gets no respect." Though it commemorates the cataclysmic event when God Himself descended upon Mt. Sinai to personally deliver the Ten Commandments, it receives little of the fanfare accompanying the other festivals.

It is short in duration; just one day (in Israel), as opposed to Pesach and Sukkot, which take up an entire week; it has no visible symbols or objects to latch on to, such as the matzah, menorah or shofar. . . .

And yet for all the ambiguity and anonymity of Shavuot, I suggest it is the centerpiece of the Jewish year and critical to the notion of Jewish nationhood -- then and now.

The rest of the article is here.

Posted Friday, May 21, 2004 by Rick
A Friday Miscellaney


Yael has been blogging up a storm this week at Boker Tov, Boulder. Don't miss it.


James Lileks, on listening to a radio talk show discussing Fritz Holling's article attributing the liberation of Iraq to "Bush's policy to secure Israel:"

What caused the war with Iraq? Simple! Charles Krauthammer used his super-powerful Jew Beams to cloud the minds of hapless pliable goyim. Then Bush realized he could win reelection by getting that overwhelming number of Jewish voters.

I know this sounds naive, but I still expect better from Senators. Better writing, better thinking. But I am coming to believe that the Senate is one of the biggest dunce-clubs around.

Here come the anti-Semitic calls. First one from a Republican who’s agreeing with a Democrat for the first time in his life! We were attacked in Somalia, says the first caller, because of our relationship to Israel. And the Bali bombing was because Australia supports Israel.

Man, did 9/11 overturn a large rock.

George Bush, in his commencement address at LSU today:

Let me leave you with one more lesson.

Wherever life takes us, and whatever challenges we meet, each one of us has much to be grateful for.

And the proper measure of response of a grateful heart is service. There's no such thing as a self-made man or woman. Everyone has had a little help along the way.

It is a sign of maturity to remember our debts, and a sign of grace to pass the favor along in generosity to others. There's a wise saying: We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.

Shabbat Shalom.

Posted Thursday, May 20, 2004 by Rick
Does Anyone Know of a New York Restaurant Suitable for a Meeting of Several Foreign Leaders and Ordinary Congresspeople?


Rabbi Michael Lerner has sent out several emails asking members of the "Tikkun Community" to call the media and “reverse the impact that AIPAC is having at this very moment.” Here is a portion of his analysis:

AIPAC Brings the Reactionaries and the Well-Intentioned Confused in the Jewish World Together.

According to wire service reports, the AIPAC gathering in DC often resembled a Republican Party stump rally -- long before Bush even arrived, whenever his name was mentioned there were roaring standing ovations in support of his foreign policy in general and his support for Sharon in particular. . . .

So how do people who are so out of step with the rest of the Jewish people and the American people, get to be the focus of so much power that ordinary Congresspeople told us, when we met with them in April, that they feared even talking about criticisms of America's support for Sharon lest AIPAC take them on and defeat them?

I hope Rabbi Lerner will provide a list of the "ordinary Congresspeople" who fear "even talking" about criticisms of America’s support for Sharon.


Since he says he met with them, he must know who they are.


Here is AIPAC’s description of what appealed to both reactionaries and well-intentioned confused people:

Bush, speaking to a crowd of about 4,000 Tuesday at AIPAC's annual Policy Conference, expressed strong support for the U.S.-Israel relationship and reaffirmed Israel's right to self-defense.

"Our nation is stronger and safer because we have a true and dependable ally in Israel… A free, prosperous and secure Israel is in this nation's national interest," Bush proclaimed.

He continued: "The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state. Israel is a democracy and a friend, and has every right to defend itself from terror."

Bush also thanked AIPAC members for their Israel advocacy work: "In a dangerous new century, your work is more vital than ever. I thank you for doing your part in the cause of freedom."

During his remarks, President Bush also called on the Palestinians to fight terrorism before they could establish a state, pushed for democracy throughout the Arab world and vowed to build a peaceful and free Iraq. Read the full text of the President's remarks.

The Jewish Press has an interesting report on Bush’s appearance, including comments of various people in the audience.


AIPAC reports that its membership has grown since September 2000 over 50 percent, to over 85,000 across the country. Alot of reactionaries and well-intentioned confused people.


Certain foreign leaders and ordinary Congresspeople may want a different president, but why would someone concerned about Israel? Even John Kerry supports the president on this one (or does he?).

Posted Tuesday, May 18, 2004 by Rick
George W. Bush at AIPAC


George W. Bush spoke this morning at AIPAC, in a speech continually interrupted by applause:

Our nation, and the nation of Israel, have much in common.

We're both relatively young nations, born of struggle and sacrifice.

We're both founded by immigrants escaping religious persecution in other lands.

We have both built vibrant democracies, built on the rule of law and market economies.

And we're both countries founded on certain basic beliefs: that God watches over the affairs of men, and values every life.

These ties have made us natural allies, and these ties will never be broken.

Read the whole thing.

Posted Monday, May 17, 2004 by Rick
Halacha and Home


Danny Gordis, who moved to Israel from America six years ago, has a new "Dispatch from Israel," about the national debate over withdrawal from Gaza and sending in soldiers to search for the remains of soldiers killed there:

[S]uddenly, this week, experts in halakhah (Jewish law) were sought for one radio talk show after another. . . .

How does one balance the command not to risk life for anything except to save life, with the command to do whatever we possibly can to make sure that every Jew gets a Jewish burial? . . .

Can we put soldiers in harm's way so that these very soldiers, and all their friends, will know that if, Heaven forbid, something like this happens to them, we'll get them home?

The front page of HaAretz today has a headline that reads "Edron's Sister Hopes His Death will Lead to Withdrawal; Aviad's Father -- Gaza is Ours." Pretty much sums it up. Even the bereaved families can't agree on what should emerge from all this.

And the rest of the country?

Even those who want to get out, and get out now, have no idea how to answer the question everyone's thinking about -- "If we leave, and they turn all of Gaza into a Hamas Disneyland, and they start firing Kassam rockets at Ashkelon and Ashdod, aren't we just going to have to go back in and take it over? And won't that be more dangerous?"

It's enough to make you dizzy, or worse, to make you just give it all up. But that doesn’t happen here. Few people give up here, because it's home.

When you watch people listening to the radio this week with an intensity that I've seen nowhere else, you know you're home.

When you see the vacant faces of people as they listen, and ask the person next to them with horror, "what do you mean there are no bodies," as if it had been their own child, you know you're home.

You're home because you know that this is the only place where an entire country could be consumed with the question of how Jews should be buried.

As with virtually all of Gordis' writing, worth reading in its entirety.

Posted Friday, May 14, 2004 by Rick
One Conflict on Many Fronts


Saul Singer on "The Two-Conflict Delusion:"

Events in Israel and Iraq are linked not just because the terrorists in each place compete to raise the current global terrorist threshold.

They are linked because the hooded men who displayed the head of an Israeli soldier and those who decapitated Nick Berg are part of the same global jihad. One wants an Islamic dictatorship in Iraq, the other the same thing but in place of Israel.

This should go without saying, yet there is still a strong impulse to pretend that there are two separate conflicts. When I suggested this to a visiting leader of a major American Jewish organization, he insisted that the conflicts are separate . . . .

Worth reading to find out why the American Jewish leader had that view, and Singer’s response.

Posted Wednesday, May 12, 2004 by Rick
Do Summers Produce Major Explosions? Or Do Certain Other Elements?


Edward R. F. Sheehan, former U.S. diplomat in the Middle East and Fellow of Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, was in Ramallah in March and spoke to "one of the PA officials close to Arafat."

This well-known Palestinian went on to predict that the summer of 2004 will produce a major explosion in both Palestine and Iraq, with the possible support of Syria and Iran.

"I don't say that it will be directly coordinated, but all these elements will work to defeat Bush in the elections." We might, he said, see something resembling what happened in Somalia happen in Iraq.

What happened in Somalia was that the United States ran away. But there was a different president in office then, and the American street had not yet been aroused.


Nice to know, though, from the "well-known" (and presumably well-informed) Palestinian, that the goal is to effect the coming election.


Wonder if he was ever in a New York restaurant with John Kerry.

Posted Tuesday, May 11, 2004 by Rick
Daniel Pearl, Tali Hatuel, Nick Berg, and six Israeli soldiers today -- murdered and body parts held for ransom.


From a thread regarding the soldiers at LGF today -- a series of comments by WriterMom and Merav, writing from Israel, each of whose brother-in-law was murdered by savages. (The comments, made over the course of the day, have been edited here):

Writer Mom:

I am still haunted by the images of Tali Hatuel and her children -- I can literally hear her husband in my head saying "How can I wake up in the morning?"

Then -- they shoot at the mourners. Then they kill more of our soldiers and like beasts, hold up and squirrel away body parts. There is nothing sacred to them.

I'm sitting here crying now, thinking about my own brother-in-law, who never did anything to anyone, and the way they murdered him -- and my in-laws -- my mother-in-law with a hole ripped through her soul and his kids wondering where their Abba went and watching my husband trying to cope with the unending loss and trying to find some words to say to his wife.

We have this picture of my brother-in-law in our kitchen and I get upset every time I see it. When we light a yartzeit candle, the glow kind of lights up the room and his face at the same time and I get sad all over again.

It's the nightmare that you never wake up from. I still can't believe he's gone.

What is particularly revolting is that these savages know that Jews consider every single part of the human presence on earth to be a holy thing -- a part of the divine. Think of the ZAKA volunteers who comb the ground, and cards for those single fragments. It's not enough to kill us, they have to further torture the families by prolonging a burial, and holding up body pieces, desecrating the dead as prizes.

We are just finishing writing a Sefer Torah in his memory and it will be presented to my father-in-law’s shul in Jerusalem this summer.

Our outrage has to be channeled to tangible things like good deeds, prayer, helping others, giving charity, helping the survivors however we can and remembering the souls of the people we lost. One good deed, one more mitzvah can move mountains.


Merav:

My husband lost his brother too. He was a soldier in the Golani brigade and it was a long time ago. I have seen my mother-in-law, after all these years, lie sobbing on Benny's grave, hugging it as if it was a person. Benny died a week before his wedding was to take place. He was 19.

Today I took a day trip to Jerusalem . . . I rode the bus, nervous the whole time, but we can't live in a plastic bubble.

As I was riding home, the woman sitting next to me, a stranger, was obviously wanting to talk. Finally she asked me if I'd heard The News. I had, and she started crying. She told me her son had just enlisted, and that her neighbor's son was one of the soldiers killed today.

How awful for the families. First, losing a loved one. Secondly, not being able to bury him. Third, knowing his body is being molested by thugs. Fourth, knowing his body will possibly be used to release terrorists, which he died fighting to protect us against.

Amnesty International and the UN may not acknowledge it, but this too is a form of torture.

Last week, with the Hatuel family, and tonight, with the human body parts. This is simply too much. Too merciless. Too inhuman. Too evil.

This has to stop. It has to be stopped. . . . It's been allowed to fester long enough.

UPDATE: Anne has more pictures here.

Posted Monday, May 10, 2004 by Rick
God Bless America.


Ben Stein devotes his latest diary to an "American Salute," reflecting on "[w]hat a lucky life I lead" in America.


His entry for a Friday night reads:

I am at a gathering honoring Holocaust Survivors and a museum they have made in Orlando, Florida.

The Holocaust Survivors are a spectacularly sprightly and lively group, especially the leader of the group, Tess Wisse. She is still beautiful and still full of fight. She gave a brilliant speech, and I followed it with a few jokes and a speech about devotion to one's parents.

When I finished . . . [a] smallish older Jewish man named Eddie came up to me and hugged me. His tears soaked my shirt onto my chest.

"I am a survivor," he said. "My father did not survive. They took him away the night before Yom Kippur.

"He said, 'I will not survive, but you must survive to bring up your son the way I brought up mine.'

"No one has ever brought up the feelings in me he did until I heard you tonight. Thank you for making me think of my father in this way and on this night.'"

And then he hugged me for so long I started to cry, too.


. . . And when I walked out of the auditorium, there was no SS, no Hamas (the Middle East wing of the SS), no NKVD, just glorious, free America. God bless, God bless.

Posted Thursday, May 06, 2004 by Rick
"The Modern 'Hep, Hep, Hep!'"


Cynthia Ozick has an absolutely stunning essay in The New York Observer today (hat tip: DB).

We thought it was finished.

The ovens are long cooled, the anti-vermin gas dissipated into purifying clouds, cleansed air, nightmarish fable.

The cries of the naked, decades gone, are mute; the bullets splitting throats and breasts and skulls, the human waterfall of bodies tipping over into the wooded ravine at Babi Yar, are no more than tedious footnotes on aging paper. The deportation ledgers, with their scrupulous lists of names of the doomed, what are they now? Museum artifacts.

The heaps of eyeglasses and children’s shoes, the hills of human hair, lie disintegrating in their display cases, while only a little distance away the visitors’ cafeteria bustles and buzzes: sandwiches, Cokes, the waiting tour buses.

We thought it was finished. In the middle of the twentieth century, and surely by the end of it, we thought it was finished, genuinely finished, the bloodlust finally slaked. . . . Naïvely, foolishly, stupidly, hopefully, a-historically, we thought that the cannibal hatred, once quenched, would not soon wake again.

It has awakened.

Continue reading here.


Cynthia Ozick’s essay will appear as the "Afterword" in "Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism" (Random House: May 18, 2004), edited and introduced by Ron Rosenbaum.


The anthology includes essays and reportage by Paul Berman, David Brooks, Nat Hentoff, Bernard Lewis, David Mamet, Amos Oz, Frank Rich, Jonathan Rosen, Simon Schama, Judith Shulevitz, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Ruth Wisse and more than 30 others.

Posted Wednesday, May 05, 2004 by Rick
The Flip-Flop That Wasn’t.


The Jewish Press publishes "Kerry, Carter and Israel."


On Israel, he was trying to flip-flop. But did he really?


We link. You decide.

Posted Tuesday, May 04, 2004 by Rick
Kerry Version 3.0


Lawrence Kaplan, in the current issue of The New Republic, has an article entitled "Hebrew Lessons: Kerry’s Jewish Problem," in which Kaplan describes the now-famous meeting with Jewish leaders in New York, just before the March 2 primary:

On February 28, the Kerry team arranged for the candidate to sit down with Jewish leaders in New York. . . . [T]he meeting went well.

Not long after leaving the room, however, the sentiment, at least among some of the attendees, began to shift.

It did so because one of the first things Kerry did at the meeting was to blame his aides for the mention of Carter and Baker as possible envoys in his December speech [to the Council on Foreign Relations] . . .

The names, Kerry said, had been inserted by mistake, and he had even asked that they be removed.

The problem is, in the speech itself, Kerry said, "There are a number of uniquely qualified Americans among whom I would consider appointing, including President Carter. . . . And, I might add, I have had conversations with both President Clinton and President Carter about their willingness to do this."

Today, the campaign offers this explanation: The candidate eventually did speak with Carter -- but only after noticing that a draft of his speech said that he spoke with Carter. [Emphasis added -- JCI]

Well, nice try, Kerry campaign, but unfortunately today’s explanation doesn’t hold up either.


As we’ve covered before -- here, here, and here -- the "staff mistake" explanation was demonstrably wrong.


And so is the explanation that Kerry spoke with Carter "only after noticing that a draft of his speech said that he spoke with Carter."


The speech as prepared for delivery did not say he had spoken with Carter. Kerry ad-libbed that in the version he actually delivered. The transcript also included his subsequent Q&A session, in which he twice mentioned Carter again as his prospective envoy.


If the problem with the draft was he hadn’t spoken with Carter, he could have simply removed the reference to having spoken with Carter.


Instead, he did the opposite: his prepared speech did not refer to speaking with Carter; that detail was added by him extemporaneously -- to reinforce his proposal, by pointing out he had already spoken to Carter about accepting the appointment (which he said he would make "in the first days of a Kerry administration").


It would also be interesting to hear today’s explanation from the campaign of how the "aides" turned Kerry down when he "asked" that Carter’s name be removed from his speech ("Sorry John, the staff is hanging tough; they inserted Carter’s name in there, and they say it’s staying: your request was denied.”).


On a related (imo) note, Daniel Radosh has converted the 200-page folder of military records released by the Kerry campaign into a simple PowerPoint presentation. Worth viewing.


Admittedly, these stories lack the breathless intrigue of secret meetings in undisclosed locations with unnamed foreign leaders without leaving the U.S. ("Tim . . . I mean, you can go to New York and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader.").


But there is a pattern.

Posted Friday, April 30, 2004 by Rick
The End of Science?


Freeman J. Dyson reviews Brian Greene’s "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality" (Knopf 2004) and recounts a fascinating debate they had in Davos, presenting alternative views of the future of science:

Three years ago, in January 2001, I was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Brian Greene was also invited, and we were asked to hold a public debate on the question "When will we know it all?" In other words, when will the last big problems of science be solved?

. . . [His position was that] Within a few years or decades, we will discover the fundamental laws of nature. The fundamental laws will be a finite set of equations, like Maxwell's equations of electrodynamics or Einstein's equations of gravitation. Everything else will then follow from these equations.

Once we have the fundamental equations, we are done. There will be no fundamental problems left. When we know the fundamental equations of physics, everything else, chemistry, biology, neurology, psychology, and so on, can be reduced to physics and explained by using the equations. . . .

Greene said his confidence in our ability to find the fundamental laws is based on the marvelous fact that the laws of nature are simple and beautiful. . . . This happened over and over again, first with Newton's laws of motion and gravitation, then with Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, then with Einstein's equations of special and general relativity, then with Schrödinger's and Dirac's equations of quantum mechanics. Now with string theory the game is almost over. . . .

I began my reply by saying that nobody denies . . . the truth of Einstein's triumphant words: "The creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed."

. . . But the reduction of other sciences to physics does not work. Chemistry has its own concepts, not reducible to physics. Biology and neurology have their own concepts not reducible to physics or to chemistry. The way to understand a living cell or a living brain is not to consider it as a collection of atoms. . . .

Science has three advancing frontiers that will always remain open. There is the mathematical frontier, which will always remain open thanks to Gödel. There is the complexity frontier, which will always remain open because we are investigating objects of ever-increasing complexity, molecules, cells, animals, brains, human beings, societies. And there is the geographical frontier, which will always remain open because our unexplored universe is expanding in space and time.

My hope and my belief is that there will never come a time when we shall say, "We are done."

May science, like history, continue -- with the knowledge that neither science nor history is the complete story.


And if Einstein is correct that "pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed," is that not an argument for the existence of God (one of the other realities grasped by the ancients)?


Shabbat Shalom.