Monthly Archives: July 2003

July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Meanwhile, on the intellectual front. . .

The struggle for Israel’s survival, and for our own security, in the face of Islamofascism proceeds, as all wars do, on many fronts. One front is the war of ideas. It was with this in mind that the administration nominated Daniel Pipes, renowned scholar of Islam and the Arab world, to the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace. Pipes, of course, is the arch-enemy of Arab-American »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

An ugly idea whose time has come

That’s how Hillel Halkin describes “the fence” in this piece for the Jerusalem Post. He finds the idea of the fence extremely unappealing, but the logic of starting to build it compelling. As Halkin sees it, either Israelis want to live together with Palestinians or they don’t. If they do, starting to build the fence is a good idea because a fence would be quite harmful to Palestinian interests and »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Tilting back towards the Israelis

The Jerusalem Post reports on President Bush’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. According to the report, Bush toned down the administration’s criticism of Israel for building a securty fence designed to keep Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating Israeli towns. Previously, Bush had described the fence as a “problem.” This time, he urged Israel to be mindful of the consequences of its actions, but did not directly criticize the construction »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Is Howard Dean electable?

The Weekly Standard’s Christopher Caldwell raises the increasingly relevant question of whether Howard Dean is electable. Caldwell concludes that Dean is and, indeed, that “there is no concrete political reason why Dean should be less electable than any of his rivals.” I agree with Caldwell on the first point. Presidential elections are always mostly about the incumbent president, and this is especially when that incumbent is his party’s nominee. This »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Playing (or being played by) the Saudis

William Kristol on how we may be “turning the corner” in Iraq and why we are displaying “stupidity” with respect to Saudi Arabia. For Kristol, the stupidity consists of the Bush administration’s decision to redact 28 pages of material regarding Saudi Arabia from the congressional report on 9/11. Kristol argues that there is no excuse for averting our eyes from the pre-9/11 unwillingness of the Saudis to cooperate on matters »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

The third way

Back in the mid 1990s, after people got tired of debating whether history had ended, there was considerable discussion about “third way” politics — i.e. new policies that eschewed the traditional big government dogma of the left and the anti-big government dogma of conservatives. In these discussions, it was always socialist or liberal parties that were going to show us the third way. Indeed, some suggested that Tony Blair and »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

George Will

had the best line during the hey-day of the “end of history” debate. “History hasn’t ended,” Will intoned, “it has just moved east.” »
July 29, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

The Grand Illusion

Charles Krauthammer on the global re-deployment of America’s armed forces. Krauthammer describes our new strategy as “Empire Lite,” in other words, “less plodding, less heavy, less static, less fixed.” Kruathammer sees the shift as the result of 9/11. Fair enough. But let’s not overlook the fact that we now have a very serious, very intelligent group of people setting our defense policy. In a throw-away line, Krauthammer attributes our failure »
July 28, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

As if the comparison to FDR wasn’t bad enough,

Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute attack the Bush administration’s domestic spending policies, claiming that “Bush spends like Carter and panders like Clinton.” Although this is surely an exaggeration, there can be little doubt that Bush has been more liberal than conservative when it comes to fiscal policy, and that this phenomenon cannot fully be explained by citing the war on terrorism. The Cato Institute is »
July 28, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Tilting towards the Palestinians

Last week, the Bush administration took the Palestinian side in a dispute over Israel’s decision to build a fence to prevent terrorist attacks. It seems unconscionable that our government would second-guess a purely defensive measure undertaken by Israel to save the lives of its citizens (the fact that the fence is the Labor Party’s idea, not necessarily Sharon’s, strikes me as irrelevant). Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post has the »
July 28, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Lying About Hitler

In his absence, the Trunk asked me to re-post a series of comments he did, back when we were just starting out, on one of the famous libel trials of modern times, Irving v. Penguin Books, and Richard Evans’ account of the trial, in which he was an expert witness. Evans’ book is titled Lying About Hitler. The trial, and Evans’ book, shed considerable light on the peculiar phenomenon of »
July 28, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Arnold’s Out

As we predicted last week, Fox News is now reporting that Arnold Schwarzenegger is staying out of the California recall election. The Fox report comes from a “source close to the actor.” »
July 28, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

The invaluable Krugman truth squad

strikes again, courtesy of National Review Online. In this installment, Donald Luskin points out that “there’s no shortage of good economic news nowadays — except in the mind of Pual Krugman, where hopelessness springs eternal.” Krugman claims that “there is very little evidence in the data for a strong recovery ready to break out.” But what about the fact that durable goods orders have just registered the biggest increase since »
July 28, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Don’t Trust the Toronto Star, Either

This piece in the Toronto Star–a straight news item from the paper’s Washington bureau, not an opinion piece–is another example of the anti-American and anti-Bush prejudice of the worldwide press. The article begins: “Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has directly linked the war on Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, signalling another shift in Washington’s defence of a conflict that continues to claim American lives.” Wolfowitz is quoted »
July 28, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Greetings from Spain

I am sincerely humbled by the outstanding job my Power Line colleagues have done in covering the significant developments in the news that have occurred in my absence over the past five days. Our sports editor »
July 28, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Never Trust the Times

Heather MacDonald reviews the flap over the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report on the supposed abuse of persons detained under the Patriot Act following 9/11: “Driven by a precipitate lust to discredit the Bush administration, The New York Times has misread a recent Justice Department report on alleged government abuse of terror suspects. More important, the front-page smear job set off a chain reaction of imitation news articles across the »
July 27, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Just Another Friendly Leftist

I love Reuters’ caption for this picture: “One-year-old Eliza St. Pierre of Quebec sleeps in a stroller during a friendly march to protest the World Trade Organization meetings in Montreal, Canada on July 27, 2003.” Yup, no angry, proto-fascist right-wing extremists here. Just some of your “friendly” liberals. I’m looking forward to the day when Reuters describes a conservative who characterizes a Democratic politician as an “international terrorist” as “friendly.” »