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Thursday, April 17, 2003 |
There's a saying of criminals which is so true: "you can run, but you can't hide." And it seems to be working in Iraq, lately. First, Abu Abbas, a known Palestinian 'guerilla' -- read, an anti-semitic thug who shoots an unarmed, disabled old guy and pushes him off a ship in his wheelchair -- and now, another of Saddam Hussein's murderous family. I am relatively confident that, over a few months, we'll track down and find (or kill) a good few more of the Iraqi repressors.
Yes, some may have wriggled out to Syria, or escaped the country in other ways). But a 'hot pursuit' is likely. Can you imagine the US putting up with these scumbags retiring in luxury overseas, and continuing to plot their comeback? It's not going to happen. And, if the Syrians or whoever else don't cooperate, then the hammer will come down in the form of special ops, or precisely targeted Tomahawks from far away. That's just the way it's going to be ... without a base, without hangers-on waving AKs and chanting arabic nursery rhymes, these terrorists and gangsters have no power. And that's just how we need it.
5:09:25 PM 
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Quite often, WSJ Europe thinkpieces don't show up here for a while (and not at all, if you don't pay for them!). Here's an excerpt from a piece by Jeffrey Grdmin, Aspen Institute Berlin. Which pins down why the Germans are feeling as foolish as the French ... [what do I think? Screw 'em, of course]
"BERLIN -- "There were no dead bodies lying on the ground nearby when we celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall," says Wolfgang Thierse, president of the German parliament. Donald Rumsfeld was making "an absurd comparison" when he likened the fall of Baghdad to the collapse of the East German communist system, according to Heinrich August Winkler, a leading historian at Berlin's Humboldt University. A German television journalist told me recently that "CNN was just selecting handfuls in Iraq that were cheering -- this is not representative of the whole country."
Some Germans are unhappy -- again. They did not like the way George W. Bush argued for optimism about building democracy in Iraq. The U.S. president had recalled that there were naysayers, too, about the prospects for German democracy after the failure of Weimar and misery of Nazi rule. "Compare Iraq with Germany?!" I heard countless times. Nor have Germans been rushing in droves to celebrate the coalition victory. Gernot Erler, the Social Democrats' foreign-policy spokesman in the Bundestag, says the war is still a mistake; the loss of life needless. Mr. Thierse agrees, adding: "with all due respect for the enthusiasm of the people [in Iraq]." Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, never at a loss for words, is mostly silent these days.
The Schroeder-Chriac-Putin axis may be eroding. For Germans this always seemed to be something "strategically insane," as one senior official in Washington put it. But it may not be so easy putting the old alliance back together. "Things will be different now," says another administration official. It's surely true in the case of Germany.
It's hard to overlook the mighty investment that Germans made in America's failure. Germany's environment minister, Juergen Trittin, opposed the war and confidently forecast up to 200,000 casualties, with "another 200,000 who will die as a direct result of the war." Angelika Beer, chairman of the Green Party, insisted that the region would "explode." In the run up to the war, Stern magazine cheered its readers by the news that Germans were being seen as heroes at the U.N. for standing up to the U.S. According to the popular weekly, Germany's U.N. Ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, would walk through the corridors of United Nations headquarters in New York and "other diplomats would pat him on the back and say: 'keep it up.'" The German mission received "70,000 emails coming in from around the world" underscoring the same point."
"... Of course, allies have the right to dissent. But like France, Germany did not merely abstain. It will now be important to discuss whether there are not limits to disagreement if we wish to have a functioning alliance. What does it mean, asks Henry Kissinger, when the U.S. president identifies a "vital" interest, for which Americans are prepared to sacrifice their sons and daughters, and a key ally like Germany works actively and energetically to contribute to the failure of the enterprise?"
Yes indeed, it has not worked out well for the Axis of Losers. And let's hope it stays that way. Keep the boycotts going till they learn some manners.
1:15:37 PM
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So, the French try to be ever-so-politically-correct, then someone catches on that they too have a "Trojan Horse" (see Tuesday's blog on this) ...
From Today's NYT ... of all places ... of course, you may ask, why do they need a 'national council of Muslims (sic)'?
PARIS, April 15 — France's interior minister threatened today to expel any Muslim religious leader considered extremist after a fundamentalist Muslim organization unexpectedly won a large number of seats in an election for the country's first national council of Muslims.
Nicolas Sarkozy, a law-and-order interior minister who pressed hard for the creation of the council, told Europe 1 radio that he would make sure that the council would not be used to spread views that run counter to French values, particularly the promotion of Islamic law.
"It is precisely because we recognize the right of Islam to sit at the table of the republic that we will not accept any deviation," Mr. Sarkozy said. "Any prayer leader whose views run contrary to the values of the republic will be expelled."
At another point he said, "Islamic law will not apply anywhere, because it is not the law of the French republic."
Representatives of nearly 1,000 mosques and prayer centers went to the polls on April 6 and last Sunday to elect representatives to a council that will represent the country's five million Muslims. The goal, Mr. Sarkozy said repeatedly, is to create an "official Islam for France" that will take France's second-largest religion out of the "cellars and garages" and demonstrate that most Muslims are mainstream, law-abiding citizens. About 20 percent of France's mosques declined to take part.
The group that made a surprisingly strong showing in the election is the Union of Islamic Organizations in France. It preaches a strict, conservative interpretation of Islam, derives much of its support from the poor suburbs of Paris and other major cities and is said to derive its inspiration from the banned fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt. It won 14 of 41 seats in the governing administrative council.
1:05:22 PM
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From AP. Hilarious, were it not so pathetic ... Just what we need: "White Stix" Blix and His Blixstone Kops, back in the spotlight. One good thing though: if he's sure that the Syrians are innocent, then they're as guilty as hell...
BERLIN - The chief U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq urged the U.S.-led coalition to allow his team back into the country to look for weapons of mass destruction, saying that would increase the credibility of any discoveries, a magazine reported Thursday.
Hans Blix, who was in charge of searches for chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles in Iraq, also challenged President Bush's administration to present proof of its allegation that Syria has chemical weapons.
"Whoever claims this should, in the interests of credibility, very quickly present the relevant proof," Blix said in an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel. "For my part, I doubt that the Syrians would have been enthusiastic to serve as a depot of weapons of mass destruction for Baghdad."
12:12:08 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Peter Savage.
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