| Michael Christian is in early semi-retirement in a semi-paradisiacal corner of California. |
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A statesman's legacy —
This unbelievable paragraph appeared in the New York Times, online:
"With his bushy beard and his booming anti-American rhetoric, Mr. Castro, who turns 80 next Sunday, will linger in the Cuban imagination far into the future as a double image — one, the romantic revolutionary of 1958, promising Cuba equality, prosperity and independence; the other, the prisoner of a half-century of confrontation with the United States that kept Cuba from evolving in a way that could deliver on the promises."
You may choose between hero and frustrated hero.
— Michael Christian
| Andrew Ferguson is
managing editor of Liberty. |
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Pat-down to the people —
On August 10, British police foiled a terrorist plot that apparently aimed to smuggle liquid explosives disguised as sports drinks onto aircraft and activate them by means of disposable cameras, thus blowing up six to ten planes en route to the U.S.
What a silly plot: "Someone stop him! He's taking a picture of that Gatorade!" That sort of thing wouldn't fly on a made-for-TV movie. Even the bumbling shoe bomber had more style.
A silly plot deserves an equally silly crackdown and, indeed, all bottles of liquid — water, coffee, shampoo, contact solution, duty-free liquor — were immediately placed on the forbidden list. It was even worse in Britain, where all carry-on luggage was banned, bar the barest hygienic necessities (and I suppose even those could be at risk: imagine if a terrorist smuggled in a "tampon bomb").
The biggest surprise of the whole drama has been the response of the public. They're pissed — and not, for the most part, at Muslims. For five years now the body politic has spread itself for invasion, and finally it's fed up at the prohibitions and the pat-downs, the pokes and the prods. It beggars belief that there is not yet a system in place to speed along the average traveler and his luggage, and with every tortuous line and torturous inspection it becomes clearer to that average traveler that such a system is nowhere near implementation.
Now Republican leaders are competing to see who can come up with the most outlandish link between the Pakistani bottle bombers and the war in Iraq, and Democratic insiders are whining about how none of this would have happened if only men like hawkish milquetoast Joe Lieberman were in charge. Neither have anything but scorn for the voices in their own parties, like Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Rep. Tim Murtha (D-Penn.), who say that, after five years of documented failure, it's time to try another way. But more and more Americans are prepared to listen to that message, and perhaps even to act on it — witness Democratic Connecticut voters rejecting Lieberman as their standard bearer. Frustration is becoming more potent than fear and, if the mood holds, those politicians who pay attention to the people rather than each other will profit come November.
— Andrew Ferguson
| Richard Kostelanetz has written many books about contemporary art and literature. |
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Provocations —
The traditional Israeli response to, say, the assassination of its Olympic team or the kidnapping of a soldier has been selective retaliation by its intelligence agency, called the Mossad. Its operatives would take out killers anywhere in the world (including Arab countries), send soldiers along with an airplane to rescue Israelis detained in Africa, or take a hostage that could be bartered for a kidnapped soldier, with a finesse and respect for noncombatants that customarily won respect from the rest of the world.
Why didn't that happen recently? Has the Mossad become less intelligent? Does Ariel Sharon's successor have less respect for its competence? What isn't yet known? Instead, the new Israeli premier has bombed a country, killing civilians along with putative perpetrators. That move reflects not traditional Israeli moxie but, dammit, the strategy of George W. Bush! And Israel's action is not likely to win the world's approval or be more successful than Dubya's.
It is also distressing to realize that Israel has fallen for a provocation, which has traditionally been an Israeli strategy. When Ariel Sharon and his troops in 1990 peacefully marched into the Arab quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, the move provoked violent Palestinian responses, an intifada, that in turn persuaded the Israeli public to give Sharon's party enough votes to make him premier again. Only he, they thought, would be tough on violence within Israel. Had the Jerusalem Palestinians not fallen for the provocation, Sharon would have probably remained a farmer.
My suspicion now is that Hezbollah knew in advance that kidnapping an Israeli soldier would provoke an Israeli response that would in turn warrant Hez's unleashing its arsenal of previously hidden missiles directly at Israeli cities. Why didn't the Mossad know and warn this would happen?
— Richard Kostelanetz
| Gary Jason is a writer, businessman,
and philosophy instructor living in San
Clemente, Calif.
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El Tigre sin cojones —
Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.), the Tiger of the Senate, who so fiercely attacked corporate corruption, has suddenly lost his testicles. Sarbanes, you will recall, was the driving force behind Sarbanes-Oxley, the law that has saddled all American corporations with onerous accounting rules, and executives with personal liability for bogus accounting. This law was an attempt to harass companies (such as WorldCom), which were already in the process of being held to account under existing laws. Muy macho! Qué cojones tan grandes!
Ah, but bad news, amigos. The tiger has blocked a crackdown on the federally backed corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These agencies have racked up $1.5 trillion in debt, i.e., portfolios of "aggressive" (read: likely to default in a housing crash) loans, which the taxpayer has an "implied" obligation to cover. Sarbanes has decided to be totally unhelpful about reforming the scandalous accounting and business practices of these government-backed mortgage agencies.
And the agencies need reform. They stink of corruption. The managers — mainly, it turns out, liberal Democrats like Sarbanes — set policies that helped boost their personal bonuses, leading Franklin Raines, Timothy Howard, Daniel Mudd, and Jamie Gorelick to pocket tens of millions of dollars in just a few years. Not surprisingly, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (along with the private companies that are tied to them) dump tons of cash into political campaigns — again, not surprisingly, mainly to elect liberal Democrats.
When the government sets up and runs corporations to do what private industry should do, this is what you get: corruption without any government policing.
— Gary Jason
| Eric Kenning is a freelance writer living in New York. |
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| New Gibson Film to Clear Up Misunderstandings HOLLYWOOD — In an effort to repair relations with the Jewish community after the anti-Semitic diatribe he let loose during his recent arrest for drunk driving, actor Mel Gibson has announced that he will produce, direct, and star in a new movie called "How Green Was My Protocol" based loosely on "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a perennially popular late-19th-century Russian work of fiction. Gibson said he picked up the book by accident while browsing in a used-screed store in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and found it "a real page-turner." The book, he added, "kept me on the edge of my seat, as did the pink elephants."
In the movie, Gibson will play a sensitive, conflicted Learned Elder who has second thoughts about participating in the conspiracy to take over the world and opens a delicatessen instead. Gibson also said that he's studying linguistic theory so that the next time he's arrested for drunk driving he can engage in a less offensive anti-semiotic diatribe. —
Eric Kenning |
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