International Affairs: May 2005 Archives

It's pleasing for many reasons to see that the French have rejected the proposed European Union constitution. The only problem is that the story says that the voters were displeased because the constitution wouldn't have protected France's social welfare system as strongly as the leftists would have liked. I've skimmed through the European constitution, and it's no right-wing capitalist dream -- far from it -- but it would have forced France to lower some of its protectist walls while at the same time sucking power away from the populace and entrusting it to a permanent elite bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the threat to their liberty didn't seem to scare the French as much as the potential loss of their 35-hour work week... which makes one wonder if their taste for freedom has already been extinguished.

The incomparable Mark Steyn agrees that the shenanigans up north amount to a Canadian Constitutional coup, as I wrote two weeks ago. Mr. Steyn writes that the biggest problem facing Canada is that no one cares.

Unlike King/Byng or Sir John Kerr firing Gough Whitlam, what makes this a constitutional crisis is that there’s no crisis: Parliament votes, and Martin shrugs; Martin fiddles the math, and Canada shrugs.

Wretchard thinks that the fact that the left (in America as well) is forced to break the rules to stay in power is a hopeful sign.

What characterizes much of the Left today as exemplified by behavior from George Galloway to Paul Martin is the increasing necessity to maintain their position By Any Means Necessary. While that is dangerous and infuriating, it is a reliable indicator that they have lost control of the system. Things just aren't working the way they used to. And that, despite everything, is cause for hope.

Witness also the tantrums of the American Democrats as they attempt to maintain control of the Senate while holding a minority of the seats.

The juiciest part is that Andrew Coyne links to tapes of Paul Martin's chief of staff bribing an opposing MP.

The Prime Minister's chief of staff, on tape, apparently discussing the possibility of a Senate seat for Gurmant Grewal if he abstains in tomorrow's vote.

I don't know how I missed this story, but apparently there's some evidence that Saudi Arabia has rigged its oil fields to self-destruct in the event of a collapse of the royal family. If so, it's no wonder that America has been so kind to them, despite the country's support for Islamofacist terrorists.

FrontPageMagazine.com | May 11, 2005 Investigative writer Gerald Posner reveals something most extraordinary in Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, his book to be published by Random House later this month: that the Saudi government may have rigged its oil and gas infrastructure with a self-destruct system that would keep it out of commission for decades. If true, this could undermine the world economy at any time.

Posner starts by recalling various hints that Americans dropped back in the 1970s, that the high price and limited production of oil might lead to a U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia and a seizure of its oil fields. For example, in 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger murkily threatened the Saudis with a double-negative: “I am not saying that there’s no circumstances where we would not use force” against them.

In response, Posner shows, the Saudi leadership began to think of ways to prevent such an occurrence. They could not do so the usual way, by building up their military, for that would be futile against the much stronger U.S. forces. So the monarchy -- one of the most creative and underestimated political forces in modern history -- set out instead to use indirection and deterrence. Rather than mount defenses of its oil installations, it did just the opposite, inserting a clandestine network of explosives designed to render the vast oil and gas infrastructure inoperable -- and not just temporarily but for a long period.

Fascinating speculation, but I doubt the Saudis will ever let us find out the truth. Even the Daily Kos appears to understand, then, why it is that America has put so little pressure on the Saudis for public cooperation.

If true, it appears our Saudi "friends" are thoroughly prepared to take their whole country, as well as the global economy, down with them in the event of an attack on the house of Saud. It also seems that they perfectly content to essentially blackmail the US in to protecting them and their interests at all costs. I think we all knew that oil was the reason that we don't particularly push the Saudis much on things like "democracy" or women's rights, but I doubt many of us knew that they were willing to make that oil untouchable for centuries should someone, foreign or domestic, moved against them.

Philomathean reminds us of some of the Saudis' involvement with terror.

For decades, Saudi Arabia has used its oil revenues to promote the spread of Wahhabism, an extremist and intolerant form of Islam. The Saudis have financed the construction and establishment of religious schools, or madrassas, in many countries, including the United States. These schools, which in places like Pakistan are often the only affordable educational option available, preach a message of hate and intolerance for infidels. Not all madrassa graduates go on to become terrorists, but enough do to ensure that the War on Terror will continue indefinitely.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Saudis will be hatching diabolical schemes for some time to come. For one thing, they are smart enough not to engage in overt acts that would serve as a justification for regime change. The Saudis also take pains to cooperate with the U.S. on various short-term diplomatic and military initiatives. And they fund an impressive network of lobbyists and political action groups in the U.S.

What can we do to stop them? If we can't convince them, and the royal family promises to blow the oil fields if they ever lose power... we're stuck. The only real hope for a quick solution is some sort of special operation targeting their triggering mechanism; in order for the self-destruct to be fail-safe it can't be easy to set off, which means that control is probably concentrated in just a few locations. Otherwise, we wait.

You know how pissed Mexican President Vincente Fox has been over the Real ID act (direct link to Financial Times article is subscriber-only), but have you ever wondered how hard it is to get a driver's license in Mexico?

To obtain a driver's license in Baja California, (the Mexican state bordering what is for now, our California) for example, a Mexican citizen is required to be at least 18 years old, provide proof that he can read and write, produce a current health certificate, provide proof of residence, pass a written and road test - and prove his or her identity with an official photo ID.

"Official ID" includes a passport, state or local voter or military ID - but not a Mexican-issued Matricula Consular card.

The Matricula Consular ID is one issued by the government of Mexico to its citizens, through its consulates - some mobile - in our country. It is an effort to provide illegal aliens from that nation with some form of ID, as they lack the valid visa or passport that a legal immigrant would possess. The Matricula Consular is not accepted in most banks in Mexico itself because of its reputation for being easily forged. Ask to see mine.

Another very distinct and notable difference between states in Mexico and our own nation in granting a driver's license - the de facto national ID card here - is in the requirements for issuing driver's license to foreign nationals (aliens). In Mexico, one must prove he has entered that sovereign nation legally to be granted the privilege to drive: an official immigration document must be presented before a license is issued.

No proof of legal entry? No driver's license.

Further evidence of Mexico's hypocritical, parasitic relationship with the United States.

This time the get-America mentality of the mainstream media has cost dozens of people their lives.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.

Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.

It's not exactly like the Muslim crazies need much of an excuse to riot, kill people, and burn the American flag, but Newsweek is still responsible for fanning the flames that led those deaths and injuries. It's particularly egregious because the magazine obviously intended to set this wildfire, and they're only apologizing because the crap they printed turned out to be false. Is it unpatriotic for an American magazine to purposefully incite hatred and violence against our country? Signs point to yes.

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

Oh, good job, I'm sure that'll solve the problem. Moron. People died, and heads shold roll at Newsweek.

Whitaker told Reuters that Newsweek did not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. "As to whether anything like this happened, we just don't know," he said in an interview. "We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either."

Wow, that's some spectacular content you've got in your magazine. Good thing you respected media elites have editors like Mark Whitaker to maintain that exalted maybe/maybe-not standard that all we bloggers marvel at.

The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based "only on the testimony of detainees."

And what motive could Islamofacist terrorists detained for acts of terrorism against the United States possibly have to lie?

Oddly amusing is this threat:

On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.

Didn't we cross this bridge, like, three and a half years ago?

Jim Geraghty at the excellent TKS (née KerrySpot) has a lot of links, and says this story will end up being bigger than Rathergate. Makes sense, what with all the dead bodies and all.

And something tells me this one is going to be bigger than Rather. There was something goofy and absurd about the whole CBS memo mess – their ludicrous claim of Burkett as an ‘unimpeachable source,’ the tale of memos passed at a rodeo, Rather’s stubborn insistence that 1972 typewriters could perfectly match Microsoft Word default settings.

This latest journalistic train wreck is just ugly. Dead Afghans, calls for jihad, threats of more violence, Islamists rejecting the Newsweek retraction… This can still get worse, and there will be no laughs in this one.

Still, Jay Tea at Wizbang thinks that some people are overreacting by blaming Newsweek for the deaths.

As noted below and elsewhere, there is a lot of heat going around right now about Newsweek and its erroneous story about a Koran being flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo. And while I agree with a lot of it, I have to argue against the most severe sanctions people are proposing against Newsweek -- in particular, lawsuits for the deaths of those killed in the ensuing riots.

The purpose of such lawsuits is to hold people liable for reasonable and predictable reactions to their actions, and I don't think the riots and deaths fall into that category.

I willingly grant the "predictable" element, but I draw the line at "reasonable." The use of that is to justify the unjustifiable. The riots were a completely irrational and wrong response, and Newsweek should not be held responsible for what a bunch of religious, West-hating whackos do. Those lunatics are simply atrocities waiting to happen, and anything -- anything -- can be the trigger. One might as well find the woman who rejected Ted Bundy and blame her for all the women he subsequently murdered.

But it should be realized that the riots weren't just "predictable", they were intended. If the woman who rejected Ted Bundy was purposefully manipulating him to commit murder, she would bear some responsibility. The thing about responsibility is that by putting some blame on Newsweek we don't have to lessen the blame we put on the rioters -- it isn't a zero-sum game.

HE!D!, a female American veteran, mocks the Muslims for being so thin-skinned.

The BBC is reporting that the Americans are at it again - mercilessly torturing the “innocent detainees” of Guantanamo Bay. Even despite the panty-waist PC strictures placed on interrogations, the evil Americans have found a way to subvert the law and *gasp* horribly scar the gentle souls of the Muslim prisoners!!!

Pakistani officials say they are “deeply dismayed” over reports that the Koran was desecrated at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.

The latest edition of the American Newsweek magazine said such tactics were used to rattle suspects.

“Rattle the suspects”? Wow - I bet crucial information just started POURING out of them once they were “rattled”! Who could possibly withstand such powerful interrogation techniques?!

Sounds right to me. I'm about to go riot right now because of those burning flags; I can hardly contain myself.

Update:
Hey Glenn, thanks for quoting Clayton Cramer's piece starting immediately after the sentence where he links to me.

Only a year and a half behind Donald Sensing, the NYT has discovered that the islamofacist terrorists have no plan in Iraq, or really anywhere else in the world. They've got no coherent agenda, no plan to achieve that non-agenda, no leaders, no political presence, and no hope of victory. At least from our perspective.

Counter-insurgency experts are baffled, wondering if the world is seeing the birth of a new kind of insurgency; if, as in China in the 1930's or Vietnam in the 1940's, it is taking insurgents a few years to organize themselves; or if, as some suspect, there is a simpler explanation.

"Instead of saying, 'What's the logic here, we don't see it,' you could speculate, there is no logic here," said Anthony James Joes, a professor of political science at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and the author of several books on the history of guerrilla warfare. The attacks now look like "wanton violence," he continued. "And there's a name for these guys: Losers."

"The insurgents are doing everything wrong now," he said. "Or, anyway, I don't understand why they're doing what they're doing."

They're violent psychopaths. What people need to realize is that the islamofacist mindset isn't disciplined or organized like the communist revolutions that we have experience with from the 20th century. Even they don't know how to win or what they're doing, but as Steven Den Beste pointed out in 2003, they don't think they have to.

I agree that bin Laden is a terrible strategist. He unquestionably completely misjudged the American people, for one thing. But I don't agree that he has no plan.

Rather, I think he did have one, and I would have thought that a man of God like Donald would have spotted it: bin Laden's strategy was to get God, or Allah, involved in the war against the infidel. ...

If God is not fighting on their side, it can only be because the Muslims have not been devout enough. It's because they don't follow the most strict interpretations of the Qur'an. It's because they let their women run around with bare faces, and don't pray when they're supposed to, and smoke and drink alcohol and gamble and charge interest on loans and in so many other ways don't actually follow God's dictums. It's because they've been seduced by the evil ways of the West. It's because they've become spiritually corrupted. They do not live as God said they should, and thus God refuses to aid them. They're not worthy of God's aid; God is displeased with them and shows it through inaction. And from this only one conclusion is possible.

It is only by embracing God's true teachings, in every way, that they can once again return to God's grace. If they can prove their spiritual purity and dedication to the cause, God will join the war and start to directly smite the Jews and Americans. Without God's aid, they can never win; but with God's aid they cannot lose. They must purify themselves, and prove to God that they have done so.

So they think, and the NYT would do well to read through the archives of the USS Clueless if they really want to understand what the islamofacists are up to. Apparently a couple of bloggers are still miles ahead of university professors and the mainstream media.

Update:
Donald Sensing comments and adds that he responded and believes that Steven Den Beste's conception of the Islamic/religious mentality is slightly mistaken.

In possibly the most important and yet underplayed story of the week, the democratic government of Canada has apparently collapsed into tyranny. Via Keith at Minority of One we get some insight into the how the Canadian parliament is operating and a link to the blog of MP Monte Solberg who writes about the ignored vote of no-confidence.

I hope this posts. Am blogging from my blackberry in the House where I have just voted for our non-confidence motion. The Libs are trying hard to play this down. They have two cabinet ministers out, Efford and Cotler. We'll win, but they'll claim it's non confidence.

Pretty unhappy campers over there! They can't believe that their iron-grip on power and pocketnooks might be loosed. Kilgour just voted with the Libs. Hmmm. 153 to 150. We win!

Oddly, the Liberal party doesn't feel it requires a democratic majority in order to rule the country, and they've refused to dissolve their government. As Keith says about the matter,

Well, so parliament has been officially declared subordinate to the Liberal party.

A majority of our elected representatives voted that they do not have confidence in the government, and the bastards say it's a procedural matter.

That's it. It's over. No one in theri right mind can accept that the Libranos are a democratic party. Their totalitarian souls have been bared for all the world to see. Bastards.

Kinda similar to how the minority party in the Senate continues to refuse the majority to confirm judges. Hopefully the Conservatives in Canada will have more balls than the Senate Republicans have shown.

MP Solberg writes more about the Liberals making a mockery of democracy today.

Hot here in Ottawa this morning, and will be very hot in the House later today, but the similarities to hell don't end there.

I wonder what our friends from Zimbabwe will think when they hear that Prime Minister Martin and Team Liberal have refused to recognize Parliament's expressed desire that Parliament be dissolved and that a general election be held. I know that Scott Reid and my friends in the PMO have already thought of this but I strongly recommend that, should the opportunity arise, Paul refrain from lecturing President Mugabe for his failure to respect democracy. Paul might also scratch that line in his stump speech about the democratic deficit being his, "number one priority". Just trying to help.

Pretty sad when Canada can't muster the moral authority to lecture Zimbabwe.

Jon Henke at QandO muses about the international perception of the death penalty and whether or not America could improve its image by abolishing it. He writes that:

After all, the primary international objections to the United States have been with our belligerence, propensity to violence and disrespect for international standards. It seems to me that uliminating the death penalty would soften our harsher edges in the public view...as well as eliminating a talking point for our opponents.

Perhaps so. And, as he writes, there are certainly practical reasons to consider eliminating capital punishment, such as the possibility of making a mistake and the incredible expense of capital prosecutions.

Still, aside from all that, I think we should not forget that our system of punishments isn't designed to make us popular, it's intended to bring about justice. That's why we call it the justice system. Justice will not always be popular, either at home or abroad. As a democracy we must adhere to the wishes of our own people -- even if we think they thwart justice -- but why should we sacrifice justice to "soften" our public image with third-parties? I think it would be morally perilous -- regardless of one's position on the death penalty -- to base questions of justice on popularity. The problem of capital punishment is essentially a moral question, and good is good regardless of how others perceive it.

(HT: Jeff the Baptist.)

My brother just sent me a link to an article about International Science and Technology Centers that are designed for "Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel".

The International Science and Technology Centers are a multilateral effort to provide opportunities for scientists of the former Soviet Union with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) expertise to engage in peaceful research – both basic and applied. The goal of the two Centers, based in Moscow and Kiev, is to reduce the likelihood – if possible, to zero – that such scientists or the institutes at which they work would be tempted to provide their expertise to terrorists or proliferating states. They do this by providing grants to fund peaceful research by former weapons scientists, combined with some efforts to facilitate these scientists' transition to long-term, sustainable civilian activities. The program includes nuclear weapons scientists, but it welcomes all "weapons scientists and engineers, particularly those who possess knowledge and skills related to weapons of mass destruction or missile delivery systems," in the former Soviet Union.

Sounds like a good idea to me, and a mostly-unnoticed front in the war on terror.

I love reading about the UK's political shenanigans, and although it's almost too late to matter, here are some suggestions on who to vote for.

From the left we have:
- Victor S, who isn't in the UK but wants you to Vote Mebyon Kernow.
- Red Pepper, who complains about the "right wing Labour government" but says you can still vote for some of them them if you pay attention to his handy election map.

From the right we have... uh... I'm actually having trouble finding conservative UK bloggers who list Tory candidates. You can go to Who Should You Vote For? and answer some questions to find out which party most closely aligns with your political inclinations. That's kinda fun, but I can pretty much guess my answer already. Check out this DoWire.org page for more on UK elections.

I'm not a big fan of parliamentary democracy because it lacks strong separation of powers between the executive and legislative authorities in comparison to the presidential system. Here's more on the mechanics of United Kingdom general elections.