International Affairs: February 2005 Archives
In light of the recent most deadly suicide bombing in Iraq, I have to wonder why there aren't more pro-Iraq vigilantes. Maybe there are private vigilante groups that hunt down terrorists, but if so I haven't heard of them. Remember when that rebel shi'ite cleric al-Sadr was running amok? There were several groups of Iraqis who self-organized to help bring him down. If suicide bombings were a daily threat in America, I'd like to think that civilians would be eager to band together to take out the murderers, if the government proved unable to. I'm sure I don't have a full understanding of the situation on the ground in Iraq, but it takes significant infrastructure to pull off these bombings, so there must be plenty of people who know the whos and wheres.
With all the stories coming out detailing UN incompetence and malevolence, it's impossible to believe that all the allegations are merely the product of "disgruntled former employees". "U.N. 'peacekeepers' rape women, children." " UN inspectors 'spent their days drinking'." The UN couldn't even contribute meaningfully to tsunami relief! And these are the people the Left wants to entrust world security to? These are the people we need permission from to protect ourselves? We should never pay that corrupt bureaucracy another penny.
As quickly as Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas declare peace, Hamas terrorists denounce it.
"The talk about what the leader of the Palestinian Authority called a cessation of acts of violence is not binding on the resistance because this is a unilateral stand and was not the outcome of an intra-Palestinian dialogue, as has been agreed previously," Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, told The Associated Press.Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, also dismissed the summit, saying, "It did not achieve anything. From our people's interests, the Israeli position did not change."
Both Hamas men said it was too early to say whether Hamas would resume its activities against Israelis.
Translation: they'll take advantage of the quiet moments to regroup and re-arm, and then strike with as much deadly violence as they can muster.
Israel has a lot of history with false peacemakers, but they never seem to learn.
Jeremiah 8:8-128 'How can you say, "We are wise,
for we have the law of the LORD ,"
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
has handled it falsely?9 The wise will be put to shame;
they will be dismayed and trapped.
Since they have rejected the word of the LORD ,
what kind of wisdom do they have?10 Therefore I will give their wives to other men
and their fields to new owners.
From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.11 They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
"Peace, peace," they say,
when there is no peace.12 Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct?
No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush.
So they will fall among the fallen;
they will be brought down when they are punished,
says the LORD.'
The funniest thing about India is that the country is becoming overwhelmed with monkeys.
Delhi suffers from a serious monkey menace, with scores of animals seen across the city, particularly near top government offices.'Security threat'
The monkeys who have moved into residential areas and official enclaves due to Delhi's shrinking forests, are said to have become a 'security threat'.
Last year, the ministry of defence found some of its top secret documents scattered all over the place one morning.
It was blamed on the many rhesus monkeys which flock around the colonial-era building.
The obvious solution? More monkeys.
The presidential palace too has been targeted and staff [there] have been forced to employ a dark-faced langur monkey to scare away the rhesus monkeys.
I've got a better idea: train the monkeys to staff technical support call centers! Everyone wins!*
*(Customers not included)
It's not particularly surprising to me that a high-ranking official in Mexican President Vicente Fox's government was working for Mexico's drug cartels. I'd only be amazed to discover that his arrest was prompted by his discovery, rather than being motivated by a desire to cover even darker criminal activities.
A senior aide to Mexican President Vicente Fox has been arrested on suspicion of leaking information to drug traffickers.Attorney General Rafael Macedo said it was thought the aide, Nahum Acosta, may have divulged Mr Fox's travel plans.
Mr Acosta was a senior member of the team that organises Mr Fox's official trips, Mr Macedo said.
Mexico is a poor, third world nation, and its government institutions are horribly corrupt. As long as we keep our common border porous, we're facilitating the corruption and oppression of the Mexican people. If we want to really help Mexico, we must stop allowing them to export the consequences of their institutional failings to America; only then will there be incentive for them to oust the crime lords who rule their country.
Here's a perfect illustration of President Bush's assertion that spreading freedom increases our safety.
An investigation by the Ukrainian secret police has found that Iran and China bought long-range missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads from Ukraine, one of the country's politicians said on Wednesday.Grigory Omelchenko, an ally of the country's new leadership and a former head of the anti-mafia committee in the Ukrainian parliament, claimed on Wednesday that Ukraine's SBU secret police had found that 12 Kh-55s were illegally exported in 1999-2001. He said six of the air-to-ground cruise missiles were sold to Iran, and six to China. ...
He accused high-ranking officials linked to Leonid Kuchma, the former president, of covering up the SBU's findings about the sale to protect a "highly placed person from the circle of President Kuchma, who was involved in the illegal arms sales".
We didn't have to go to war to support Ukrainian liberty -- in fact we didn't have to do much at all, overtly. But take note: tyrannical police states sell weapons to our enemies, but real democracies are less likely to do so.
Apparently the soldier being held hostage by terrorists in Iraq is just a doll -- though Dan Rather, CBS, and the New York Times are claiming that the initial reports were "fake, but accurate".
What are some of the first steps the new Iraqi government should be taking?
I think one of the first items on their agenda should be securing their borders from Syria and Iranian infiltration. The new government can also crack down on insurgents more harshly than the Coalition was able to, and they'll have more information at their disposal than we did. Hopefully they'll move quickly to take care of the military side of things.
More importantly even than the shooting and killing, however, will be the process of building up their image on the world stage. Iraq has several public relations tasks it needs to perform if it wants to be respected and taken seriously around the world. There are two directions they can take, either towards America or towards Europe, and I hope that they're willing to hew to our side of the fence now that they've already reaped the benefits.
First, Iraq should offer to compensate the families of the foreign soldiers who died for their liberation. They've got vast oil wealth to draw from, and there are only a few thousand Coalition deaths -- the families of the dead should each be paid at least US$1 million for their sacrifice. Iraq could afford more, but we should be mindful that they need money to rebuild their own country now, and much of that rebuilding effort should be done using American corporations. I don't think Iraq should be forced to repay the costs of the war, but they should certainly be eager to work within the market system to reward America and Americans for the sacrifice we've made.
Secondly, Iraq needs to issue strong denunciations of Europe and the useless UN, all of whom were struggling mightily to keep Iraq in her chains. The people of Iraq need to come together to make an undismissable show of thanks to America and a give public appreciation for what we've done. Not to make us feel good about ourselves, but to spit in the face of tyrants everywhere, and their appeasers. The world will ignore the thanks of the Iraqi government and deride it as a US "puppet", but the world cannot long ignore the Iraqi people themselves. I'm not exactly sure what form this statement of thanks should take, but I know the Iraqis can figure it out.
Thirdly, Iraq needs to pull itself out of the ridiculous Arab League. Every nation in the Arab League is ruled by a despot who dreads that the freedom that's most recently come to Iraq will spread throughout the rest of the Arab world, and Iraq should ensure that it does. Pulling out of the Arab League will demonstrate to the world that things are not the same as they were before, and that Iraq now stands head and shoulders above its neighbors. Iraq should be the founding member of the Democratic Arab Nations, and should vigorously invite its brothers into the fold.
