LET'S HOPE THIS IS TRUE: Via Instapundit, an exceptionally argued piece by David Warren stating that the U.S.' recent moves in the MidEast are designed to prepare the way for the destruction of Arafat. Let's hope.

TERRORIST PREVENTION 101: Apparently today's suicide bomber had been recently released from custody by the Palestinian "Authority."
Meanwhile, Colin Powell - as in the head of the peace-processing State Department - is moving to declare the Arafat-connected Al-Aqsa Brigades a terrorist organization. It's too early to say "I told you so," but it is clear that this is not your Bush father's Administration. I just don't see James Baker-type pressure coming anytime soon.
In addition, Bill Quick also takes up the big picture of the U.S.-Israel-Iraq triangle and looks at the future for the region. It's not pretty. According to the World Tribune article he cites:

The two countries are said to have reached an understanding over the military priorities in any U.S. war against President Saddam Hussein.
The priorities focus on protecting Israel from an Iraqi nonconventional missile attack. The sources said the administration has pledged to provide early-warning alert for any Iraqi missile attack and focus its war effort on destroying Iraqi missile launchers near the Jordanian border. The sources said the understandings were reached during Cheney's visit this week.
...The understandings also include an Israeli commitment to exhibit restraint during any U.S.-led war against Iraq. The sources said the commitment regards a series of scenarios raised by Washington.
In one scenario, Iraq fires missiles tipped with chemical warheads toward Israel. U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iraq has installed chemical warheads on Iraqi Scud-class missiles. But the agencies are skeptical over the effectiveness of the warheads on aging Iraqi missiles, meant to fly more than 400 kilometers.
The diplomatic sources said Israel has agreed to demonstrate restraint in the face of such an Iraqi attack as long as the missiles are launched from Iraqi territory rather than from neighboring Jordan or Syria.

As an aside, wouldn't you love (in a perverse way) to see how the Arab world would blame Israel if the chemical-tipped misslies failed to reach Israel and kiled people in Jordan or Syria? (And if it is the former, how about a joint Israeli-Jordanian force going into Iraq as a response? That would surely blow the minds of the region's bloodhtirsty anti-Semites.)
But back to the article...

For his part, Sharon has sought U.S. understanding for an Israeli military response to a third scenario — that of a Palestinian rocket attack on Israeli communities during the war against Saddam. The sources said Sharon maintains that Israel would then reserve the right to respond with a massive attack that would destroy the PA or exile PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.
The administration appears divided over Sharon's request. The sources said Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have expressed understanding of Sharon's position. But Secretary of State Colin Powell has warned that a massive Israeli response would derail any U.S. military campaign in Iraq.

Zinni should give Arafat a copy of the former paragraph at their next meeting. It really seems that the Bush adminsitration views Arafat as someone whose survival is moderatley useful to them until they can topple Saddam. But that won't be long, and once it happens, Sharon (or Netanyahu) may well be given the green light to destroy the PA once and for all.
Not that it will be a lasting solution, but it may well stop the flurry of suicide bombings. And that's good enough for now.

SOME PASSOVER THOUGHTS ON LIVING IN AND VISITING ISRAEL: Yossi Klein Halevi discusses how "living in Israel is an act of faith." Meanwhile, the popular youth tour "March of the Living" has canceled the Israeli leg of the tour this year.

YES, THAT USUALLY HAPPENS: I know they're doing this in frenzied fashion, but CNN's online editor really fell asleep at the switch for this one:

A suicide bomber set off a massive explosion Thursday in the heart of downtown Jerusalem, police said, killing at least two people and wounding more than 50.
Police said they believed the bomber was also killed.

Let's see... if a "suicide bomber" sets off a "massive explosion," yes, the bomber would usually be killed. The word "suicide" is there for a reason.

CEASE-FIRE ALERT: While the Palestinians supposedly negotiate a cease-fire,yet another suicide bomber attacks in central Jerusalem. The bombing was apparently carried out by the Arafat-connected Al Aqsa Brigades.

THE PRINCE OF PEACE, OR OF DARKNESS? Steven Den Beste has an interesting rumination on the nature of peace:

I want a dark flashlight, please. I want a lamp I can put in a room and turn on and it will make the room dark... Where can I buy that, please? Sorry, not for sale, not even physically possible. To make a room dark, you must find and get rid of all sources of light. But as long as there are any sources of light in the room, it won't be dark.
I would like to buy some peace, please. Where can I buy that? Sorry, to get peace, you have to stop all conflicts, and that means you have to find and remove all the reasons why those involved were willing to fight.

And on the basis of war:

Whatever that reason was to start the war in the first place, it is going to be strong enough to restart it, unless that reason was dealt with in the meantime. In the 1970's they ran into that in Lebanon. The various factions were shelling each other and turning what was once considered the most beautiful modern city in the mid-East into a bombed out wreck, and some western do-gooder would come in and negotiate a cease fire. And the shooting would stop.
For maybe 24 or 48 hours. And then the combat would start again, slowly but with rising ferocity, and within a week they'd be back to "normal". This happened again and again. Over a period of months there was cease-fire after cease-fire, and none of them held. (It ended when one of the do-gooders got kidnapped and held for ransom. After that, no more do-gooders tried to negotiate cease fires.)
The problem was that to the western do-gooder, "peace" was itself the goal, and the way to get it was for everyone to stop shooting. But for those involved in the war, peace was not the goal. And the ceasefire did indeed bring peace but it didn't deal with the underlying grievance which started the war in the first place. So they would start shooting again.
We got a guy in Israel right now trying to get a cease fire between the Israelis and Palestinians. Will he succeed? He might. But it won't last. Both sides would like peace, but they also want more than that, and a simple ceasefire won't give it to them: land. The Israelis have it, the Palestinians want it, and there isn't enough of it for both of them (in their opinion). The Palestinians started this round of the Intifada for a reason, and a cease fire won't satisfy them. (If they had only wanted peace, they wouldn't have started the Intifada in the first place.)
The [pro-"peacemaking" advocate] is making the same mistake that the do-gooders did in Beirut, and assuming that peace itself is what both sides in any given conflict crave. So you can get peace just by stopping the fighting. But if it were possible to have dealt with the deeper issues without fighting, they wouldn't have begun fighting [in] the first place.

Well said.

LESSONS FROM THE DURABN DISASTER: An outstanding article by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Ca.), a Holocaust survivor and U.S. delegate at the disastrous Durban conference, describing the exact nature of the anti-semitic forces at work there. Two of the most notable features of his piece:
1) He singles out non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") for special blame:

The leaders of the great Western human rights NGOs like Human Rights Watch, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and Amnesty International participated in the NGO Forum in Durban. Shockingly, they did almost nothing to denounce the activities of the radicals in their midst. They made no statements protesting the debasement of human rights mechanisms and terms taking place in front of their eyes and they offered no support to the principled position that the Bush administration took against the singling out of Israel and Jews for attack and criticism at the conference. Instead, they repeated, like a mantra, the ludicrous charge that the Bush administration was using the Middle East issue as a smokescreen to avoid discussion of slavery.
Durban demonstrates that we cannot always assume that all NGOs are focused on advancing universal standards of human rights. When the U.S. government abrogates its role as the leading advocate of pluralism, democracy and human rights, the NGO process can become as polluted as the intergovernmental process.2) Lantos singled out Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights for special blame, and his critique has already gotten results: Robinson has resigned.
As Professor InstaPundit says:

I think it's time to give the UN and Euro crowd what they say they want -- deep U.S. involvement in the U.N. and other multilateral enterprises. Getting rid of Mary Robinson is the beginning of this process. We've let too much crap fester by ignoring it on the plausible theory that it didn't matter. Let's show these folks the respect of taking them seriously -- but let's hold them to the responsibility that entails. U.S. diplomacy needs to look more like Metternich and Bismarck than Albright and Robinson.

THE U.N. RESOLUTION SHOULD BE COMING ANY DAY NOW: According to a German documentary, it appears that Muhammad ad-Dura, the 12-year old Palestinian boy whose tragic shooting death at the begining of the second intifada was captured on TV, was likely killed by Palestinian shooters rather than Israeli soldiers. Somehow, I don't think this news will get quite the media coverage that the original blaming of Israel did.

ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE ROYALS FANS: Rany Jazayerli is losing faith in his Royals earlier than usual this year. Not that he doesn't have plenty of justification, but it's sad to see nonetheless. This week's "Rany on the Royals" is about the franchise's determination to not sign its best players to long-term contracts:
David Glass announced that the Royals could not negotiate any long-term deals with their players until a new Collective Bargaining Agreement was reached.
...It could be that Glass is one of Selig's closest allies in the game, and has been reassured that a new CBA is coming, one that will prune the salaries of high-priced star ballplayers. Who can blame Glass for believing Selig? When has Allan H. Selig ever been proven wrong?
Regardless, Glass put his foot down, and squashed whatever hope remained. Refusing to sign your best young players to long-term contracts isn't fiscal responsibility; it's suicide. Offering young players long-term security in exchange for locking them at below market value (what they call "cost certainty" in the business) is the small-market franchise's weapon of choice. Glass's announcement was tantamount to throwing down arms and running from the field of battle. (This military reference brought to you by Tony Muser.)
Sign Jermaine Dye to a long-term deal? The Royals couldn't even get Rey Sanchez's name on a new contract. Employing the logic that has served the team so well for the past 12 years, the Royals decided they could live without a booming bat in right field a lot easier than they could live without a slick glove at shortstop. With Neifi Perez, the Royals were pleased they had killed two birds with one stone, even if in the process they strangled fan interest, butchered the trust of their players, and knocked off about six wins a season. Lee Harvey Oswald didn't do as much damage with a single shot.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO (SUPPOSED) POWER: More great stuff from Victor Davis Hanson on the true motivations behind the Israeli-Palestinian war:
Indeed, if the West Bank were to be returned and a general peace declared, there might well be a decade of peace. But then after the hiatus, the madrassas, the autocrats, the theocrats, and the coffee-house intellectuals would, according to their station and methods, all move on to the next round of recovering "all" of "Palestine" — a task made somewhat easier in their mind by Israel's new nearly indefensible borders.
Unlike the Europeans and some others in the West, much of the Arab world does not see distinct and lasting periods of peace and war, but rather interprets the conflict as a continuum — one that will properly and only end eventually with the end of Israel itself.
Why should we put credence in such a pessimistic appraisal of Arab intentions? History supports it. The first three wars were waged when the West Bank was in Arab hands; so why would the premises for the next war be any different from those of 1947, 1956, or 1967, when the goal, as Egyptian General Saad Ali Amer once put it plainly, was "the realization of our common goal — the elimination of Israel"?
The current conflict is surely not over the grievance of dead Muslims — Iraq and Iran make Israelis look like amateurs in that regard. Nor is the lament really over the cruel expulsion of Palestinians en masse — Kuwait garners that prize for expelling a quarter million after the Gulf War. Nor is there much historical precedent of according Palestinians any privileged position based on land lost through war. Compare the current borders of Germany with those of 1914, and then try and make the case for returning soil from France and Poland that was German since antiquity — and the world will answer back with a stern lecture about the wages that a state incurs when it repeatedly attacks its neighbors and loses.
What then can Israel do as the West watches and wonders whether the supply of suicidal murderers will be exhausted before the weary Israeli public concedes? Such a strange place, the Middle East — where Klansmen-like terrorists in hoods, who blow themselves up in Israeli restaurants, and fire machine guns up into the air at funerals, try to pass themselves off as noble, underpowered freedom fighters because their fiery supporters in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan have learned long ago not to send any more of their own plentiful planes and tanks to destroy Israel.
Most notable is Hanson's undeniable conclusion:
But there is one final consideration for those smug utopian architects in our state department and Europe that is completely forgotten in all this. There will be no second Holocaust. If almost all of the West Bank is returned, as is likely, and in a few years hostilities nevertheless resume as they did during phases 1-3 of the Middle East wars, as is also likely, the battle will be over Israel itself, not Palestinian land. That will be a war Israel will not lose, and it will be fought outside not inside the Jewish state. And that will be a nightmare compared to the current crisis. Those in Europe and in the United States who now lecture about morality will then prove to be not only amoral, but also answerable for far, far more still.

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN RADICAL A YEAR AGO: Thomas Friedman believes that U.S. troops need to be on the ground in the West Bank to make and keep peace there. The theme of his column is that "this is a shocking recommendation," but it is a statement about how horrific the situation has become that if you've been following developments closely, it isn't crzay at all.
Also, Friedman makes the following point:
What the hawks don't understand is that the escalating friction between the Israeli and Palestinian forces is enabling Palestinians to steadily improve their military skills. This is a natural phenomenon seen in many prolonged wars between a more sophisticated and less sophisticated army. It was the long friction between Hezbollah, a ragtag Lebanese militia, and Israel that eventually improved Hezbollah's skills to the point where it was able to force Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Lebanon, without any agreement, by lowering the casualty ratio between Hezbollah and Israel from 10 to 1 down to 1 to 1.
He's absolutely right, and it points out something that the U.S. learned in Vietnam: the folly of gradual escalation. Part of the effectiveness of force is in its shock value, which is greatly reduced in a situation of gradual escalation. Something to keep in mind for when the next cease-fire fails.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, VOL. II: Andrew Sullivan speaks for many bloggers when he opines that by pressing Israel for a cease-fire, it is selling Israel out and faltering in the war on terrorism. I agree that from a moral standpoint, the reversion to State Department-style peace processing is wrong. But I think there is much more to the administration's moves, and much less succor to the Palestinian terrorists, than meets the eye. Here's a semi-organized explanation:
1) The Bush administration deserves the benefit of the doubt. The unqualified support they have given to the Sharon government over the last several months, in the face of international opposition and the scorn of media "sophisticates", is more than any recent administration has done - perhaps not since the Johnson administration gave Israel a tacit green light to launch the 1967 war. (For all of Clinton's affinity for Israel, he reverted to the James Baker playbook as soon as Netanyahu was elected; his administration's support for Israel not-so-coincidentally coincided with the intervals in which Israel was most willing to comply with the wishes of international polite opinion. I think it is far more impressive that the U.S. government has supported the man regularly and unfavorably compared to Caligula in the international media (on a good day).)
2) The support being given to Arafat is much less than it seems. In a brilliant piece originally published in July in the Weekly Standard, David Brooks noted that the Palestinians and Israelis were then (and certainly now) at the stage where they were negotiating cease-fires in a way that would force the other side to break them first. The Tenet plan was a victory for Israel in that respect:
It forces Yasser Arafat to perform a series of politically unpalatable tasks—like arresting terrorists and confiscating illegal weapons from his troops—before it forces Israel to do anything politically unpalatable, such as freeze settlement construction on the West Bank. Therefore, Arafat will have to break the cease-fire first and bear the brunt of the ensuing American disapproval.
The agenda that Zinni is now pushing is the Tenet plan. Today's supposed breakthrough - the news that Dick Cheney would be willing to meet Arafat - is, as the Washington Post understands, a politically adept move which returns the onus to Arafat to:
meet certain conditions, including a public declaration that violence by Palestinians must end and that his Palestinian Authority security forces enforce a cease-fire, once it is agreed on, in areas under Palestinian control.
...Israeli officials said neither Cheney nor Zinni had pressured them to make political concessions -- or even discuss possible concessions -- before the Palestinians arrest militants, seize illegal weapons and crack down on groups that have carried out terrorist attacks.
(As an aside, don't expect the NY Times to pick up on any of this, as usual.)
Also, there is little doubt that Sharon has been taking a page from Arafat's book and escalated the Israeli response right before the Zinni visit, so as to create an opportunity for a "concession" (along the lines of the Palestinians reducing the number of shootings on Israelis from dozens to 5 per day).
3) The current situation will be swept away in the whirlwind of what is about to happen. I've seen many journalists couch this scenario in qualifiers so as to not confront the ramifications. But you read this site for descriptions of the ramifications. So:
Israel will be attacked with chemical weapons in the next year.
When the U.S. attacks Iraq, there is little doubt that Saddam will fire whatever he can at Israel, as its nuclear deterrent will lose some effect once Saddam knows he is dead one way or another. (I still believe that it is worth taking him put ASAP, because failure to do so will only strengthen what he can and will fire at Israel and the U.S.) It is entirely possible that the attacks will, like his Scud attacks in the Gulf war, will fail to do much damage, but the storm resulting from the attempt will reshape the region to an extent we can barely foresee. (Not that I won't try.)
A regional war could easily result, especially if Israel retaliates with nuclear weapons. If that happens, the "peace process" will be pushed back at least a generation, and if (as will probebly be the case) the Palestinians join in the war, Israel may wreak destruction that will exceed the wildest fantasies of Al-Jazeera.
Even if a regional war does not result, Israel will be in a totally different position as a result of being the victim of an attack of weapons of mass destruction. And it appears that regardless of what happens, the U.S. will not be using much (if anything) in the way of Arab bases for the upcoming attack on Iraq; not as much of a "coalition" to pay lip service to. Thanks to that (and to the fact that unlike Bush 41, Bush 43's team is "unilateralist" by nature), the U.S. will feel less of a debt to the Arab countries than it did after the first Gulf War, meaning that James Baker-type pressure is unlikely to be applied.
Given all that, it makes sense that Sharon is going along with the U.S. now; it will cost him less than it looks at first and the situation will undergo complete upheaval when the U.S. attacks Iraq.
Have a good night.

NOT ALL "PEACE PROCESSES" FAIL: The NY Times had a great account of how peace has been restored to Columbia's English Department. Apparently they need to have outsiders make the important decisions because the department is so divided.
I wasn't an English major, but I took a lot of classes in the department, with the good guys (defined for purposes of this post as those who did not mention the word "deconstruction.") I had no idea any of these tensions existed. Obliviousness is sometimes a very good thing.

AT LEAST RUBEN RIVERA UNDERSTOOD HE WAS STEALING: Pirates outfielder Derek Bell, signed before last season to a two-year, $10 million contract for no discernible reason, had a truly horrific season last year and looks worse this spring. So how does he react to the news that the Pirates might be considering other options - such as players who might actually be able to play? He threatens to commence "Operation Shutdown," as Mark Kriedler explains. One question that Kriedler doesn't answer: how would "Operation Shutdown" be any different than what Bell has done since the first half of 2000?

SORRY: Blogger has been down every time I tried posting over the last two days. I will try to make up for it this evening.

THE OTHER SIDE: From the Jerusalem Post, a good piece about how right-wing ideologues in Israel never admit that life may be more complicated than their worldview.

WHAT IS A BUBBLE? Robert Musil considers the question, as part of a series of posts on facotrs relating to the late-90s tech mania and subsequent "tech wreck."

APPEASEMENT IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE: An excellent piece by David Gelertner in the Weekly Standard titled "The Suicide of the Palestinians." Here are some excerpts:
In short, the Palestinian response to Israel's generous peace offer was, "Drop dead." How could that possibly have happened? A trick question--because the obvious but wrong answer is so close to the right one that it's hard to tune the right one in. You have to fiddle the dial back and forth. Yet the difference between the two is crucial. The "lesson of appeasement" is not that appeasement is futile. Appeasement is not futile, it is dangerous. Israel's enemies claim that Israel herself provoked the ongoing Palestinian pogrom, and in a sense they might well be right. Outlaws interpret an openhanded offer as weakness, not generosity. They interpret weakness as an incitement to violence.
...to a significant number of Palestinians, the offer obviously said: "We are weak; you have nothing to fear; attack." Appeasement doesn't merely fail to prevent catastrophe, it provokes catastrophe.
...Jews have as much right as anyone to settle on the West Bank. But it long seemed to me (as to many other American Jews) that, leaving right and wrong out of it, the settlements were causing Israel more grief than they were worth and ought to be stopped. But everything has changed. Who in his right mind could still believe today that to stop building new settlements (or even to abandon old ones) would appease the Palestinians? On the contrary: Such a move is likely to be dangerous, as Barak's offer turned out to be.
We now know what Palestinians want, and what they think of Israelis. After all, what exactly is the point of sending killers to massacre children at random? What do you accomplish? You impose hatred. You ask Israel, in effect: What do we need to do to make you all (not some of you; everyone) hate us? To make you unable to look at a Palestinian without revulsion? To force you eventually to take the terrible step of setting up enclaves where Arabs are banned? Palestinians don't want to live peaceably among Israelis; the natural conclusion is that they think about Israelis as they choose for Israelis to think about them.

WHY THE IVORY TOWER IS A STATE OF MIND: Dennis Ross proposes another U.S.-led diplomatic initiative to restart a "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians. Since he served both the Bush (I) and Clinton admnistrations as their point man on Israeli-Palestinian relations and was one of the primary architects of the Oslo-based "peace process" of such enduring accomplishment, it is worth examining his arguments. Despite the fact that he spent as much time in the region and immersed himself in the details of the negotiations as anyone else, his ideas still seem fatally divorced from reality.
Ross' main point is that the U.S. should start a four-point initiative, as follows:
First, we would ask Israel to halt its attacks and lift the siege of the Palestinians for 10 days. Should Israel get intelligence about a planned terrorist act in this period, it would inform Palestinian security forces and the United States. If the Palestinians did not act immediately to preempt the attack, the Israelis would have the right to do so.
OK... for every terrorist attack that succeeds, the Israelis prevent several others. Is it realistic to give first crack at prevention to those who have been (at best) encouraging the attackers? It is a recipe for a greater success ratio for the terrorists. This policy may not last past 9 A.M. on the first day of this plan.
Second, the Palestinian Authority would act decisively and unequivocally in the 10-day period to try to prevent all acts of terror and violence against Israelis. It would also begin to fulfill Yasser Arafat's previous promises to Zinni to make real, not fake, arrests and to dismantle terror organizations.
This has been on the agenda since the day the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, and hasn't happened yet. So when it fails to happen again...
Third, the United States would reconstitute the Committee on Verification and Monitoring mandated by the Wye River Agreement of 1998. Zinni would chair the committee and have it meet every day for the 10-day period; he would discuss the commitments each side has made, the gap between performance and commitment and the steps needed to bridge that gap. And he would be ready to announce who is fulfilling and not fulfilling his obligations. Based on the work of this committee, we should make sure our allies are prepared to join us in a common denunciation of the side not fulfilling its commitments.
At this point, you will run into the same issues that have prevented this from happening since 1993. Let's say the Palestinians fail to comply with certain requirements of the agreements - like #2 above, or having "security forces" many times larger than the one allowed under Oslo, or many times more (and heavier) weapons than allowed. Our allies who should be "prepared to join us in a common denunciation of the side not fulfilling its commitments" will bring tremendous pressure on us to spare Arafat in our denunciations - using all the familar arguments, and some new ones (like how any such criticism will jeopardize any supposed support we are getting for attacking Iraq). Under the Oslo-based process which Mr. Ross helped design, those exigencies always carried the day and the denunciations never occurred. Thus one side, which had forsworn violence, was emboldened to (a) build up an army with which to challenge its negotiating partner and (b) believe they could violate any agreement without consequence. If you want a recipe for the result of such "peace process" being a war like the one that exists now, that's a good place to start.
Basically, Ross is saying that the U.S. should now do what it avoided doing for almost a decade. It sounds good, but (a) it would be nice if he admitted as much, as he bears responsibility for why these steps were never taken before now and (b) it doesn't take into account why these steps have never been taken.
Fourth, assuming the initial 10-day period brings a halt to the violence, the Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Saudis would send representatives to Washington at the foreign minister level to work out a timeline of steps to be taken over a six-month period. This high-level meeting would break new ground for the Bush administration. Its purpose would be to cement and institutionalize the initial period of stability; to introduce the additional measures called for in the Tenet and Mitchell plans for changing the climate so negotiations could be resumed; to fix a point at which talks would resume; and to establish the agenda for the negotiations.
Even if the violence does actually pause for those 10 days (and that's one hell of an assumption), a main lesson of the last 18 months is that the fundamental compromises that must take place in order for any peace to take hold (i.e., the Palestinians understanding that they will not be able to return to their ancestral homes) are not items that can be decided at a "high-level" negotiation; the people itself must accept them before peace can hold. The Israelis have certainly not been perfect at understanding compromises that they must make, but the concept of dismantling (at least many) settlements has been long and openly discussed and is agreed to by a large percentage of the population. By contrast, the Palestinian leadership has encouraged the fantasies of its population that they will be able to return to their old homes in Israel, an idea which is a total non-starter. As long as such beliefs are widely held, there is no reason to think that a peace based on a negotiation which compromises them will hold (regardless of how many "high-level" negotiations are held.) The stress on "high-level" negotiations shows that Ross still does not understand that.
Somehow, I don't think Robert McNamara had much credibility after Vietnam. The analogy is not perfect, but Ross was a primary architect of the most prestigious U.S. diplomatic effort of the last decade, one which has degenerated into total disaster. That should be kept in mind when considering his further prescriptions for the matter.

A CONTEMPORARY FAIRY TALE: Thomas Boswell looks at the Washington, D.C. sports scene through the lens of the tale of the genie who grants three wishes:

A genie might grant you three wishes. In storybooks, this never works out well for the poor sap who gets the wishes.
Within the last year, the fans of Washington's three major pro sports franchises got the equivalent of their own three wishes.
So far, just as in those diabolical genie fables, things aren't working out exactly as expected.
Sixteen teams make the NBA playoffs. Sixteen teams make the NHL playoffs. It's a challenge to miss 'em. But right now, it does not look like the Wizards or Caps will make the postseason. Somewhere a malicious genie is rolling on the floor laughing. And he probably can't wait for the Redskins' 2002 season to begin.
Maybe this is the same genie who got Ken Lay to wish that he could be "the most talked-about CEO in America."

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO... Paul Krugman recently used his NYT column to eulogize James Tobin, the Nobel Prize -winning economist who taught at Yale and served as an adviser to President Kennedy. Krugman's description of Tobin's work (and his usage of Tobin's government service to - surprise! bash everything connected to the Bush administration) is criticized by Ben Stein (yes, as in "Win Ben Stein's Money.")

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: An article by Tim Blair argues for the superiority of today's kids over previous versions, and attributes it to.. The Simpsons!

THE FORTY QUESTIONS (MORE OR LESS), OR "WHY IS THIS WAR DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHERS:" Victor Davis Hanson has that many (mostly rhetorical) questions regarding war-related issues.
Here are some of them:

Is there a difference between Palestinians preferring to kill Israeli civilians rather than soldiers, and Israelis preferring to kill Palestinian fighters rather than civilians?
Why are the EU and international agencies vocal about well-fed and humanely treated prisoners in Cuba, and yet said nothing when depraved comrades of these detainees recently executed an American soldier upon capture in Afghanistan, and murdered Danny Pearl?
If America forced Israel to give back every inch of the West Bank, if America withdrew all its troops from all Arab countries, if America increased its aid to Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan, if America sought to placate Saddam Hussein, remove all U.N. sanctions, and normalize relations with the Iraqi dictatorship, and if America sought to restore full relations with Iran without conditions, would the Muslim world really like the United States?
Why do Middle Easterners become far more enraged at Israelis for shooting hundreds of Muslims than at Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians, Indians, Algerians, Russians, Somalis, and Serbians for liquidating tens of thousands?
If nearly two-thirds of the Arabic world believe that Arabs were not involved in September 11, why should any American believe anything that two out of three people from that region say?
Will Palestinians cheer when Saddam Hussein launches chemical-laden missiles against Israel when we invade his country?

Just wondering...

SPEAKING TRUTH TO WEAKNESS: An outstanding piece by Michael Walzer, a leftist intellectual with tremendous intellectual integrity, in the latest issue of Dissent. He harshly criticizes his colleagues on the left for the feebleness of their response to the war on terror.
I would quote examples, but there were too many great bits to choose from. Go read it.

AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT... Steven Spielberg has made some changes to the version of E.T. about to be re-released. Most notably, he has digitally altered the guns in one chase scene to walkie-talkies - after all, a whole generation of children has been traumatized by the sight. My old college classmate Tim Carvell has some other editing suggestions for Mr. Spielberg.

WELCOME: A special welcome to all those who have arrived through the referral of Mickey Kaus. I hope you'll enjoy your stay and come back occasionally. Thanks, Mickey!

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, VOL. I: An outstanding piece by Megan McArdle on why Netscape deserves to lose its civil suit against Microsoft, regardless of the dirty tricks playd by the latter against the former.
On her website, Megan amplifies on her article and notes:

The funny thing about the Netscape/Microsoft battle is that it's possible to argue that it was Netscape that acted like a monopoly: sitting there fat, dumb, and happy while someone else took their market share away.
... They built a great product, but they were not as aggressive about improvements as Microsoft was, especially on the consumer side. Unfortunately, they got a little soft in the days when they were the only game in town. Confident that there was no real competition from Microsoft, they introduced a passable browser -- Communicator 4.5 -- and some reportedly iffy server software. ... Netscape pretty clearly thought that it could takes its customers for granted because -- well, because it was Netscape. That's monopoly thinking.
Netscape was too confident that users would continue to use its technology simply because it was already the dominant technology in the market. They took the wrong lessons from Microsoft. Microsoft is not the technology leader in the market (by a long shot), but that doesn't mean the company doesn't innovate. It focuses its innovation on consumer features, which is what makes it so successful. Netscape assumed that once it had established dominance, it didn't matter that much what the company sold because the brand and the network effects would carry it. That's an assumption Microsoft never made, which is why it's around today.

For more food for thought defending Microsoft against one of the most common charges levied against it - namely, that Microsoft is the beneficiary of "path dependence" (that for reasons unrelated to quality, an "inferior" product became standard and made it inefficient to switch to the "superior" competitior), see this summary in the Economist of a book by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis called Winners, Losers and Microsoft. (The most famous example of supposed "path dependence" is the QWERTY keyboard layout, which is supposedly less efficient than other models but gained currency through historical accidents. Liebowitz and Margolis debunk that example, as well.)

YOU JUST KNOW SOME PEOPLE WILL THINK THIS IS SERIOUS: From Sophismata, a link to the Gettysburg Address in Powerpoint. Really. I'm not kidding.

THE SOURCES OF KOFI ANNAN'S THINKING: SmarterTimes deconstructs the sources for Kofi Annan's use of the word "illegal" in describing the Israeli presene in the West Bank and Gaza.

"WHEN REALLY, REALLY STUPID BEHAVIOR IS INVOLVED, CAN BUD SELIG BE FAR BEHIND?" A memorable (and depressingly accurate) line from Doug Pappas' seventh entry in his series on interpreting baseball's financial statements. It has been revealing. (The stupid behavior he refers to was when Bud owned the Brewers, he took on a tremendous amount of debt to cover operating expenses rather than to finance investments - making it very difficult for the team to borrow money to finance its new stadium. This, from the man who now wants to penalize teams who borrow to finance revenue-increasing new stadiums and save money by signing players to long-term contracts.

AND THE PROBLEM IS? Legendary anti-American and anti-Israeli columnist Robert Fisk has a piece in the Guardian where he loyally voices the supposed desires (for the U.S. to abandon Israel) and fears (that the U.S. will move against Iraq) of the Arab governments. No doubt faithfully repeating their thoughts, he writes:
Privately, pro-western leaders in the Arab world have grave concerns about the Bush theory of "regime change". For if Iraqis were helped to overthrow their dictatorial government, what if Egyptian or Saudi citizens also decided on a little "regime change" of their own?

NINE POINTS: In the middle of an otherwise conventional piece about BBC bias against Israel, Barry Rubin summarizes why Israel is skeptical of the effectiveness of a peace deal, in light of the last 18 months:

1. Seeing the "return" of refugees as a formula for massive violence and for Israel's destruction, though there is no Israeli objection to resettling refugees in a Palestinian state. It is Arafat and the Palestinian leadership who reject that solution.

9. Mistrust of Western/international urgings for concessions and promises of guarantees, based on their refusal to back Israel while it has been facing such a brutal terrorist assault. Palestinians and other Arabs constantly claim that Israel's concessions demonstrate its weakness, and that killing more Israelis is thus justified, until victory.

SIDESHOW BOB: A typically sharp pice of analysis by Robert "Crazy Bob" Kuttner:
Whether it is an ill-specified axis of evil, or a decision to make tactical nuclear war thinkable, or a domestic ''shadow government,'' or deliberately leaked plans to attack Iraq, George W. Bush in his own way is as frightening as Al Qaeda.

HARBINGERS OF "NORMALIZATION": According to the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh, the recently-celebrated Jewish holiday of Purim calls for the preparation of special holiday pastries filled with human blood. Again, this is from a newpaper from a government which is supposedly prepared to "normalize" a relationship with Israel.
It is easy to make fun of the "corrections" sometimes found in papers like the New York Times. But can you imagine what an equivalent section in this paper would look like if Saudi Arabia actually tried to follow through in the plan and signed a treaty with Israel? "This Just In: Jews Have A Right to Exist - Ignore Everything You Have Been Taught For The Last 50 Years."

SPEAK TO YOUR EDITORS: Thomas Friedman understands exactly what was novel about the Saudi "peace plan" described in his column, and exactly why watering it down even a little bit will make a big difference:

If Abdullah lets his message get watered down, it will signal not only that the Palestinians can't make real peace with Israel, but that the Arabs can't either. Therefore, no real acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East is possible — even if Israel fulfills all Arab requirements. For the Arab world, that would mean that bin Laden and Syria are in the driver's seat and that the Arab past will continue to bury the Arab future.
...Anwar el-Sadat also demanded full withdrawal. The reason he got it, though, was not because of what he demanded, but because of the psychological breakthrough to Israelis that he offered first. The reason Abdullah's remarks tantalized some Israelis was because they offered "full normalization." This needs to be elaborated. If, instead, it's washed out by the Arab League, the whole exercise will be remembered as wasted breath.

Do Friedman's editors read his columns?

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: This item must be seen to be believed.

MORE ON KOFI ANNAN: Mr. Annan no doubt represented the international consensus that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is "illegal." Is that actually true? Or is it just one of those things that is commonly believed because it is repeated so often, regardless as to whether or not the relevant legal sources actually proscribe it? (Especially when combined with the nasty international habit of blaming Israel whenever possible, and half the time when impossible.) Here's a crisp article by Dore Gold indicating that the latter is more likely. (Via SmarterTimes.)

WAR AND PEACE (PROCESSES): Michael Kelly explains how Israel can emulate Yasser Arafat:

What Israel must do is to adopt its own version of Arafat's phased war approach; it must pursue peace, or appear to pursue peace, as a phase in the longer war. It must meet Palestinian war with relentless war in return. But, simultaneously, it must become the aggressor in a new peace process -- whether or not that process will ultimately lead to a peace Israel can accept. The so-called Saudi plan currently on the table is a cynical and moth-eaten fraud put forth by a cynical and moth-eaten regime. In its ultimate proposals -- the abandonment of Jerusalem, the return of all Palestinian refugees -- it is purposely unworkable. Israel should nevertheless grasp it (or something equally unrealistic) as the basis for a new round of negotiations.

This won't produce peace. But Israel can learn from Arafat's strategy; the great thing now is to take the long view -- and meanwhile move the war to the next phase.

THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT: The Washington Post's editorial and op-ed pages have become far superior to those of the New York Times. An example is the Post's editorial regarding the Nuclear Posture Review. While not flawless, its critcism is far more measured and intelligent than the New York Times' hysterical outburst on the same topic.
If the Times' editors had actually given the matter any thought, it would have realized that with regard to the possibility of nuclear retalitation against Iraq or North Korea:
For more than a decade, the United States has sought to deter rogue states from using weapons of mass destruction by publicly suggesting that it might respond with a nuclear strike, and Pentagon planners have backed the threat by laying out theoretical targeting plans for Iraq, Iran and other such states. The policy, which the Clinton administration continued from the first Bush presidency, has been a success: Saddam Hussein, who used chemical weapons against his own people in the 1980s, did not dare to employ them against U.S. troops or allies during or after the Persian Gulf War. You wouldn't know it from recent scaremongering headlines and overheated rhetoric, but in this aspect the Bush review has merely reaffirmed a sensible strategy.
Note to NYT editors: "Recent scaremongering headlines and overheated rhetoric" - that's you.

A WARM DAY IN HELL: Bud Selig is at it again, announcing that he will enforce the "60/40 rule" (which states that baseball teams cannot have debt exceeding 40% of their value) in a manner aimed to penalize teams that do things that Selig doesn't like - i.e., sign players to long-term contracts and obtain private (rather than state) funding for new ballparks. Joe Sheehan discusses the plan's faults in detail, most notably:
Selig plans to set the value of clubs at twice their revenues, a number presumably pulled from the same place as the rest of baseball's numbers.

Three teams--the Expos, Marlins, and Red Sox--were sold this winter. The Red Sox had revenues of $177 million in 2001, and were sold for $660 million. The Expos had revenues of $34 million, and were sold for $120 million. The Marlins has revenues of $60.5 million, and were sold for $158 million.

...Hasn't his basic thought process been revealed? Invest in your product, and you're the enemy. Better to get the money from 1) taxpayers and 2) ballplayers, no matter how many lies have to be told to get it.

Enough said.

THE BENEFITS OF PROCRASTINATION: I was all set to write a long rant on the unbelievably illogical and inane New York Times editorial (even by NYT standards) regarding the recently leaked review of nuclear policy that the Bush administration has undertaken. But Scott Shuger has beaten me to the punch with a piece on a similar item in the LA Times. Glad to free-ride on his labor.

WORSE THAN MORAL EQUIVALENCE: Assuming Kofi Annan is correctly quoted in today's New York Times, his words provide more proof as to why the U.N. cannot be taken seriously on matters relating to Israel - in fact, why it must be actively opposed.
According to James Bennet, Annan said:

To the Israelis I say: you have the right to live in peace and security within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must end the illegal occupation," he said. "More urgently, you must stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians."

He continued: "To the Palestinians I say: you have the inalienable right to a viable state within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must stop all acts of terror and all suicide bombings. It is doing immense harm to your cause, by weakening international support and making Israelis believe that it is their existence as a state, and not the occupation, that is being opposed."
First, only the Palestinians' rights to a state "within secure internationally recognized borders" is deemed "inalienable." Maybe that's just a quibble, but look at the nature of the criticisms: the Palestinians' terrorism is criticized on prudential grounds, as "doing immense harm to your cause." By contrast, the unqualified detailing of every action taken by Israel is criticized for its own sake. Apparently, only the Israelis' actions are wrong in and of themselves. This is worse than moral equivalence; it assumes the Palestinians' moral superiority. While no one should be surprised in light of the Durban "anti-racism" conference, a U.N.-sponsored orgy of anti-Semitism, it is always depressing to hear it from the organization's leader. It is also a useful reminder of the organization's true nature in this area.

PEACE PROCESS SUICIDE: An interesting piece by Anne Applebaum in Slate citing Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist, on how the Oslo process created the seeds of the current terrorism. The ramifications are, Applebaum writes, that:

everyone involved should look hard at the past decade and ask a few tough questions. How wise was it, for example, to begin a peace process that had no clear outcome? How successful can such negotiations ever be if the partners involved have not yet agreed on what the endgame will look like—and have not yet renounced violence? How successful can they be if the interim arrangements simply create more frustration?

If Oslo did make the situation worse, then we all have some rethinking to do. By accepting long, drawn out, halfway solutions, the promoters of peace appear to have undermined the notion of "peace" itself. I hope it is not too late to restore it.

I think that in order to succeed, a peace process needs to confront the fundamental issues right away. A process which neglects fundamental disagreements in favor of "confidence-building measures" only promote misunderstandings regarding those fundamental issues, which will lead to more violence when they can no longer be ignored. You don't solve fundamental disagreements by agreeing on minor points; you solve them by arguing about them - be it at the negotiating table or the battlefield. While the latter sounds harsh, ignoring the need to determine who has won will only lead to more violence as a result of a failed "peace process," which failure will make peace harder to achieve.

ANNIVERSARY ITEM: In honor of the semi-annual anniversary of 9/11 and the horrifying images we witnessed again last night through CBS' extraordinary 9/11 documentary, here's a reminder of what one journalist saw on 9/11 in Lebanon. (Via Rod Dreher on National Review Online's "Corner.")

MORE ON "IT'S NOT OVER TIL IT'S OVER:" Another look at how we will know the war is over, from James Lileks.

THIS IS WHAT VICTORY MEANS: Another great column by Mark Steyn regarding the war. Here are his criteria for victory:
*Regime changes in Iraq and Iran.

*The embrace by the Middle East of the same reforms Turkey embarked on 80 years ago.

Worth considering. Even if you have reservations about points #2 and 3, the larger point is inarguable: we've only just begun.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Jonathan Rauch is one of the few journalists who can be counted on to consistently come up with original thoughts, and today's column, where he proposes having Israel re-occupy the West Bank as an overt gesture towards peace negotiations (counterintuitive as that may seem) possibly coupled with the simultaneous evacuation of certain settlements, definitely qualifies.
Rauch's analysis of the situation is generally excellent. But it's his introduction which should be posted on the chairs of every editorialist and op-ed writer who thinks sending Anthony Zinni back to the region is part of a solution:
Amazingly, the newspapers are still full of diplomats, politicians, and editorialists insisting that the answer must be for the Bush Administration to roll up its sleeves, fully engage the Middle East crisis, and get the peace process back on track. Good idea! How about an intense, personal, eight-year effort by an American President to forge a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians? How about frequent White House meetings with the principals, tireless hands-on diplomacy, and every imaginable kind of stroking, arm-twisting, map-drawing, cajoling, and pleading?
Oops. Already tried that. Never mind.
Here is one Middle East initiative that would really help: The next diplomat, politician, or editorial writer who declares that the Bush Administration must "fully engage to restart the peace process" should be drawn and quartered. Especially if the offender is a European who risked not one nickel of political capital in the Middle East during the 1990s. And doubly especially if the offender is an Arab who spent the 1990s ducking American pleas to push the Palestinians to make a deal, and who now blames America (America!) for the failure of Middle East peace.
Will the idea work? Probably not. Will it fail more bloodily than what has been tried up to this point? Probably not.

HOW FRIEDMAN GOT HIS GROOVE BACK: An excellent assessment of Thomas Friedman by David Plotz. It provides a good explanation as to why, when Friedman is right - as he has been about most things since September 11 - he can be the most influential columnist in the country.

THE PROBLEM OF QUALITY CONTROL: In The American Prospect, Natasha Berger mounts an unconvincing defense of the recently revealed plagiarism of Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Samples include:
Goodwin, for her part, has apologized repeatedly and profusely, maintaining the theft was unintentional, a result of carelessness and poor organization of source materials.
Well, apologizing is nice, but it doesn't mean the deed was not committed. No one can know what her intent was, but there are certain facts militating against Goodwin's version; she paid a substantial settlement to the author from whom she plagiarized and the plagiarism was apparently quite substantial.
Timothy Noah cites a handbook on plagiarism from Harvard, where Goodwin is on the Board of Overseers, which shows that under Harvard policy, Goodwin would be guilty of plagiarism even if the theft was unintentional. In response, Berger writes:
Nor is it exactly fair to argue, as Noah does, that Goodwin is getting her just desserts because a "Harvard undergraduate" caught doing the same thing would be punished with suspension. Goodwin's position in no way corresponds to that of a student. Her years of valuable -- and blameless -- scholarly work merit the benefit of the doubt.
Let's rewrite that sentence a little bit:
Nor is it exactly fair to argue, as Noah does, that Ken Lay is getting his just desserts because a "middle manager" caught doing the same thing would be punished with jail. Lay's position in no way corresponds to that of a middle manager. His years of valuable -- and blameless -- business experience merit the benefit of the doubt.
Can you see The American Prospect printing that sentence? I didn't think so. Should they print that sentence? Absolutely not.
But we haven't even gotten to the best part...
Berger's real criticism is that the criticism of Goodwin are invalid because of their source:
...that editor-free child of Web media, the blog (the common name for Web logs). However inadvertently, blogs -- with their sound-bite commentary, round-the-clock updates, and open-door policy to posters -- make an ideal breeding ground for character assassins.
..few media critics have gotten around to dealing with the serious problem of quality control in the increasingly powerful blogging world. The irony, of course, is that in many cases, Goodwin is being hounded by people who are just as shifty with their sources as she was with hers -- probably much more so.
Where was the editor on this piece? Leaving aside the whole ridiculous notion that blogs are some kind of drag on journalistic quality and accuracy (see this Andrew Sullivan piece for a good rejoinder), think it through: Several respectable entities have disassociated themselves from Goodwin or considered doing so, like the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" and the board which awards the Pulitzer Prizes. Why would they do so unless the allegations had at least a subtantial likelihood of being true? (After all, as Berger points out, Goodwin's reputation far outweighs that of her accusers.) And if the allegations are true, then how can you criticize the "blogs" for raising them? Other than the aesthetic revulsion and ad hominem attacks which characterize so much of what passes for reasoning at The American Propsect, you can't.

THE VOICE OF THE PAST: Another excellent historical perspective from Victor Davis Hanson.

BLEATING AGAINST SHEEP: James Lileks takes on sanctimonious Europeans at the end of today's entry. A must-read.

THE WORST THING BUSH HAS DONE: The tariff placed on steel by the Bush administration is both an economic and political disaster. Much as it pains me to admit it, Paul Krugman's criticisms are on the mark this time.

MORE ON THE CHIMERA: In today's "Breakfast Table" in Slate, Anne Applebaum dismisses the Saudi plan:
As for the Saudi proposal—I find it ludicrous. There is no evidence that the Arab world is ready to recognize the Israeli right to exist, and certainly no evidence that the Arab world is ready to give up the Palestinian refugees' "right of return" to Israel. Since the Israelis will never accept the refugees—and their many millions of descendants—it is hard to imagine how we get around this one.
Applebaum has been a long-time skeptic of the efficacy of "peace processes," which she repeats here:
In these circumstances, the outside intervention—from President Clinton—was an utter disaster. He forced everyone to play their cards too soon, before either the Israeli or the Palestinian general public were ready to give up on violence. I can't see how Colin Powell or Javier Solana could, at the moment, do much better: Negotiations could perhaps calm the situation, but until one or both sides has come to the conclusion that talking will produce a better deal than fighting, negotiations have little chance of long-term success.
This critique is identical to the one Ari Fleischer cited, to much criticism. They're both wrong, though.
I have been as critical of Clinton as anyone, but the main problem wasn't that he forced the issue, for two reasons. First, the idea to convene Camp David with such an ambitious agenda was as much as I have previously argued at unconscionable length, the problem had more to do with the one-sided giving structure of the "peace process." With that pattern, the breakdown at Camp David over final-status issues would have occurred whether the discussions had taken place in 2000 or 2025. If anything, it was beneficial to force the issue, to see if the Palestinians would be ready to make compromises of their own before Israel had already given up all their chips. A better-designed peace process would have forced the Palestinians to make painful concessions as the Israelis did (indeed, that would have been the "even-handed" approach). Barak's forcing the issue at Camp David was as much an attempt to break out of the prior pattern which governed the peace process as it was an attempt to reach a final settlement. The problem wasn't as much that an outsider had tried to force peace before the parties were ready for it. The problem was that the pattern of dealings between the parties, encouraged by the outside mediators, had led one side to believe that it could have peace without giving up anything, as it was the other who bore all responsibility for making peace.
In fact, I think (as Barak did) that once that pattern had been established, it was necessary to force the issue so as to break out of it, even at the risk of causing conflict such as exists now.

ARE YOU SURE HE WASN'T A SURGEON? Charles Krauthammer carves up the Saudi "peace plan."

ROLE MODELS: Another star-struck portrayal of Palestinian terrorists in the Washington Post.
Profiles such as this one usually gloss over certain inconvenient facts, and this article is no exception. Here's an example:

...Abu Wadya eventually became disillusioned. The breaking point was when the government of the previous prime minister, Ehud Barak, declined to implement withdrawal agreements signed by previous governments.
"I had a glimpse of hope, like everybody else, but lost it," Abu Wadya said.

One might consider it appropriate to note that instead of implementing limited withdrawals, Barak offered the Palestinains virtually all of what they supposedly wanted at Camp David - something that should have offered a "glimmer of hope," which was only lost when the Palestinians started a war as a counteroffer. But that context would be inconvenient, wouldn't it?

AGAIN: Another week, another outstanding Michael Kelly column.

COSMO'S OWNER STRIKES AGAIN: Jonah Goldberg's latest G-File has the appropriate reaction to the recent news that Arab countries and the U.S. do not have high opinions of each other.

WHY ONE SHOULD NEVER TAKE THE GUARDIAN SERIOUSLY: A targeted strike by Gary Farber on the clear thinking of one columnist for the British left-wing publication.

MOSTLY GETTING IT: A good column by Thomas Friedman about the roots of Muslim rage at Israel and the U.S., helping to explain why - if poverty is supposedly the root cause of terrorism - the perpetrators of the worst Muslim terrorism have been educated and from the middle-class. My only criticism is that, as he often does, Friedman overstates the impact of the West Bank & Gaza settlements on the conflict and the positive impact that would result from a settlement regarding them. But it's still a useful read.

TERRORISM, BRITISH STYLE: From Andrew Sullivan, an article from the Telegraph describing how left-wing publications in Britian ruthlessly stifle dissent from their anti-American views. Some views, you see, are too dangerous to publish.
Among th views deemed fit to print is a column from the New Statesman in which the columnist offers his earnings from the magazine to anyone who will kill President Bush. The Telegaph cites this column and has a devastating, only-in-England response to it:
[G]iven the notorious stinginess of the magazine's payments, that is unlikely to prove a tempting offer.

THE COMING WHIRLWIND: Unless a drastic improvement in the situation occurs, Ze'ev Schiff warns that Israel may have to move against the families of suicide bombers. Under the current situation, those who blow themselves up are taking out a grisly life insurance policies for their families, who receive payments from sources such as Saddam Hussein for the services of their murderous relative. While I can't imagine Israel ever physically harming the families of suicide bombers, I could easily see a policy of putting them in detention so as to prevent monies from reaching them and generally make the point that the families will not be taken care of. Schiff notes that:
it is already clear that damaging property is not enough, because those who would not build one house for their refugee brothers are willing to build a new house for the martyr's family after he kills Israelis.
Such a tactic would be reminiscent of those used by Jordan to destroy the Abu Nidal organization over a decade ago. As Seymour Hersch describes:
In an interview, two former operations officers cited the tactics used in the late nineteen-eighties by the Jordanian security service, in its successful effort to bring down Abu Nidal, the Palestinian who led what was at the time "the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence," according to the State Department. Abu Nidal's group was best known for its role in two bloody gun and grenade attacks on check-in desks for El Al, the Israeli airline, at the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985. At his peak, Abu Nidal threatened the life of King Hussein of Jordan—whom he called "the pygmy king"—and the King responded, according to the former intelligence officers, by telling his state security service, "Go get them."
The Jordanians did not move directly against suspected Abu Nidal followers but seized close family members instead—mothers and brothers. The Abu Nidal suspect would be approached, given a telephone, and told to call his mother, who would say, according to one C.I.A. man, "Son, they'll take care of me if you don't do what they ask." (To his knowledge, the official carefully added, all the suspects agreed to talk before any family members were actually harmed.) By the early nineteen-nineties, the group was crippled by internal dissent and was no longer a significant terrorist organization. (Abu Nidal, now in his sixties and in poor health, is believed to be living quietly in Egypt.) "Jordan is the one nation that totally succeeded in penetrating a group," the official added. "You have to get their families under control."
This would be a horrific development, but Israel may be forced in that direction if the current conflict continues.

A WORLDVIEW EXPLAINED: This good article by James Poniewozik has the following nugget that can be extended to other contexts. The controversy over the proposed cancellation of "Nightline:"
is less about that one show than about journalists' eternal belief that the golden age of their profession is always twenty years before whatever the present time happens to be.
Substitute "baseball" for "their profession," and you have a perfect expression of the worldview of most sportswriters. In both editions of his Historical Baseball Abstract and in his other writings, Bill James had a funny feature called "Old Ballplayers Never Die," which would cite quotes from old baseball figures regarding the no-good players of the day, the decline of the game and of competitive balance, etc. Most of those quotes could pass for ones uttered today, and were as foolish then as their successors are now.

THE ALOMAR TRADE JUST GOT BETTER: Fragile prospect Alex Escobar, the key player given up by the Mets to acquire Roberto Alomar from the Indians, is out for the season with a knee injury. Sometimes subsequent events make you look smart. (Considering Escobar's injury history, this development is much less surprising than it'd be for another player, so some of it was real smarts on the Mets' part.)

NOSTALGIA AWARD: In honor of today's screed, look to this 1998 Slate piece regarding arguments for and against the government's anti-Microsoft case. I chose the later piece because it contains a reminder of when Krugman criticized Democrats for sloppy economic thinking as well as Republicans.
Krugman is absolutely right about the transition costs involved with transitioning to a system of partially-privatized Social Security system. But why is a Presidential speech regarding a long-collapsed proposal worthy of vicious criticism (for the umpteenth time), while a viable Democratic proposal that could destroy the 401(k) system in order to "save" it unworthy of comment?

WHY A NAZARETH ZONING CONTROVERSY IS A GOOD MODEL FOR THE PEACE PROCESS: Today's editorial in the Jerusalem Post explains why.
This is a persistent problem in negotiations: you have to sometimes be willing to have the deal fall apart over a ssemingly minor point in order to make clear that flouting the agreement at one side's convenience will not be tolerated. Because the Israelis and the U.S. were never willing to run that risk, and the Palestinaians knew it, a culture took hold where the Palestinains were never expected to abide by any of the agreements they signed. When you're looking for reasons why the Palestinains might have thought they could start the second intifada after Camp David, that's one place to look.

LESSON FROM THE PROFESSOR: InstaPundit has the following observation:
The big danger in the next few months isn't being too violent, and inflaming the "Arab street" with a desire for revenge. It's not being violent enough, and inflaming the "Arab street" with the belief that victory is possible.
I think one measure of success on the war on terrorism will be if, by the next State of the Union address, there are new, pro-Western governments in both Iran and Iraq. I think it's entirely possible (one by internal revolution, which we should be encouraging, and one by invasion). Those who protest that those two countries have not been definitively linked to 9/11 are usually the same ones who say, in their next breath, that only attacking the "conditions which lead" to terrorism(usually meaning Israel) will succeed. They have it wrong, as usual: The disappearance of the undisputed leader of Islamic fundamentalism (Shi'ite division) and the regime which has defied the U.S. most conspicuously for the longest, and the rise of pro-Western governments in their stead, will do more to show the bankruptcy of the Islamo-facist approach than any measure of diplomatic niceties.
Thomas Friedman has often written about the need for Arab societies to open up and reconstitute themselves. The external shock to the region from regime changes in Iran and Iraq should help matters.

TOXIC OIL DUMP: More great stuff from Mark Steyn. Samples include:

There are only two convincing positions on the House of Saud and 9/11: a) They're indirectly responsible for it; b) They're directly responsible for it. There's a lot of evidence for the former -- the Saudi funding of extreme Islamist madrassahs, etc. -- and a certain amount of not yet totally compelling evidence for the latter -- a Saudi "humanitarian aid" office in the Balkans set up by a member of the Royal Family which appears to be a front for terrorism. Reasonable people can disagree whether it's (a) or (b) but for Americans to argue that the Saudis are our allies in the war on terrorism is like Ron Goldman joining O.J. in his search for the real killers.
Borders are not sacrosanct. The House of Saud is not Royal, merely nomads who found a sugar daddy. There's no good reason why every time you fill your SUV you should be helping fund some toxic madrassah. In this instance, destabilization is our friend.

NOW THAT THE GENTLEMAN HAS ASKED: Rob Neyer takes up the issue of whether the long-standing practice of baseball players' editing their birthdays would have a major impact on our view of players' value patterns. Here's what he has to say:

As a postscript, I'd like to address an issue raised by a number of readers, who wondered if all of these bonkers birthdays might have a significant effect on the aging patterns that have been previously discovered by sabermetricians. As you know, it's now generally held that players tend to enjoy their best seasons between the ages of 26 and 28, and that baseball players, as a group, decline after they turn 30. So what does all the new math mean?

Which is what I figured. When we conduct studies of aging patterns, we're generally dealing with retired players, and the correct birthdays for the great majority of those players are now known.

THEOLOGY 101: The Muslim Pundit strikes again, with an extended discussion of the illogic of Islamist anti-democracy polemics.

MAN BITES DOG: In Salon, Anthony York rips the Democrats' proposed caps on the amount of company stock an employee may hold in a 401(k) plan, saying:
The proposed Boxer-Corzine reforms represent the worst part of left-wing political orthodoxy -- that individuals aren't smart enough to live their own lives. Keep in mind, we are not talking about Social Security, the safety net for American retirement. Boxer and Corzine are essentially trying to place limits on the gifts and incentives a company can offer its employees.
As York points out, the stock that Enron employees were prevented from selling for a few weeks in the fall was stock that Enron had given them as matching contributions in the first place.

THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: Saul Singer makes a few good points in his latest column regarding the different standards that Middle East dictators are held to.
As an aside, he also tosses off the following observation:
For their whole lives, Israelis have dreamed of being in a simple, solvable border conflict. The entire peace process - from Resolution 242, to Camp David I, to Oslo and back to Camp David - has been built on the assumption that the conflict is over borders, because if it is not, there is no basis for negotiating peace.
This is the type of blinding-flash-of-the-obvious observation that so much of the coverage of the current conflict is predicated on ignoring. What ability would a Taba accord have had to transform an existential rejection?
UPDATE: Instead of my harping on the differences between a "peace process" and actual piece, see this Anne Applebaum piece instead. She describes a consistent temptation among diplomats to fall victim to "peace process syndrome:"
This is what happens when politicians on one side or another of a sectarian conflict start to confuse the "process" with "peace," and think that because they are engaged in the former, they have achieved the latter. In fact, in a war or a long-running feud like the one in Northern Ireland, peace—real peace, which doesn't contain the seeds of a new war—comes about only when one side or the other has effectively agreed to give up.
It appears that the Palestinians may have believed that the Israelis had given up, a delusion fostered by the pattern of the "peace process" (as described at unconscionable length in last night's post), and the contrary recognition helped bring on the current fighting.

I'M NOT SURE IF THIS IS A JOKE: A major controversy has broken out regarding the Yankees.

CLIFF NOTES FOR EUROTRASHING: Charles Krauthammer elegantly dissects the Eurocrats' objections to the U.S.' recent actions.

FOR THE SPORTS FANS AND LIBERTARIANS AMONG US: A front-page story in the NY Daily News regarding the number of professional athletes who own guns. I don't think the article is that horribly biased (it does acknowledge that athletes could use the protection, though perhaps it only seems objective in relation to other NY-based press coverage of gun-related issues), but you can tell that it's a NY-based story from the assumption of surprise at the proportion and specific athletes cited (I know I was surprised).

REASSURANCE 101: In this frightening article about the lieklihood of a future terrorist attack, TIME has the following quote: "It's going to be worse, and a lot of people are going to die," warns a U.S. counterterrorism official. "I don't think there's a damn thing we're going to be able to do about it."

ARI FLEISCHER WAS RIGHT: In a way, his quickly-retracted blaming of Bill Clinton for the present violence in Israel deserved more credit than it received. Not for the reasons he cited ("as a result of an attempt to push the parties beyond where they were willing to go, that it led to expectations that were raised to such a high level that it turned into violence."); Clinton did not push further than Barak was willing to go at Camp David and Taba. Rather, the conduct of the peace process through 2000 was, in retrospect, perfectly designed to encourage Palestinian maximalism, and Clinton deserves some of the blame for it.
After Arafat signed the Oslo accords, all of the giving was on the Israeli side; at no time before Camp David in 2000 were the Palestinians called upon to give anything other than promises of non-violence (which were duly broken when convenient). For those who argue that the recognition of Israel's right to exist was an appropriate compromise, I would refer to P.J. O'Rourke's line from Parliament of Whores about how being bitten in half by a shark is a compromise with being swallowed whole.
At every interim juncture, whenever the Palestinians raised a violent stink, Israel was pressured to keep the peace process moving along by making compromises. Binaymin Netanyahu attempted to change the paradigm, and was treated as a virtual pariah by the U.S. and the rest of the world for doing so. (Incidentally, those who point to U.S. support for Israel as being the key factor as to why the Arab world hates us skip over the fact that in 1998, when the U.S. forced Netanyahu into the Wye accords at diplomatic gunpoint, the U.S.' standing in the Arab world did not dramatically increase, and the attack on our embassies in Africa took place around that time.)
The result was, as Michael Kelly put it, that a "particularly dangerous delusion [was] held by a surprising number of people in the Middle East... that Israel will one day be forced to its knees -- and that America will let that happen."
When the Camp David proposals came in under the maximum Palestinian demands, it was in keeping with the history of the "peace process" that the Palestinians would start violence in an attempt to force the Israelis to sweeten the pot or surrender. Even The Economist, for whom Israel is always wrong as a matter of first principles, recognized that "the violence is not one-sided. It has, in point of fact, been initiated by the Palestinians ... to drive Israel from the territories by force."
The pattern of the peace process set the stage for the violence that began in October 2000, and Bill Clinton bears some responsibility for it.
P.S. The question that provoked Fleicher's response, as described in the NY Times, was even more inaccurate than his response. The questioner supposedly asked "Mr. Fleischer if he agreed that Middle East violence in the last months of the Clinton administration had been quelled when both Israelis and Palestinians were at the negotiating table, and if it had not increased during the Bush administration, when the United States has not been deeply involved in peace talks."
The violence may be worse now, but any suggestion that "Middle East violence in the last months of the Clinton administration had been quelled when both Israelis and Palestinians were at the negotiating table" is an ambitious piece of revisionist history. The Taba talks - the closest the two sides have come to a final agreement - was among the most surreal events in diplomatic history, as attacks on Israelis were continuing apace and Barak was negotiating knowing he had no chance of being returned to office in the next month's elections. And the questioner's assumption that the increase in violence is due to a lack of American involvement is equally fallacious, but this post is already too long.

AND HOW WAS YOUR DAY? (THE TRUE HORROR): Here is a description of the latest 24-hour stretch in Israel. Among the dead in the Jerusalem bombing were seven members of one family. And this outstanding achievement was described as, according to the Jerusalem Post, "an operation of heroic martyrdom." That statement is even more indicative of the likelihood of peace than the actions which it describes. For further proof, see the picture accompanying this article.

HORRORS! I know I'm beating this Saudi "peace plan" into the ground, but here's another angle. From a review of the reactions to the plan from Middle East papers, Jefferson Morley unearths this gem from "Al-Quds al-Arabi, the Saudi-owned, London-based Arab nationalist paper that is critical of the Saudi royal family and the United States." (Unfortunately, I cannot find an English version of the site.) The editor:

worried that the peace overture might lead, among other things, to Jewish tourists in Saudi Arabia. Did it cross Abdullah's mind, Atwan asks,
"that normalization of tourist ties could mean that swarms of Israeli tourists would want to visit Medina to look for traces of their forefathers, and to hold religious festivals on their holidays to commemorate anniversaries of the Bani Quraydhah and Bani Qinqa (Pre-Islam Jewish tribes that dwelt in southwest the Arabian Peninsula), exactly as they visit Jarbah in Tunisia and the Abu-Hasirah grave in Egypt."
I can reassure the editor that not many Israelis will be holding the specific "religious festivals" he refers to. But imagine the horrors of Israelis visiting Medina!

THERE'S A SHOCK: About 18 hours after closing on their purchase of the Boston Red Sox, the new ownership group fired general manager Dan Duquette.
If Duquette had stepped down before the 2000 season, he would have been recognized as one of the best GMs in baseball. At that point, he had led the Sox to a division title in 1995 and consecutive wild-card berths in 1998 and 1999 and built the foundation for a great team with Pedro Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra. The farm system looked at least OK, and he had shown that he knew the value of the waiver wire, acquiring good complementary players like Brian Daubach, Troy O'Leary and Tim Wakefield for nothing. And