Many columnists and writers have penned pieces on Memorial Day. Without much comment, here are a few of the better articles I've run across.

Paul Greenberg's Sweep of History . . . and Heroism; Mark Steyn on Memorials and Perspective; and an excellent piece by Dan Henninger in Friday's WSJ. There's also a editorial in this morning's Atlanta-Journal Constitution (registration) marking Memorial Day.

More as I discover them, plus a few thoughts on patriotism, later today.

Apropos my comments below on media bias and truth, Jonnah Goldberg has a column on journalists' fear that, during wartime, their peers will find them guilty of patriotism. His best paragraph quotes Mike Wallace:

"In 1987 . . . Peter Jennings and CBS' Mike Wallace explained on a PBS show that they wouldn't warn American troops they were about to be ambushed. When Wallace was asked if saving American lives might be a higher duty than getting 30 seconds of videotape, he snapped back: 'No. You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!'"

Think of Ernie Pyle's performance in WWII, says Goldberg, and you'll be reminded just how different the profession has become. He's dead on, of course, but take time to think of the late Michael Kelley, who also died in war, or Robert Kaplan, whose reporting from Iraq I outlined earlier today. As Goldberg implies, patriotism isn't taught as a virtue at Columbia Journalism School, but it's still esteemed by some practitioners of the craft.

Bruce Thornton, a classics professor and author in California, treats the problem of media bias in an essay running on Victor Hanson's web site. He complains, rightly, that the elite media, led by the New York Times, has given pride of place to the Abu Ghraib story at the expense of covering the wider picture in Iraq. Had they looked around a bit, Thornton argues, they would have noted that American troops have rebuilt schools and roads, attacked and killed Baathist thugs who would return the country to dictatorship, and worked to bring stability to that long-troubled land.

In Bruce's words: "[T]he media needs to keep the proper perspective and judge actions by the standard not of perfection but of flawed human nature and the complexity and unforeseen consequences of all action. One way to do this is to be careful with language. In describing the abuse in Abu Ghraib, the New York Times' favorite word is 'horrific.' If intimidation and humiliation are 'horrific,' what word do we use to describe Auschwitz, or what went on in Abu Ghraib under Hussein? The use of such rhetoric is a sure sign that partisan interpretation rather than objective reporting is driving the news."

And he cites the power of visual images to sway our opinion regardless of actual battlefield situations: "The most notorious example, for us Americans, of the power of misleading media coverage, particularly visual media, is the 1968 Tet offensive during the war in Vietnam. Images of Viet Cong in the heart of Saigon and dead Americans in the U.S. embassy grounds created an interpretation of North Vietnamese prowess and U.S. weakness, when in actual fact Tet was a failure for the North and a display of American military brilliance by any just standard. But the images created their own reality."

Similar observations were made in yesterday's WSJ ($) by Robert Kaplan, who was the only journalist to accompany Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment into Fallujah back on April 6. That same Marine Company had scored a historic victory at Hue City in February, 1968. Yet that achievement went underreported for reasons that bear great similarity with what we're seeing in Iraq.

As Kaplan says: "The Marines never got proper credit for Hue, for it was ultimately overshadowed by My Lai, in which an Army platoon killed 347 civilians a month later in 1968. This was despite the fact that the Marines' liberation of Hue led to the uncovering of thousands of mass graves there: the victims of an indiscriminate communist slaughter. Thus, Hue became a metaphor for the military's frustration with the media: a frustration revisited in Fallujah."

Bruce Thornton notes that the Allies had no qualms about destroying Germany and Japan before the rebuilding began. Kaplan eloquently describes how different things are today: "By the standards of most wars, some mosques in Fallujah deserved to be leveled. But only after repeated aggressions was any mosque targeted, and then sometimes for hits so small in scope that they often had little effect. The news photos of holes in mosque domes did not indicate the callousness of the American military; rather the reverse. . . . [T]he only time I saw angry or depressed Marines was when an Iraqi civilian was accidentally hit in the crossfire -- usually perpetrated by the enemy. I was not surprised. I had seen Army Special Forces react similarly to civilian casualties the year before in Afghanistan. The humanity of the troops is something to behold: contrary to the op-ed page of the New York Times (May 21), the word 'haji' in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at least among Marines and Special Forces, is more often used as an endearment than a slur. To wit, 'let's drink tea and hang out with the hajis' . . . 'haji food is so much better than what they feed us' . . . 'a haji designed real nice vests for our rifle plates,' and so on. Thus, it has been so appallingly depressing to read about Abu Ghraib prison day after day, after day."

Given the partisanship of today's elite media, counteracting the impact of visual images requires a sustained government effort not to propagandize, but to get the truth out. LBJ and Nixon failed miserably at that task during Vietnam; Bush has done better, but Kaplan charges incompetence among his staff in telling the American people the truth about Iraq. He calls for daily slide shows, films, photos -- visual images that tell the rest of the story. Absent this coordinated effort, the public will live only on a diet of photos and stories about our "horrific" behavior at Abu Ghraib. Kaplan's full story will appear in the July/August issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Today's Washington Post has a long article on the travails of the upcoming generation of Russians. With only the faintest memory of the Soviet Union and facing an uncertain, chaotic political and economic world, some of the under-20 crowd romanticize the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, and even Stalin.

This is hardly surprising. Seventy years of lies, brutality, and the struggle to survive war and oppression left deep scars on a Russian soul shaped by 1,000 years of autocracy. As the article notes, many of the Russian parents who benefited from communism -- top party members and apparatchiks, favored courtiers and other elites -- lost out economically when the USSR fell. Their offspring have been reared on a diet of stories from the glory days of their parents' youth, when everyone knew his place and perks were taken for granted.

It's not so different in Iraq, except for the violence of the Baathists. And it won't be so different in any country trying to move from illegitimate regimes based on fear and favor to more open polities. Russia's difficulties are well known, from the rise of the oligarchs and the lack of rule of law that made them possible to the autocratic impulses of President Putin. All such cases require the West to act proactively through locals when possible to educate the young about the foundational elements of civil society. Without this knowledge -- and it isn't something that they'll discern on their own, especially in an atmosphere laced with nostalgia and envy -- free and stable societies are unlikely to develop or last. Vigilance, patience, and vision are called for from Western governments, nonprofits, and elites. It won't get better overnight, but by using our heads and resources, we can help ensure progress toward freedom.

As Win wrote yesterday, Al Gore went too far at the MoveOn.Org rally. He calls Bush "the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon." No, sir, I believe that was your former boss, President William Jefferson Clinton. May I remind everybody that Clinton, not Bush, was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury.

But, what is more laughable is the sanctimony of Gore's remarks; he sounds like a cross between your worst professor at college and a newly minted preacher:

"One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America."

The man is full of complete nonsense. Thank God he was not President when the Twin Towers fell on September 11. This is not to say that Gore isn't right to condemn the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, but it's a real leap in logic to say:

"What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by 'a few bad apples,' it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances."

OK Al, where were those same checks and balances when your Attorney General bulldozed the Branch Davidians, or murdered Randy Weaver's wife and kids at Ruby Ridge?

Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a speech today attacking President Bush on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. If you're interested in what he had to say, you'd probably rather listen to it than read it, as the printed version on the web site of Moveon.org, which sponsored his appearance, runs to an astounding 6,589 words.

In reading over the speech, it's difficult to pick out some choice parts for quoting here, not because there aren't any, but because the entire harangue is so incoherent, slipshod, ahistorical, and conspiracy-laden. Still, here are a few representative remarks from the man who almost became our president.

"Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

"These policies [in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq] were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military . . . ."

And:

"But instead of making it [America's security] better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

"He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name."

Or:

"It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison . . . .

"The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration [sic] has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned."

Move over, Howard Dean. Al's claimed the mantel of maddest Democrat.

Today's WSJ ($) carries a front-page story on the increasing influence exerted by American evangelicals on the formation of U.S. foreign policy. It also highlights the crucial role played by Beltway insiders whose knowledge of foreign policy and the plight of persecuted Christians abroad proved crucial in spurring the evangelicals to action. The most important of these, Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, is shown to be the strongest link between heartland Christians concerned about their persecuted brethren and policy experts whose contacts and knowledge pave the way for these concerns to be acted upon concretely.

As the article demonstrates, and as anyone familiar with the realist school of foreign policy that holds sway in the State Department can attest, the obstacles to implementing a pro-liberty U.S. foreign policy are considerable. As Peter Waldman, the author of the article, writes:

"Led in part by the irrepressible Mr. Horowitz, a neoconservative at the Hudson Institute think tank, evangelicals are embracing international causes with the same moral fervor they have long brought to domestic matters. Since 1998, they have helped win federal laws to fight religious persecution overseas, to crack down on international sex trafficking and to help resolve one of Africa's longest and bloodiest civil wars, in southern Sudan.

"In so doing, evangelical groups, once among America's staunchest isolationists, are making a mark on U.S. foreign policy. They have tipped the balance, at least for the moment, in the perennial rivalry in Washington between 'realists,' who believe the U.S. has limited capacity to change the world and shouldn't try, and 'idealists,' who strive to give U.S. conduct a moral purpose.

"'This community is saying, "We're the most dominant country in the history of humanity. We must move humbly and wisely, not just for our own economic and strategic interests but for what is morally right,"' says Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a champion of evangelical causes on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."

And: "'The policies are up for grabs,' says Mr. Horowitz, 66 years old, a lawyer by training who served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration."

It's because of his concern about Christian persecution and his ability to move powerful people in Washington that Horowitz, who is Jewish, was named one of the ten most influential Christians in 1997 by a Southern Baptist magazine. As Richard Land, a top executive at the Southern Baptist Convention, says: "'Before I met Michael seven years ago, I had no idea it was so bad . . . . He's a provocateur, a real voice of conscience.'"

Such praise from a top Southern Baptist, and the support the policies advocated by Horowitz and Senator Brownback receive from Red State Americans, should help put to rest charges flung by realists and isolationists on the left and right that U.S. policy has been hijacked by a cabal of wild-eyed Wilsonians or sly Zionists. It isn't naive to work for the liberty of others, and although they support the war in Iraq, the anti-isolationists aren't calling for the invasion of every dictatorship on earth. Rather, they're striving to bring American policy in line with America's core ideals and beliefs.

A fun new inside the Beltway quarterly arrived in my in-box at Hudson Institute today. It's called Doublethink and is published by America's Future Foundation, which is "the hot new group of young conservative professionals." I'm guess I'm neither hot nor young, as I'm not a member.

In the Spring 2004 issue is an article titled, "Blueprint for Victory: Core Republican voters aren't the key to Bush's reelection" by Todd Weiner, a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute. Weiner mistakenly believes that "George W. Bush must have the courage to benignly neglect his conservative base and head to the political center occupied by tens of millions of independent voters...The ugly truth is that most independents disagree with conservatives when it comes to social and economic issues." But just before that he said, "George W. Bush beat Al Gore among independents 47 to 45 percent." Nah, independents agree with Bush on economic issues to be sure: they like tax cuts. And social issues too: they are opposed to gay marriage.

But, Weiner may be on to something. I'm just not sure whether he knows it. It's ok, he's young. Weiner writes that for Bush to win "he must emphasize his personality." Bingo. He goes on to write:

"Can Bush still use the character issue six years after the Lewinsky imbrolio? Indeed, it is Bush's best hope of earning reelection. The war on terror has extended the shelf life of at least one character issue: leadership."

If Bush is to win in November, Weiner nails down the reason, which will be that Americans appreciate the fact that Bush governs from the gut. And his gut is nearly always right. But why? Because his gutteral values are good; they're rock solid and conservative. As an evangelical Christian, Bush can rally his base and independent voters by trumpeting his very real success on human rights issues such as the State Department's very successful efforts to curb sex trafficking of women around the globe, or his efforts to free Afghani women from the strictures of Sharia law. Weiner is wrong to suggest that Bush should abandon his conservative values, rather what he can do is build bridges between the left and right that will bring independent-minded voters into his column on election day.

Jean Bethke Elshtain has an excellent review essay on four new books that examine academic and cultural matters in the Third Reich. I can't do her essay justice in this space except to say that new scholarship on Hitler's Germany demonstrates how his rise to power was facilitated not merely by militarism, but by what Elshtain calls "an entire Weltanschauung that penetrated every aspect of German life, including art, industry, technology, medicine, nutrition, health, and psychology."

She notes that this perversion of the production and dissemination of knowledge and, even more, of the philosophy of being, hasn't received sufficient scrutiny by Western scholars. Much of what Elshtain writes is eerily familiar to modern readers, so much so in fact that one wonders if our lack of interest isn't due in part to our familiarity with that evil system's lingering influences. What Elshtain and the authors she reviews make abundantly clear, however, is that Nazism, like all forms of totalitarianism, had to bastardize historically important fields of knowledge in order to establish itself and thrive. The antidote is the freedom to think, write, and pursue knowledge, and this can be achieved only in free societies.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London has released a report on the strength of Al Qaeda. It estimates that 18,000 terrorists in 60 countries have signed up with the group. IISS analysts believe that the war in Iraq has spawned new recruits among militants and warned that Al Qaeda continues to covet weapons of mass destruction and is likely to continue to attack soft targets in Europe and America.

Opponents of the war against terrorists will doubtless seize on this news to denounce the war effort itself and not merely its execution. Had we left them alone or tried to understand their grievances, we would escape their wrath. But this argument for appeasement, as we've stated here many times and as others have argued, ignores the stark fact that we're engaged in a war for democracy's survival. That offensive attacks against terrorists and the regimes that supported and financed them would result in increased determination among militants to harm us isn't surprising. Did we expect them to convert en masse to the cause of peace and justice?

Terrorists, Islamic militants -- call them what you will -- must be defeated. That means killing or capturing them, not succoring them in the hope they'll allow us to thrive in their shadow. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, fighting for liberty in the face of extremism is no vice. Al Qaeda's growth doesn't prove the failure of self-defense. Rather, it demonstrates the nature and ruthlessness of our enemy and calls for our resolve not to live in fear or to surrender our liberties to murderous thugs.

A colleague this morning shared via email a column I regret not having seen sooner. It’s a prescient piece of journalism, one I think worthy of a full read. It says, in no uncertain terms, that we are at war against religious fanaticism -- at war for democracy and freedom itself.

Phil Lucas, the column’s author, writes: “Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the good part, the part that wasn’t fiction, the part that drew us to the books and movies because it was the truest part: the titanic struggle between good and evil, between freedom and enslavement, between the individual and the state, between the celebration of life and the worshipping of death. That’s the fight we are in, and it never ends. It just has peaks and valleys.”

There are no shades of gray in this war, and America is justified in taking up arms as it has. In this fight, we must make no apologies. There is no time for that. And we must not rest until the sun sets on victory for freedom and justice.

If a willingness to assert military prowess in defense of American people means I’m a war monger, so be it. I’m proud to wear that credential. I’d rather bear that criticism than a conscience of American deaths born of appeasement.

At least not one in civility and wisdom. Newsday reports that E.L. Doctorow was "nearly booed off the stage" because of the anti-Bush harangue he substituted for a commencement address at Hofstra University yesterday. Among the great author's clever exhortations to the class of '04, according to Newsday's Bart Jones:

"Doctorow, who spent virtually all of his 20-minute address in Hempstead criticizing Bush, told the crowd that like himself the president is a storyteller. But 'sadly they are not good stories this president tells,' he said. 'They are not good stories because they are not true.' That line provoked the first boos, along with scattered cheers. 'One story he told was that the country of Iraq had nuclear and biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and was intending shortly to use them on us,' he said. 'That was an exciting story all right, it was designed to send shivers up our spines. But it was not true. 'Another story was that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was in league with the terrorists of al-Qaida,' he said. 'And that turned out to be not true. But anyway we went off to war on the basis of these stories.'"

Such tiresome behavior isn't novel on college campuses, and the reaction of some members of the crowd who were interviewed after the exercise drives home the point that the real split in red/blue America is between elites and their wanna-be followers, on the one hand, and the folks whose work and ingenuity support the nation, on the other. To wit:

"Many parents and relatives of the more than 1,300 undergraduates were livid over the address, saying afterward that a college graduation was not the place for a political speech. 'If this would have happened in Florida, we would have taken him out' of the stadium, said Frank Mallafre, who traveled from Miami for his granddaughter's graduation."

"Bill Schmidt, 51, of North Bellmore, shared the outrage. 'To ruin my daughter's graduation with politics is pathetic,' the retired New York Police Department captain said. 'I think the president is doing the best he can" in the war against terrorism."

"Many students also called Doctorow's speech inappropriate. Peter Hulse, 24, of Manchester, England, said, 'He's a bit like Michael Moore,' the documentary director who provoked booing at last year's Oscars' ceremony by criticizing the war in Iraq."

Compare their reactions to that of sociology professor Cynthia Bogard, who, not content to applaud Doctorow, attacked the parents of offended students:

"'I thought this was a totally appropriate place to talk about politics because that's the world our students are entering,' said sociology professor Cynthia Bogard. 'I only wish their parents had provided them a better role model.'"

What Bogard should really be upset about is that, after four years of instruction by her ilk, the students still possess enough common sense to know a charlatan when they hear one.

Microsoft Founder and Chairman Bill Gates endorsed the use of blogs today as "a good way for firms to tell customers, staff and partners what they are doing." The reason, in my estimation, is that blogs become an integral part of one's daily life: they harken back to the lost practice of keeping a journal, which was common among older generations.

But where blogging is better is in its interactive nature. It necessarily, through its ability to link to articles, pictures, etc., provides the blogger the ability to provide context and tangents to what he is thinking; thereby offering a personal angle to the news. This evolution can be seen in our own daily blogging on the Democracy Project site, which has evolved considerably from merely posting a breaking news event (which we still do frequently) to mini-editorials on how the news fits into our organization's larger schema.

We here at Democracy Project obviously believe in the efficacy of blogging to promote freedom worldwide, but I am also excited about its potential for culture; might it produce the next Shakespeare or T.S. Eliot (think about all of his footnotes in the Wasteland that could be links). Its wide implications for culture and art haven't even emerged, but will.

World chess genius Garry Kasparov pens a fine piece for OpinionJournal.com in which he righteously challenges the notion of weak leadership and appeasement of terrorists.

“Nothing comes of nothing,” a staple line of Shakespeare’s King Lear, was the mantra of European appeasers in early 20th century Europe, and that ideology has resurfaced again today. Appeasers believe that by doing nothing -- that by taking no military action against growing and impending threats -- transgressors will leave them alone.

How wrong they are. History has proven time and again that, with regard to appeasement, something does come of nothing, and often it is the blood of civilians shed on their own homeland. This has happened before, and it will happen again.

I vividly remember my British history professor’s lecture recounting the 1938 Brown House negotiations in Munich and Neville Chamberlain’s stoic revelry at “winning” an agreement with Adolf Hitler. “Chamberlain took that document, folded it, and placed it in his jacket pocket like it was a ticket stub to the second coming of the Lord,” Dr. Adams said.

That ticket was, instead, to the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Chamberlain failed to see the devil in front of him. Faced with a tangible enemy, he refused to take a stand. He was bullied by a maniac whose only interest was gaining more power. And history has written Chamberlain into a fitting role: that of a spineless leader who chose appeasement over confrontation. In essence, he chose the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

Today we are at war with Jihadistan, a borderless and intangible network of terrorists whose interest is not power but total annihilation of Western thought and ways of life. They resent our liberties, our religious free will and the economic prosperity of capitalism. They resent our very existence, and they have brought to bear all their warring resources. And despite the threat they pose -- and the bloody proof therein already shown -- leaders at home and abroad forget the lessons of the past.

Spain is the latest victim of appeasement, and its soils surely will be blood soaked again. Who will choose tomorrow to ignore the threat of terrorism -- who will choose to let people live under the threat of death by those who kill for no reason other than hatred?

“In this fight the enemy does not play by our rules, or by any rules at all. WMD will be in terrorist hands eventually; conventional wisdom recognizes this reality. Concessions and negotiations at best only delay catastrophe,” Kasparov writes. “Europe and its people are in this war whether they acknowledge it or not. Those who would appease terrorists must realize that by pretending that this battle does not exist, they will soon have blood on their hands--both real and metaphorical.”

Right he is. Let us yearn for peace -- and achieve it with superior firepower.

The Associated Press reported this week that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, at age 77, is in good health and can live to be 140. What a pity.

"He is formidably well," Dr. Eugenio Selman Housein told the AP, citing Castro’s regular exercise regimen and his recent 800-meter march in an anti-U.S. protest.

Perhaps Dr. Housein should take a look at the people of Cuba who have little choice but to live under Castro’s tyrannical (and maniacal) rule. Perhaps he should look at the way they attempt to leave Cuba in fruitbaskets and rowboats, seeking a better way of life in the United States. Perhaps he should look at the success stories of Cuban Americans who long have enjoyed the fruits of freedom, democracy and capitalism.

Cuba is the last vestige of communism in the western hemisphere (save Massachusetts), and we have Castro to thank (or blame). Let us all hope his years don’t extend to 140 -– and that someday we will witness seeds of democracy take root on that island to the south.

Reuters reports yesterday that "A small amount of the nerve agent sarin was found in a shell that exploded in Iraq." Today, tests by the Department of Defense confirm that the deadly chemical was inside the shell. According to Fox News, "The soldiers displayed "classic" symptoms of sarin exposure, most notably dilated pupils and nausea, officials said." The article continues to say that Iraq is a "bazaar of weapons."

The most recent beheading of Nick Berg by Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is proof that Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq. In fact, Reuters reported that Al Qaeda's top leader in Saudi Arabia, Abdulzaziz al-Muqrin, said "In our jihad in the Arabia peninsula, we are serving the Iraqi cause and helping the mujahidin there who we are in constant contact with and are supporting...We seek to confuse the enemy, keep it occupied in its rear bases and foil its future plans with its Arab allies and despots."

Physicians for Human Rights, in a survey of nearly 2,000 Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq, found that almost half reported that they or household members had suffered abuse, ranging from torture and death to amputation and forced conscription by Hussein's regime between 1991 and the end of his reign last year. The survey's results were detailed in the March 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamed al-Attiyah, said on May 15, 2004 that rising oil prices could be attributed to “geopolitics and security fears.” Attiyah estimated Middle East instability was adding an $8 premium to the price of one barrel of crude oil, which stood in New York on Friday at $41.50 – a 30 year high. Prior to the Iraq war, oil prices hovered near $30 per barrel. Similarly, when the United States initiated the first Gulf War, prices skyrocketed from a low of $15 per barrel to nearly $35 per barrel. Therefore, assertions that America went to war in Iraq for control of the world oil supply is nonsense, as American military involvement in the region during both wars has had a negative impact on the U.S. economy and led to increased instability in the world oil market. We're there to bring democracy to the Middle East and to rid the world of a tyrant.

I'll be cooling my heels in the Gulf for the coming week, but Brent & Brady will be blogging away with the latest on democracy, the war, and world events. Back in a week.

At least you'll emerge from reading Victor Hanson's latest article reminded that the chattering classes suffer, at best, from attention deficit disorder. He contrasts the reality of Iraq today with the long litany of dire warnings from critics of the war -- or better, critics of all things American except their right to harp endlessly about their country. For example:

"In the middle of a war demand the resignation of both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who oversaw two successful wars that deposed the two worst regimes in the Middle East in less than an aggregate eleven weeks. Pay as little attention as possible to horrific footage of American civilians burned alive and desecrated or to Jewish-American citizens beheaded on tape. Instead get up each morning damning the United States military in the field for the moral lapses and despicable, un-American behavior of a few untrained guards in an ex-charnel house that was occasionally shelled while they interrogated some of the worst criminals on the planet."

But he ends with constructive advice:

"[K]eep reminding the American people how much has been accomplished and how rare is our effort to defeat fascism and leave consensual government in its wake—and do that every day."

I have a feeling most people know that instinctively. Today, as at all times, the trick is knowing what to be concerned about and what to ignore.

Pollsters meeting in Phoenix say that their polling in Iraq indicates a strong desire for multiparty parliamentary democracy among Iraqis. At the same time, Iraqis don't know much about the intricacies of a democratic system -- hardly a surprise given their three decades of suffering under Saddam's brutal dictatorship.

According to the AP: "In the most recent Gallup poll, four in 10 said they preferred a multiparty parliamentary democracy -- that was the form of government most often mentioned. When Oxford Research International asked Iraqis in a separate poll to name the party they favored or the candidate they backed, the majority offered no preference on either question."

Also encouraging: "'Very low down the list is an Islamic theocracy, in which mullahs and religious leaders have a lot of influence, such as in Iran,' said [Gallop's director of international polling Richard] Burkholder, who polled in Baghdad in August and nationwide in late March and early April for CNN and USA Today."

Another result shows the resiliency of the spirit of many Iraqis, along with the necessity of moving ahead despite continued strife: "'One of the things that comes up again and again as a success in the transition so far is education,' [director of Oxford Research International Christoph] Sahm said. He also mentioned increasing trust in the Iraqi police and the new Iraqi army. 'When we see the images of war and terror on the TV screen,' Sahm said, 'it's hard to believe that behind all of this, many Iraqis are leading normal lives and going about their business.'"

This AP story was posted to Newsday's web site at 2:22 pm EDT. It'll be interesting to see how much play it receives in tomorrow's print media. After all, it's good news.

It's election year and there's a war on (although no small number of journalists, politicians, and pundits question that), so perhaps no one should be shocked that many elements of the elite media are displaying a higher degree of partisanship than in recent memory. What seems to be angering many observers, however, is the extraordinary degree of partisanship on display over the past two weeks. Leading Democrats such as Ted Kennedy and Al Gore have lost any inhibitions -- well, the former is better known for exhibitions anyway -- but they and the "mainstream" media may have miscalculated the public's mood for such shenanigans.

The blogosphere and talk radio, in particular, are full of outrage at liberal elites for seeming to root for America's defeat in Iraq. Not that this didn't go on daily during the Vietnam War, but it's been years and we've forgotten how odious the practice can be while our soldiers are being killed in combat.

A story on this in the current issue of The Spectator (free with registration) illustrates the point (hat tip to Instapundit). While lounging beside a hotel pool in Baghdad, the reporter (Toby Harnden) was "accosted" by a female American magazine journalist who, he says, had "impeccable liberal credentials."

"She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera."

"But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing."

"She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it."

This morally odious position is echoed in the attempted moral equivalency between the Iraqi prison abuses and the beheading of Nick Berg. The Washington Times reports from Berg's home town of West Chester, Pa., 25 miles north of where I sit. Berg's friends and neighbors are appalled and hurt that his story has already been pushed off the front page by the Abu Ghraib onslaught.

Have the NY Times, the Wash Post, and the networks finally overplayed their hands? September 11 didn't change everything -- nothing does -- but it did reduce Americans' appetite for jejune, narcissistic displays by morally challenged elites. Surely shock jock Howard Stern's troubles with the FCC stem in part from this new cultural atmosphere.

I'm reminded of an email exchange with a colleague who holds an endowed chair in an academic department. He wondered when the public would have enough of highly politicized, nihilistic universities and simply withdraw their support. The crash of America's system of higher education, he thought, could be swift and dramatic. America's elite media have been in decline for over two decades now, and their irrelevancy only grows when their partisanship is accompanied by a less forgiving public and the growth of alternative sources of information. We may be witnessing a significant shift of power among, if not from, elites. Institutions, whether for-profit corporations or universities, must adapt to survive and grow. Parochialism and narcissism are mortal enemies of survival in any marketplace or moral system. Put more directly, rooting for your own country's defeat in a just war against murderous fanatics is itself thuggish and repulsive, and any group that does it deserves to be defeated, ostracized, and ignored.

Update: John Podhoretz has a searing column on moral equivalency in today's NY Post.

In the event you're not a subscriber to Commentary, the most thorough investigation of the UN's Oil-for-Food Program, and its use to corrupt governments, UN personnel, and others is Claudia Rosett's article in the April issue. She explains, in great detail, how the UN and Saddam worked together to create an almost foolproof scheme for lining pockets. The more money from oil that Saddam could produce, the more the Secretariate received in return. Thus, under the cover of aiding Iraq's suffering citizens, Saddam and his co-conspirators in the UN and other countries were grew richer and richer.

As Rosett explains:

"Unlike most of its relief programs, in which both the cost of the relief itself and UN overhead were paid for by contributions from member states, Oil-for-Food would in every respect be funded entirely out of Saddam’s oil revenues. The UN Secretariat would collect a 2.2-percent commission on every barrel of Iraqi oil sold, plus 0.8 percent to pay for UN weapons inspections in Iraq."

"If the aim of this provision was to make Saddam bear the cost of his own obstinacy, the effect was to create a situation in which the UN Secretariat was paid handsomely, on commission, by Saddam—to supervise Saddam. And the bigger Oil-for-Food got, the bigger the fees collected by Annan’s office. Over the seven years of the program, oil sales ultimately totaled some $65 billion. On the spending side, the UN says $46 billion went for aid to Iraq, and $18.2 billion was paid out as compensation to victims of Saddam’s 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait. As for commissions to the Secretariat, these ran to about $1.9 billion, of which $1.4 billion was earmarked for administrative overhead for the humanitarian program (the UN says it turned over $300 million of this to help pay for relief, but no public accounting has ever been given) and another $500 million or so for weapons inspections in Iraq. Discrepancies in these numbers can be chalked up to interest paid on some of the funds, exchange-rate fluctuations, or simply the murk in which most of the Oil-for-Food transactions remain shrouded to this day."

As many of us have asked before, and as Rosett asks in her concluding sentence, "And is this the same United Nations that, now, we are planning to entrust with bringing democracy to Iraq?"

The intellectual sclerosis of the Vietnam generation is embodied in John Kerry's insatiable need to mention that war virtually every day and in his adherence to that period's worldview, historical lessons be damned. But the times they have 'a changed, as Jamie M. Fly argues in an excellent new piece. Gen X-ers, he says, formed their worldview in the aftermath of September 11, which is their Vietnam. They're not shy about using American power to protect our own liberties and free others from tyranny, and they see America as a force for good in the world. Just as the Boomers turned on their own parents -- after all, the old folks merely saved the West, built the world's most dynamic economy, and raised a generation of spoiled kids -- so are the Gen X-ers rejecting the narcissistic nihilism of those who bore them.

Many will recall the charge that old fogies and squares had "hang-ups" about what was new and cool. Now it seems that the hang-ups are with the oldies once again. Fly writes:

"John Kerry and an entire generation of Americans have been reluctant to use American power to make a difference. Those of us born after the Vietnam War don't view the world through the same lens as the generation of 1968. As the September 11 generation ages, this will change. This change cannot come too soon, for the terrorist challenge will not rest while our leaders overcome their historical hang-ups [emphasis added]."

The intricacies of particular policies can and will be debated, and Fly, a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, is in a position to do just that. But how striking that he represents young policy types who understand that it takes more than sanctimonious posturing to preserve liberty. This is cause for celebration and hope.

Yesterday I argued that American foreign policy under the Bush administration did not represent, pace his critics, a break with the policies of previous wartime presidents. Today I've come across a lively and informative email exchange between Niall Ferguson and Robert Kagan last week at Salon.com. They debated the question of America's empire and, as a base for discussion, recent books by John Lewis Gaddis and Walter Russell Mead.

At one point Kagan writes:

"Sept. 11 may have aroused Americans to take a series of military actions, but the actions themselves are hardly surprising or unprecedented, much less out of character— as Gaddis so persuasively explains in his essay. It is widely asserted, especially by those hostile to the Bush administration, that Bush has engineered a 'revolution' in American foreign policy, with such presumably radical inventions as the idea of 'pre-emption,' or by flouting the U.N. Charter and bypassing the U.N. Security Council, or by a willingness to take action 'unilaterally'— i.e., without the approval of Paris and Berlin. But as Gaddis notes, pre-emption, a certain tendency toward unilateralism, and a proclivity to expand power and influence in response to threats all have deep and enduring roots in American history."

The exchange is a worthwhile read, as you might expect from such thoughtful scholars.

American interests in Iraq, including the affair over prisoner abuses, require us to understand the difference in Iraqis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Algerians, and other Arab states according to the indispensable Fouad Ajami. Writing in this morning's WSJ ($), Ajami calls our difficulty in interpreting political realities in the Middle East the "curse of pan-Arabism."

His account of our reaction to Abu Ghraib is sobering, though not alarmist. But he's emphatic that taking the Alan Alda approach to manhood -- always having to say you're sorry -- places us on the road to self-defeat. Here are a few of the best paragraphs, as the piece is available only for a charge.

Of President Bush's apology to Jordan's King Abdullah II, Ajami writes:

"Peculiar, that apology -- owed to Iraq's people, yet forwarded to Jordan. We are still held captive by Pan-Arab politics. We struck into Iraq to free that country from the curse of the Arabism that played havoc with its politics from its very inception as a nation-state. We had thought, or implied, or let Iraqis think, that a new political order would emerge, that the Pan-Arab vocation that had been Iraq's poison would be no more."

He also condemns our inexplicable dispatch of the Algerian UN lackey Lakhdar Brahimi to Iraq:

"It stood to reason (American reason, uninformed as to the terrible complications of Arab life) that Mr. Brahimi, 'an Arab,' would better understand Iraq's ways than Paul Bremer. But nothing in Mr. Brahimi's curriculum vitae gives him the tools, or the sympathy, to understand the life of Iraq's Shiite seminaries; nothing he did in his years of service in the Arab league exhibited concern for the cruelties visited on the Kurds in the 1980s. Mr. Brahimi hails from the very same political class that has wrecked the Arab world. He has partaken of the ways of that class: populism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and a preference for the centralized state. . . . No messenger more inappropriate could have been found if the aim was to introduce Iraqis to the ways of pluralism."

Finally, Ajami sheds light on the so-called Arab mind, which (he charges) we consistently misread:

"[T]here is cunning aplenty in [the Arab] world, and an unerring eye for the follies of great foreign powers. The Arabs can read through President Bush's stepping back from his support for Ariel Sharon's plan for withdrawal from Gaza. There are amends to be made for Abu Ghraib, and those are owed the people of Iraq. Yet here we are paying the Palestinians with Iraqi coin. The Palestinians will not be grateful for our concessions; and they are to be forgiven the only conclusion they will draw. Those concessions have already been taken as the compromises of an America now in the throes of self-flagellation."

Prof. Ajami teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, located in Washington, D.C. That's only a short drive from the White House, and I'll bet he'd be willing to pay for the gas.

The Wall Street Journal’s Brendan Miniter wrote today that “there is a growing concern that America may become a much different place by fighting a global war on terror.” This is a wise observation, and we mustn’t forget that far more is at stake than the lives of Americans and our national security: We are fighting for democracy itself.

Al-Qaeda has made clear its unwillingness to let democracy spread. Hatred pervades every fiber of its shady network, as was affirmed with today’s news that an American was beheaded in Iraq. But beyond the bombs al-Qaeda would use or the lives it would claim, the terrorist organization has proven capable of an even greater strike: political engineering and disruption.

Spain fell victim to this atrocity in March, and all signs point to an attempted attack on U.S. soil before Election Day. No doubt al-Qaeda would like to orchestrate an election outcome in their favor -– an election outcome in the appeasers’ favor. And while such an outcome must not happen, Americans likewise must not surrender or equivocate on the tenets on which this nation was chartered.

If in the interest of national security Americans must forgo -– or even negotiate on -– their “unalienable rights,” then have we not lost already? If the very essence of democracy is suspended or marginalized in the United States, have the terrorists not already had the effect they seek? And does that not negate the bloody but noble war being waged in Iraq?

Sometimes, perhaps, we must save ourselves from saving ourselves. And in this case, we also must ensure democracy is not sacrificed in our plight to save democracy. Too much is at stake to lose any battle in this war.

Never one to be outdone, reports indicate al-Qaida has beheaded an American contractor in Iraq. The Guardian reports it being done "to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers."

"The Web site on which the video was posted is known as a clearing house for al-Qaida and Islamic extremist groups' statements and tapes. An audiotape purportedly from bin Laden - which the CIA said was probably authentic - appeared on the same Web site last week."

OK, enough of this nonsense by those who don't believe we are actually fighting the War on Terror. This is it, folks. The killing was done by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- one of Osama's top lieutenants. We came to the right place to make this fight; whether we stick it out will be determined November 2, 2004.

Stephen Schwartz, a Sufi, has an insighful column about the American Muslim community at TCS. After detailing the paths of several radicals whose stories have come to light in the past few years, he offers this advice:

"As I have written and otherwise argued so often since September 11, 2001, it is up to Muslims -- especially Muslims in America -- to demonstrate that Islam is a religion of peace, of support for democracy, and of loyalty to legitimate authorities, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. Now is the moment for American Muslims to form new organizations, independent of the "Wahhabi lobby," and actively committed to these principles. Indeed, time is running out for American Muslims, whether born to or new to the faith, to free themselves of the suspicion of terrorist sympathies."

Sclerotic institutions need reformation, if not replacement. Now's the time to get in on the ground floor of new pro-liberty Muslim organizing.

To see the kind of "conservative" arguments Victor Hanson is out to defeat (and he does a bang up job), read the counterargument put forward in this article by Stephan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. The authors make the tired (and inaccurate) charge that "neoconservatives" have hijacked American foreign policy under the guise of Reaganism. They state, correctly, that Reagan's response to terrorism was far less muscular than Bush's. As Hanson notes, that history of failure to take terrorism seriously -- something most of us were guilty of in the '80s and '90s -- led directly to 9/11.

But like other critics who deride the necessity of taking the war on terrorism to the terrorists themselves, they barely mention the fact that we were attacked. Apparently, the murder of 3,000 Americans in a single day, which came on the heels of years of smaller acts of terrorism in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, changed nothing. Halper and Clarke offer no alternative vision or plan of action.

Furthermore, their argument fails to recognize that Reagan's foreign policy was in fact innovative, bold, and muscular. It marked a stark departure from the weak, appeasement-based stances of Carter and Ford, and it was crafted to respond to the principal threat of the day -- the USSR.

As others have pointed out, there's a difference in tradition and traditionalism, or in a conservative and a reactionary. Working within a tradition, innovation is welcomed, but never for innovation's sake. The Bush administration has crafted a policy in response to an historical event -- a brutal attack on America -- and not in obeisance to an ideology. Going to war to protect Americans in America falls well within the bounds of traditional American foreign policy. What would the President's critics have done?

Yesterday Brent linked to a critically important new essay by Victor Davis Hanson. In "The Wages of Appeasement," which first appeared in City Journal under the title "The Fruits of Appeasement," Hanson argues that the West's infatuation with multiculturalism has increased its vulnerability to terrorism. By replacing rigorous scholarship, research, and linguistic training with intellectual posturing and moral nihilism, multiculturalism has blinded us to evil when it's carried out by non-Westerners.

While you're getting into a Hanson groove, don't miss Hanson's newest essay on his web site. In "The Wars of the West," he recounts the absurd defeatist arguments from appeaseniks in the years since 9/11. A key paragraph (but only one among many -- read it all):

"Th[e] classically liberal vision is always under assault on the left by utopian totalitarians, devils who demand coercive government powers to force us to be angels, and on the right by autocratic romantics who believe in the superiority of a pure religion, race, or nationality. Thus we must defend the promise of the West and its manifestation in America almost constantly. Indeed, it seems to me in these trying times that the greater sin is for thinking people to remain silent and allow the idea of America to be slurred without retort than it is for the ignorant to so breezily condemn it. We made no claims that we were perfect, only far better than the alternative and thus had the moral obligation and indeed the power and skill to defeat our enemies and preserve our culture."

Hanson is doing his part to defend the West, and he's giving the rest of us the tools to press forward in this vital fight.

In the wake of September 11, nobody's done a better than Victor Davis Hanson in reminding us why we're fighting the War on Terror. Today's OpinionJournal posts an article titled, "The Wages of Appeasement: How Jimmy Carter and academic multiculturalists helped bring us Sept. 11." Uniquely, Hanson makes the connection between academic multiculturalists and the appeasement foreign policy of Carter, Clinton, and Kerry. It's a manifesto for why Democracy Project is in business.

Some traditionalist types have, over the decades, blamed democracy and the free market for alienating man by uprooting him from hearth and home. The best writers in that tradition are thoughtful enough to avoid the reactionary seduction and to help us remain grounded -- to avoid the intoxication of self-worship. All of them, however, must grapple with the simple fact of their existence in the world as it is. Critiquing it thoughtfully is a high art that requires intellectual honesty and an ironic touch.

Writing for the Independent, Adam Nicolson reviews Roger Scruton's latest book, News from Somewhere: On Settling. The book is a paen to the rural life that Scruton, an accomplished philosopher and cultural critic, has adopted. Nicolson appreciates Scruton's well crafted prose and genuine love of family and place, as should we all. The book's cover features Brueghel's famous painting of Icarus falling into the sea as a plowman goes about his work in the foreground, utterly unaware of the fatal plunge occurring in the distance. Scruton, who calls himself a "meta-farmer," wishes to be the plowman. Nicolson hits on the soft underbelly of much wistful, anti-modern literature when he discusses the necessary dissonance of Scruton's attempt to escape the world while yet encumbered by the urbane intellectual's baggage.

Scruton says that the rural folk in his area eat their lunches in total silence, only "grunting and nodding when the pudding appears." But that places him in an impossible quandary. As Nicolson writes:

"Whether or not that grunting and nodding is only a meta-farmer's signal for innocence, the overwhelming rural silence is a disaster for the man who wants to settle there. Scruton, whose entire mode of being is voluble, vocal and argumentative, cannot slump into the quiet. He has got to meta-farm for all he is worth, writing and lecturing on all his multifarious interests, not in wordless authenticity but in the endless, paying word- stream of which this book is a part. News from Somewhere is not even a dialogue between the settled and unsettled. It is a struggle between them and describes not a solution but a predicament: once you have left the silence of Eden, there is no going back."

"'You are reminded of the fundamental truth about travel,' he writes at one point, 'that it is a mistake. Don't leave but stay - and make where you stay a home.' But even to say that is a symptom of having left. Icarus envies the ploughman. The ploughman doesn't even know that Icarus exists."

More on this topic -- the problem of living as free men and women in a technologically driven society -- in the near future.

As an erstwhile historian (never killed off the dissertation at Michigan years back) who's been away from the academy for a decade now, I'm glad to see some members of the profession take the offensive against anti-anti-communists who've perverted the history of the twentieth century's bloodiest ideology. Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes published their latest book, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage, last fall and it's the subject of a positive (and lively) review by John Gavin in the April issue of Reason magazine.

Gavin notes the degree to which many academic historians, including such prominent figures as Columbia's Eric Foner, former president of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, have gone to discredit the work of those bold enough to break with reigning opinion and declare the USSR (and communism in general) an ideology that has brought misery and bloodshed wherever it's been tried. This denial continues in spite of the evidence presented in Soviet primary sources that show, incontestably, that the Communist Party of the United States was run and funded directly by Moscow and that Roosevelt's administration was rife with spies and fellow travelers.

As the Founders understood, a republic can't abide citizens whose ignorance of their own history condemns them to a life based solely on present-day experiences. We must turn to the past to understand how the present came to be and to interpret modern events and personalities. Democracy Project was founded to combat a dearth of learning that, if left unchecked, leads to a decline of the institutions that make up civil society. It's no secret that our universities are in the vanguard of this decline, not least because of the ideological blinders (or old fashioned mendacity) of too many historians who're willing to distort the past. Kudos to Klehr and Haynes (at Emory and the Library of Congress, resp.) for doing what historians are supposed to do: write about the past as guided by their sources rather than their wishes.

With the Rumsfeld imbroglio unfolding and the Beltway press corps, joined by Hill Democrats, engaged in the most opportunistic blood hunt in recent memory, Michael Barone offers a sane and balanced look at reality. Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Barone argues that the elite press's intellectual myopia isn't shared by most Americans, who have the common sense to know that Vietnam and Watergate aren't analogous to today's events. Key paragraphs:

"For liberal Americans of a certain age, the American involvement in Vietnam is the paradigmatic event in human history. It demonstrated - or their warped view of it demonstrated - that America could be on the wrong side of a war, that American military action was dangerous (as the peacenik slogan had it) to children and other living things and could accomplish nothing positive. And to American journalists of that age and younger generations, Vietnam and the soon-to-follow disaster for the American presidency, Watergate, were proof that disbelieving American leaders and providing the most jaundiced coverage of their actions was the road to enormous success and wealth."

"The next time you're in Washington, go to the local records office and check the property assessment of Bob Woodward's house on Q Street."

I was a child in the '60s and not a child of the '60s, so perhaps my views are colored by my late-Boomer birth date. But the Boomers born in the immediate post-war period, or at least those who are now in positions of influence in Washington, are for my money the most reactionary generation in American history. All things -- history, literature, art, religion -- must be viewed through the lenses of youth -- their youth (not yours or anyone else's). But that youth, as our rising medical bills and sagging bodies show, was 30 or more years ago.

This would be a subject for pathos were it not for their influence on national policy. In their backward-looking posture, these illuminati resemble the diviners, astrologers, and magicians in the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno. Because in life they impiously claimed to see the future, in death their heads are twisted around so that they must walk backwards through eternity. It wasn't a terribly effective way to predict the future in the fourteenth century, and it's no better today.

In an interview with the Atlantic's online edition, Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis offers a clear-headed critique of the modern Middle East and the West's interest in that volatile region. The interview is quite long, so I've posted some of the best remarks below.

On the use of "soft power," or information, to bring change to the region:

"We have a better opportunity of doing that now than ever before, thanks to the miracles of modern communication. But I don't think we're using that opportunity. There is some improvement, but generally speaking, I see a failure of communication. Simple translation isn't good enough. Even accurate translation may be misleading, because in different cultures we use the same word with different meanings. There is a great danger of misunderstanding."

On the ignorance of Western journalists based in Iraq:

"I think the first thing is better linguistic training. For example, when I listen to the broadcasts from the media people who are in Iraq at the present time, they almost always mispronounce the names of Iraqi towns. One town which has been very much in the news is spelled in Latin letters N-a-j-a-f, and I hear one announcer or newsreader after another, even those who are calling from over there, say Na-jaf' (emphasis on the second syllable). Well it isn't Na-jaf', it's Na'jaf (emphasis on the first syllable). Anyone who's ever heard an Iraqi pronounce the name will know that. The fact that this sort of name is systematically mispronounced is really alarming. One wonders who they've been talking to. . . . It also makes people like me wonder how much we can rely on what we are being told when they don't even know how to pronounce the name of the place."

Q: "What do you make of the thesis that Islam is another version of the anti-liberal, anti-modern dogmas of the twentieth century? Some pundits have been using the term "Islamo-fascism" to describe the ideology of bin Laden and his ilk. Do you think that the militant form of Islam stems more from recent utopian movements than from Islamic tradition?"

A: "No, I don't. There is an Islamic saying, 'The first to reason by analogy was the devil.' Certainly there is a Fascist element in the Islamic world, but it's not in the religious fundamentalists. It's rather in people like Saddam Hussein and his regime and the Syrian regime. These were directly based on the Fascist regimes. We can date it with precision: in 1940, the French government capitulated and a collaborationist regime was established in Vichy. The rulers of the French colonial empire had to decide whether they would stay with Vichy, or rally to De Gaulle. And they made various decisions. Syria and Lebanon were at that time under French mandate, and these French officials stayed with Vichy, so Syria and Lebanon became a center of Axis propaganda in the Middle East. That was when real Fascist ideas began to penetrate. There were many translations and adaptations of Nazi material into Arabic. The Ba'ath party, which dates from a little after that period, came in as a sort of Middle Eastern clone of the Nazi party and, a little later, the Communist party."

"But that has nothing to do with Islam. The Islamists' approach is quite different from that and has its roots in the history of Islam. Though, of course, it is also influenced by outside ideas. I would not call it Fascist. I would say it is certainly authoritarian and shares the hostilities of the Fascists rather than their doctrines."

The Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board writes ($) "the political class would do well to heed Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, who said yesterday that 'This immoral behavior [of the soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison] in no way eliminates the justice of our cause in Iraq.'"

Despite assertions to the contrary by the ilk that is documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, the ends the Bush Administration seeks to achieve in Iraq have been just -- the elimination of the Hussein regime, democratic government, preservation of human rights. The trouble is the means we've used to achieve such ends has not always been just; because war has its casualties and at times is indiscriminate. Let's not forget September 11, where every single person killed that day was innocent. This war was brought to our shores, we're bringing it back to theirs. They chose the time and place, we didn't.

Bush is correct to condemn Rumsfeld for not clueing him in on just what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison. But to lose heart over our cause in Iraq because of abuses committed by white trash is tantamount to letting one's brain be so open as to let it fall out.

UPDATE: I just learned my friend, Professor Donna Hughes of The University of Rhode Island, has an article in National Review Online about the Abu Ghraib prison images, comparing them to pornography and images made by traffickers. A must read.

Unesco has awarded jailed Cuban poet and journalist Raul Rivero its World Press Freedom Award. It's good to see an agency of the U.N. take a stance against dictatorship. I'm also heartened that diplomats from several countries, including the U.K. and Spain along with the head of the U.S. Interest Section (as we have no diplomatic relations with Cuba), gathered at Mr. Rivero's home in Cuba to call attention to his detention. Castro charged Mr. Rivero and 75 others with collaboration with the U.S. and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Among other things, Mr. Rivero's work appeared occasionally in American publications -- proof that he was in the pay of an enemy country, according to Castro's henchmen.

To boot, Cuba finds itself increasingly isolated among formerly friendly Latin countries (including Mexico) because of their April 15 U.N. vote to condemn Cuba's human rights abuses. Part of this isolation stems from the above-noted arrest of the 75 dissidents. Word is that later this week President Bush will announce new measures to force Castro's departure. A policy of encouraging the ousting of dictators is long overdue and needn't be unilateral, as current events demonstrate.

Freedom of the press is a foundational necessity for democratic rule. Ed Driscoll has published the first of a two-part series on media bias. Much of the essay centers around his interview with former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg, whose book Bias helped breech the walls of network denial that they were anything but uninterested observers who reported the news from a neutral vantage point.

Just as enlightening are Goldberg's comments on something we've noted here before (see the April 10 entry): the ignorance of many journalists that prevents them from practicing their craft competently, with or without any political agenda. To wit:

"If there's a problem besides bias with the evening news,' Goldberg says, 'it's a lack of intelligence. The reporters are intelligent -- that's not the problem. The news is not intelligent: they squeeze it into a minute and a half. They don't know anything about outsourcing, yet they do pieces about outsourcing. They do pieces on unemployment, but they no [sic] nothing about productivity problems.'"

Replying to a call to register every citizen to vote, Bill Buckley once asked a incredulous voting rights advocate, "But why do you want dumb votes?" One might also ask, why do we believe dumb news stories? More on Driscoll's columns tomorrow.

The library shelves are full of dusty, unread books by shunned consiglieri and courtiers of great men. Men like Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, and sadly Colin Powell are too undisciplined and think themselves too self-important to keep their mouths shut -- really a failure to see the forest for the trees. By coming "clean" about the disagreements over war planning in Iraq, which Powell and his staff recently did in this article appearing in GQ Magazine, they leave themselves to be defined by Bush. It is their disagreement with his policies that define them, rather them playing a defining role in his administration's policies. In the GQ article one cannot get over the countless hours that must have been spent on taxpayer time for Wil Hylton to get his scoop. I don't doubt Powell's worth ethic, which is self-evident, but better men would spend their time more wisely.

India is in the midst of general elections as potentially 670 million citizens cast votes at 700,000 polling places. For years, this gargantuan effort was one of the few bright spots in a perennially blighted land. Widespread corruption, inefficiencies stemming from a massive and wasteful public sector, and a post-colonial aversion to Western innovations left the subcontinent lagging in key indicators for modernization.

But as former CEO of Procter & Gamble India Gurcharan Das wrote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal ($), economic growth and opportunity are changing campaign rhetoric so that there's less talk of caste and religion and more about building stable and prosperous lives. As Mr. Das reports:

"If its economy continues to grow at this rate for the next few decades -- and there is no reason why it should not -- then a majority in the south, west and northwest should be middle class by 2025. The poorer Eastern states should get there by 2050. Had India's GDP growth continued at the pre-1980 level, Indian incomes would only have reached American per-capita income levels by 2250; but at the current rate India will reach it by 2066. It is thus increasingly possible to believe that India will finally be able to conquer its age-old worry over want and hunger."

He attributes much of what he calls a newfound "self-assuredness" to the decolonization of the Indian mind. An illustration is the widespread acceptance of English as one of the Indian languages rather than as an imposition from Britain. Das says that when he was growing up, "it mattered how you spoke; you could speak rubbish but you had to do it with the right accent. Today, young Indians in the new middle class think of English as a skill, like Windows." This in turn has led to the spread of "Hinglish," a mixture of Hindi and English.

No one is claiming that all's well in India, or that corruption and inefficiency still aren't serious problems. Nor should we assume that Hindu nationalism, resurgent in the recent past, has been permanently quelled by economic growth. But the infrastructure of self-governance left by the British is expanding into the economic realm. Rule of law is sufficiently strong to allow private property to become widespread (a stark contrast to the almost lawless Russian experience, where well-connected apparatchiks became oligarchs almost overnight). A growing Indian middle class has learned enough basic economics to know that rising living standards aren't achieved by state edict or anti-colonial posturing, but by allowing individuals to profit from their own industry and intelligence.

Duty is a two-way street. America's citizens have a duty to support our troops in times of war and our troops as our emissaries worldwide have a duty to represent our nation in a way befitting its values and people.

That's not what happened in a prison outside of Baghdad. No matter how you slice it -- maybe justified or not -- those troops who subjected captured Iraqi's to simulated and real acts of sex abuse are derelict of the special duty and honor bestowed upon them as defenders of our Constitution. Those engaged in such acts must be punished swiftly and completely, with penalties being severe. By not doing so, the United States will suffer a severe credibility gap as we continue to push for democratic self-government in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The United Nations acts like the political machine in Detroit, says a Michigan Congressman. It's the best description I've heard yet:

"Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan Republican, told a House International Relations Committee hearing last week that the U.N. oil-for-food scandal reminded him of down-home political influence-buying and corruption in his Wayne County district. 'In many ways, we are seeing a political machine that is accused of doing something wrong and the tactics that the machine uses to defend itself are quite similar,' he said. 'There will be confusion, distraction and an internal investigation controlled by the machine, the results of which may or may not be for public consumption. And it is all to defend the institution.'"

This is the institution from which we're supposed to seek legitimacy for our foreign policy?