...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
And the funny thing is the corpse looked more lifelike than the kisser.
A tale of two presidents: Richard Baehr on the American Thinker site contrasts the legacies of two American presidents—Gerald Ford, an unassuming man who, in his post-presidential years, acquitted himself with modesty and grace, and Jimmy Carter, a self-important, self-righteous blowhard who continues to hog the world stage and refuses to disappear:
…But it is Carter's behavior after his defeat that stands in sharp contrast to Gerald Ford's post-presidential years. Certainly, charitable works are a useful endeavor for public figures after they leave office. Both Ford and Carter have done this - Carter for many years building homes with Habitat for Humanity.
But in other ways Carter has acted as if the last 26 years were an extended second term in office. He has freelanced in foreign policy - lending his ex-presidential imprimatur to the likes of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, and Yassar Arafat. He has been outspoken when he has disagreed with the policies of a sitting President (pretty much every Republican).
In the period leading up to the war with
The invitation to
Gerald Ford was an accidental president. He was the only president not elected either to that office or as vice president. He was the first appointed vice president (after Spiro Agnew's resignation), and when he succeeded to the presidency , it was not the culmination of a lifetime of seeking that office. Ford had been content to be a member the House of Representatives. He never tried to "upgrade" to the US Senate. Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, much like another recent Democratic Southern governor who made it to the presidency, had mapped out a strategy for that oval office run for years before he ran. The contrast between Ford and Carter is between modesty and vanity, service and ambition.
Finally, some public figures do not understand what it means to leave the stage gracefully. Gerald Ford did, and it is no wonder his reputation has grown since he left office, despite troubles on many fronts during his short two and a half year tenure. Ford was a transition president who had to deal with very difficult circumstances that he inherited from Richard Nixon: a deteriorating economy , a collapse in trust in government, and the final phase of the long unhappy Vietnam war experience. By pardoning Richard Nixon soon after taking the oath, Ford eliminated what would have been a distracting national sideshow, enabling him and the government to get on with managing its real business. It was, of course, also an act of mercy for a fallen president, already disgraced. It is impossible to think of Jimmy Carter demonstrating such judgment or compassion.
Jimmy Carter has plenty of compassion—but only for
A New Year’s Eve wish: From me to you:
Have a frolicsome New Year’s,
If you care to risk it.
And here’s hoping the jihad
Bites the bisquit.
Spoiled rotten: MTV has a dreadful reality show about Sweet Sixteen parties thrown by stupid, over-indulgent parents for their obnoxious, grasping, constitutionally ungrateful progeny (usually a daughter, but occasionally a son). For some inexplicable reason, my sister loves the show; I find it unwatchable.
It’s good to know, however, that American aren’t the only ones with daughters who’ve been spoiled rotten. Here, for example, is a deliciously bitchy story about Saddam Hussein’s daughter Raghad, who probably never had a Sweet Sixteen, but who is even more insufferable than any MTV sweet sixteener. From the Daily Mail:
She was relaxing in the Dazzle
It was obviously something important or her personal assistant would not have risked invoking her volcanic temper by passing her the mobile phone mid-treatment.
Indeed it was. On the end of the line was a lawyer telling her that Saddam Hussein had lost his appeal and would hang by the end of the week.
And the tall, slim woman who paled as she received this news was the tyrant's redoubtable eldest daughter Raghad.
There was much arm-waving, cursing and shrieking. But as a member of staff noted when she recounted the story to another customer, this kind of behaviour from Raghad is hardly unusual.
In the
And like her father during his brutal reign, she is used to getting her own way, although unlike him she has relied on nothing sharper than her tongue…
To the annoyance of Jordanians, Raghad enjoys a conspicuously extravagant lifestyle in
Driven wherever she pleases by bodyguards, she has an almost comical appetite for designer clothes and accessories and shops with a gusto that would earn approval from the high-spending wives and girlfriends of
"She buys shoes by the sack load," said a woman close to Raghad's tight circle of friends.
"But the store owners are wary of her because she can be a difficult customer and nothing is ever good enough for her. There's a shop in
Raghad is said to have a penchant for Gucci handbags and £400 Sergio Rossi boots and pays for them - or rather, her personal assistant pays for them - with a thick wad of crisp US dollars.
It is perhaps not surprising then that Raghad was pampering herself in a
If not out shopping she can often be found in Dazzle, or in the Iraqi-owned ladies' gym above it - Body Design - where she works out most mornings.
They are in
Raghad, an avid Hello! reader, also has her hair styled three times a week and is said to have received cosmetic surgery - nose, breasts, bags under the eyes - at the Amman Surgical Hospital…
Raghad's appeals on behalf of her father have surprised her family. "It is not the Arab way for a woman to speak out like this," one of Raghad's cousins told The Mail on Sunday.
"The family do not like it. And they do not like the way she wears his name like one of her designer labels."
Even at the international school her children attend in
"I remember telling her that I was taking one of my kids out of the school and moving her to the British international school because she was struggling with English," said one mother.
"I asked how her children were getting on with English and she said they were doing great. Then she said something extraordinary: 'Can you really imagine the grandchildren of Saddam Hussein not being able to speak English?'
The mother added: "All the mothers avoid her like the plague although she tries very hard to be friends."
So what now for Little Saddam? With her father gone she will no longer have a legal team to manage and will find herself with time on her hands. How will she ever fill it?
We know how she’s going to fill it. The same way another spoiled Arab princess, Suha Arafat, does: by having lots of facials, quackish spa treatments and exfoliations, and wasting oodles of purloined lucre on revoltingly expensive designer gear
Martyr maker: Times reporter John Simpson is impressed by Saddam’s “fortitude” as he met his fate:
SADDAM HUSSEIN met his death on the scaffold in
Having reported on Saddam for more than 25 years, I last saw him on the day he was sentenced to death. He had been expecting it, of course, and he played the scene with great toughness and spirit, condemning the American invasion and challenging the Iraqi government and the judges.
At the end, as he was taken out of the courtroom, he passed within a couple of feet of me. I could see a little smile of triumph on his lips. He must have known then that he had begun to create the legend of Saddam the martyr.
His last moments, face to face with death, were part of that same strategy. He knew Iraqis very well, and he knew what they liked in their leaders. The Saddam legend is only just beginning…
At first, after his surrender in the hole where he was hiding beside the
However, when he challenged the invasion’s legality during his trial, opinion among Sunnis began to swing. Soon they saw him as their champion and he used to address them from the dock, telling them not to despair.
As he stood on the trap door with the noose around his neck, waiting to plunge to his death, perhaps like all martyrs he was reflecting that immediate pain would be followed by an everlasting triumph. In political terms he may well turn out to be right.
Saddam is in no way a martyr, and it’s beyond sickening that Simpson would hitch a ride on the delusional bandwagon that is trying to turn him into one.
EUnuchs against the death penalty: It surprises me not at all to learn that, almost to a man (and woman) tender-hearted European leaders disapprove of Saddam’s execution. From the Los Angeles Times:
Some of the strongest criticism came from the
The execution "is tragic news … that risks feeding the spirit of revenge and sowing new violence," said Pope Benedict XVI's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.
"Even though this is a person guilty of grave crimes," Lombardi told Vatican Radio on Saturday morning, the execution "is a motive for sadness."
"The killing of a guilty party is not the way to build justice nor to reconcile society."
The
Several European leaders, spanning the political spectrum, questioned whether justice was served by Hussein's execution and said it could bring further bloodshed.
"We've already seen in the first hours the consequences, with a predictable increase in tension and violence," Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said from his home in
"The death penalty is not justice, it is vengeance, and so it was in this case," Gustavo de Aristegui, a senior official with the opposition Popular Party, told the Spanish news agency EFE. "But nobody will miss Saddam Hussein."
In
"I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people. He has now been held to account," Beckett said.
"The British government does not support the use of the death penalty, in
But Menzies Campbell, leader of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, said: "Saddam's death does not vindicate in any way the ill-conceived and disastrous decision to invade
"
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said: "
European politicians who are friendly to
"We respect the decision, but it is known that the German government is opposed to capital punishment," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
"But on a day like this my thoughts are mostly on the many innocent victims of Saddam Hussein," she said.
There is, however, one notable exception to this pity party:
Only in
"Justice has been meted out to a criminal who murdered thousands of people in
"This should serve as a warning to all those who would like to follow in Saddam Hussein's footsteps."
Along with having a conservative government,
Family reunion: CNN reports that Saddam Hussein is to be buried in his hometown, Tikrit (one of the few places in
R.I.H. (roil in Hell) the lot of you.
No banality, just pure, unmitigated evil: David Pryce-Jones reminisces about the trial and execution of another totalitarian brute: Adolf Eichmann. From NRO:
In 1962 I attended portions of the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann. The experience was bewildering. There, behind bullet-proof glass, sat Eichmann, intently listening through headphones to the ghastly evidence, and adding to it with every interjection he made. Apparently sane and self-possessed, he had no idea of the enormity of his crime, talking about it as though mass murder were a part of everyday life. The sight and sound of the man encased in bullet-proof glass misled Hannah Arendt into coining the phrase “The banality of evil.” This has a journalistic ring about it, but it has consistently irritated me. There was nothing banal about Eichmann and the solemnity of his trial was a milestone for humanity.
With Eichmann in front of me, I questioned the death penalty. To take a person’s life, even after due process and a fair trial, is a fearful deed, seeming to overpower taboo and the instinct to respect one’s fellow men. A day came when his appeal was heard. I was in court. The judge was quoting this and that precedent in international law, and suddenly, without ceremony or pause, he rejected the appeal. Eichmann was escorted away. Everyone else gathered in the small square outside the court, all of us silent, a few in tears. After quite a short time, the news came through, again without ceremony, that he had been hanged. To my surprise, the sun immediately seemed brighter, the sky more blue, the earth cleaner, and I realized that I do not in fact question the death penalty for mass murder.
These responses resurfaced this morning with a surge of emotion at the news that Saddam Hussein has gone to the gallows as once Eichmann had. In the course of his trial, he too had condemned himself with every word he spoke, equally oblivious to the enormity of his crimes, as though mass murder answered to his job description. Anyone who holds that such men really are banal, and shouldn’t pay with their lives for the evil they do, must further explain how justice is to be done to the victims.
I’m so glad that Pryce-Jones, like me, is appalled by the phrase “the banality of evil”—one of the most ridiculous and half-baked notions of the 20th Century. I for one continue to be appalled by the damage wrought by Hannah Arendt, a German Jewish anti-Zionist whose wrong-headed assesments of Eichmann, the Jews, the Holocaust and Israel continue to inform and show up on the syllabuses (syllabi?) of Israel-bashing academics like Dr. Shiraz Dossa.
Saddam’s last words: Q: What do you call people who are bereft at the execution of brutal Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein? A: Palestinians. From YNET News:
Palestinians on Saddam: We lost a leader
(VIDEO) Iraqi tyrant's last words, '
Many in the Palestinian Authority on Saturday lamented the execution of Saddam Hussein, who received a special status among the Palestinians.
"Saddam was known for his ability to stick to his opinion and say 'no' to a world power," said Husni al-Ajal, 46, from a refugee camp near Ramallah.
The pictures of the "butcher from
On Saturday morning, the citizens of
Saddam, on (sic) his part, did not forget the Palestinians also during his last moments. Just before the rope was wrapped around his neck, he shouted, "Allah is great. Long live the Iraqi nation.
Wrong, noose guy. The Palestinian part of
Saddam swings: I have been listening with grim amusement this morning to Ceeb radio coverage about the execution of Saddam Hussein. While describing the details of Saddam’s final moments, reporter Phillip Lee Shannock has been sure to include a few local Iraqi nay-sayers who insist that Saddam didn’t get a fair shake at his trial, and that Iraqis cannot rejoice while the American occupiers are still firmly in place.
This kind of reportage is in keeping with the Ceeb’s bizarro world view; two days ago, I listened in astonishment as a newsreader related as accepted fact that it was a bad thing that the Islamists of Somalia had been pushed back by the Ethiopians and the Somali government.
As an antidote to the Ceeb’s witchy leftoid snake venom, I offer this piece by James S. Robbins on the NRO site:
…There is something grimly primordial about death by hanging. Surely it as ancient a method of execution as rope itself. The placement of the noose, the pause, a final appeal to God, the clatter of the trap door, the snap of the rope, the jerk. A cold and definitive end to a significant historical figure. And the formality ended there, as the witnesses broke into cheers and danced around the body. A native custom I suppose.
Saddam’s final spoken words, “God is great,” were a political statement. They were the last words of a man expecting to be remembered not as a criminal but as a sacrificial victim. This attitude is clear in Saddam’s final missive, released days earlier. He expressed no regrets, apologized for nothing. He counseled his followers against hate, but called for continued violence. He said he would be raised to stand with the martyrs if and when God wills it. But Saddam gave up his genuine chance to be a martyr, unlike his sons. He will not be a greater inspiration dead than alive. The concept of the martyr is overrated — none of history’s villains became more powerful or influential after death. In time it was if they had never existed, except for the evil that they have done, the lives they have destroyed, and the fading memory of just how deadening it was to live in constant fear.
The blandishments of the Baathist holdouts that Saddam’s execution will bring about attacks on the
To employ a Judeo-Christian expression (while I still can), amen to that.
Slip sliding away: Sandro Contenta, the Toronto Star’s man on the scene in Europe, urges “secular” continentals to eschew the “Islamophobia” that’s making it so hard for Muslims to integrate into their and embrace the 15 million Muslims in their midst. In other words, to relax and accept that their future as an Islam-dominated continent is all but inevitable:
…The White House's disastrous
By contrast, bombers have hit London and Madrid, a Dutch filmmaker was butchered in the name of Allah on the streets of Amsterdam, a noticeable flow of European Muslims are taking up jihad in Iraq, and arrests of suspected plotters is practically a monthly event.
In
Immigration patterns made it easier for the
With few exceptions, European governments spent decades using Turkish and North African immigrant "guest workers" for cheap labour. Neglect, and a belief that they would one day return home, meant they got little help to integrate.
Last year, the Paris-based Montaigne Institute conducted an experiment: It responded to job ads with identical CVs and found that CVs with "traditional" French names got five times as many replies as those with Arab names.
Yet since 9/11, European politicians have defined the problem of integration not in terms of economic and social barriers but in terms of religion.
American Muslims also face a disturbing amount of "Islamophobia." But in a country where the dollar bill proclaims trust in God and Bible study groups are held in the White House, the notion religion might be a barrier to integration is inconceivable. Simply put, Muslims feel more at home in God-fearing America than in Godless Europe.
"If the message they hear from us is that the necessary condition for being European is to abandon their religion, then they will choose not to be European," writes Timothy Gordon Ash, professor of European Studies at
Muslims have much to do to help their integration. An attitude of victimization is setting in that risks seeing Muslims accept their marginal status, indeed wear it as a badge of honour. More effort is needed to develop a European brand of Islam, which fully incorporates values of democracy, tolerance and equality, and is preached by homegrown Imams.
Reform is all the harder, however, in an atmosphere where even Tony Blair, a devout Christian, is reluctant to publicly profess his faith. In the run-up to the
The sooner
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The “European brand of Islam” that Sandro is touting is already in full flower—and it differs not a whit from the Sayed Qutb brand of Islam that’s all the rage in the rest of the ummah. Pretending that this is all a matter of a Western failure to integrate, and the
So when Sandro Contera says that the sooner
Back to the future: Pretend 2007 has already come and gone. That’s what James Lileks does in offering a “look back” at the year ahead. Here are a few highlights:
…Fidel Castro died and lay in state for 48 hours while Cubans filed past to pay their respects in the traditional manner. Experts estimated that 24,302 liters of spittle were expelled. Brother Raul declared a "National Day of Mourning and Mopping Up."
Terror plots in
Vladimir Putin prepared for his eventual retirement in 2008 by forcing the Russian Parliament to create a position called "Czar," which he described as "purely ceremonial." Critics of his imperial ambitions and corrupt, gangster-style government were not reassured by the theft of Lenin's body, which turned up on eBay, was then stolen from the winning bidder and was finally discovered in a London alley. Poisoned…
Two can play at the prognostication game. Here are a few of my “backward” glances:
Happy New Year to all! And I hope we can gather a year from now to see which if any of my predictions have come true.
…Every day that goes by under current conditions -- with Israeli forces no longer patrolling the Gaza/Egypt border and no Palestinian security force in place to stop the terrorist organizations from smuggling heavy weaponry into Gaza (or for that matter conducting large-scale military operations against the terrorists already operating there) -- is another day in which Islamofascist forces grow stronger and Israel's deterrent capability grows weaker. Unfortunately, these realities seem lost on policy-makers in Washington and Jerusalem, who doggedly insist that the solution to the current problem lies in strengthening the "moderate" Mr. Abbas so he can "fight" terrorism. Israeli sources say privately that in recent months, the State Department has leaned on Mr. Olmert (a politician in domestic free-fall) to agree to permit Mr. Abbas to expand Force-17, a Fatah militia. Mr. Olmert, for his part, has responded by embracing Mr. Abbas and becoming his number one Israeli cheerleader, something that is probably not a very good long-term strategy. In May, Mr. Abbas appointed Col. Mahmoud Damra, formerly a top aide to Yasser Arafat, to head Force-17 despite the fact that he was wanted by Mr. Olmert's government for running a West Bank terror cell that had killed and wounded scores of Israelis. He was arrested by Israel three months ago.
The Bush administration is vigorously promoting U.S. Army Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton's efforts to expand Force-17 despite a disturbing history over the past decade in which Palestinians use their American security training to facilitate terrorist operations against Israel. In 1996, CIA Director George Tenet was authorized by President Clinton to begin training the Palestinians in anti-terror tactics. In 1998, Mr. Clinton brow
Anyone who believes Mr. Abbas will reform this situation is deluding themselves. As Miss Rice was praising Mr. Abbas in Jericho, the Israeli group Palestinian Media Watch issued a report showing how PA television (which is under Mr. Abbas' control) and the Fatah-controlled newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida glorify suicide bombings and the use of children in warfare; support terrorist insurgents in Iraq and depict the United States as a menace to the Arab world. Mahmoud Abbas looks increasingly like Yasser Arafat in a business suit.
A commentary in that bastion of dhimmitude, the International Herald Tribune (link via Martin Kramer), comes to the same conclusion—that it’s useless to deal with Abbas—but, in a dizzyingly wrong-headed assessment, claims there’s only one way forward: deal with Hamas:
…The most fundamental miscalculation of all is the notion that there can be a peace process with a Palestinian government that excludes Hamas. Hamas is not an ephemeral phenomenon that can be extinguished by force of arms. It is as permanent a feature of the Palestinian political landscape as Fatah, which means that no enduring change in relations between Israelis and Palestinians — and certainly no end to violence, or beginning of a political process, let alone meaningful Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank — can occur over its opposition.
There is an alternative, and though it, too, is uncertain, it is far less risky or bloody, and hardly has been given a chance. Hamas wants to govern effectively — that is, without a crippling international siege and Israeli military operations. Although it is not willing to formally renounce violence, it is prepared to abide by a comprehensive cease- fire, and has proved its ability to implement it when
Hamas is willing to deal directly with
Hamas will not, however, recognize
They’re kidding, right? How on earth is Israel supposed to negotiate a peace agreement with people who not only do not recognize the right of Jews to have a sovereign state, but whose charter calls for a genocide of the Jews? That’s not a petty detail that
Me? I say a pox on both Palestinian houses—and phooey on the IHT’s Hamas lobbyists, too.
Ceeb “comedy”: Here’s the website for the Ceeb’s new comedy series, Little Mosque on the Prairie, set to air early in the new year. The Ceeb bills the show as “Halalarious,” but persusing the site, it looks like it follows the Ceeb’s usual deadly earnest (and deadly unfunny) formulation re majorities and minorities, i.e. white folks, especially practicing Christians, are generally bad and ignorant; non-white folks are usually good and wise.
I’m reserving judgement until I see the shows, but from a clip showing a young Muslim man chatting on his cell phone as he lines up at an airport check-in, and the misunderstanding that ensues when he innocently mentions the words “jihad” and “hijacking” (oh, those silly infidels, always so quick to jump to conclusions), I have a feeling I’m going to find it less than amusing.
Bottoms up: Yesterday Reuters reported that Foggy Bottom diva, Condoleezza Rice, wants to use a “back channel” to kick start the moribund Peace in Our Time process. That is, she plans to bypass Hamas, the regime in charge, and deal directly with Mahmoud Abbas, the man in charge of the regime’s rival, Fatah.