Month: July 2005

As if you had any doubts about who wears the pants at Establishment Libertarianism, Inc., check out who’s been dominating the London narrative at their blog. At 1:15 pm Central, I count eight foreign-policy related posts – seven of which are by warmongers Charles Paul Freund, Michael Young (check out this incoherence), and Ronald Bailey, one by the antiwar Jesse Walker.

The problem I have noticed over the last few years is not a shortage of antiwar folks at Reason and other high-profile libertarian organizations, but a certain timidity. At Reason, for instance, in addition to Walker, the people who have made some declaration of opposition to the Iraq war or Bush foreign policy generally include Nick Gillespie, Tim Cavanaugh, Jeff Taylor, Julian Sanchez, and Brian Doherty. Yet only a couple of these ever talk about foreign policy as if it’s more important than, say, gay marriage or copyright law, and even then they include all sorts of “well, the neocons might be right” hedges. Meanwhile, Young, Freund, Bailey, et al., are out making the liberventionist case with admirable conviction and tenacity, spinning what should be major blows to their thesis into rhetorical victories. How do they get away with it?

This is exactly what I’d expect Anthony Charles Lynton Blair to say but it’s still disappointing.

“It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.

“Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.”

Fine sentiments, perhaps, but it doesn’t demonstrate much understanding of what “those engaged in terrorism” are about.

Then, in self-referential remarks so typical of Blair, he notes: “It is particularly barbaric this has happened on a day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa and the long term problems of climate change and the environment.”

Leftist London Mayor Ken Livingstone commented that: “This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary working class people.”

Yes and no. Yes, the bombers did not seek to attack the G8 meeting at the Gleneagles hotel in Scotland. That would not have succeeded because Tony Blair had surrounded himself with enough army and police to thwart such an attack. So in consequence they struck at vulnerable public spaces (streets and subways) in London. But, no, it was not aimed at working class people per se, just anyone—venture capitalists and shop assistants—who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Livingstone added: “They seek to turn Londoners against each other . . . London will not be divided by this.” I guess this is a reference to Moslem minorities in London but I doubt the bombers particularly sought to foment ethnic and religious strife in the capital.

Personally, I much prefer what the Queen had to say. She was “deeply shocked” and sent sympathy to those affected. Amen.

The Associated Press is reporting that Scotland Yard informed the Israeli Embassy in London moments before Terror Thursday dawned that attacks were imminent, according to a “senior Israeli official.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to show up at a conference slated to take place in a hotel directly above a subway station where one of the blasts went off. AP avers “The warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.”

The story is datelined Jersusalem, and so we are talking about Israeli officials in this instance, not Scotland Yard.

I am listening now to Brian Paddock of Scotland Yard saying that no one received any warnings: that the authorities – the London authorities, that is – had no intelligence that led them to believe terrorist attacks were coming. Less than an hour later, reporter Andrea Mitchell is saying that the warnings came “after the attacks,” which would seem rather inexplicable, but there you have it.

We report — you decide. However, one has to wonder why the AP is citing several unnamed Israeli government officials in support of this story. Why did Netanyahu stay in his hotel room instead of attending the conference? If Scotland Yard didn’t warn him, then who did?

This isn’t the first time that Israeli foreknowledge of a terrorist attack against the West has been raised by a reputable source. One has to wonder: why is it that these reports of Israeli foreknowledge come up with such metronomic regularity? With all that smoke, is there really no fire?

In spite of the denials coming in, the question is: is the Associated Press lying? And if the Israelis are disturbed by these rumors — and they may just be rumors — one has to wonder why Israeli government officials seem to be spreading them.

On December 11, 2001, Carl Cameron of Fox News — hardly the nexus of anti-Israeli sentiment in the U.S. — reported the following:

“There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are ‘tie-ins.’ But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, “evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.”

In The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, I make the case that the Israelis knew something was afoot, and this alleged warning to Netanyahu — and I emphasize the word alleged quite deliberately — repeats that ominous pattern.

UPDATE: This report from Wales says that Netanyahu was going to attend the conference, “but the attacks occurred before he arrived.” Quite different from not showing up due to a warning. The report goes on to note that “Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy and said warnings of possible attacks had been received, the [senior Israeli] official said.” Here is the first report on the Netanyahu warning, which is attributed to Agence France Presse.

UPDATE II: Stratfor.com, the respected national security-intelligence analysts, has published an account of the alleged Israeli warning that confirms, at least to some extent, the above: that the source of the warning wasn’t Scotland Yard, but rather came from the Israelis themselves. Unfortunately, this is part of their “premium” content, as is available only to subscribers [someone has already posted it on the internet, of course]. Here’s the money quote:

“Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned ‘minutes before’ the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks ‘a couple of days’ previous.”

More on this in my upcoming column.

As I write this, the casualty rate in the London terrorist attacks — 40 dead, over 300 wounded — is rising. This synchronized strike, several blasts at once, is being claimed by a group that calls itself “Secret Organization — al-Qaeda in Europe.” The attacks, according to this shadowy group, were made “in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

So much for the assertion, made often by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, that the Anglo-American invasion of the Middle East has made the West safer. As Blair put it:

“Suppose the terrorists repeated September 11th or worse. Suppose they got hold of a chemical or biological or nuclear dirty bomb; and if they could, they would. What then? And if it is the threat of the 21st century, Britain should be in there helping confront it, not because we are America’s poodle, but because dealing with it will make Britain safer.”

Now Britain is paying price of poodle-ism.

The question is posed pointblank: are the people of the UK prepared to accept a war against their own territory on account of their support for America’s imperial ambitions? I would venture that the answer is a flat “No.”

This also puts the lie to the Bushian rhetoric of “We’re fighting them in the streets of Baghdad so we don’t have to fight them in the streets of [fill in name of a Western city].” The truth is that this war has made us less safe, it is bringing the war home to us. We are fighting them in Iraq — and on the streets of London. And if they are stalemating us in the former, and beating us in the latter — where is the “victory” in that?

Here is a city that has more surveillence cameras per city block than any city on earth — all to no avail. Right now I am watching Steve Emerson, the terrorism “expert,” say on MSNBC that those cameras will enable the London authorities to find out who the perpetrators are, but what exactly is the value of that? We know it was terrorist nut-balls, jihadis who care not one whit for human decency or honor, and do not hesitate to strike out at innocents in their global war on the West. The cameras were sold as a preventive measure — the Brits were supposedly selling the last remnants of their liberties for the promise of safety. But there is no safety in this new world that our leaders are building for us.

A brazen, horrific barbaric attack that took place during London’s rush hour — three explosions at once, perhaps one of them a suicide bomber — is turning the whole world into Tel Aviv. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, New Republic editor declared that “We are all Israelis now.”

This is now indubitably true. The question is: is this what we want?

Some will say that we have no choice, but that is nonsense. The attack came in direct retaliation for what the terrorists’ claim of responsibility called the “massacres” in Iraq. The current war in Iraq is a war of choice, not of necessity, and we should be very clear: we have chosen this path, or our leaders have. Now the question arises: is it too late to turn back?

John McCain is the first American politician to do his Churchill imitation on MSNBC. Asked the meaning of all this, the lesson of Terror Thursday, he answers:

“It means that the struggle goes on, it’s a tough fight, and as sad as we are … we understand the nature of this cruel and despicable enemey. We have to fight and we have to win.”

“Solidarity,” “strength,” “commitment” — more mock-heroic blather from the Arizona Blusterer. But when asked what the U.S. and Britain can do to prevent these attacks, his answer is less Churchchillian: we must “do exactly what we are doing.”

Does it matter that “exactly what we are doing” isn’t working? Not to McCain, the most bloodthirsty of all the warmongers on either side of the Atlantic. We are willing to bet, however, that it matters to the Brits, who are described by McCain (again in Churchchillian terms) as “stoic.” However, online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the philosophy of Stoicism as more than merely a penchant for heroics:

“The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics’ teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so. Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense.”

McCain took the opportunity, I’ll note, to call for unspecified “sacrifice” on the part of the American people — and, carrying the Stoic parallel further, calling for the continuation of policies — the war in Iraq, the crackdown on civil liberties, the worldwide crusade to impose “democracy” on recalcitrant peoples — so at odds with common sense.

Seems Jacques Chirac can’t catch a break. A few weeks ago French voters demonstrated their incredible esteem for him by rejecting the Chirac-supported centralizing EU”constitution” and the even more unaccountable bureaucracy it would have ushered in. Then earlier this week the French newspaper Liberation caught him in a perhaps-unguarded-perhaps-calculated moment talking with Schroeder and Putin, in which he suggested you simply can’t trust the Brits because they have such bad food, and went on to say that only Finland had worse cuisine than Britain. Apparently on a roll, he suggested the Britains only contribution to European agriculture was mad cow disease.

All very funny, one supposes.

Then earlier today (or late last night) the Olympic Committee announced that not Paris but — shudder! — London will host the 2012 Olympics. Chirac had really been counting on ghetting the bid to boost his standing with the French people.

Does this mean that instead of English “cuisine” he’ll have to eat crow? Let’s hope it is at least cooked in trufffles.

I bear no particular animus, but I just couldn’t resist.

Reuters reported Tuesday that Bosnian Serb police had found a bomb near the Potocari Memorial in Srebrenica. It wasn’t long before the viceroy’s office (OHR) issued a statement insinuating that the RS police staged the whole thing to disrupt the commemoration. (!)

Compare this to the reactions to bomb attacks in Kosovo on Saturday night, which targeted the UN and Serbs. The bombings – latest in a series – bore all the trademarks of the KLA. But both Albanian leaders and Imperial officials have been hard at work to deflect the blame. Albanians immediately claimed the bombs were “attacks on the democratic process” aimed to “destabilize Kosovo” (meaning, the Albanian separatist cause) – blaming the Serbs, in not so many words. US envoy Philip Goldberg, offered this meaningless assessment: “Neither people of Kosovo nor the international community will allow acts of terrorism to divert us from the important work ahead.”

However, Viceroy Jessen-Petersen gave himself away when he said he was sure the bombings “do not have the support of the people of Kosovo.” Now, the “people of Kosovo” is a synonym for Albanians. Why would the viceroy say he was certain Albanians did not support he bombings, unless he figured Albanian terrorists (the KLA) were behind them?