August
5, 2002 9:00 a.m. Him
and her. Hombre of the Week. The Best Job in the World. And more.
o, Bill Clinton has told a Jewish audience that, if Israel were invaded,
he’d get into a ditch and fight and die. Isn’t that nice? Clinton
always had a knack for telling an audience — any audience —
exactly what it wanted to hear. Remember when he told those rich donors
that he thought he’d raised their taxes too much? Then had to take
it back? The other day, you got the feeling he’d tell an Iraqi audience,
“You know, if Israel invaded Iraq, I’d . . .”
Mrs. C.’s no
different, of course. As I’ve commented before, too bad she chose
to run for office in New York, and had to change her life-long views on
the Arab-Israeli conflict. If only she had run for, say, mayor of Dearborn,
Mich., she could have stayed true.
You
know, we right-wingers are terrible about the State Department. I’ve
always felt a little guilty about that. At least since McCarthy days,
we’ve looked with suspicion on the “striped pants,” the
State Department bureaucrats with jello for marrow, and leftism in their
heads. Alger Hiss was only the beginning of it. Of course, we’ve
had some liberal Democratic company, too: FDR, bless him, thought the
State Department “a nest of appeasers,” as a friend of mine
recently put it.
But then, something
comes along — many things come along — that make you think,
“Hmm: Maybe we wing-nuts aren’t so paranoid about State after
all.”
And this is what
I think about E-mail-gate, or whatever we should call it. Colin Powell
has had to tell the striped pants to knock it off. In their e-mail, the
bureaucrats have been blasting President Bush’s foreign policy, grousing
about — as it happens — “McCarthyism” and “witch-hunts”
and so on. (They’re referring to our efforts to thwart terrorism,
and to keep terrorists from killing thousands more of us.) One State Department
employee — one Columbia A. Barrosse — said that the White House
would probably appoint a “neo-Nazi” to replace ex-assistant
secretary of state Mary Ryan, the one whom NR’s own Joel Mowbray
outed as a kind of visa Santa Claus for Saudis.
Yes, that’s
just what George W. Bush would do, isn’t it? Appoint a “neo-Nazi.”
The State Department:
Just when you think you’re being a little fringy . . .
I’m
interested in the new deputy assistant defense secretary for East Asia.
That is, I’m interested in his name: Richard P. Lawless. He was on
the National Security Council staff under Reagan and used to work for
the CIA.
But does he have
to be named Lawless?
Turkey
has abolished the death penalty, not because it opposes the death penalty,
but because it wants EU membership more. The EU will not permit any nation
that has the death penalty to join. Nice to know that this new European
monolith has its priorities straight.
Like many people,
I have long been ambivalent about the death penalty. But nothing makes
me hotter than certain death-penalty opponents — in fact, most of
them. I remember — long ago, now — when West Germany refused
to extradite two Jordanian terrorists (I believe) to us — terrorists
who had murdered Americans in cold blood — on grounds that we had
capital punishment. Germany! The thought of it!
I’d better stop
now, ’fore I blow.
Oh, sure, they’re
sensitive to death — even for mass murderers, after an exhaustive
legal process — now.
But I said I’d
stop.
In
the words of the AP, “Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez
on Friday fired a staff member who put out a casting call specifying the
racial mix of actors sought for campaign commercials.” This was in
Texas. “A want ad posted by John R. Wright through the STAGE Web
site said the campaign was looking for blacks for background roles in
a TV commercial featuring Sanchez, and a ‘mix of people, with emphasis
on Caucasian,’ for speaking parts in other spots.”
A Sanchez spokesman
says, “What we had was an overzealous employee who has been dismissed
from the campaign.”
So, so unfair: The
Democratic party has made such racial particularity and obsessiveness
its watchword for years — and the guy gets canned for doing what
comes naturally? It’s bad enough for a party to have obnoxious principles;
but to be hypocritical about them is even worse.
How
do you feel when ancient Nazis — 85-year-olds, 90-year-olds —
get caught somewhere, like Uruguay, and hauled into court and thrown in
jail? I don’t feel bad.
Neither do I feel
bad about the conviction in Miami of Mr. Eriberto Mederos, a 79-year-old
former psychiatric nurse in Cuba. He stood accused of torturing political
prisoners in a hospital. Actually, he stood accused of lying about his
past, in order to gain U.S. citizenship, which he did in 1993. As one
account of the trial had it, “prosecutor Frank Tamen called Mederos
an evil servant of Communist tyranny who took sadistic pleasure in sending
terrified inmates into convulsions three times a week from 1968 to 1978.”
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o, Bill Clinton has told a Jewish audience that, if Israel were invaded,
he’d get into a ditch and fight and die. Isn’t that nice? Clinton
always had a knack for telling an audience — any audience —
exactly what it wanted to hear. Remember when he told those rich donors
that he thought he’d raised their taxes too much? Then had to take
it back? The other day, you got the feeling he’d tell an Iraqi audience,
“You know, if Israel invaded Iraq, I’d . . .”
You
know, we right-wingers are terrible about the State Department. I’ve
always felt a little guilty about that. At least since McCarthy days,
we’ve looked with suspicion on the “striped pants,” the
State Department bureaucrats with jello for marrow, and leftism in their
heads. Alger Hiss was only the beginning of it. Of course, we’ve
had some liberal Democratic company, too: FDR, bless him, thought the
State Department “a nest of appeasers,” as a friend of mine
recently put it.
