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COVER STORY
Swallowed by Leviathan

Government spending has been growing faster under Bush than it did under Clinton, renewing the debate about how conservative Bush is. A minority of Bush’s supporters have celebrated the president’s alleged embrace of “big-government conservatism.”     By Ramesh Ponnuru

ARTICLES

Where We Stand by John O’Sullivan The situation in Iraq, and how to go forward.

The Great Escape (Cont.) by Byron York How did assorted bin Ladens get out of America after September 11?

Giving, and Taking Away by John J. Miller A controversy at Princeton offers broad lessons.

In Pol Pot Land by Anthony Daniels Ruins of varying types.

From ‘Activist’ to ‘Warmonger’ by John Derbyshire A handy glossary from Lucifer’s latest lexicographer.

Swallowed by Leviathan by Ramesh Ponnuru Conservatism versus an oxymoron: ‘big-government conservatism.’

Facing up to It in California by Victor Davis Hanson We must leap the ‘third rail’ of illegal immigration.

A Voice for Our Time by Jay Nordlinger Those who think that Bush can’t talk should think again.

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

Pandora Revisited — Wesley J. Smith . . . War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black

Miller’s Centrist Tale — David Gratzer . . . The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America’s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love, by Matthew Miller

Providence Lost — and Found? — M. D. Aeschliman . . . Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design, by Francis J. Beckwith

Barreling Around in Central Asia — Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky . . . The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia, by Lutz Kleveman

Shelf Life: Bring Down the Walls — Michael Potemra praises pro-globalist Johan Norberg.

City Desk: The Upper Upper West Side — Richard Brookhiser escapes the crush and fret.

SECTIONS

Letters
For the Record
The Week
Notes & Asides
Help!
The Long View
Poetry
On the Right
What’s Right

letters to the editor

THE PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY
Re John J. Miller’s article “The Awful Specter of Yet Another Term” (Sept. 1): Most Pennsylvania Republicans recognize that Congressman Pat Toomey’s candidacy would likely turn a safe Republican seat over to the Democrats. Pennsylvania recently elected a Democrat as governor by a wide margin.

Mr. Toomey’s campaign may cause Senator Specter to so identify himself with President Bush as to put Specter at risk against a vigorous Democratic opponent.

Robert E. Field
Lancaster, Pa.

Arlen Specter’s negatives could have filled the entire issue. A fact not noted is that after the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill controversy, when Specter was in his next general-election race, he pandered to the Left and the feminists, denouncing his support of Thomas and apologizing for it. That’s his M.O.: do a few things right every six years to secure renomination, then turn left for reelection.

Many Pennsylvanians are prepared to vote for “anyone but Specter.” Congressman Pat Toomey has talent, ability, and integrity, so we can take pride in voting for him instead of just registering protest votes.

Albert H. Bienstock
Camp Hill, Pa.

MUSLIMS IN AFRICA
Anthony Daniels’s article “Big Men, Big Corruption” (Aug. 11) incompletely describes the political reality on the African continent.

Mr. Daniels makes no mention of the chronic tensions precipitated by the often violent incursions of radical Muslim forces into territories, from Sudan to Nigeria, with significant Christian populations.

Missionaries, if not the press, report that religious warfare is a major factor in African political/cultural/economic turmoil. We must not ignore this basic reality.

J. Thomas Whetstone
Arden, N.C.

AND ON THE GAY MOMENT . . .
In the July 28 issue, both Ramesh Ponnuru (“Coming Out Ahead”) and Gerard V. Bradley (“Stand and Fight”) use the term “gay marriage” in their articles. This is an oxymoron. Use terms such as “gay relationship” or “gay union,” but please don’t misuse the word “marriage.” We have few enough words left that represent important values.

Alan B. Williams
Augusta, Ga.

Conservatives should perhaps welcome Harvey Milk High School (The Week, Sept. 1). Finally, a high school that will have no problems with teenage pregnancy!

Denise Noe
Atlanta, Ga.

National Review encourages letters to the editor. Letters should be submitted by e-mail to letters@nationalreview.com or by fax to (212) 849-2835 or by mail to Letters Editor, National Review, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Please include your full name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

masthead

September 29 issue; printed September 11

EDITOR
Richard Lowry
Senior Editors
Richard Brookhiser / Jeffrey Hart
Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones
Managing Editor Jay Nordlinger
Washington Editor Kate O’Beirne
Literary Editor Michael Potemra
Executive Editor Dorothy McCartney
National Political Reporter John J. Miller
White House Correspondent Byron York Art Director Luba Kolomytseva
Production Editor Christopher McEvoy

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Executive Secretary Frances Bronson
Assistant to the Editor Jane Jolis
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Robert H. Bork / John Derbyshire
W. H. von Dreele / Rod Dreher
David Frum / Roman Genn
Jonah Goldberg / John Hillen
Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow
Mark R. Levin / Rob Long
Stephen Moore / John Simon
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Thomas L. Rhodes
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for the record

“Oh, yeah? — Well, my true inner self can whip your true inner self!”

In CBS News poll, Bush earns 55 percent approval rating, but only 39 percent approve his handling of economy. . . . Bush: “We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” . . . In CBS News poll, 33 percent say they’ll vote for Bush next year, 27 percent say they’ll vote for Democratic nominee, and 36 percent “don’t know yet.” . . . More Bush: “For America, there will be no going back to the era before September the 11th, 2001 — to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.” . . . Deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in Wall Street Journal: “Foreign terrorists who go to Iraq to kill Americans understand this: If killing Americans leads to our defeat and the restoration of the old regime, they would score an enormous strategic victory for terrorism. . . . To those who think the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the global war against terrorism . . . tell that to our troops.” . . . In Washington Post poll, 69 percent say there’s a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

Gov. Gray Davis (D., Calif.), on NBC: “The voters are angry and I’ve gotten that. And this is a very humbling experience.” . . . Davis on Republicans: “They would rather shoot their mother than raise any taxes.” . . . GOP consultant Sal Russo, in San Jose Mercury News: “Arnold Schwarzenegger has the celebrity but no base. Tom McClintock has the base but no celebrity.” . . . California Senate GOP leader Jim Brulte, in Washington Post: “I’m at the point of saying to McClintock, show you can bring the resources to the table to win, or get out of the way.” . . . McClintock on why he’s not a spoiler, on MSNBC: “My suspicion is that a lot of the folks who are voting for me don’t trust Arnold’s fiscal policies and don’t like his social policies. I would be very concerned about those voters staying home.”

Rep. Dick Gephardt (D., Mo.): “This president is a miserable failure.” . . . Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.): “The one person in the United States who deserves to be laid off is George W. Bush.” . . . Former governor Howard Dean (D., Vt.), on CNN: “No Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years in this country. You can’t trust them with your money.” . . . Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) on whether Iraqis are better off today, on CNN: “It doesn’t appear so. . . . This whole [war] has been a disaster. It’s been a disaster for the people of Iraq. It’s been a disaster for the world community and it’s been a disaster for the United States.” . . . Sen. Joe Lieberman (D., Conn.), in Hartford Courant: “My opponents . . . threaten to take us back to the pre-Clinton time when the Democratic party was, in fact, in the political wilderness for the better part of two decades. I don’t want to do that.” . . . Lieberman warns of Dean’s trade policies: “If that ever happened, I’d say that the Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression.” . . . Retired Gen. Wesley Clark insists it’s not too late to jump in race for president, in Newsweek: “I’ve got recon out there. I’ve got some heavy artillery that can come in. I’ve got good logistics, and I’ve got strategic mobility.” . . . Gov. Bill Richardson (D., N.M.), in Albuquerque Journal: “I’m not going to accept a spot on the ticket. I’m very firm.”

In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Huckabee (R.) and former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R.) say they won’t run for Senate, giving big boost to incumbent Blanche Lincoln (D.). . . . Combined with decision of Rep. Jim Gibbons (R., Nev.) not to challenge Sen. Harry Reid (D.), Democratic Senate hopes brighten for 2004. . . . Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) on her support for school choice, in Washington Post: “I have begun to rethink public education, and I think we spend too much time supporting old structures and not enough time on what works for children.” . . . Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), in Newsday: “The Saudis say they are our partners, but they cut back [oil] supply when we need it most.” . . . In Arizona, GOP state representatives Randy Graf and Russell Pearce propose ballot initiative to fight illegal immigration by requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote and proof of eligibility when receiving state services.

Former New York governor Mario Cuomo (D.) on Hillary Clinton, in New York Post: “I would support her in a flash if she came into the race [for president], absolutely.” . . . Hillary on seeking White House, according to Associated Press: “I am absolutely ruling it out.” . . . Richard Miniter’s new book, Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror, chronicles how Clinton administration failed to respond to USS Cole bombing.

Polish commander takes control of 31,000-square-mile section of Iraq, including Najaf. . . . Peru says 69,000 people died during civil war between 1980 and 2000. . . . Moscow City Court holds first jury trial since 1917.

David Letterman: “Bill Clinton is in California helping Gov. Gray Davis campaign. Because, you know, nothing makes more sense than having a recalled governor getting advice from an impeached president.”

The Week

Schumer decides. Now what?

The Kerry camp wants to attack Howard Dean, but not just now. Maybe they’re waiting for a French okay?

A thought for 9/11 + 2 (from Grant by Jean Edward Smith). “[S]ometime after midnight [on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh] Sherman went looking for Grant. He had worked five hours to prepare his division to attack, but it seemed hopeless. His men had been thoroughly beaten and Sherman — who would have been the last to say so — thought it important ‘to put the river between us and the enemy.’ This is why he sought Grant, to see when and how the retreat could be arranged. The rain was coming down in buckets, punctuated by heavy thunder and lightning in the background. In this surreal setting Sherman found Grant standing alone under a large oak tree, dripping wet, hat slouched down over his face, coat collar up around his ears, a dimly glowing lantern in his hand, cigar clenched between his teeth . . . Sherman approached and said, ‘Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Grant, puffing on his cigar. ‘Yes. Lick ’em tomorrow though.’”

Last year, California governor Gray Davis vetoed a measure to let illegal immigrants have driver’s licenses, calling it a security threat. This year, he is pandering to Hispanic voters in order to defeat a recall election brought on by his own misgovernance. So he has signed the measure. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the leading Republican candidate to replace Davis, opposed it. (Nobody seems to be advocating the appropriate solution, which is that the illegals be given free rides, back to Mexico.) But Schwarzenegger is still offering little to conservatives — except, now, insults. He came out against Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative, which would keep the state government from collecting data on race. That’s disappointing, but there are honorable opponents of the initiative. What is less excusable is Schwarzenegger’s labeling of its supporters as “right-wing crazies.” The only candidate in the race who isn’t pandering is conservative Tom McClintock. Schwarzenegger skipped a debate with the other candidates in order to avoid giving a spotlight to McClintock. This was wise: The more people hear from McClintock, the more they will understand that he has convictions and knows how the state government should be run. McClintock points out that Schwarzenegger refuses to pledge not to raise taxes — and that it takes a Republican governor to raise taxes in California. We know that McClintock is currently behind Schwarzenegger in the polls. But we also know that if elected, McClintock would fight the spenders and taxers in Sacramento. About Arnold Schwarzenegger we know no such thing.

Ed Gillespie, the head of the Republican National Committee, met with editors of the Manchester Union Leader. To the editors, Gillespie seemed to be saying that the Republican party no longer stands for smaller government, but merely for increasing the size of government at a slower pace than the Democrats want. Not the most inspiring of battle cries. Gillespie claims that his remarks were taken out of context; the Union Leader stands by its interpretation of his remarks. No one who knows Gillespie will doubt that he is sincere in saying that he is still a Reaganite. But this is really an argument about President Bush and Republican officialdom generally, not about Gillespie. We are well aware that it’s difficult to shrink the government or even to restrain its growth, having advocated doing so without much success for 50 years. But the president could try a little harder. Will Bush attempt to pare back corporate welfare? Will he threaten to veto a Medicare bill that skimps on reform? Will he renew his campaign for personal Social Security accounts? Will he ditch the steel tariffs? If the administration ignores the restiveness of its base — or responds merely by sending emissaries to reassure conservative leaders — that restiveness will only increase.

The Democratic field is quickly separating into three camps: Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, and Everyone Else. Everyone Else is worried about attacking Dean. Attacking Dean might make him look even more the front-runner. Worse, it might alienate Dean’s supporters. Better to wait for Dean to collapse, or for some other candidate to attack him. For the most part, Everyone Else is saying nothing worse about Dean than that he is unelectable, while aping his policy positions. In the candidates’ recent debate in New Mexico, Dean said that our troops in Iraq needed to “come home” — a statement his campaign quickly modified — and John Kerry said that we needed to “minimize” America’s role in Iraq and on no account should we send more troops there. Dean has also staked out the position that we should trade freely only when Mexican wages are equivalent to Sweden’s. Joe Lieberman is the only candidate who is pointing out that Dean is weak on national security and that his protectionism would devastate the economy. We hope that the Democrats will not choose to contest 2004 on Dean’s platform — but if they do, President Bush had better be prepared to explain why it’s wrong.

Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Tom Daschle are very, very happy guys. Two years ago, they set out to kill the federal appeals court nomination of Miguel Estrada, one of President Bush’s premier judicial picks. But they had nothing — not even a phony allegation of racism or “insensitivity” to minority concerns — to use against him. Yet they still managed to pull it off; on September 4, Estrada, his nomination paralyzed by a Democratic filibuster, withdrew his name from consideration. In a gloating news conference, Kennedy called it “a victory for the Constitution.” He also praised Schumer, who had devised the strategy of opposing Estrada for allegedly not answering the Senate’s questions, even though Estrada had in fact answered all the Senate’s questions (and met personally with any Democrat who asked). Schumer had also come up with the “stealth” nominee idea, once saying that Estrada was “like a stealth missile . . . coming out of the right wing’s deepest silo.” All of that would seem kooky had not Schumer been able to convince more than 40 Democratic colleagues to support an unprecedented filibuster. In light of that — two other Bush nominees face filibusters, and others may soon follow — what are Republicans to do? GOP senators are often urged to make Democrats engage in an old-fashioned talk-all-night filibuster, but that’s not possible under today’s parliamentary rules (and with the GOP’s one-seat majority). Several Republicans now believe it’s time to try the “nuclear option” of changing the Senate’s rules on filibusters without summoning the supermajority that such rules changes usually require. But Republicans are not united on the idea; some don’t want to resort to unconventional tactics. So it appears that the real resolution might not come until November 2004. If the GOP can knock off a few Democrats who took part in the filibuster, they will a) have more votes available to break future filibusters, and b) remind Democrats that taking part in such obstruction carries a political price. Victory is very, very, very important.

The long-suffering parents of Washington, D.C., got a step closer to school choice. The House, and a Senate committee, both approved vouchers for the District — but not before liberal congressman Danny Davis warned that the message of the school-choice bill “goes far beyond Washington, D.C.” He said: “It’s D.C. today. It’s Chicago tomorrow. St. Louis, New Orleans, Los Angeles next week. Then it’s all of America.” From his mouth to God’s ear.

All politicians like to say they’re in favor of jobs in manufacturing, although it’s not clear why these are better than other jobs. President Bush, no exception, promised that an assistant secretary of commerce would work full time on manufacturing issues. He also sent Treasury secretary John Snow to China. Manufacturers have complained that China, by holding the yuan at an artificially low value, has hurt American exports. Snow was to get China to revalue the currency. But as the editors of the Wall Street Journal noted, China’s currency may actually be overvalued now, because China also makes it difficult to export capital from the country. Manufacturing jobs have been in steady decline, as a proportion of the workforce, for decades in the United States, as in other advanced countries. Using fewer people to produce more goods is what economic growth is all about. Luckily, no government official is likely to be able to stop that trend.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, employers have to give overtime pay to some employees if they work long hours. Which employees? Well, that’s not always clear — and the confusion has made for rich rewards for trial lawyers. Elaine Chao’s Labor Department is trying to update and clarify the regulations. The current rule automatically grants overtime to anyone who makes less than $8,000 a year. Chao would raise that threshold, as labor activists have long demanded, to $22,000. But many workers would be reclassified so that employers would no longer be legally required to give them overtime pay. The unions have therefore launched an ad campaign accusing President Bush of being the Grinch who stole overtime. If we had our druthers, Chao’s new regulations would be scrapped, along with the old ones: Wages and work conditions are properly a matter to be worked out by employees and employers competing in an open market. But at the very least, congressional Republicans ought not let the unions scare them away from supporting Chao’s modest deregulation.

President Bush has signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, legislation crafted by Republican Frank Wolf in the House and Ted Kennedy in the Senate. The bill provides $40 million worth of grants to help reduce rape in the nation’s prisons and jails, and will call negligent prison administrators to Washington to answer questions about their failures. Running state prisons in a responsible and decent manner is a duty of the states, not of Washington. But we’re glad that one of America’s most serious human-rights crises is finally getting official attention. By conservative estimates, the number of rapes behind bars exceeds the total number reported in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Boston combined. Other estimates put the numbers much higher: It’s even possible that more men get raped than women each year. The new law will not, of course, live up to its title. Violent, racist prison gangs (black, white, and Latino alike) all use rape to keep non-members in line, and many prison administrators turn a blind eye because the threat of rape often makes inmate populations easier to control. But thanks to the law, not everyone will turn a blind eye to this shameful aspect of American life.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, arrested in New Haven while lending his name to the employees’ strike against Yale University, boomed, “This is going to be for economic justice, as Selma was for the right to vote.” Hearing such talk, one turns away in disgust, and maybe with a rueful smile. As you might expect from a place such as Yale, the employees — clerical, library, dining hall — have generous agreements. They are paid an average of $32,000 a year, and recently rejected a package that would have yielded a 44 percent raise in five years. They get pension benefits that amount to about 85 percent of their salaries — and they can retire after 30 years. They have a minimum of seven weeks’ paid vacation. Yale will subsidize up to $46,460 in college bills for families. Etc. Yet Jesse Jackson rants about Selma and the right to vote. Please.

What about the far eastern leg of the Axis of Evil? The United States, shifting its stance, is dangling the possibility of American assistance to North Korea in return for its dismantling its nuclear weapons program and the weapons it has already built. One advantage of this maneuver is involving China in pressuring Pyongyang. But we must not count on a crazed dictatorship willingly to remove its only prop, the threat of force. The United States must prepare other options — an intrusive inspections regime, a pre-emptive strike. South Korea, which truckles cravenly to the monster on its doorstep, must be warned that it should devote a sizable chunk of the GDP that flourished under American protection to dealing with the results.

Just about everybody’s a critic of Islamofascism these days, but scholar Daniel Pipes was at it long before 9/11. This has earned him the right kind of enemies, who howled in protest when the White House announced that it would nominate Pipes to an unpaid position on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. There should be no controversy when a group such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations complains, but Ted Kennedy and a few other Democrats decided to kick up a fuss anyway. On August 22, Bush decided to avoid a nasty confirmation fight over a minor post and made a recess appointment of Pipes, who will now serve the interests of his country — including the peace-loving Muslims in it — for the next 16 months.

Mahmoud Abbas stepped down as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, reportedly citing his frustration in dealing with America, Israel, and Yasser Arafat, whom he had supposedly superseded. America and Israel would not, in his view, follow the road map. What was Arafat doing? Abbas, at his last appearance before the Palestinian parliament, was greeted by dozens of masked, chanting members of Fatah, Arafat’s organization, who heckled him. This was not like the prime minister’s Question Time in the British parliament, rough though that can be. In American history, masks were worn by the Klan and other desperadoes intent on murder; that is why many states have anti-mask laws to this day. So it is among Palestinians, though there are no mask laws. Abbas looked out at the crowd, and saw that it was time for him to go. The United States will resume its efforts to broker peace with such partners.

Bombs began to explode in the Saudi capital of Riyadh in the fall of 2000, killing Westerners in what proved an al-Qaeda prelude to September 11. In their habitual style, Saudi officials refused to look at the evidence, instead accusing Westerners of killing each other in a bootleggers’ war. A hideous case was concocted against several Westerners. One of them was Sandy Mitchell, a Scot in his forties and an anesthetic technician in a Riyadh hospital for over 20 years. Still wearing his white coat and stethoscope, he was picked up one morning, accused of the bombings, chained and regularly tortured to extract a confession that he was acting under instructions from the British embassy, denied a lawyer, kept in jail for 30 months (half the time in solitary confinement), and finally sentenced to be crucified. In this barbarity, the victim is “partially” beheaded, then tied to a cross publicly for three days. But while Mitchell was in the throes of his ordeal, the bombings in the country increased so that the charges against him became absurd, even to the Saudis. Mitchell and two other English victims were made to write a groveling letter to Prince Nayef, the Saudi minister of the interior, who duly “pardoned” these broken men and put them on a flight home. It’s their culture, the Saudis like to say. Those princes and al-Qaeda share it equally.

According to Gerald Posner’s new book, Why We Slept, bagged al-Qaeda big Abu Zubaydah wasn’t frightened when the U.S. pretended to have handed him over to the Saudis. He was relieved. He proceeded to give his captors a phone number for a Saudi prince who would “tell you what to do,” and outlined the pre–9/11 arrangement whereby both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan secretly supported bin Laden. Whether Posner has the details of the interrogation right, or whether Zubaydah gave accurate information, is impossible to say. But Posner’s book serves as a reminder of all we still don’t know about 9/11, and how our “allies” have managed to escape giving a full public accounting of their relationship to al-Qaeda. Since the Bush administration shows little appetite for such an airing, Congress should keep at it, in hearings and investigations.

BUSH, INTERPRETED

Phase II planning wasn’t good.
Bremer did what Bremer could,
But Iraq’s so loose, Chirac
Makes his lips close with a smack.
Consequently — it’s a wrench —
Colin’s tapped to stroke the French.
(Just the thought leaves Rummy faint.)
Cornucopia, we ain’t.

— W. H. von Dreele

Hatred of Ahmad Chalabi seems almost de rigueur in the American media. Seldom has a man less deserved such hatred. Chalabi has spent his life opposing tyranny in his country, Iraq, forming the Iraqi National Congress, the most prominent and most promising exile group. But Chalabi is thought to be favored by the Defense Department, and whatever the Defense Department favors . . . many people feel obliged to attack. One of the things left-liberal journalists score Chalabi for is having been an exile. Just recently, a writer in Newsweek contrasted Chalabi to “rival contenders . . . who stuck it out inside Iraq during the decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule.” Stuck it out inside Iraq. The implication, of course, is that Chalabi is somehow cowardly or unpatriotic. What would his critics have had him do? Remain in fascist, Baathist Iraq to be imprisoned or killed? What good would that have done his countrymen? Further, do we hold it against de Gaulle that he was abroad while France was staffed by Nazis? And Chalabi’s critics must really hate the Dalai Lama — in exile, rather than in a PRC dungeon or dead. Chalabi has lived an admirable life; those who smear him aren’t fit to wipe the dust from his Iraqi boots.

Oriana Fallaci is famous as a free spirit. As a teenager she was already an anti-Mussolini partisan in her native Italy. Her specialty as a journalist was the probing interview, in which she said what she thought to the likes of Yasser Arafat and Muammar Qaddafi. Obliged to drape herself in a black chador to meet Ayatollah Khomeini, she ripped it off in front of him. Now living in New York, she wrote an impassioned book after September 11, The Rage and the Pride, to say that these terrorists might be Muslims but she could recognize fascists when she saw them. Accusing her of inciting racial hatred, some Muslims are bringing a case against her in — naturellement — Paris, world headquarters of the thought police. She’s 73, and suffering from cancer, but her refusal to attend the trial is the proper middle-fingered salute.

An odd feature of the last few decades is how many of the wilder kinds of political paranoia have migrated from right to left. Anti-Semitism, for instance, once characteristic of old-style “throne and altar” European conservatives, then taken up by early 20th-century ultra-nationalists, is now found mainly on the political left. Something similar has happened with water-fluoridation scares. Back in the 1950s, these were promoted chiefly by far-right outfits like the John Birch Society, which tried to persuade Americans that fluoridation was a Communist plot to poison us all. Nowadays it is hard to find a conservative of any stripe who gives a fig about fluoridation. The people objecting to it are environmentalists, anti-globalists, Greens, and others hostile to capitalism and national sovereignty. Not very surprising, therefore, to find that the anti-fluoridation nuts have now enlisted “diversity” to their cause. A British group called the National Pure Water Association has argued that it is a violation of Islam for Muslims to drink fluoridated water. “You don’t deliberately pollute the gift of God. There is no question it is against Islam,” they tell us. Something called the Islamic Medical Association has chimed in with support, and there is to be a march on Parliament. Water, declares a spokesman for this organization, is declared in the Koran to be “holy and blessed and healthy and safe.” So on your next trip to a Muslim country — Egypt, perhaps, or Yemen, or Bangladesh — you need have no qualms about drinking water straight from the faucet. It will contain no fluoride. It will be holy and blessed and healthy and safe.

Swaziland is a small (pop. 1 million), landlocked country in southern Africa, governed as an absolutist monarchy. The king, Mswati III, has nine wives and two fiancées. He was last in the news two years ago when, in an attempt to halt the spread of AIDS in his country, he ordered Swazi women to remain chaste until age 19. The effect of this edict was somewhat diluted when, a short time later, the king selected a 17-year-old girl to join his harem. The king fined himself one ox for the offense, but there was considerable grumbling nonetheless. Now the heavens themselves seem to be showing displeasure at King Mswati’s lifestyle. It is the custom in Swaziland for several thousand young women to assemble once a year before the king and dance bare-breasted. Mswati has frequently used the occasion to select a new companion for himself. This year, however, just as footmen were unrolling a red carpet so that the king could begin his inspection, a terrific hailstorm broke out, and the young ladies fled the scene. “Hailstones the size of peas,” says a news report. We certainly feel for the young ladies, under the circumstances, but can’t help wondering . . . Was the band playing “Hail to the Chief”?

NOT FUNNY

The above is a cartoon drawn by Don Wright of the Palm Beach Post. It is one of the most racist and abhorrent political cartoons we have ever seen. That newspapers in 2003 should publish it is astonishing. Conservatives have always maintained that liberals feel free to be as racist as possible . . . toward black conservatives. And they are never called on it. We are calling Mr. Wright and those who publish him on it. And, by the way, this same Wright drew a cartoon of John Ashcroft as a terrorist truck bomber driving into the U.S. Constitution. Nice.

“May God continue to bless America” is the typical closer for George W. Bush’s speeches, and this has brought a thoughtful response from Constance Hilliard, associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. Writing in USA Today, Professor Hilliard notes that “we are, after all, a pluralistic society,” and suggests that Bush might say “Allah bless America” too. This would show the same respect that so many Muslim nations give their Christian, Jewish, and Hindu subjects. President Bush, and we, have much to learn.

MTV is a pop music station on cable TV, and of course they have one of those endless self-congratulatory award ceremonies to honor the creators of music videos. At this year’s ceremony, pop stars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Madonna performed a suggestive dance together to dull thumping music. At one point, the women kissed each other lasciviously. This caused a media sensation of the minor sort, which of course was the intention. Few noticed (columnist Michelle Malkin being an honorable exception) that Madonna’s six-year-old daughter was on the stage when this cynically obscene display took place. The child was dressed as for First Communion: white dress, lace gloves, and a crucifix — plus a studded belt with the words “BOY TOY.” Her father is of course far away; her stepfather was in the audience, smiling approvingly. “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

A 13-year-old schoolgirl in Beaver County, Pa., was suspended from school for engaging in oral sex with a boy of the same age while riding the school bus. The boy was also suspended. The girl’s mother promptly sued the school district for having violated her daughter’s constitutional rights. She further claimed that there was nothing in the district’s written policies to suggest that the particular activity for which the girl was suspended might be unacceptable. So far there is nothing very surprising in this story. It is just another slice of life in early 21st-century America. Now here’s the real stunner: The fool woman’s claim was thrown out of court! The judge — let his name be known: George E. James — upheld the girl’s suspension! That many of the nation’s children are utterly ignorant of any decent standards of behavior is not news; that their parents encourage and condone their ignorance and irresponsibility is not news, either; that at least one of our judges is willing to stand up for decency and common sense — that’s news. Any chance we can get Judge James nominated for the federal bench? Nah, he’d never get past Chuck Schumer.

The new general manager of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, Larry Bird, fired the head coach, Isiah Thomas, replacing him with Rick Carlisle. Bird and Carlisle are white; Thomas is black. Who cares? Who cares? you ask! How long have you lived in America? Harvey Araton, sports columnist of the New York Times — the sports pages in which are as least as political as the editorial and op-ed pages — wrote, “ . . . here came Bird, in his first bold move as the Pacers’ general manager, to fire an African-American legend, intending to replace him with Rick Carlisle, his very white friend and former occupier of space at the end of the Boston Celtics’ bench.” A few questions: Why can’t Isiah Thomas just be a legend, instead of an “African-American legend”? And why is Rick Carlisle “very white” — not just white (if he has to be a color, instead of a person or coach, at all)? And would Araton, or any other Times columnist, or any other human being, ever, ever write the phrase “his very black friend”? Just asking.

Gary Coleman is one of the gang running for governor of California. He is the tiny actor who starred as Arnold on the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. Appearing on Fox News, he was asked by Sean Hannity who the vice president of the United States was. Mr. Coleman could not come up with the answer. (Come on, Gary, Dick Cheney isn’t that self-effacing.) In a later interview with the New York Times, Mr. Coleman declared, “Hannity is evil. He didn’t ask Schwarzenegger that.” We would like to think of a closing comment that does not include “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout?” — but cannot.

“Are you the famous Dr. Teller?” a man once asked. “No,” came the reply, “I am the infamous Dr. Teller.” As a longtime enemy of Communism, Edward Teller was infamous for all the right reasons. He was the chief inventor of the H-bomb and one of its strongest advocates, pushing for its development in spite of stiff opposition from arms-control liberals who underestimated the Soviet threat. In 1967, he introduced Ronald Reagan to the idea of missile defense and 15 years later became a crucial supporter of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Probably no other scientist had a greater political impact in the 20th century. His left-wing detractors are legion, in large part because Teller once testified against granting a security clearance to his old Manhattan Project colleague Robert Oppenheimer. Teller was ostracized for this decision and later said he regretted it, though his actions remain defensible: Oppenheimer had lied to federal investigators about his contacts with known Communists and was a member of the Communist party until at least 1942. On July 23, President Bush awarded Teller the Medal of Freedom. On September 9, at the age of 95, Teller died. A giant, who saw the moral issues of his time as clearly as he did the scientific ones. R.I.P.

AT WAR
The Fight Now

The administration’s policy on Iraq, as explained by the president’s speech September 7, will change in some important details, while remaining essentially the same.

The continuing theme of Bush’s Iraq policy is its context. “Two years ago,” Bush said, “I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there and there they must be defeated.” This is a snapshot of a world war. We did not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, as John Quincy Adams warned. They came to destroy us. Saddam Hussein was one of many patrons. Now the terrorists — Baathists and al-Qaeda operatives, formerly sheltering in Iran — buzz like flies around the corpses of his sons and his state. We must continue to swat them down.

But American policy needs to adjust itself to realities on the ground. Iraq needs money — lots of it — for reconstruction, and to sustain our own operations. Bush’s price tag of $87 billion is a nice round sum, conveying seriousness and laying the floor for further requests, if they are needed. Nations will go into any amount of debt for necessary projects, so long as they are given a sense of the parameters. The United States will also be seeking “expand[ed] international cooperation in . . . reconstruction and security,” as Bush put it. He will be rattling the tin cup abroad, and asking the Security Council for a resolution that could give countries like India the aegis for sending troops. As long as they are under American control, they will be welcome.

Soliciting foreign troops suggests that we do not have enough of our own — a tender point to the administration. Some reporters argue that what our soldiers do is more important than how many there are: The 101st Airborne in the north and the Marines in the south show the flexibility of light infantry, which the armored divisions holding Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle might emulate. But technique is not everything. We need more troops to guard ammo dumps and patrol borders.

If the United Nations will not bless international efforts to send the necessary troops — or if France and Germany attach unacceptable conditions to a resolution — we will have to find the reinforcements ourselves, including National Guard units and soldiers deployed in other theaters. Over the longer run, President Bush ought to acknowledge that we downsized the armed forces too much during the holiday of the 1990s. We need a larger military.

The stubbornness and circle-closing that Bush’s men have shown is hardly unique to them, though they carry it to extremes. The best achievable result might be that they correct their errors, even if they never admit making them.

Finally, the pace of Iraq-ization should be kept brisk, as we expand Iraqi police and civil defense forces, and Iraqi control over them. The terrorists know the importance of this — hence their attacks on Iraqi policemen.

Bush and the American people must keep track of the elements of the strategic situation. Our troops have been splendid. As military historian Caleb Carr wrote, not since the professional armies of the 18th century have men at arms shown such coolness and discipline. Unlike Frederick the Great’s soliders, they have shown intelligence and initiative as well. Our enemies, meanwhile, have been forced back upon themselves. Only recently, they attacked American troops (Khobar Towers, the USS Cole), American embassies, and America itself. Now they are battling to stifle a free state emerging in the Arab heartland. Their dream of a worldwide Islamist empire looks increasingly desperate.

But there are also signs of American impatience and witlessness. The Maureen Dowd-Howard Dean Left, which wants all wars to be perfectly planned, low-cost, and over before they begin, represents a significant and seemingly unbudgeable chunk of American opinion. Should it ever win a presidential election, it will go hard with us.

notes & asides

Dear Mr. Buckley: To quote a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, “The House of Representatives, as everyone knows, is that place where the Members address each other as ‘The Gentlelady [one word] from Connecticut.’” I need some help on this.

“Ladies” and “Gentlemen” are terms to designate persons, female and male, of refined speech and manners. There are gentle ladies, but that is redundant. One could, I guess, say that a lady is a female gentleman. But the term “gentlelady” sounds stilted and not in keeping with the King’s English.

My eighth-grade English teacher would have none of it, and she was ever a lady.

Sincerely,
David D. Ansel
Annapolis, Md.

Dear Mr. Ansel: What you ask puts us face to face with a discomfiting fruit of the women’s movement. To refer to a “lady,” other than as a complement to a “gentleman,” is thought condescending. Clare Boothe Luce, e.g., reprimanded me on Firing Line for referring to her as a (“distinguished”) lady.

It’s similar to the problem bequeathed to us by the proscription against the use of “Dear Sirs.” That was such a manageable way, back then, to begin a letter addressed to the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Circulation Department of National Review, or the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, for that matter. But we can’t do that, those of us who are running for president: Can you imagine a letter, other than to a Carthusian monastery, beginning with “Dear Sirs,” and signed by Kerry, Dean, Graham, or any of those other people? He’d (Carol Moseley Braun gets in the way here) — he/she would be tossed out of Iowa and New Hampshire on his/her ear by all the gentleladies acting in concert.

So, we just have to struggle along with, e.g., “Dear Sirs or Madams,” but of course you do see the danger there. “Dear Sir/Ms.” might get you by, but that leaves you feeling anal-compulsive. “To Whom It May Concern” sounds portentous on a petition for a form to renew your dog’s registration, but what is there to do if one wants to retain some semblance of civility? Sorry I can’t help you.

Cordially, WFB

Dear Mr. Buckley: I agree with your correspondent Helen Wildermuth (May 19) on the proper use of thank you/you’re welcome, but she is mistaken about the German word danke — it simply means “thank you.” The answer to it is bitte, and the exchange goes as follows: Danke schoen/Bitte schoen or Danke sehr/Bitte sehr. There is one accepted and often-used variant: Danke schoen/Gern geschehen, which means “Thank you/It was my pleasure.”

While I thoroughly enjoy the English language, I can’t agree that English is a fuller language than German. A study of Goethe’s Faust easily dissuades one from that opinion, not to mention the difficult and complicated grammatical structure of German.

Although I might be talked into a draw.

Horst Brakel
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Buckley: The June 30 issue of NR mentions “famine in the [sic] Ukraine.”

I hope that in the future one may read about famine in the Ireland, the China, or the India.

William J. McNamara
New Britain, Conn.

Dear Mr. Buckley: You extolled the virtues of peanut butter so eloquently in the course of a biographical sketch shown on TV that I have no doubt that you should be the one to compose an “Ode to Peanut Butter.” Do it well, lest the ode be odious, and do it without delay so that I may enjoy it before I gasp away, a fate known to happen to octogenarians in large numbers at unpredictable moments. The world cries out for an “Ode to Peanut Butter.” Are you up to the task?

Jim Schmitt
Ashland City, Tenn.

Dear Mr. Schmitt: Not a chance. Am not up to the challenge, and Shakespeare’s dead.

Cordially,
— WFB

Lawrence Jackson/AP September 7, 2003

AT WAR
Where We Stand
The situation in Iraq, and how to go forward

JOHN O’SULLIVAN

What the Bush administration most needs in its Iraqi policy is not greater U.N. involvement, or more soldiers, or even an infusion of $87 billion — but steady nerves. For it is in danger of being panicked into foolish new initiatives by the exaggerated claims and false arguments of a highly unusual coalition of enemies, unreliable allies, ideological opponents of the traditional state system of international relations, appeasement-minded bureaucrats, domestic political rivals, and the growing constituency of anti-American Americans and anti-Western Westerners. And thus far it is not responding to these challenges with firmness, persuasiveness, or indeed any very clear perception of what exactly is at stake. One crucial exception to that criticism must be made: In his September 7 television address, President Bush himself very clearly argued that Iraq is now the central front in the war against terrorism; his administration should heed his words.

The terrorists have made Iraq the main battleground by sneaking into the country, linking up with well-financed Baathist remnants, and embarking on a classic guerrilla-cum-terrorist campaign against Coalition forces and Iraqi patriots cooperating with them. For Islamist and Arab-nationalist terrorists, Iraq is the Spanish Civil War: their opportunity to confront and defeat the main enemy whom their own governments shrink from fighting. They believe, though perhaps with fading certainty, that the U.S. is vulnerable to guerrilla attacks because the American people cannot accept even a moderate number of casualties in foreign wars. That belief happens to be false. As Lawrence Kaplan establishes with a wealth of survey evidence in a recent New Republic article, it is not the people but the elites who shrink from casualties. What ordinary Americans rightly oppose is a war conducted without any clear aim or prospect of victory. And as yet opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the war in Iraq to be just, necessary, and winnable. But the terrorists’ faith in America’s lack of resolve helps to sustain their campaign.

It was imperative, therefore, that the president firmly declare that whatever the terrorists throw at us, the U.S. will stay in Iraq until the Iraqi people can operate and defend their own democratic government — which he did, with admirable clarity, on September 7. On less clear-cut issues, however, the administration’s case is not being advanced effectively. Let me briskly summarize the arguments of the anti-Coalition coalition.

One: The war is being lost. According to a British Foreign Office document, self-evidently written to be leaked and thus to increase the pressure for U.N. involvement, the Coalition faces “strategic defeat” in Iraq. In the less flamboyant rhetoric of a Washington Post report, Iraq is “engulfed in guerrilla violence.” In fact, virtually every reporter who actually travels outside Baghdad points out that most of Iraq is relatively peaceful, serious violence is largely confined to the “Sunni Triangle” between Baghdad and Tikrit, the long-predicted Shiite violence against Coalition forces seems not to have materialized, and the number of Coalition casualties is militarily insignificant. That last sentence will strike many readers, especially those with family members serving in Iraq, as harsh and callous. I appreciate that, and acknowledge that every death is a tragedy for some family somewhere. But the blunt truth is that the U.S. can withstand the death of one soldier a day — or fewer than 4,000 soldiers a decade — indefinitely, provided that the American people believe that the deaths are in a decent and winnable cause. And the sooner that fact is generally appreciated, the quicker the terrorists will lose the battle in Iraq and lose heart across the world. If, on the other hand, the U.S. loses heart and scuttles, then Iraq will become the headquarters and training ground for terrorist violence committed not in Iraq against soldiers but in American and West European cities against civilians. Take your choice.

Two: We need more troops on the ground — and that means troops from currently reluctant allies. Other things being equal, it would naturally be pleasant to have more troops in Iraq. But as several anti-terrorism experts have pointed out, increasing the number of troops is not as important as improving the intelligence those troops are provided. And the intelligence-gathering process is indeed paying off: 39 of the top 55 officials on the playing-card list of senior Saddamites have been arrested or killed. If additional troops are genuinely needed for military reasons, then the U.S. would do well to seek them from those national armed forces that have real military clout and experience in working with U.S. forces — namely, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and some NATO allies in Europe. Simply adding a bunch of U.N. peacekeepers is likely to complicate and weaken the Coalition effort. Some of those advocating it do so in order to strengthen the U.N.’s claims over Iraq rather than to defeat terrorism more expeditiously.

Three: We need a greater U.N. role in Iraq in order to provide legitimacy for the Coalition. But legitimacy with whom? Not with the terrorists, since — as the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq amply demonstrated — the Islamists regard the U.N. as just another instrument of a corrupt and godless West. With the Iraqi people? But they will remember that the U.N. ran a “food for oil” program that benefited the U.N. far more than the Iraqi people. With reluctant allies such as France and Germany? But they favor multilateralism not as means of achieving joint objectives but as a mechanism for frustrating U.S. policy. With the non-governmental organizations that are leaving Iraq in protest at the failure of the Coalition to provide them with security? But, as Martin Peretz has pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, these NGOs remain in far more dangerous situations, such as Liberia, and their withdrawal is basically a political gesture against the Coalition. This is indeed a question of legitimacy: The U.N. and other transnational bodies wish to establish that military intervention is illegitimate and cannot succeed unless it is legitimized by U.N. approval. And this position is covertly endorsed by many Americans in the media, the academy, and politics, because they share this distrust of U.S. power, especially during a Republican administration.

These dubious arguments hold general sway in the public debate, while developments that would tend to support U.S. policy tend to be overlooked. Little attention has been paid to the evidence, outlined by Amir Taheri in the New York Post, that Syria is already responding to the “demonstration effect” of Iraqi freedom by modest steps toward liberalization and the ending of the one-party state. But this merely underscores the need for the U.S. to argue its case better, and to stay the course in Iraq.

Are there then no valid criticisms of administration policy? Certainly there are. The “swagger” element in the Bush foreign policy has been grossly overdone; a firm policy can still be advanced in soothing diplomatic terms. The vulgar undifferentiated attacks on “the Europeans” have distorted the reality of strong support for the U.S. in many European nations and alienated potential supporters across the Continent. At the same time, the failure to develop a serious long-term policy that would prevent France and Germany from conscripting the “New Europe” into an anti-American coalition will weaken the U.S. Nor has the State Department, in its dealings with the U.N., employed public diplomacy to explain why the U.S., as a constitutional democratic government rooted in accountability to the voters, cannot accept the exaggerated claims of transnational organizations, NGOs, and “soft” international law to embody the will of the “international community.” And so on.

The U.S. has quietly acquiesced over the years in the construction of a set of transnational rules, practices, and organizations that are hostile in principle to an international system based on nation-states and thus to the U.S. as the single most important state in that system. It is then unreasonably surprised when, in a crisis like Iraq, these transnational forces object to America’s pursuing its interests without due deference to the new structures. In thinking about U.S. policymakers, I am reminded of a remark about the Hapsburgs, by my old boss on the Daily Telegraph, Colin Welch: “They always fought in the last ditch. Never in the first.”

AT WAR II
The Great Escape (Cont.)
How did assorted bin Ladens get out of America after September 11?

BYRON YORK

Last year, on the first anniversary of September 11, there were serious, unanswered questions about the Bush administration’s decision to allow members of the bin Laden family living in the United States to leave the country in the days after the terrorist attacks. Now, on the second anniversary of September 11, there are still serious, unanswered questions. But ever so slowly, new information is emerging.

The basic story has been known for quite a while. Not long after the attacks, the Saudi government, saying it feared retribution against Saudi citizens, worked with the bin Laden family to gather up more than 100 family members and other prominent Saudis for a flight to Jeddah. A chartered jet made pickups in Los Angeles, Orlando, and Washington, D.C., before making a final stop at Boston’s Logan Airport, from which it departed for Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudis required permission to leave the country, and it has never been clear who in the U.S. government gave it to them. In interviews with National Review last year (see “The Great Escape,” Sept. 30, 2002), a State Department source said Foggy Bottom “played no role” in the matter; an FBI spokesman said the Bureau did not have the authority to make that decision; and the White House declined to answer questions. Recently, however, Richard Clarke, the former head of anti-terrorism at the National Security Council, gave some answers while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism. “I do recall the State Department coming to us that week [after September 11],” Clarke testified,

saying that the Saudi Embassy felt that in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Arabs in this country, particularly Saudis, might be victims of retribution attacks, and they wanted therefore to take some Saudi students and the Saudi citizens back to their kingdom for safety, and could they be given permission to fly, even though we had grounded all flights. Now, what I recall is that I asked for flight manifests of everyone on board and all of those names need to be directly and individually vetted by the FBI before they were allowed to leave the country. And I also wanted the FBI to sign off even on the concept of Saudis being allowed to leave the country. And as I recall, all of that was done. It is true that members of the bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can’t say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House.

What Clarke could not testify to was the thoroughness with which the FBI questioned the departing Saudis. Last year, National Review reported that the FBI conducted brief, day-of-departure interviews with the Saudis — in the words of an FBI spokesman, “at the airport, as they were about to leave.” Experts interviewed by National Review called the FBI’s actions “highly unusual” given the fact that those departing were actually members of Osama bin Laden’s family. “They [the FBI] could not have done a thorough and complete interview,” said John L. Martin, the former head of internal security at the Justice Department.

At the Judiciary subcommittee hearing, New York Democratic senator Charles Schumer asked Clarke how closely the Saudis were questioned. “Sir, all I can tell you is that I asked the FBI to do that,” Clarke replied. “I asked the director and the assistant director of the FBI to do that. They told me they did it.” End of story.

Clarke’s statement — and Schumer’s questions — came as a result of an article in Vanity Fair that questioned some aspects of the Saudi exodus. Author Craig Unger reported that the Saudis made an additional pickup flight, on an eight-passenger Learjet that flew from Tampa to Lexington, Ky., on the afternoon of September 13, 2001. That flight, Unger said, occurred at a time when the Federal Aviation Administration had banned all private flights (commercial planes had just resumed flying). “Three private planes violated the ban that day, and in each case a pair of jet fighters quickly forced the aircraft down,” writes Unger. Yet the Saudi flight, he says, was allowed to travel undisturbed.

Vanity Fair suggests that that was the result of some sort of intervention by the Bush White House. But administration sources tell National Review they have looked into the matter and found no record of such a flight receiving any special permission to fly. The sources also say that charter aviation was allowed to resume on the morning of September 13, several hours before the Tampa-to-Lexington flight is said to have departed, which would mean that the plane, which Vanity Fair says was chartered, did not need any clearance to fly. Overall, it appears that all flights — the ones gathering up Saudis domestically and the one from Boston to Jedda — took place after the government allowed aviation to resume.

Yet the big question — Who decided to allow the bin Ladens to leave the country and why? — remains.

Vanity Fair quotes Nail al-Jubeir, the Saudi director of information, as saying that the Saudi flights were approved “at the highest level of the U.S. government” — just as Clarke said. So far, however, those highest levels are saying very little. The FBI’s account remains the same — “We didn’t clear them to leave the country, we don’t have that power,” a spokesman tells National Review. As for the State Department, Secretary Colin Powell, when asked about the subject on Meet the Press, said, “I don’t know the details of what happened, but my understanding is that there was no sneaking out of the country; that the flights were well known, and it was coordinated within the government.” For its part, the White House remains silent.

All of which has led to growing curiosity. “I think people need to know the facts,” says Arizona Republican senator Jon Kyl, who chaired the Judiciary subcommittee hearing the day Richard Clarke testified. “It’s a perfectly legitimate subject. Clarke very candidly testified that he had run it past the State Department.”

Roman Genn

The official silence has also led observers to wonder whether there is some information about the bin Laden flights in the 28 blacked-out pages of the House and Senate intelligence committees’ September 11 report. Those pages are apparently devoted to Saudi involvement in the terrorist attacks, but it seems they do not cover the Saudi departures. Sen. Kyl has read the material, and while he will not say what is in it — not even whether it discusses the Saudis — he says he is “unaware of any information in the intelligence reports that I have read that specifically goes into that.”

Finally, the administration’s silence on the Saudi question is having one more effect: It is allowing some Democrats to turn the issue into a political football.

The day after he questioned Clarke, Sen. Schumer participated in a news conference with the Senate Democratic leadership. “On September 12th and 13th [2001], hundreds of Saudis were able to take flights home back to Saudi Arabia when no one else could fly,” Schumer said. “I couldn’t fly. Senator Boxer couldn’t fly. Senator Durbin couldn’t fly. But relatives of the royal family, including two members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to get on airplanes and go back to Saudi Arabia.”

According to all available evidence, that is simply not true. Perhaps Schumer was unaware of the facts; at the hearing the day before, he confessed that he had not even read the Vanity Fair article, relying instead on a summary the magazine had released. In any event, he leveled an incendiary charge based on faulty premises.

Schumer has also written a letter to the president calling for an investigation of the Saudi flights. “For whatever reason, it appears as if these particular Saudis were given a free pass by the U.S. government despite their potential knowledge about 9-11,” Schumer wrote. “Allowing approximately 140 Saudi citizens with potential links to the 9-11 attacks to leave the United States without FBI interrogation in the days after September 11th is clearly a glaring investigative failure.”

Now, it’s possible that other Democrats will pick up the story as well. Presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt have both been highly critical of the administration’s dealings with the Saudis, and asking why George W. Bush let the family of the mastermind of September 11 leave the country shortly after the terrorist attacks might work very well in a campaign speech. In the end, the Bush White House might end up paying a political price for its refusal to answer a few simple questions.

PHILANTHROPY
Giving, and Taking Away
A controversy at Princeton offers broad lessons

JOHN J. MILLER

In 1961, Charles and Marie Robertson gave one of the largest gifts ever made to higher education. Today, their heirs are trying to take it back, in an unprecedented lawsuit that carries major implications for conservative philanthropy.

The Robertsons’ donation, coming from the fortune of the A&P grocery-store chain, was worth $35 million to Princeton University. It created the Robertson Foundation, which was known as the “X Foundation” for more than a decade because the Robertsons wished to remain anonymous. Over the course of 40 years and under the dual management of the family and the university, the foundation has dispersed more than $200 million to Princeton. The endowment itself is now worth about $600 million, supposedly for the purpose of helping graduate students “prepare themselves for careers in government service, with particular emphasis on the education of such persons for careers in those areas of the Federal Government that are concerned with international relations and affairs.”

In 2002, Princeton used the foundation’s vast wealth to produce exactly three students who fit this description.

“Princeton has lost the right to have these funds,” says Bill Robertson, the son of the original patrons. “The university isn’t abiding by the mission of the foundation.” Last year, he and four relatives filed a lawsuit that has become a critical battleground in the national fight over donor intent.

Over the years, violations of donor intent have caused conservatives great harm. The Left has captured billions of dollars in financial resources by seizing control of philanthropic foundations and ignoring the wishes of the people who endowed them. The Ford Foundation is perhaps the best-known example of this — Henry Ford II famously resigned from its board in 1977, complaining that the foundation started by his grandfather had turned against the capitalist system that made its very creation possible. Other egregious offenders include the MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Conservatives don’t always lose these struggles. In 1995, Yale University returned a $20 million gift from Lee Bass following a four-year scrap: Bass tried to fund a program in Western civilization, the school delayed implementing his conditions, and Bass finally succeeded in getting his money back. Yet the Robertson case, which has received less attention, is almost certainly more important. Although the money Bass wanted to give is nothing to sniff at, it doesn’t match the amount of cash the Robertson endowment throws off each year in interest alone. What’s more, the Bass dispute quickly became politicized in ways that complicated the broader goals of conservatives. Perhaps they stopped a bunch of left-wing professors from running away with a particular piggy bank — but Yale came off looking pretty good among different audiences for protecting academic freedom from a right-wing insurgency.

The Princeton case, in contrast, can’t be politicized, because the Robertsons’ money never was earmarked for conservative purposes. “My parents made this gift because they believed training students for careers in security matters and international affairs was necessary to protect democracy,” says Bill Robertson. The foundation’s charter is clear on this point: “Its objective is to strengthen the Government of the United States and increase the ability and determination to defend and extend freedom throughout the world.” That was a useful project during the Cold War and it remains one today, especially given the War on Terror. The foundation promises to keep its charge by helping students earn graduate degrees at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School (WWS).

To Princeton, however, the Robertson Foundation’s expression of donor intent has become a nuisance. Indeed, the university’s briefs in the litigation scoff at the plaintiffs’ claims: “Alleged expressions of donative intent are legally insignificant.” What’s more, the foundation is said to have an “evolving mission” and the specific objectives outlined in the foundation’s incorporating articles are merely “aspirational goals.”

Princeton’s lawyers resort to such dismissive language in part because they can’t defend the university on the merits. In 2002, according to Princeton’s own data, the program funded by the Robertson Foundation produced 63 graduates. Of these, only 9 took positions with the federal government. What’s more, only 3 of these 9 students had an international focus to their studies. Most of the rest taking jobs went to work for NGOs, foreign governments, and the private sector. “That’s not what my parents envisioned,” notes Bill Robertson.

The numbers from earlier years aren’t much different, and Robertsons have grumbled about them before. In 1970, Charles Robertson wrote that Princeton was producing “a disappointing number of MPA degree holders in public service particularly in the international agencies.” He called it “a small output from large resources.”

Marie Robertson died in 1972 and Charles in 1981, but their children and other relatives have remained involved in the activities of the foundation — its governing structure, in fact, reserves spots on the board of trustees for members of the family. They don’t control the foundation, but they have a strong say in what it does — and everybody, including board members appointed by the Princeton administration, is supposed to abide by the foundation’s charter and guard its independence.

This isn’t how things have worked out in practice. In 1997, for instance, the university informed the Robertson board that it planned to construct Wallace Hall, a new building that would allow for the expansion of the WWS. Princeton said it would try to raise all the money for the project, but that the Robertson Foundation might be asked to make a contribution if the fundraising fell short of the $25 million needed. Bill Robertson wasn’t pleased about this, as an e-mail WWS dean Michael Rothschild sent to Princeton president Harold Shapiro acknowledged: “He is unhappy and if we use large amounts of Robertson money to pay for the building he will be more so.”

But the happiness of the Robertson clan has not been a Princeton priority. In 2001, the university withdrew more than $13 million from the foundation’s account to meet the budget for Wallace Hall. Today, the WWS occupies a chunk of the building, but so do the sociology department, the Office of Population Research, and something called the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (whose advisory board includes former Democratic congresswoman Patricia Schroeder). “These programs have nothing to do with what the foundation is supposed to support,” says Bill Robertson.

He’s even more upset by Princeton’s attempt to commingle the foundation’s assets with the school’s general endowment. Since the early 1980s, the foundation’s independent investments have outperformed Princeton’s funds, earning about $150 million more than they would have under university management. Yet the school is eager to deposit the foundation’s cash into its own $8.3 billion endowment — and no doubt wait for the day when it doesn’t have to put up with those pesky Robertsons anymore.

On ethical grounds, the Robertsons appear to have a strong case. Whether they’ll prevail in their legal dispute is another matter, though they did win an important victory in June when a judge refused Princeton’s motion to have the case dismissed. The two sides have now entered a period of pre-trial investigation that’s expected to last at least a year.

No matter what happens, some good may come of the case if it creates skepticism among donors and leads to smarter philanthropy. “There’s always a concern that litigation like this can generate unfavorable publicity,” says Doug Eakeley, a lawyer for Princeton. This, of course, is Princeton’s point of view. For others, the “unfavorable publicity” can amount to a worthwhile education. Somewhere right now, there is perhaps a wealthy Princeton alumnus who has considered endowing a chair in the history department at his alma mater because he once enjoyed a class on the Civil War — but the Robertson case has convinced him that there’s a decent chance the administration will just grab his cash and fill the professorship with a feminist whose main research interest is cross-dressing in 17th-century Amsterdam.

Too many benefactors write checks to universities and simply assume the recipients will channel the money in wise directions. “Making unrestricted gifts to endowments is the worst thing you can do,” says Martin Morse Wooster of the Capital Research Center, a conservative watchdog group. Instead, donors should make their wishes explicit — perhaps putting a time limit on the spending commitment, or targeting the funding to specific individuals and organizations within universities whose ongoing work meets certain criteria.

The alternative is to lose more than your money. “My family used to have the highest regard for Princeton. It bordered on idolatry,” says Bill Robertson. “But now all those old school ties are gone and I don’t think we’ll ever get them back.”

ABROAD
In Pol Pot Land
Ruins of varying types

ANTHONY DANIELS

When I arrived in Siem Reap, the town next door to Angkor Wat, one of the many new hotels that have sprung up there recently and that look like pagodas crossed with mirrored sunglasses, was draped with a banner announcing a conference: Gender Analysis in Farmers’ Water Management.

This was strong evidence, I think, that the aid agencies were in town, for the conference (it seemed to me) was unlikely to have been arranged on purely Cambodian initiative. The aid agencies are one means by which our current fads, fancies, and obsessions are transmitted to, or should I say imposed upon, small and poor countries, usually with disastrous results. The last thing Cambodia needs, after all, is more deconstruction.

But aid is not the only means of transmission of our obsessions. It is curious how tourism, the constant search for exotic destinations by people disillusioned with their daily lives, always ends up by reducing the difference between the exotic destinations and the places from which tourists seek to escape. A brochure in my luxurious, French-run hotel informed me that Siem Reap was no longer the sleepy little place it once was (when, of course, it wasn’t in the throes of massacre and civil war). It was developing quite a night life:

When it comes to partying in bars or downing drinks, the old favorites are holding their own . . . Among the most popular [is] . . . le Tigre de Papier, a sophisticated little spot in the up-and-coming bar strip of Siem Reap. Granddaddy of this strip is the Angkor What? and it is still going strong after four years.

Four whole years! If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eon in popular culture. As for the temples, built between 800 and 1400 — well, they’re history.

Le Tigre de Papier “rages into the early hours of the morning.” Again, it seems rather curious that, in a multiculturalist age when everyone is supposed to be alive to everyone else’s sensitivities, a bar’s name should make light reference to the words of Mao Tse-tung, who not only caused one of the greatest famines in world history, but was the chief ally and inspiration of the mad Khmer Rouge ideologues responsible for the deaths of between a fifth and a quarter of the entire Cambodian population. No one, I hope, would open a bar called Sonderkommando in Minsk, or Einsatzgruppen in Vilnius (though British Airways, in one of the most unfortunate advertising campaigns in history, did once promise their German customers Sonderbehandlung, the Special Treatment that was the Nazi euphemism for genocidal murder), but ironical reference to Communist horrors is still not only permissible but chic. Perhaps it demonstrates that one hasn’t quite abandoned the idealism of youth.

Whatever the destructive cultural effects of tourism, it is Cambodia’s greatest economic hope. Hotels are being constructed at a furious rate, in the expectation of a million visitors annually to Angkor within a year or two. The visa fee and airport departure tax alone will add 1 percent to the country’s GDP, and all in U.S. dollars.

Never has a country been so dependent upon the visible remains of its ancestral civilization. It is as if Italy depended upon visitors to Pompeii for its prosperity. But the temples at Angkor, spread over 30 square miles, are so spectacular that familiarity cannot stale them, nor will they ever disappoint those lucky enough to see them for the first time. Even a million tourists a year will not vitiate their overwhelming effect, though perhaps it will be difficult henceforth to visit them in the kind of solitude necessary to enjoy any ruins to the full.

Temple at Angkor Wat
David Greedy/Getty

It is difficult, though, even in solitude, to completely exclude reflections about Cambodia’s recent past from one’s romantic reaction to the temples. At the entrance to each of them, hopeful young salesmen tout books in English, mainly pirated editions, about the Khmer Rouge regime. “You want Pol Pot book, mister?” is a common refrain. It was as if Pol Pot had become a tourist attraction too.

There is indeed a connection between Pol Pot and Angkor: The grandeur of the site (first appreciated by the French colonialists) fed Pol Pot’s megalomania. He once said, and meant, that the people who built Angkor could do anything, a kind of racial-nationalist version of Mao’s thesis about people as blank sheets of paper upon whom the most beautiful characters could be written. People who can do anything have no need to take stark reality, either human or physical, into account. They can decree how much rice is to be produced by forcibly collectivized workers, whether farmers or not, a failure to meet the target therefore indicating counter-revolutionary sabotage rather than physical impossibility. People who can do anything can attack much stronger neighbors, such as Vietnam, and prevail. This Angkor-induced voluntarism led to the overthrow of Pol Pot’s regime.

You can’t help wondering what kind of labor produced the exquisite monuments of Angkor, with their serene and sublime sculptures. Were the armies of laborers necessary for the erection of the temples so devout that they were happy to toil for the glory of the Hindu gods and their avatars on earth, the Cambodian kings? Or were they wretched slaves? No one knows, but one ancient stone inscription in Cambodia describes how a worker called Viruna tried to escape from his temple and had his eyes gouged out and his nose cut off: not exactly a testament to labor’s freedom of movement.

The contrast between the captivating charm and physical grace of the Cambodians, and the inhuman cruelty of the Khmer Rouge, is a source of puzzlement to all visitors to the country. I caught a glimpse of the less attractive side of the Cambodian character at one of the temples. A deaf and dumb girl approached me when I reached the top of the temple and offered me a ring she had woven of palm leaf, obviously in the hope of a tip. One of the female temple guards (and guards are necessary, to prevent people from taking carvings home, a tradition joined if not started by André Malraux in the 1920s, when he tried to steal several carved Apsaras) shouted at the girl to go away and then used a switch to beat her, which she did with evident sadistic relish. My wife and I intervened to protect the girl from further beating, which was horrible in its heartlessness. If the guard was prepared to do this in front of foreigners, what would she have been prepared to do when not observed? We took the girl, crying, away.

But had we done the right thing? The girl, after all, was local and would have to stay where she was. Perhaps the guard, also local, would take her revenge upon her for being thus humiliated by our intervention. When you don’t know the culture, when you can’t read the script or speak a single word of the language, it isn’t easy to know whether you’re doing good or harm.

It isn’t easy to understand a country in which Sihanouk could still be head of state. He has had more incarnations than a Hindu god. He has been a playboy prince, a colonial front-man/king, a Japanese puppet, a fighter for independence, a populist prime minister with elitist tastes, a persecutor of Communists, a neutralist with anti-American and pro-Communist leanings, an exile in Peking, a head of state under palace arrest of a mass-murdering regime, a deposed head of state once more, a leader of an exiled opposition coalition including the party of the mass murderers who deposed him, and finally a figurehead king. But it seems to me probable that he is still widely revered. I think I could study Cambodia for many years, and still not understand.

Mr. Daniels is the author of, among other books, Utopias Elsewhere: Journeys in a Vanishing World.

CULTURE WATCH
From ‘Activist’ to ‘Warmonger’
A handy glossary from Lucifer’s latest lexicographer

JOHN DERBYSHIRE

Back in 1911 the American misanthrope and satirist Ambrose Bierce published his Devil’s Dictionary, 140 pages of scathing commentary on the folly, ugliness, and cruelty of the human race, laid out in the form of a dictionary, with “definitions” along the lines of (to give an actual sample): “Erudition, n. — Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.”

Without in any way wishing to endorse Bierce’s low opinion of his fellow man, I offer the following brief Devil’s Dictionary of terms current in the media today. Alongside each entry I have given the least charitable possible interpretation of the word or phrase listed. (N.B.: To save space and avoid unnecessary repetition, I have used an abbreviation — “DVG,” which stands for “designated victim group,” e.g., black people, homosexuals, illegal immigrants, etc.)

activist, n. Leftist troublemaker.
affirmative action, n. Quotas by race, sex, and often sexual orientation (though never by religion or political inclination).
Arab street, the, n. The cab driver who took your correspondent from Amman airport to the Hilton Hotel.
bash, v.t. To make uncomplimentary remarks about a DVG. To suggest that some particular member of a DVG has moral failings. E.g., “immigrant-bashing” — opposing illegal immigration.
bigotry, n. The open expression of conservative opinions.
celebrate, v.t. (In such bound forms as “celebrate diversity.”) To feign wholehearted enthusiasm for some theory, doctrine, law, ruling, or administrative fait accompli that strips you of some of your rights or property.
censorship, n. A refusal, on the part of the public authorities, to disburse public monies to performance artists (q.v.), transgressive artists (q.v.), and so on.
centrist, adj. Liberal. See also mainstream, moderate.
children, for the sake of our (slogan). Teachers unions, for the sake of the.
choice, n. The killing of human fetuses in utero, or the removal by suction of the brain of a newborn baby.
civil rights, n. The privileges to which DVGs are entitled.
Communist, n. A person who adheres to the economic and political theories of Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin. No member of the U.S. media knows any such person, nor ever has. Probably no such person ever existed. If such a person did exist, he or she was undoubtedly full of good intentions, though perhaps mistaken as to methods.
controversial, adj. (Applied to a nominee for any cabinet or judicial position requiring congressional approval.) Conservative.
deficit, n. An imbalance in state or national finances brought about by the willful refusal of the executive branch to support the ever-increasing levels of taxation required to fund the disbursements required by the legislature (q.v.).
discrimination, n. Formerly known as “freedom of association.”
diverse, adj. (Applied to a collectivity of persons.) Containing persons of all possible skin colors, sexes, sexual preferences, and immigration statuses, but preferably of identically mainstream (q.v.) opinions.
drastic cuts in government services, n. Reductions in the rate of growth of the rate of growth of the public sector’s rate of growth.
education, n. The activity engaged in by members of teachers unions, in the brief intervals between political lobbying, skills-enhancement sabbaticals, etc.
Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., n. A dating service for homosexuals, funded mainly by revenues from ownership of real estate in New York City.
gun lobbies, n. People opposed to the idea that the only armed civilians should be bank robbers.
hate speech, n. Words that are offensive to some powerful interest group.
inappropriate, adj. True, but unmentionable for political reasons.
inclusive, adj. Firm in the belief that no two people ought ever be treated differently by anyone at all in any context at all. Opposite of divisive.
International Criminal Court, n. A gathering of European and Third World left-wing jurists, committed to bringing to trial and punishing Henry Kissinger for the crime of having helped thwart a Communist coup in Chile, thereby depriving the Chilean people of universal free health care and 100 percent literacy (q.v.).
judiciary, n. A body of citizens charged with making those laws that Congress has omitted to make.
law school, n. An institution for the inculcation of politically correct ideas in young adults; a place where the process of extracting new rights and benefits from the Constitution is taught; the natural and proper aspiration for all young persons.
legislature, n. An institution whose purpose is to identify the few dozen noisiest, wealthiest, or most troublesome of many thousands of factions in a state, or in the nation, and to disburse public monies to them. In the event that a faction so identified is already a recipient of public monies, the legislature must ensure that the amount disbursed increases each year.
living wage, n. The latest wage demand by some public-sector labor union.
mainstream, adj. (Applied to a person’s opinions.) Liberal. See also centrist, moderate.
marriage, n. An archaic institution for the oppression of women and the abuse of children, from participation in which homosexual couples are cruelly and unjustly barred.
mean-spirited, adj. Insufficiently deferential to, or failing to acknowledge the inherent moral superiority of, some DVG.
media, n. A program of indoor relief for unemployable intellectuals.