February 23, 2006, 7:58 a.m.
An exchange to note, &c.

Not long ago, there was a stunning exchange in an Iraqi courtroom, and I want to be sure you know about it. Saddam Hussein was acting up — shouting “Down with traitors!” and “Down with America!” and so on.

The judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, ordered the guards to eject him.

Saddam said, “For 35 years I led you, and you say, ‘Eject him?’”

Judge Abdel-Rahman replied, “I am a judge and you are a defendant. And you have violated order in the court. I am implementing the law.”

You might say, “Ho-hum — what’s the big deal about that, Nordlinger?” This is a momentous deal, in the Middle East. That language is absolutely radical, revolutionary, unheard of, in the Arab world: “I am a judge and you are a defendant. . . . I am implementing the law.”

And these words are earthshaking not just in the Arab world: For most of human history — in most times and places — “justice” has been a matter of brute force: The strong put the weak up against the wall. True liberal order has been a rarity.

And now Iraq is having a taste — a big taste — of that. Proper justice is being administered to the former dictator himself.

In the midst of everyday crises — a Koran and a toilet, a Danish cartoon, a vice-presidential accident — we should pause, once in a while, to acknowledge this.

I don’t think I’ve heard anything so electrifying since the War on Terror began: “I am a judge and you are a defendant. . . . I am implementing the law.”

Huge.

Incidentally, when Saddam was acting up in court, he was clutching — and waving — a Koran. He also keeps raving about the “ummah” (the broad Muslim world).

But the good Bush critics are always telling us that Saddam is a mere secularist annoyance — what truck could he possibly have with extremist Islam, al Qaeda, our real enemies?

Yeah, yeah: Before he was toppled, Saddam put an inscription from the Koran on the Iraqi flag; he claimed to have had a Koran written out in his own blood; etc., etc.

Dictators use what they can, and we should be spared more talk about how Saddam was just a standard secularist, not to be confused with the cancer now attacking our world.

Did you see that photo of the burka’d Kenyan woman bearing a sign that said, “Freedom of expression is Western terrorism”? What a marvelous thing — “Freedom of expression is Western terrorism.” Somehow, that woman should be a TA (teaching assistant) at the University of Michigan.

Bush made a statement the other day, worth considering. How are we doing in the War on Terror? That question can be answered in multifarious ways, but one of them is this: “The terrorists are living under constant pressure, and this adds to our security.” (I’m now quoting Bush.) “When terrorists spend their days working to avoid death or capture, it’s harder for them to plan and execute new attacks on our country.”

Quite so. After 9/11, Bush decided to harass them unmercifully. And he has kept to his plan — and that is why he is invaluable as commander-in-chief in this era. This will be more broadly recognized — much more — after January 2009.

As long as I’m quoting administration officials (and we can count the president as an administration official, can’t we?): “Either they will succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs.” That was Rumsfeld — and this stark formulation could well be correct.

I’m not going to quote Al Gore, addressing the flock in Jeddah. You have heard by now what he had to say.

And what would possess a man to say such things? We’re not talking about just any man, either. We’re talking about a former vice president of the United States; the almost president of the United States — the man who received more votes in the 2000 election. About the worst thing you can do, in the present climate, is fuel Arab paranoia. And Arab paranoia very much includes the rounding up of Muslims in the United States; the keeping of said Muslims in depraved conditions; general American hostility.

Al Gore essentially told these people that Muslims in the United States are treated the way pretty much everybody is in the Middle East.

I didn’t think that, at this point — February 2006 — I could be shocked or disheartened by Gore. He went around the bend long ago. But this was, indeed, shocking and disheartening.

By comparison, his remarks on the natural environment are calm and sensible.

Gore, it seems, has entered Jimmy Carter territory. And here it is time to lament the steep decline of the Democratic party. Anyone can pick on fringe figures — a nut on this talk show or that. (Who’s that woman? Randi Rhodes?) But some of the most vile and cuckoo stuff is coming from Carter and Gore. One of them is a former president; the other is a former vice president. These are not fringe figures. It’s not like pointing to Noam Chomsky (who in any case is wildly popular, on campus and elsewhere). It’s not like pointing to Howard Dean.

Oh, hang on: Dean is chairman of the party. Sorry.

But you see the point, don’t you?!

And I know you see the point of the Pappy Boyington affair. Boyington is one of our greatest World War II heroes. Apparently, the kids at the University of Washington don’t want a monument to him. Why? Because he fought in a war (and war is bad). Also, he was a rich white man. (They say “male,” these kids, because that’s what they’re taught: “white male,” “black male.”) Never mind that Boyington grew up poor, and that he was part Sioux. The modern university mind is impervious to facts, or reason. I believe I know: I grew up around this mind; was constantly influenced by it; learned to resist and rebel against it.

Will these UW kids ever be ashamed — ashamed that they refused to honor their illustrious alumnus, 20 years after his death? Perhaps. That would be nice.

And what if Pappy Boyingtons were needed again, to defend the likes of these UW kids against fascism? Oh, yeah: They are needed again, and, as in every war, we have them, quasi-miraculously.

And don’t even get me started on San Francisco’s refusing to harbor the USS Iowa, in the ship’s retirement. The Iowa defended San Francisco in the Second War (as it did all of America, and all of the civilized world). Its successors are defending San Francisco now. But the citizenry doesn’t know it. Or care.

It was the city’s Board of Supervisors, by the way, that declared the Iowa unwelcome. To what party do these supervisors belong? If the Democratic party — and that would be a shock — why shouldn’t Republicans, around the country, use this as a campaign issue? Why aren’t Democrats at large forced to confront this? If Republicans did something analogous — I can’t think what that would be — wouldn’t the entire country, led by the media, be up in arms?

(I recall that Arizona, for a spell, refused to adopt Martin Luther King Day as a holiday. There were serious boycotts of the state of Arizona. It was an outright pariah among states.)

But, of course, if Republicans act — or talk — they are denounced as McCarthyite. George Clooney might make a film about us.

Let him!

Did you see that Castro has invited the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, to Havana? I quote from the Agence France-Presse report:

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accepted an invitation to visit Cuba from President Fidel Castro, in gratitude for Cuba’s support of Iran’s nuclear program. . . .

On Saturday in Vienna, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria voted against a resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over a nuclear program the West suspects is weapons-oriented.

The Iranian president recently publicly thanked Cuba for its “dignified and principled” position . . .

Just in case you had forgotten the character of the Cuban regime, or the Iranian — or the Syrian, or the Venezuelan.

And had you forgotten about Bryant Gumbel? The other day, he said that “a paucity of blacks . . . makes the Winter [Olympic] Games look like a GOP convention.” Nice, Bryant. You’re just the kind of man that makes America such a pleasant country in which to live. Thank you. Have a nice day.

Paul Johnson laid a big word on us, in a recent Spectator column. He called that word “useful” — and the word is (deep breath) “floccinaucinihilipilification.” Definition? According to Dictionary.com, “an act or instance of judging something to be worthless or trivial.”

If you can work it into some conversation, bully for you.

I’m gonna lay a ton of music on you — music criticism, that is. All from the New York Sun. Most recent to most . . . not recent.

For a review of the pianist András Schiff, with the Cappella Andrea Barca, please go here.

For a review of Verdi’s Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera, please go here.

For a review of the tenor Eric Cutler, and a review of the New York Philharmonic Ensembles, please go here.

For a review of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Mariss Jansons, please go here.

For a review of the soprano Felicity Lott, please go here.

For a review of a concert spearheaded by the pianist Richard Goode, please go here.

For a review of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila at the Met, and a review of the New York Philharmonic, under Lorin Maazel, please go here.

For a review of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, please go here.

For a review of Verdi’s Traviata at the Met, and a review of the tenor Rolando Villazón (in recital), please go here.

For a review of . . .

As the Republicans said in 1946 (it was their campaign slogan, after a long, long season of Democratic dominance): Had enough?

Finally, I wanted to mention this to you, Brown University people. Brown University people? I will be speaking at that fair place next Wednesday, 7 p.m., Starr Auditorium (in MacMillan Hall, 167 Thayer St.). Free (very free) and open to the public. There'll be a Q&A. Punch and cookies, I don’t know. Be there or be square. (Actually, be there and be square, but let us not needlessly insult.)