Aaron Hanscom

Climate of Fear Spreads In California Mosques

2009-03-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

The arrest of a man with suspected ties to al-Qaeda has many Muslims worried — about the FBI.

Honoring Abstinence vs. Honor Killings

2008-06-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

What was New York Times blogger Judith Warner thinking when she compared evangelical fathers at a purity ball to an infamous Austrian rapist?

My latest piece is up at PJM.

Spain, the Once and Future Muslim Province

2008-06-15T13:18:00.001-07:00

Some argue that the notion of Muslims reconquering Spain is just right-wing fear-mongering. Meanwhile, al-Zawahiri and his minions sharpen their swords.

@ PJM

Kids becoming miniature grown-ups

2008-03-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

Check out my piece today in the Orange County Register.

The Down Syndrome Bombers

2008-02-18T19:34:00.001-08:00

Terrorism sinks to a new low.

Why Are College Kids Mocking the Dead?

2008-01-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

At PJM.

Why Speak English in America?

2007-12-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

You can read my thoughts at PJM.

Paying Mama's Boys to Leave Mama

2007-10-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

My latest PJM piece can be read here.

How to Talk to Children About 9/11

2007-09-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

Warning: Don't get tips from the BBC.

Also see BBC’s Newsround fed youngsters Al Qaeda propaganda, claims ex-spy chief.

Perpetual Adolescence

2007-09-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

Read my confessions of a perpetual adolescent.

Diana West, author of "The Death of the Grown-Up," was interviewed by Jamie Glazov at FrontPage.

Meet the Parents

2007-08-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

My PJM piece this week is on parental responsibility, a topic that is often overlooked in discussions about educational reform.

For a great companion read, check out this piece in City Journal about broken homes in Newark.

My Last Two Pajamas Pieces

2007-07-16T16:46:00.001-07:00

Not a "Rosie" Picture

Europe in Decline: Lessons Learned in Spain

A Poor Choice of Words

2007-07-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

As reported in the Guardian: At 3.11pm, a Jeep Cherokee wreathed in flames was crashed into the doors of the main terminal building at Glasgow. Driven by two 'Asian-looking' men, it came to a halt as they threw petrol over it and appeared to try to detonate the vehicle.With the help of bystanders, the two men were overpowered and arrested. One was fighting for his life last night, after throwing petrol over himself and setting it alight.

Can suicide bombers really fight for their lives?

The PSOE´s Disengagement Policy with Freedom

2007-06-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

As I make clear in my latest piece for the Strategic Studies Group, Spain´s Socialists clearly favor Castro´s Cuba to Bush´s America.

Finding Comedy in the Collapse of Europe

2007-06-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

Here's my review of "The Collapse of Europe" conference held at Pepperdine University on June 10.

Walid Shoebat

2007-06-05T06:56:00.000-07:00

My Pajamas Media interview with the former PLO terrorist can be viewed here.

The Intifada of Ceuta

2007-05-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

My first piece for the Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos/Strategic Studies Group can be read here.

Confronting Worldwide Anti-Semitism

2007-04-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

My latest FrontPage piece is about the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the world.

Not everyone agrees with my take on the issue. As if to prove my point, here's a marvelously anti-Semitic critique of my article.

Round 2: Daniel Pipes versus UC Muslims

2007-04-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

My latest piece for Pajamas Media on a controversial (at least in the eyes of UCLA Muslim students) panel discussion about totalitarian Islam can be found here.

Recruiting Soldiers Against Radical Islam

2007-04-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here is my review of a speech given by Daniel Pipes last week on "Radical Islam and the War on Terror."

A New Kind of Evil

2007-03-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

My latest piece for Pajamas Media is on the use of children by terrorists to further their goals.

Spanish Lessons in Appeasement---and Love

2007-03-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

Trust me, I prefer writing positive articles about my wife's country. But the bad news just keeps on coming.

I wish I could return to 1998--the year we met. 9/11 and 3/11 were inconceivable back then. I invite you to read my Christian Science Monitor essay on the best year of my life.

Cathy Seipp

2007-03-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

You can learn a lot about people by how they treat complete strangers. Cathy Seipp returned all my annoying personal emails over the years. That she took the time to offer professional advice to someone she didn't know--while fighting a battle against cancer--meant very much to me. I'm not surprised in the least at the amount of friends who were at her side at the end of her life, nor at the outpouring of emotion that can be read all over the internet right now. May she rest in peace.

The War Against JROTC

2007-03-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

In today's lead story at FrontPage, I discuss the public schools' crusade against the JROTC program.

The New Forced Segregation

2007-03-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

I write about the latest anti-assimilation policy in TCS Daily.

Javier Jordan

2007-03-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

Please don't miss my interview with the professor from the University of Granada. He discusses the March 11 terrorism trial and the continuing terrorist threat facing Spain.

Reut Cohen Interview

2007-02-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

The UC Irvine student who filmed the Muslim Student Union's disruption of a Daniel Pipes talk answered some questions for me. You can read the interview here. The MSU responds in the next installment.

Remembering the Holocaust in Europe

2007-01-30T14:09:00.000-08:00

Or not. I explain today in FrontPage.

Dennis Prager

2007-01-29T12:29:00.000-08:00

My review of Prager's recent speech in Yorba Linda can be read here.

Londonistan

2007-01-18T16:24:00.000-08:00

A Free Republic poster comments on my Frontpage piece from today:

David Selbourne is the author of The Losing Battle with Islam.

This is an article based on the Seinfeld premise; an article about nothing.

Posters vent.

So What.

I heard the author (Selbourne) interviewed on the Dennis Prager radio program.

It was unclear as to what his real position is with regard to Islam in the West. He took potshots at Melanie Phillip's Londonistan without really making clear where he thought its premise was flawed.

I concluded that he is an empty suit with nothing worthwhile to convey.
This article confirms that impression.

I agree completely (minus the Seinfeld line, of course.) I heard the same Prager interview with David Selbourne, and that's what gave me the idea for the piece. The critics who will have none of the Eurabia thesis usually don't do a good job of showing where it is flawed. That's one of the points of my piece.

ETA

2007-01-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

Jose at Barcepundit expertly explains why today's demonstration in Madrid doesn't mean Spaniards have suddenly learned that appeasment doesn't pay. Read it.

2007-01-11T20:40:00.000-08:00

The Eyes of Evil ?

The Catholic Church Versus Eurabia

2007-01-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

The Roman Catholic Church has rejected a plea by Spanish Muslims to pray in the Cordoba Cathedral. That's why my Pajamas Media piece from today is a little bit more positive than my previous reports on the situation in Europe:

The Reality of Eurabia

The Jihadist Dream to Liberate Spain

The MTV Generation

2006-12-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

I make amends for all those hours wasted watching "The Real World" in my latest piece for the Orange County Register.

UCLA Taser Incident

2006-11-22T19:56:00.000-08:00

I weigh in on the controversy at FrontPage Mag.

My friend, a UCLA law student, has a different take on the event:

Aaron: do you think it is appropriate for campus police to use a taser on a student who is refusing to walk out of a library? Yes, I and any right thinking person would have complied with police orders without argument. That is the self-preserving position to take. But the point is, police are paid to deal with situations professionaly and competently, not just by imposing maximum force. There is a public relations element to law enforcement, in that you want the community to trust you. So when police do things like this, it makes people trust them less, which is bad for everybody. If the student were a threat in any way to the police or bystanders, appropriate force should have been used. But nobody is even alleging that he did anything remotely threatening...They should have carried him out. If he fought them, they could have escalated their force with a control hold or hogtied him. It was five or six against one. Shouldn't have been a problem. Doesn't that seem like a reasonable way to handle it? I don't understand why you keep coming back to what the student was doing. I've already said I agree with you he was being a jackass. If you are saying he was posing a threat, not even the campus police have alleged that. They say he was passively resisting, by yelling and refusing to walk out of the library. LAPD policy allows for taser use when an officer feels physically threatened or thinks that a third party is in danger. I don't have a problem with that, assuming a reasonable interpretation of threat and danger. UCLA apparently allows taser use for non-compliance. I totally disagree with that. I think it's too much force when no force is needed. Are you saying that you approve of the taser because the kid had it coming? It sort of sounds that way. If so, I don't agree with that, because our legal system has a more formal way of punishing those who break the law. As for your hypothetical of the person running from police, what does his race have to do with it? Are you saying there should be different rules for different races? That would be illegal, but also, I think, bad policy. If you're asking would a taser be appropriate on a fleeing suspect, it all depends on the facts and circumstances. Is he a wanted murder suspect? Or just some guy who took off when he saw the cops? That makes a difference.

Education

2006-10-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Ari Kaufman and I had an op-ed published today in the Indianapolis Star.

For some more information on teachers unions, see these two recent FrontPage Magazine pieces of mine.

Joanne Jacobs

2006-10-10T12:45:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite writers on education will be speaking tomorrow at Reason Foundation, 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #400, Los Angeles. Call 310-391-2245 for details.

Teaching the truth as myth

2006-10-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

My latest article on college indoctrination can be found here.

Shari’a law in Europe

2006-09-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

"Allah's Socialists," my latest article, was published today in FrontPage Magazine.

For those people who think I'm exaggerating the worrisome situation in Europe, I'd remind them that the examples of appeasement that I cite do not come from your average Juan on the streets of Barcelona. The Dutch Justice Minister and Spanish Foreign Minister are pretty important people. Plus, I've been to Spain (among other European countries) about a dozen times since 1998. The majority of the people I talk to there couldn't agree more with Donner and Moratinos. Come to think of it, maybe I should have included a Juan or two in the piece.

Update: There are plenty more examples of politicans like Donner and Moratinos. Mark Steyn writes:

Kinky as this is, it has nothing on Fallaci’s next circle of cultural diversity – the weirdly masochistic pleasure European leaders get out of talking themselves down and talking Islam up. Beginning with the German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the 1983 “Hamburg Symposium for the Euro-Arab Dialogue”, Signora Fallaci rounds up a quarter-century’s worth of westerners who’ve insisted that everything you know was invented by Islam: Paper, medicine, sherbet, artichokes, on and on and on…

"Always clever, the Muslims. Always at the top. Always ingenious. In philosophy, in mathematics, in gastronomy, in literature, in architecture, in medicine, in music, in law, in hydraulics, in cooking. And always stupid, we westerners. Always inadequate, always inferior. Therefore obliged to thank some son of Allah who preceded us. Who enlightened us. Who acted as a schoolteacher guiding dimwitted pupils."

This, it seems to me, is the most valuable contribution of Oriana Fallaci’s work. I enjoy the don’t-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers. If I had to choose, I’d rather Mohammed Atta was down river in Egypt hitting on the livestock than flying through the window of Manhattan skyscrapers. But he’s not. And one reason why westernized Muslims seem so confident is that Europeans like Herr Genscher, in positing a choice between a generalized “Islam” and “the west”, have inadvertently promoted a globalized pan-Islamism that’s become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

VDH

2006-09-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson at his absolute best:

In matters of the present war, I have given up on most of the neoconservatives, many of whom, following the perceived pulse of the battlefield, have either renounced their decade-long, pre-September11 rants to remove Saddam (despite the 140,000 brave souls still on the field of battle who took them at their word), or turned on the President on grounds that he is not waging the perfect fight and thus is not pursuing the good war. The Paleo-right is as frightening as is the lunatic Left. My old Democratic party is long dead, their jackals trying to tear apart the solitary and stumbling noble stag Joe Liebermann, the old center taken over by the Kerry and Soros billionaires, and the guilt-ridden academic, celebrity and media cadres.

So we really are left with very little in these pivotal times—the will of George Bush, of course, the Old Breed unchanged since Okinawa and the Bulge that still anchors the US military, the courage and skill of a very few brave writers like a Hitchens, Krauthammer, and the tireless and brilliant Mark Steyn, but very, very few others. No, this is an age in which we in the West make smug snuff movies about killing an American President, while the Taliban and the Islamists boast of assassinating the Pope.

So long may you run, Ms. Fallaci, you who by now have learned that, yes, there is a soul, and, yes, yours was indeed saved for eternity if only for its singular courage and honesty alone. And dear Pope: clarify, contextualize, express sorrow over the wrong interpretation of your remarks, but please don’t apologize for the Truth—not now, not ever

Abducted Israeli Soldiers

2006-09-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

This is good news.

I wrote about the three soldiers in FrontPage Magazine last week.

Gustavo de Aristegui

2006-09-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

Please don't miss my interview with the brave Spaniard. His website is here.

Muslim Beaches

2006-08-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

I hope Spain (where I am currently vacationing) doesn´t get any ideas from Italy. (link will take you to my article in FrontPage)

The Banality of Evil

2006-08-10T06:23:00.000-07:00

Mike Wallace sat down with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran for an interview on Tuesday. This is what Wallace said of the man who is eager to destroy Israel:"He's an impressive fellow, this guy. He really is. He's obviously smart as hell."

I couldn´t help but be reminded of Dan Rather´s interview with another monster: Saddam Hussein. I wrote the following at the time:

The Saddam Dan Would Rather Have Interviewed

Dan Rather’s interview with Saddam Hussein revealed far more about the CBS anchorman than the Iraqi leader himself. This was not Mr. Rather’s fault completely, however. Very few people tuned in last Wednesday night to ascertain the point of view of a pathological liar. Most were glued to their television sets as voyeurs, marveling at the banality of evil. Hussein did not let them down. He wore a nice suit, walked out of the room to pray midway through the interview, laughed good-naturedly a few times, and addressed a man he once tried to have assassinated as Mr. Bush. No, Mr. Rather was the real disappointment. He failed- like many of us do - to try and expose the easily hidden and inherently evil side of a man.

The fact that Hussein agreed to the interview in the first place is quite significant. Saddam, no idiot himself, clearly knows who his useful idiots are. Iraq did not give prominent coverage to the peace rallies held around the world for nothing. While there are respectable arguments against waging war in Iraq, there is no denying one sure outcome of appeasement: Hussein stays in power. Every action (or inaction) has a consequence: whether intended or not. Just as Hussein knows that most of the Westerners who oppose military action against him are on the left, he is undoubtedly aware of the media bias in America. So a couple of weeks after Iraq expelled Fox News correspondents from Baghdad, Hussein agreed to be interview by a man who once said during the Elian Gonzalez fiasco, “While Fidel Castro, and certainly justified on his record, is widely criticized for a lot of things, there is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba. And, I recognize this might be controversial, but there’s little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘listen, we really want this child back here.’” Surely any man that can convince himself that Fidel Castro deeply cares for the Cuban people is capable of having an open mind concerning Hussein’s humanitarian intentions.

A recent personal experience should shed some light on the interview that took place in Iraq. A couple months ago I had a parent conference with the father of one of my fifth grade students. I had recently learned that this man had just been released from prison for aggravated assault. Teachers told me that he was the main drug dealer for a local gang. An admired member of the PTA he was not. I was actually quite nervous before the conference. At the same time I realized that I had a couple of things going for me. First, I was the man who was helping someone he actually did care about: his daughter. Also, I prided myself on being completely charming with parents. Compliments and respect could appease even the most aggravated mother or father.

I remember that I took this man’s hand in both of my own and told him how pleased I was to meet him. He was respectful and nice, and I soon forgot all the things I had learned about his gang activities. We did touch on some of the problems his daughter was having in class but we didn’t even come close to addressing their root causes. Neither of us really wanted to face the truth. He wanted me to believe he wasn’t such a bad father. The sad thing was that I wanted and chose to believe the same thing.

The moment Mr. Rather endearingly grasped Hussein’s hand it was clear that the interview was going to be a farce. He was going to treat Hussein as if he were Jose Maria Aznar. Like myself, Mr. Rather had two things going for him. He opposes American removal of Hussein from power and he has a history of being soft with dictators.

I have no doubt Mr. Rather believes Saddam Hussein is a bad person. That is not the issue. His problem, like that of many people on the left, is not wanting to confront the evil in a person. Accepting and confronting are two very different things. Almost every person who opposes Hussein’s removal from power prefaces their arguments by conceding that Hussein is a “bad guy” or “jerk”. However, they rarely give details showing the extent of his evil and they almost immediately drop his name from the conversation after this initial concession. They consequently scoff when supporters of war declare that Hussein has gassed his own people or gets a sadistic pleasure out of having people tortured. By focusing more on the banality of the man, confrontation stops being a moral imperative.

Mr. Rather didn’t come close to confronting Saddam Hussein. Clifford D. May of The National Review has already shown how soft Mr. Rather was by just listing all the questions he asked. Here are a few of the most revealing ones:

Rather: Mr. President, I do appreciate your agreeing to spend an hour, because I want to ask questions in two categories, please.
Rather: Mr. President, you're being very patient with your time, and I want you to know I consider this a solemn moment in history, and, if I may, take time to have you speak to the American people about questions that I know are on their minds. I just want you to know that I appreciate your patience here.
Rather: I understand. Mr. President, if it's necessary for you to forgive me, I hope that you'll forgive me. But I have a couple of - sort of clean-up questions that I'm not clear about. Number one. Will the new proposed United Nations resolution, the one that's just out this week — will this make any difference at all in your position?
Rather: Mr. President, I hope you will take this question in the spirit in which it's asked. First of all, I regret that I do not speak Arabic. Do you speak any — any English at all?
Rather: I understand. Mr. President, again, you've been patient with your time. What is the most important thing you want the p - American people to understand? What's the most important thing you want the American people to understand, at this important juncture of history?
Rather: Well — first of all, I want to be serious that I — I appreciate — your confidence - Mr. President. I'm pausing because I'm tempted to ask a favor of the president. He has surprised me. I wonder for my good health if he could denounce me?
Rather: Mr. President, you've been so patient with your time. I appreciate you (UNINTEL). And I'm gonna —
Rather: I would like very much to see you in the future, Mr. President.

It is clear that Mr. Rather was talking to the person he would like Hussein to be. What a tragedy that he doesn’t realize the real Hussein would rather see him--and all of us-- dead.

Mel Gibson

2006-08-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

My take on the escapade can be found here.

Spain's Anti-Semitism

2006-08-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

I recently wrote about why Jews are feeling a lot more uncomfortable in Spain. Now comes this from a Wall Street Journal piece by Bret Stephens:

Messrs. Kaplan and Small employ data from a 2004 survey of European attitudes toward Jews and toward Israel commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League. Five thousand people in 10 European countries were asked to agree or disagree with 11 statements about Jews: for instance, that "Jews are more willing than others to use shady business practices" or that "Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind." (Agreeing with more than five of the questions qualified one as an anti-Semite, according to the ADL.) The respondents were also asked to agree or disagree with four questions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as whether Israel's treatment of Palestinians was similar to South Africa's treatment of blacks during apartheid.

The results were remarkable. Among those who held the most negative views of Israel, some 60% also believed that Jews engaged in shady financial practices, and more than 70% thought that Jews had too much business power. Whatever the respondents' religion, nationality, sex or income level, the more intense their dislike of Israel, the likelier they were to be anti-Semitic. Altogether, 56% of those harboring strong anti-Israel feelings were also anti-Semitic. (For the record, the survey found that Spain was the most anti-Semitic country in Europe, with 22% of respondents qualifying as anti-Semites, while Denmark and the Netherlands, at 8%, were the least.)

Victor Davis Hanson

2006-08-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

VDH brings up the significance of European anti-Semitic cartoons(as I did a few days ago) in his outstanding piece on the West's madness:

There is no need to mention Europe , an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred.

The CNN Effect

2006-08-03T02:42:00.000-07:00

Frida Ghitis has a must-read piece in the Los Angeles Times on the insidious effets of television images in a time of war:

The tears and the rage and the destruction are absolutely real. By confronting us with the ugliness of war, the images force us to keep human suffering in the forefront — exactly where it should be. And yet television images of suffering pack so much power that they overwhelm every other kind of information. They can cripple our ability to understand what is really happening.

I went into the streets of Amsterdam to hear from residents who, unlike me, fully understood the narration that came with the pictures on their local news. Not surprisingly, the images dominated their thoughts to the exclusion of virtually everything else.

Bram Jipen talked about "those poor children, with the big eyes." Everyone agreed that the war should stop immediately, and the majority — with some viciously bigoted exceptions — thought it was "everybody's fault." It seemed that TV destroyed the ability to differentiate, to analyze.

"They're both stupid," Gerard Jansan told me, righteously succumbing to the easy morality of blaming all sides. Viewing pictures of children with skin burned off their faces, it seems inhumane to even ponder the causes of war or, more inconceivable, whether a war might be justified.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Why Spain Matters

2006-08-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer tells us why Israel's war is our war:

For all their medieval trappings, these two sources of Islamic fervor now vying for possession of the newly transmuted Arab-Israeli dispute confirm the Bush Administration's view that, after a holiday from history in the 1990s, the global ideological struggles of the 20th century have been rejoined with a change only in the cast. In place of the ersatz Western religions of fascism and communism, radical Islam, bastard child of a real and great religion, has arisen. Led by two rival Vaticans, one in Tehran and the other cavebound on the Afghan-Pakistani border, it raises the banner of a militant religion that will not rest until, as al-Zawahiri pledged, Islam has retaken every piece of Waqf "from Spain to Iraq."

Yes, Spain--conquered by Islam in the 8th century, lost to Christianity in 1492. That's a long way from Haifa, from Lebanon, from Baghdad and even from Mecca. It's an even longer way from rationality, which is why the struggle against it will be long and painful, and enduringly surreal.

World Opinion

2006-08-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

So I finally lost it the other day at the dinner table. There is only so much one can take when it comes to the blatant anti-Israel bias of Spain's television news or "telediarios." I had heard the words "babies" and "massacres" too many times to hold it in any longer. After explaining to my mother-in-law that it is Hezbollah's goal to murder innocents (Lebanese included) while Israel does whatever it can to avoid civilian deaths, she simply asked, "So is the whole world wrong?"

The answer is yes. Dennis Prager explains it better than I ever could:

World opinion" doesn't confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do -- most notably today America and Israel.

The moment one recognizes "world opinion" for what it is -- a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That "world opinion" at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when "world opinion" and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you've lost your way.

Read the entire piece.

The Political Divide

2006-07-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

Forget tax cuts and abortion. Would you let your toddler pee in the paint pots at school? If so, Eleanor Hammer says you're probably a liberal:

In fact, the school was in danger of splitting into two factions: the liberals and the conservatives. Naturally I expected to be part of the liberal group. But the actual breaking up came from an unexpected issue: Should the boys be restrained from peeing in the paint pots?

The conservatives were outraged that the behavior in question had happened at all, and that allowing it was even under discussion. The liberals answered that it didn't hurt the paint, and that in any event the little boys would outgrow such behavior. Eventually.

At a parents meeting called to decide the issue, inside my head I could hear the voice of my mother: Little boys are doing what? And you are allowing it?

I don't think so

2006-07-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

Tell me if you notice what's contradictory in J.J. Martin's analysis here (Hint: it's in bold):

So why has the international community been mute in condemning Israel’s attacks on Lebanon?

Perhaps it is the fear of being accused of anti-Semitism that has made western governments reluctant to speak out.

It seems as if criticising Israel’s onslaught in Lebanon equates to anti-Semitism.

Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has found this out the hard way.

When Sr Zapatero accused Israel of using “abusive force” in Lebanon at a Socialist youth rally in Alicante and was photographed wearing a Palestinian scarf a Jewish community leader in Spain claimed that Sr Zapatero was anti-Semitic.

“The silence of the international community today towards what is happening in the Middle East could become regret tomorrow,” said Sr Zapatero.

Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos defended Sr Zapatero’s comments saying that the Spanish government will not tolerate accusations of anti-Semitism against the Prime Minister, arguing that that the Spanish leader’s criticism of Israeli tactics in Lebanon should not be interpreted in those terms.

After all Sr Zapatero’s comments are completely in line with a large part of Spanish and international opinion. There have been protest rallies against the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in Spain, the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Russia and as far afield as Sydney, Australia.

I really don't think the international community has been mute, do you?

I'm Back

2006-07-29T04:08:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed my stint guestblogging for Barcepundit this week. Muchas gracias, Jose.

In case you missed it, my latest FrontPage piece on anti-Semitic cartoons in Europe can be found here.

A Spanish Vacation

2006-07-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

I'm in Southern Spain trying to survive the heat. Zapatero is harder to tolerate when you have to listen to him on the telediario every afternoon. Here's what I wrote about him in FrontPage Magazine.

Do you remember?

2006-07-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

My latest piece for FrontPage Magazine is on the recent arrests of the Miami Muslims--yes, Muslims--who were plotting to blow up the Sears Tower (among other places).

Canada

2006-07-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

This old piece of mine has more relevance after the Toronto arrests of several weeks ago.

Be Careful What You Wish For

This year I feel like one of those particularly lucky people whose birthdays fall on Christmas Day. By the time I turned 28 at midnight on election night, George W. Bush had already won his 28th state and was well on his way to winning a second term in office. I wasn't alone in reaching an all-time high on November 3. Here's Canada's immigration ministry spokeswoman, Maria Iadinardi: "When we looked at the first day after the election, November 3, our Web site hit a new high, almost double the previous record high."

It appears that many of my fellow Americans are the ones contemplating the idea of seeking refuge in North America's last remaining civil society. Reuters reports that the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration site has increased six-fold since the re-election of Dubya. While this spike could be due to the MTV generation's fear that P. Diddy will make good on his "Vote or Die" threat, it seems more likely that these potential emigrants fear the gangster occupying the White House.

It is hard to argue that Islamic terrorists don't share the far left's fear of a second Bush term. Osama bin Laden seemed to be mimicking Michael Moore in his pre-election videotaped message, when he castigated Bush for continuing to read "My Pet Goat" on the morning of September 11.

Still, I'll concede that Al-Qaeda's leaders might view Bush as their single greatest recruitment tool. In wanting to rush to Canada, however, quite a few on the left undeniably share something in common with the terrorists.Just take a look at a recent U.S. Library of Congress study declaring Canada a "favored destination for terrorists." Last year Canadian Security Intelligence Services reported that the country "is viewed by some terrorist groups as a place to try to seek refuge, raise funds, procure materials and/or conduct other support activities." You can thank Canada's immigration laws, welfare policy, rare prosecutions and light sentences for the fact that "virtually all of the most notorious international terrorist organizations are known to maintain a network presence in Canada." So while I can understand the terrorists believing they will be safe making the trip, I'm hoping Americans will give it a second thought.

Not that I haven't previously thought about expatriating. I, too, wanted to pretend that this War on Terror was something Bush had cooked up in Washington- and not World War IV. How great it would be if I could just change citizenship and watch all my fears disappear. It would not have been too hard for me to leave either, since my wife is from Spain. Any doubts I may have had about Bush's handling of the war were quickly dispelled, however, when I took a closer look at the current situation in Spain (which closely resembles that of Canada).The socialist government that came to power in the aftermath of the March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid has pursued what you (and John Kerry) might call a more "sensitive" war on terror. Prime Minister Jose Zapatero kindly pulled Spain's troops out of Iraq, per the terrorists' request, and has promoted cultural dialogue with the Muslim community as a superior counterterrorism tactic.

The results? Just last month Spanish police arrested two groups of Islamic radicals for plotting to blow up the central criminal court and other landmarks. A "congress of dialogue" with representatives of the Arab world was summoned by the socialist government and resulted in Arab heckling when "European historians discussed the more liberal era when Islamic women did not wear the veil." Judge Baltasar Garz—n, Spain's leading anti-terrorist judge, recently stated that Spanish prisons are "breeding grounds" for Islamic terrorists. And, oh yeah, Al-Qaeda hasn't yet given up its claim to Andalusia.

On November 2 millions of Americans endorsed President Bush's aggressive stance on terror. Carolyn Parrish, a liberal MP in Canada, spoke for much of the world when she said she was "dumfounded" over Bush's victory. She concluded that American voters are "completely out of step with most of the free world." Well, how about the part of the world that is not free? Millions of Iranians living under the repression of themullahs celebrated the results of the American election. They recognize that an America under President Bush is committed to democracy and freedom in the Middle East. The terrorists recognize it, too. That's why they wish we were more like Canada.My compatriots looking to escape to Quebec or Toronto might want to be a little more careful of what they wish for.

Nothing new

2006-07-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn is good, real good: The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad – or, if you’re a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman’s right to Jews.

An Aztec Education

2006-06-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

My latest FrontPageMagazine piece is on the anti-assimilation trend in American education.

The next 9/11

2006-06-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

Sure, law enforcement has stopped many terrorist attacks against the West. But Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of the main reason why we haven't experienced another 9/11:

The Islamists are also in a dilemma about escalation. They have a deep-seated suspicion that another 9/11 might unleash an unpredictable Western response that would pollute the favorable Middle East waters in which they swim. Behead a Canadian prime minister; blow up the Eiffel Tower or the Vatican; take out the Empire State Building — and Western bombs may be dropped first, beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and questions asked later. So for now, jihadists accept that their best strategy is not to upset too much the multifarious forces that conspire to restrain Western power.

More UC Irvine

2006-06-18T00:12:00.000-07:00

The Orange County Register has more on the FBI's activities in Irvine:

The issue arose May 24, when Pat Rose, head of FBI's Orange County al-Qaida squad, said during a meeting of the Pacific Club that "there are a lot of individuals of interest." Asked whether citizens should be worried about activist Muslim students at UCI, she said it was "another tough question to answer."

The FBI hasn't said who is being monitored, but Rose admitted that electronic surveillance is being used in Orange County.

World Cup

2006-06-18T00:04:00.000-07:00

I'm now rooting for the United States, Spain and Ghana.

UC Irvine update

2006-06-06T19:17:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote an article for FrontPageMag.com about the revelation that the FBI is monitoring students at UC Irvine. Today, The Orange County Register reports that the FBI is not monitoring UCI students:

The FBI and Muslim community leaders met again Monday night, one in a series of gatherings since 9/11 intended to promote a better understanding of each other.

The latest meeting was needed, Muslim leaders said, because of a report by Register columnist Frank Mickadeit last month in which Pat Rose, head of the FBI's Orange County al-Qaida squad, was quoted as saying her agency was looking for potential terrorists here through a variety of electronic eavesdropping techniques.
Rose said the FBI is aware of large numbers of Muslims at UC Irvine and USC. And she said she was "quite surprised" that "there are a lot of individuals of interest right here in Orange County."

Stephen Tidwell, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, told about 100 people gathered at the Islamic Center of Irvine, that "we do not, we cannot, we do not" monitor students at UC Irvine and USC.

As I read the rest of the article, I couldn't help but wonder whether Tidwell was choosing his words extra carefully. Some astute readers at LittleGreenFootballs noticed the same thing:

"Translating this is simple.
The FBI does not monitor UC Irvine and USC students just because they are UC Irvine and USC students.
The FBI does not monitor the Muslim community in general just because they are Muslim.
To do so would be against our laws.
However, the FBI most certainly is monitoring or investigating individual people, for specific documented justifications that meet our legal requirements, and these people may happen to be students, members of the Muslim community, or both. "

"This looks to me like a non-story. Tidwell's remarks are carefully ambiguous, at least as reported.
Stephen Tidwell, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, told about 100 people gathered at the Islamic Center of Irvine, that "we do not, we cannot, we do not" monitor students at UC Irvine and USC.
"We will set aside whether (Rose) was accurate or it was reported accurately or not," he said in his opening remarks.
Tidwell explained how the FBI investigates tips and how a threat assessment is made and sent to agency headquarters in Washington.
"There are rules and guidelines as to how and why we conduct an investigation," he said.
So: we're not doing blanket wiretapping of students; I'm not saying either way whether there are 'individuals of interest' we are following here; and we have rules about how to conduct investigations.
To quote the brilliant, eloquent "joewilson": duh.
This is a careful statement of the obvious. It is NOT saying "we are ignoring any threats coming out of this community". "

"Phooey. This is a semantics game. The FBI does not investigate anyone based on their lawful activities. Being a student is lawful. Being Muslim is lawful. Therefore, the FBI does not "monitor" people JUST because they are Muslim students.
That does not mean a thing. The agent is reacting to the freakout caused by agent Rose's mention that the FBI is pursuing leads and surveiling "leads."
My guess is if a Muslim student is engaged in suspect activity, he/she will be a "lead" or a "suspect" and will be surveiled. "

Norman Finkelstein

2006-06-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

The professor responds to my FrontPage piece on his speech at UC Irvine:

Regarding Aaron Hanscom's article:

The quoted statement attributed to me - "by hammering on the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the exclusive link between Holocaust and Jews, the Holocaust industry has become the main promoter of antisemitism" - is sheer fabrication; AH: The interview in question can be found here.

I never stated or implied that Israel was "the world's greatest human rights violator." As I've said on numerous occasions, the U.S.'s record in Iraq is on the order of ten times as worse if one compares, for example, the Palestinian casualties in Jenin and Nablus during Operation Desert Shield with the Iraqi casualties in Fallujah and Najaf; AH: Would "the world's second greatest human rights violator" have been better ? If so, I apologize.

I publicly objected to the note passed to me at 9:45 p.m. that I had to end within 15 minutes because I was promised that I could speak and take questions until 11:00 p.m. I only arrived at Irvine at 7:30 p.m., began speaking at 8:15 p.m. and was taking the first flight out the next morning at 6:00 a.m. I keep this tight schedule because I have a heavy teaching load and never cancel class, am never late for class and never dismiss class early. My standard speaking fee is "the best you can do," which usually isn't very much (Muslim student groups are not big budget items on most campuses), and I almost never even have time for a meal except take-out fast food. Under these circumstances it seems reasonable to request that I at least have time to speak;

I did state that the claim of anti-Semitism being prevalent on U.S. college campuses is "preposterous." However, this is hardly an aberrant opinion (see the item "The Show's Over" posted on this web site); AH: Is anti-Semitism prevalent at UC Irvine? As I wrote in the article, UCI is the subject of an anti-Semitism probe by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights. And how about this? Or this? I could go on and on, but I don't think I'm going to change the mind of a person who can't find any hints of anti-Semitism in Palestine. (see below)

Readers are warned that "Finkelstein also made the claim that there is no evidence of new anti-Semitism in Europe. In fact, he stated that the evidence shows a decline in European anti-Semitism since 1991." In his just published book The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism (Oxford 2006), none other than Walter Laqueur writes: "Ten percent of the French expressed strong anti-Jewish feelings in a public opinion poll in 2002, but the antagonism toward Muslims was considerably stronger, almost three times as frequently expressed. In Britain, Germany, Russia, and other European countries, unfavorable views vis-a-vis Muslims were twice as frequently expressed than negative views vis-a-vis Jews. Events in the Middle East certainly affected the image of Israel in themedia, yet this was not reflected in popular attitudes toward Jews; in fact, such attitudes were slightly more favorable in 2002 than they had been in 1991" (p. 126; my emphasis). (The book comes with a strong recommendation from ADL head Abraham Foxman); AH: Same answer as above and evidence can be found in my article.

I did not state it was "hypocrisy" to demand that Hamas recognize Israel and renounce violence against Israeli civilians. In fact I explicitly endorsed these demands. Rather I stated that it was hypocrisy to put these demands on Hamas while not putting the reciprocal demands on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state on the June 1967 borders and to renounce violence against Palestinian civilians; AH: From an Ed Koch piece today: "For example, on a Channel 13 PBS evening news show last Wednesday, May 24th, I witnessed a clear example of that BBC bias when anchor Matt Frei said:

"Welcome. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert pushed all the right buttons for an American audience. Addressing a joint session of U.S. Congress, Mr. Olmert said he was extending a hand to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas but that Israel would not yield to terror. Israel has not recognized the new Hamas government and Hamas does not recognize the existence of Israel. The new Prime Minister also warned that his government would not wait forever for a Palestinian peace partner but would seek a unilateral solution."

The language that struck me as demonstrating an incomplete and misleading picture hostile to Israel was the statement, "Israel has not recognized the new Hamas government and Hamas does not recognize the existence of Israel." Frei equated Israel, the victim of terrorism, with the Hamas government. The unabashed and publicly-stated goal of Hamas, when it was not in government and now that it is the government, is to occupy all of historic Palestine, from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea, and destroy the Jewish state.

In referring to the goal of Hamas, a May 27th New York Times article stated:
"Hamas has refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a permanent, sovereign state, insisting that all of the former Palestine is waqf - land given by God to Muslims, who can neither cede nor sell it."

I did state that of all the places I've visited in my life (admittedly not many), I've experienced the least amount of antisemitism in Palestine. Hanscom recommends that I "visit a school." In fact for several summers I co-taught English at a Palestinian school named Talitha Kumi in Beit Jala. Delightful kids. Wish my own students were as respectful. AH: Uh-huh.

Terror on Campus

2006-05-31T18:22:00.000-07:00

It was the "Intifada" T-shirt a young Muslim student was wearing on my recent trip to UC Irvine that frightened me more than anything. My latest FrontPage article deals with the recent FBI revelation that it is studying suspicious Muslim students at UCI.

Too late indeed

2006-05-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

Naomi Riley in the Wall Street Journal:

According to a report in Jewish Week, some rabbis are encouraging their congregants to see "Keeping Up With the Steins" because they approve of its last reel. Benjamin's father plans to hold his bar mitzvah at Los Angeles's Dodger Stadium -- from which guests would take home their own major-league uniforms as party favors. Benjamin, in the end, rejects the idea and invites everyone over to his house to listen to a Klezmer band and eat his grandmother's brisket. It's all very touching, but it's also too little, too late.

My younger brother recently attended the bar mitzvah of a certain celebrity's son. It was held at...Dodger Stadium.

UC Irvine

2006-05-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

What I saw on my latest trip back to college.

United 93

2006-05-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

My latest FrontPage article can be read as an answer to Charlie.

Heroes?

2006-05-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

Not all Americans think the passengers on United 93 were heroes. My friend Charlie writes in an email to me:

I don't agree with the Flight 93 people being "heroes." I am not sure what a hero is, but even if you believe as I do that we are all equally selfish, at least heroism should be something extraordinary, going far out of your way to help somebody with no obvious benefit to yourself (the benefit being mostly an obscure psychological one). I'm thinking of a person jumping into a fast river to save a kid they don't even know, or something like that.

Attacking the terrorists who are trying to kill you seems like pretty basic self-preservation to me, but maybe that is not patriotic of me to say that? Also, the same people seem to reject any notion of the hijackers being labeled "brave." But they killed themselves in support of their ideas. We just don't like their ideas. If they were American troops, we would call them brave. What do you think about that?

I still want to see Flight 93, though.

American Patriot

2006-04-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Gyllenhaals are back at it.

Movie star JAKE GYLLENHAAL has shocked American Gulf War veterans by joking they did nothing but "masturbate" during their time in the desert in 1991. The cheeky 25-year-old stars in JARHEAD, a movie exposing the US soldiers' lack of combat in the Middle Eastern conflict. He said, "The US soldiers were sent to the desert for 122 days and they sat in the same tent and did nothing, except a little too much masturbating."

His sister still takes the prize for the most offensive comments to date.

While Europe sleeps...

2006-04-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

so do we. Or had you heard?

MONTPELLIER, France — The cellphone's trail led from bloodstained Fallouja to the engineering school here, a modern campus where researchers in white coats stroll past labs and the breeze rustles through trees in courtyards dotted with pine cones.

Two years ago French investigators, aided by U.S. intelligence, detected calls from Iraq to a central figure in a suspected extremist cell in Montpellier. French intelligence officials say the calls came from a militant leader in Fallouja involved in the grisly killing of four American military contractors by a mob on March 31, 2004, an incident that became an icon of the savage conflict in Iraq.

The suspected cell included a group of Moroccan students accused of studying electronics, computer technology and telecommunications in the service of a North African terrorist group allied with Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The group is sending fighters to Iraq, developing alliances across North Africa and plotting attacks in Europe, investigators say.

Officials say the case of the students, several of whom are under arrest, also illustrates a wider effort by terrorist networks to use universities and the Internet to replace former training camps in Afghanistan.

Update: And a little closer to home...

A Svelte Porcelain Bush-hater

2006-04-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

You be the judge as to whether or not Caitlin Flanagan's anti-Bush salvo is tasteful:

For her part, Flanagan seems to be feeling the pain of backlash from those she has judged. A week after our meeting — during which she has very likely read the Elle profile, which brought out the pious parson in her, a side I didn’t see — she calls me back and tells me she has a quote for me that she hasn’t given anyone else. “I am pro-choice, anti-war, anti-Bush, I’m a Democrat, and only a conservative on family issues,” she says plaintively. “I’ve got nothing but derision from the left — you’ve got to check everything on the menu to please them. But the right has been good to me, even though they disagree with me about abortion. I can go on Tucker Carlson and he’s respectful. The head of the Southern Baptist Convention had me on the radio. But the feminists humiliate me. We, the Democrats, have a real small tent. The Republicans have a big tent.”

Guantanamo Vacation

2006-04-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian, no less!

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

The Lost Generation

2006-04-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

V S Naipaul tells it like it is:

Hemingway didn't know where he was, ever, really. He was so busy being an American and that was his subject matter. You wouldn't have any idea, from Hemingway or Fitzgerald and their stories or writings about Paris, that Paris was in the most terrible way between the wars. They just talked about the cafes, the drinks and oysters and things like that. They don't see the larger thing outside. I find it very difficult to read that kind of writing or to take it seriously. It's for other people - people down the road...

Freedom of Speech in Sevilla

2006-04-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

I studied at the University of Sevilla in 1998. Anyways:

A group of some 20 leftist youths, members of a "solidarity with Cuba" group, charged into the University of Sevilla's conference room and disrupted a speech by poet and exiled Cuban dissident Raul Rivero on Monday. Rivero called them "a metathesis of Castroism," and the university expressed its "most energetic condemnation of the incidents, provoked by persons from outside the university." The disruptors shouted Rivero down, calling him a "terrorist." Rivero told Libertad Digital, "A year ago, when I came to Spain, something similar happened at the Granada poetry festival. But after they shouted their slogans, I was able to continue speaking. Yesterday was different, because they managed to keep me from expressing my opinion." Rivero declared, "The Cuban government is based on lies and cheap propaganda. That's why it is afraid of words and the truth."

The Battle for Spain's Future

2006-03-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

National Police officers arrested four persons yesterday, three Spaniards and a Syrian, in relation with an Islamist terrorist cell in Madrid. The police operation was still in progress Wednesday night, and at least one firearm was confiscated. The Syrian arrested is the brother of a man acquitted of terrorism last September 27, and the three Spaniards apparently collaborated in the cell's financial network.

La Jolla Bound

2006-03-27T00:46:00.000-08:00

Cathy Seipp writes about her daughter's acceptance to UC San Diego, where I graduated from in 2000. Like Maia, I was shocked and ecstatic to learn that I was accepted by UCSD. I would have spent four years in Boulder, Colorado-- and not lovely La Jolla-- had I been rejected.

Maia's first UC choice was San Diego, which was also the last to let applicants know about admissions. I felt terrible seeing her sitting tearfully over the computer, trying to access UC San Diego's busy server the day the school sent out its yeas or nays. The record so far wasn't promising, even though I know she's a good and enthusiastic student who'd do well anywhere. And UC San Diego, where she applied as a Russian/Soviet Studies major, is more selective than UC Santa Barbara.

But she got in. Go figure. And the one good thing about the pit of teenage despair is that it has a flip side: utter teenage jubilation.

Good Stuff

2006-03-24T00:45:00.000-08:00

This is very funny. Make sure you read Laksin daily.

Clarence Page is so right throughout most of this piece on the plight of young blacks. But the "honest alternatives" he craves are staring him right in the face.

Steyn.

James Woolsey thinks Matt Stone and Trey Parker can help us win the war on terror. They're already a big help on the domestic front.

Time Out

2006-03-23T00:28:00.000-08:00

An unconditional surrender is quite different from a permanent ceasefire. The former happens when an enemy has been defeated to such a degree that the futility of its cause begins to outweigh the delusions of grandeur that once kept it fighting. The latter is very often just a call for a breather; a hudna, as it is known in Islamic law. The Basque terrorist group, ETA, has opted for the latter. Jose is the expert and has all the latest news. I've dusted off an old piece I wrote about the terrorist group and posted it below. The Saturday I refer to was just a few weeks ago.

Fifteen years ago 12 year-old Irene Villa lost both of her legs in a bombing by the Basque terrorist group ETA. On Saturday, she elegantly expressed why hundreds of thousands of Spaniards were braving the freezing cold and rain of Madrid to protest their Socialist government. “We want to make sure that [the government] does not negotiate with murderers and that terrorism is not seen as a way to achieve a political end," she said, with other victims of ETA at her side. Unfortunately, the Spanish prime minister has a habit of listening less to the victims of terrorism than to the very terrorists themselves.

Bombs planted by ETA have been exploding in Spain on a regular basis since the March 11 train bombings in Madrid. While the general feeling after the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history was that the terrorist group would lay low for a while so as not to lose any of its already slender support, the election of Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has proven to be as big a boon for ETA as it was for the Islamic terrorists themselves.

The tragedy is that ETA had been at its weakest state since its campaign for an independent country began more than 30 years ago—a campaign which has been responsible for more than 800 deaths. ETA’s reduced military capacity was primarily due to the aggressive anti-terrorism policy of former Conservative prime minister José María Aznar. After a 14 month ETA ceasefire (which ended in November 1999 following negotiations with the terrorist group and Aznar’s own government) turned out to be just a ploy to buy time to regroup, Aznar learned that dialogue costs lives and vowed to relentlessly pursue the terrorists to the full extent of the law. There have been more than 650 arrests of ETA operatives by Spanish and French police since 2000. The 2003 Spanish Supreme Court decision to outlaw the political party Batasuna for its affiliation with ETA was also a big victory for Spain.

The Anti-Terrorism Pact agreed to by Conservatives and Socialists in 2000 was just as important in demolishing ETA. By “agreeing not to disagree” both major political parties in essence denied the possibility of negotiating with ETA unless it renounced violence and laid down its weapons. It was Zapatero’s breaking of this pact that has allowed ETA to rise from the dead. As Aznar said in a recent interview: “Every time a terrorist is offered the possibility of negotiation, he thinks ‘it is possible for me to win this battle.’ When you are strong, you never offer negotiations, but when you are weak you talk about them all the time.”

Zapatero wasted no time after his election victory in showing ETA that Spain was in fact weak and willing to negotiate. The terrorist group responded to his suggestion that the time was right for talks with 13 bombs in nine different Spanish cities in just four days at the end of 2004. This didn’t stop Zapatero from continuing the political debate about whether his administration should negotiate with the terrorists. In May 2005, right before Parliament was set to vote on a motion by the Socialists requesting the green light to dialogue, ETA set off four bombs in different Basque towns. Zapatero failed to mention the bombings in a speech just hours following the explosions.

The situation continued to worsen. After the Socialists and its leftist parliamentary allies finally approved the talks proposal, 53 people were injured when an ETA car bomb exploded in Madrid. ETA celebrated Spanish Constitution Day in December 2005 by detonating five bombs along Madrid highways. And over the last 12 days ETA has set off three bombs targeting Basque companies.

Unfortunately, Zapatero’s willingness to dialogue with ETA and Batasuna has precipitated other threats to Spanish unity. A Catalan statute of autonomy has recently caused Spaniards to fear the possibility of eventual Catalan independence. Why, Catalan separatists undoubtedly wonder, should we stop at partial autonomy when the Spanish government is willing to engage in negotiations with ETA?

After the parliamentary resolution allowing negotiations with ETA was passed, the Conservatives accused Zapatero of “betraying the dead.” Some 850,000 Spaniards agreed when they took to the streets of Madrid to protest. Victims of ETA attacks and their relatives held signs reading “No negotiations in my name.” Zapatero was unmoved. However, after the violent protests by Muslims over the Danish cartoons, the prime minister was affected enough to write an op-ed for the International Herald Tribune calling on the West to be more sensitive.

On Saturday, Zapatero once again dismissed the concerns of the hundreds of thousands demonstrating against his policies and stated they should not adopt the tone of the Conservative opposition. It seems that terrorists and their supporters are the only ones who really know how to earn his attention—through violence.

BTBTTSA

2006-03-22T00:42:00.000-08:00

Otherwise known as the "Bomb Them Back To The Stone Age" doctrine. It is mentioned favorably in this excellent piece by John Derbyshire, aka Andrew Sullivan's crush. Derbyshire writes:

Postwar Germany and Japan were wrecked societies to which we had applied the “Bomb Them Back To The Stone Age” doctrine (hereinafter BTBTTSA) that Rich (Lowry) sneers at elsewhere in his article. The allies in the wars against Napoleon did not have BTBTTSA available to them, but French revolutionary imperialism had been defeated — twice! — as thoroughly as it could have been. And the case that Iraq is not Vietnam has been made so many times, it does not bear repeating.

(Why, by the way, does Rich sneer at BTBTTSA? Does he think that some other policy would have brought democracy to Germany and Japan? It is true, as he says, that we did not employ that doctrine against North Vietnam. There were excellent reasons for that, though — this was the Cold War, and the USSR was North Vietnam’s patron. Suppose we had employed BTBTTSA against North Vietnam? Does Rich think that the Vietnam War could not have been won by BTBTTSA methods? I am sure it could have; I think any war could be won by BTBTTSA. At this point in history, the American people would not tolerate a BTBTTSA strategy; but we tolerated it in the past, and might again in the future. Why does Rich scoff at THWTHs for the “instinctive favor” we display towards BTBTTSA? It is, as Japan and Germany showed, a most efficacious war-fighting strategy, surely deserving the favor of anyone who thinks seriously about war.

I can hear the claps from the Ayn Rand Institute now. Just last week, I heard its president, Dr. Yaron Brook, speak at UCLA. He expressed frustration over the Bush Administration's concern for building a democratic Iraq. Our only goal, Brook said, should be to utterly destroy our enemies. If that means dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran (he wasn't sure about the necessity of going that far), so be it.

The ultimate fate of Muslims doesn't much bother Derbyshire either, provided they don't kill us in mass numbers. As he puts it: "...the spectacle of Middle Eastern Muslims slaughtering each other is one that I find I can contemplate with calm composure." Derbyshire believes that very soon most thoughtful neo-cons will outgrow their fanciful notions of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East and embrace a more "Jacksonian" foreign policy. No more wars tainted with naive idealism, thank you very much. Henceforth, only military engagements with strictly punitive or monitory goals.

Oddly, I hear a lot of liberals supporting this line of thinking. "If we are going to fight the war, then let's at least go all out," they tell me. Granted, these remarks are made confidentially in personal conversations. I don't anticipate Nancy Pelosi making a press conference any time soon demanding that we start "bombing mosques if the bastards are holed up inside." But I do think that the French/cartoon/fill in the blank riots are starting to wake people up to the fact that we need to be a tad more ruthless in this war. Victor Davis Hanson has written on this in the past, saying that it is a good thing for our enemies to think we might be a little nuts.

So I agree with a lot of what Derbyshire has to say, but I think he underestimates the ability of the Muslim world to join the free and modern one. It will happen--especially if we help.

Kicking Footballs Not Allowed

2006-03-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Back in January I wrote a piece on parenting, or the lack thereof, for the Los Angeles Daily News. The phenomeon of parents trying so hard to be their children's best friends should be worrisome to us all. As I said then:

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that parents are acting more and more childish at a time when they are striving so hard to become their children's best friends. The tragic irony is that precious childhood seems to have been replaced by premature adulthood. To put it another way: Our kids are losing their innocence all too soon.

What's to blame for this?

In a 2004 City Journal essay titled "Who Killed Childhood?" Theodore Dalrymple observed that "overindulgence in the latest fashions, toys, or clothes, and a television in the bedroom are regarded as the highest - indeed only - manifestations of tender concern for a child's welfare." This trend reached its apogee late last year with a $10 million bat mitzvah for the daughter of a New York defense contractor, at which performers such as Don Henley, Aerosmith and 50 Cent performed.

What happens when children are given everything their little hearts desire? When the only boundaries they are aware of are those they cross on a summer trip to Europe? When they never hear the word "no" or have to utter the word "please"?

I see the answer every day in the classroom: Children with no self-control and an appalling lack of respect for others. Their outward show of defiance is usually a subconscious plea for structure in their lives.

Of course, too much structure is a recipe for disaster as well. Ellen Scolnic discovered that after an incident on the playground at her son's elementary school:

I forgot the incident until a few weeks later when a large packet arrived in Andy's backpack. Evidently, committees had been formed, irate parents alerted, and the expert assistance of psychologists, counselors, and administrators enlisted. Eight pages of "Recess Rules for Appropriate Behavior" were written, copied, folded, and sent home with every child. It lay on my kitchen table staring at me, daring me to stick my tongue out and sneer back at it...

So you can understand my skepticism as I opened the packet of rules for recess behavior. Sure enough, the first page was a thorough outline of what would happen to pint-size offenders. After the punishments came the rules. Pages and pages of detailed instructions on how to play:
"On the swings, don't swing too high. Don't walk in front of swings. Don't share swings. Do not kick footballs. When playing soccer, the ball may not be kicked in the air. Do not head or throw the soccer ball."

Do not make up any games yourselves, I added to myself. Imagination is forbidden. You are only 7 years old.

Forbidding childhood pleasures is another reason why children are losing their innocence at an all too early age.

Anti-War Protest in Hollywood

2006-03-18T17:39:00.000-08:00

Welcome Michelle Malkin and Instapundit readers. I hope you'll stay for a moment and have a look around.

My wife took these photos at Hollywood and Highland today. The protest was coordinated by A.N.S.W.E.R. I don't think any words are necessary to convey the level of thought on display.

More from Hollywood

2006-03-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

And More

2006-03-18T16:56:00.000-08:00

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More pictures from Hollywood.

Unveiling a Professor's Radicalism

2006-03-17T23:49:00.000-08:00

My latest piece for FrontPageMagazine can be found here.

Update: I wonder if Professor LeVine (that's a capital "V", thank you very much) would find the "Iran Freedom Concert" at Harvard University to be as inflamatory as the cartoon unveiling at UC-Irvine.

Roman

2006-03-16T15:56:00.000-08:00

Please don't miss the latest gem by Sue Diaz. You'll be left speechless when you're done, I promise. Just a sample:

That's not to say Roman's initial 15 months as an infantryman in the Sunni Triangle were easy. No one's time in Iraq is easy - not by a long shot. But in light of "that day in December" and the region's escalating violence and instability, my son's first deployment now seems like a march in the park.

I've continued, as I did back then, to drop a card or a letter in the mail to him a couple times a week, along with an occasional care package. But the only communication we've had from his end in the months since Christmas has been a brief phone call with a bad connection, two short e-mails (one about his bank statement), and a recent late-night conversation with his dad on Instant Messenger. My husband initiated it when he noticed on his computer screen that Roman had signed in online.

"Is that you, Roman?" he typed, clicked, then waited for an answer.

Finally it came. "Hey! What's up, Pops!"

"How are you, Roman?"

"Eh, I'm alright. How are you?"

Their "hellos" behind them, a few lines later my husband asked, "Do you want or need anything from over here?"

"No, I'm good."

"How about some chicharrones or pickled pigs feet?" (Convinced, apparently, that the way to a soldier's heart is through an eclectic assortment of pork-based snack foods.)

"No, really, dad. I'm good."

"Need any extra armor?"

"No."

"Jackets?"

"No. It's going to warm up soon."

And so it went. A fatherly offer here, a quick "no" there. Interspersed with small bits of small talk about the Olympics, rumors of a recent troop visit by Jessica Simpson, and at the end, a sudden, "Dad, I gotta go."

The next morning my husband shared with me their conversation, and coupled with Roman's silence in recent months, the gist of it all seems to me to be, "Mom, Dad. For your sake and for mine right now, don't love me so much."

Never Forget

2006-03-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

Jose has it covered.

Another O.J.

2006-03-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

Don't piss him off:

Although the great national pastime has been short on heroes for years, save for Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles and a few others, Bonds’s ascension to the home-run heights is particularly distasteful. He has long been one of the surliest, most obnoxious athletes in professional sports, foul-mouthed, childish, and arrogant. He’s also a poor winner, constantly rubbing opposing pitchers’ faces in it by standing still at home plate and admiring each home-run ball as it sails over the fence.

And he’s no prince off the field. Game of Shadows quotes his mistress, Kimberly Bell, as saying she began saving her voicemail messages from Bonds after he threatened her life. She says that on one occasion when she was late meeting him for a tryst at a hotel he put his hands around her throat, put her against a wall and said, “If you ever (expletive) pull some (expletive) like that again I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

Larry Elder

2006-03-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

It was quite an honor to hear Larry Elder read my latest article on his radio program today. In case you missed it, the article can be found in the Guest Writer column on his website.

School Choice

2006-03-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

From my Orange County Register piece:

According to a recent newspaper story, tuition at some of the most elite private schools in Los Angeles County has hit $25,000.

Harvard-Westlake, the high school I graduated from in 1995, looks like a bargain by comparison at only $23,850 per student next year. Perhaps the $1,150 in savings can be given as gas money to the teenagers who have to make the journey to the Studio City campus from as far away as Malibu. Parental stories of trekking miles to school in the snow will soon be replaced by even-harder-to-believe stories like my own: driving through four different ZIP codes to get to school.

Back to School

2006-03-03T15:44:00.000-08:00

What I saw on my journey to UC-Irvine.

Reaction

2006-02-26T21:50:00.000-08:00

My friend Charlie responds to my FrontPage article:

I realized that my reaction to most of your stuff is: "well, that could be true" or "maybe that is right." Which I think is good, because most of the time you are stating the merits of a position that is the opposite of what, say, the NY Times would advocate. So it forces me in most cases to realize that I don't know enough facts to really take a position, since there are reasonable arguments on both sides. Most of the time I don't have enough interest in the specific issue to actually do the research to come to an informed decision, so I remain agnostic.

I guess what I am curious is: do you see yourself serving this function that I am talking about, or do you really strongly believe in the correctness of your specific position?

Take the Palestinians and the Israelis. Your position seems to be "well, it's in the Palestinians' hands"--they can renounce terror and stop advocating the destruction of Israel, and then there can be peace. Which is a reasonable position. Of course, it seems to me the Israelis could usefully stop doing things like building more settlements in the West Bank, which seems like needless provocation and will only prolong the lack of peace.

But maybe it goes back to your view that people are killers or not killers, good or evil, something like that. So if the Palestinians use suicide bombers, then they are evil and no amount of negotiation will ever change that: they are killers for life and should only be killed or captured.

But is this because they are using violence? What about the colonists in the American Revolution? They used violence to get their own country. Or the French Revolution? Many people have used violence in the name of getting themselves a better life. This has often included killing civilians. What about the Native Americans in the United States? Some of these people we view as terrorists and some we view as freedom fighters. What were the Viet Cong, for example? You could argue that General Sherman was a "terrorist" when he burned down the homes of Southerners in an attempt to make them give up and end the Civil War. Was he?

I guess what I am driving at is why you seem to feel pretty clear about who is in the "right" in the Pal.-Israel situation. It seems to me like both sides have stuff they need to do before there is peace, which is usually the case. Israel is sympathetic because they are in the midst of hostile countries. But they also have the strongest army by far in the region, the most advanced (I think) economy and are a democracy. They are organized in a way that the Palestinians are not. If I were them, I would be thinking: how can we get peace? Unless your plan is just to kill every Palestinian, which is not really a workable plan, then obviously you need to work something out. Maybe the Palestinians are being totally unreasonable (to the extent that they even have a government to negotiate with) but wouldn't you then have an interest in helping them to form a government? Maybe Israel is already doing this kind of stuff, I don't really know. But the stuff like the settlements has alwasy rubbed me the wrong way. It sort of seems like kicking the Pals while they are down, reminding them who is strong and who is weak, and I guess I feel that type of behavior usually comes back to bite you in the end.

Anti-Semitism

2006-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

My latest piece for FrontPageMagazine can be found here.

H-W

2006-02-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

Take it from me (class of 1995), it's not worth it:

"We all worry about the tipping point; it's a dominant subject of discussion when school leaders get together," said Thomas C. Hudnut, headmaster at Harvard-Westlake, one of L.A.'s largest private schools, where tuition next year will reach $23,850. "Twenty years ago when tuition was $4,000, we thought the tipping point would be far below what it is today. I can remember sitting with the chairman of the school finance committee in 1983 or '84 with his head in his hands, saying he couldn't believe we were going to break $5,000. It wasn't that long ago, and now we're blithely charging five times that much."

Paradise

2006-02-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

It looks like T.C. Lower has found my favorite part of Seville:

For me, perfect moments appear while I'm traveling. One such moment occurred in Seville, Spain, while I was winding down a road by a whitewashed labyrinth of homes beyond whose gates were courtyards with fountains and towering foliage.

I rounded a corner and entered what looked and smelled like paradise - a public courtyard filled with the fragrance of the orange trees lining its edges. The trees provided shade for gorgeous tropical flowers and mosaic-tiled benches where, on this particular day, I was treated to the music of a local guitarist strumming his 12-string.

I've spent hours in that very same courtyard just around the corner from the Alcazar. The perfect moments in life take place when time seems to stand still. For those of you who will never fall in love for the first time again, Seville might be the best place to help you feel "that way" again. All the more reason to fight Islamic terrorists who are intent on restoring their rule over Andalusia.

Running on empty

2006-02-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

I've long been bothered by the exercise addicts who break out into a sweat when they are prevented from working up a sweat on the treadmill. All I can tell them is : "Don't sweat it."

In Newsweek last month, Dr. Harvey Simon of the Harvard Medical School recanted a view he had preached for years: that the only way to benefit from exercise was through intense aerobic activity, complete with pounding heart and rivers of sweat. Now, citing the latest research, he says he was dead wrong, and that gentle, no-sweat exercise -- even walking or gardening -- is also highly effective.

The Nuclear Family

2006-02-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

The Orange County Register published an interesting letter today in response to my op-ed piece:

Unsung parental values

Aaron Hanscom's article, "Woe to kids without father figures" [Feb. 8], was truthful and sad. Many adults believe it's OK to pursue their own happiness - mainly at the expense of their own children - through drugs, divorce, day-care, etc.

Children need both a mother and a father in their home whose sole purpose is to raise productive members of society. That's what parents are supposed to do. Inner-city leaders and role models could help by stepping up to the plate and applauding people in their communities who are doing just that.

Julie Freese

Picking a fight

2006-02-07T15:15:00.000-08:00

Many people such as Hugh Hewitt are suggesting that the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, was looking for a fight by publishing the caricatures of Muhammad. This piece of information shows who the true instigators really were:

Keen to "globalize" the crisis to pressure the Danish government, Mr. Abu-Laban and his colleagues decided to send delegations to the Middle East. They prepared a dossier to distribute during the travels. The document, which exceeded 30 pages, featured copies of the published cartoons and Arabic media reports about the controversy. It also contained a group of highly offensive pictures that had never been published by the newspaper, including a photograph of a man dressed as a pig, with the caption: "this is the real picture of Muhammad."

August and Everything After

2006-02-05T22:39:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, everything after their 1993 debut album has been sub-par for the Counting Crows. Hopefully Adam Duritz will find the magic again:

We are definitely making a new album. This is just to clear things up. We'redefinitely going to be making an album. Many of the songs are alreadywritten. Some have already been recorded (at least preliminarily) anddiscussions have been held as to how to proceed. The holdup is me. I'm stillnot prepared to do the things I would have to do to go forward with an albumproject right now, especially one as ambitious as this. Actually, it's notthe scope of the album that presents the difficulty. That's the easyenjoyable part to be honest. I'm just not prepared to go on tour for anylength of time and I'm even less prepared to wallow in the filth of themusic business. I don't want to go away form home for any period of time. Idon't want to speak to anyone in the press. I certainly don't want to readabout myself in the press. And, as I said, I don't want to spend any timeamong the disappointment and (unavoidable) disillusionment of the recordbusiness. At least for a little while. It wouldn't be healthy for me right now.

2006-02-03T15:56:00.002-08:00

An excellent point made in the Wall Street Journal today:

It's also important to consider the effect that a nuclear Iran would have on the potential for a democratic Iran. Its nuclear project is often portrayed as a matter of national prestige, the implication being that any strike against it would rally the regime's domestic opponents to its side. What Iranian dissidents tell us is closer to the opposite. A nuclear Iran would enhance the mullahs' sense of invulnerability and facilitate domestic repression.

Sexual fluidity

2006-02-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

Ancient Greece and prison(and Jake and Heath kissing on screen) prove that women aren't the only ones who have it:

If you ask the girls why they think there’s more teenage bisexual experimentation happening today, Alair is quick with an explanation. “I blame television,” she says. “I blame the media.” She’s partly joking, giving the stock answer. But there’s obviously some truth to it. She’s too young to remember a time when she couldn’t turn on Showtime or even MTV and regularly see girls kissing girls. It’s not simply that they’re imitating what they’ve seen, it’s that the stigma has been erased, maybe even transformed into cachet. “It’s in the realm of possibilities now,” as Ritch Savin-Williams puts it. “When you don’t think of it as being a possibility, you don’t do it. But now that it’s out there, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, that could be fun.’ ” Of course, sexy TV shows would have no impact at all if they weren’t tapping into something more innate. Perhaps, as research suggests, sexuality is more fluid for women than it is for men. Perhaps natural female intimacy opens the door to sexual experimentation at an age when male partners can be particularly unsatisfying.