Boris Johnson Steps Down as Editor of The Spectator

Conservative MP and all around good guy Boris Johnson has stepped down today as the editor of the Spectator, a magazine that only improved under his leadership. Johnson steps down to join new Conservative leader David Cameron's shadow cabinet, as shadow minister for education.

While American conservatives have had their differences with the Spectator of late, there is no doubt that it is, on balance, the best and most well written magazine of opinion in the English language. And while I certainly did not agree with everything Johnson wrote or said, it has to be admitted that it was always written or said well. In this day and age, that is saying something indeed. I encourage you to subscribe on-line if you are at all able. I'm happy to be able to report that Johnson's affiliation with the Spectator will continue, as a columnist.

Best of luck to Johnson on the front benches. The often dreary debate over the crucial issue of education could certainly use a man of Johnson's calibre.

ElBaradei's IAEA: Not the Enemy

Charles Johnson over at the indispensible Little Green Footballs posts today regarding Mohamed ElBaradei's upcoming acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize and labels him a "blind, toothless nuclear watchdog."

While I certainly agree that ElBaradei's IAEA has not done as good a job with regard to Iran as I might wish, I cannot agree with Charles' characterization in this regard. Given the state of world opinion on this issue, which is largely negative thanks to our now completely discredited intelligence record in connection with weapons of mass distruction, and given that the IAEA serves many masters, most of whom do not share the United States' view of the Iranian situation, I am actually surprised that ElBaradei has been able to keep his eye on the ball as much as he has.

The only thing that I can conclude about the IAEA's continued hawkishness on the Iranian issue is that there exists--behind the scenes--a widely shared view among the world's power about the dangerousness of an Iranian bomb. This is very good news for the U.S., for Israel and for the world.

Of course, these other powers (who one suspects includes the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, India and, probably, China) are more than willing to let the U.S. stand alone out front since they have calculated that, given our national interest in the matter, we can do no less. So, once again, the U.S. carries water for the "international community" As has by now become depressingly customary, we will be expected to act and take all the blame for acting and will all the while be the target of intense criticism by those counting on us to save the day.

I understand that is frustrating. I also understand that the Nobel committee clearly gave the IAEA the "peace" award as a slap against the United States.

But none of that is ElBaradei's fault or doing. If one looks at the quotes themselves, they clearly acknowledge that Iran is a major problem. That is good, not bad. Shouldn't we be immensely grateful that the weekly parade of bad news from Iran is from the IAEA and not the U.S. Administration? Wasn't it ElBaradei himself who just a few weeks ago acknowledged that the Iranians are about 4 months from a bomb once they start processing uranium?

Those positions, laid out by an agency that is not seen internationally as one beholden to a discredited President, are remarkably helpful for us in rallying international opinion to our side on this issue.

According to the report Charles sets forth, ElBaradei had the following comments:

The 63-year-old Egyptian dismissed notions that the IAEA has been too lenient with Iran.

"I'm not sure we are showing restraint, I think we are doing a full court press, if you like, on Iran," ElBaradei said.

"As long as we are moving forward, as long as we haven't seen an imminent threat, a smoking gun, I don't see what other alternatives we have, frankly. ... I think the best alternative today is inspections, to be on the ground and unearth the facts," ElBaradei said.

Given the climate created by our failure with regard to WMD in Iraq, this is about the best we can hope for at this stage. To the extent we're unhappy about this, we've only ourselves to blame.

More and more, given the leaks, the damange, the Beltway insurgency, the ridiculously over-wrought intelligence, it is beginning to seem to me that before putting the United Nations in order we first need to put the Central Intelligence Agency in order.

NOTE: What's with an Egyptian like ElBaradei using an expression like "full-court press"? That's about as American as they come, isn't it?

Possible answer: He did attend graduate school at the University of New York and has been stationed in New York now for many years. It would be interesting to know if he is, in fact, a basketball fan or just picked up this expression through exposure.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Secretary of State Condi Rice has been explaining patiently to any and all who will listen to her that the United States does not have a policy allowing it to torture detainees held pursuant to our prosecution of the War on Terror.

For example, today after a NATO meeting, the Foreign Minister of Belgium said that Rice assured him and his colleagues "that at no time did the United States agree to inhumane acts or torture, that they have always respected the sovereignty of the states concerned and even if terrorists are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, they have still applied the principles governing those Geneva Conventions."

So, what does the headline say over at National Public Radio?

RICE DEFENDS TORTURE POLICY

Note to NPR:

There

Is

No

Torture

Policy

Why the Republicans never de-funded an outmoded leftish clique like NPR is beyond me.

Imagine the wailing if liberal tax money partially supported Fox News.

Actually, now that I think about it that would be pretty good revenge. And let's make sure Rush Limbaugh gets that Daniel Schorr "commentator" role.

Debate Over: "Torture" Finally Defined

A lot of the debate over the use of torture has occurred in the Blogosphere and the MSM without any of the participants defining the term. A prime example of this behavior is new-MSM member and Time contributor Andrew Sullivan, who, so far as I can tell, defines torture as "anything that makes me feel a bit icky about my country and its values." Since "torture" has come to mean "stuff I don't agree with," the debate is really about what we should do with captured terrorists in a war that transcends borders and in which the enemy doesn't wear a uniform.

Fortunately, however, the United Nations, in no less a personage than the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Louise Arbour, has finally said straight out what constitutes torture under international human rights law:

Holding prisoners incommunicado in itself amounts to torture.

That's right. The simple fact that prisoners are held and denied contact with the outside world is torture. Forget pulling off fingernails, clamping electrodes on body parts, the rack. That stuff you thought was torture is way, way beyond the pale. The fact that the terrorist doesn't get his phone call, well, that's torture.

So, now we know what the critics mean. Anything that falls short of "criminal suspect" status will be defined as torture. Anything the Bush Administration does to fight what Ms. Arbour so telling refers to as the "so-called" War on Terrorism that is in line with traditional war fighting methods will be called "torture."

I know Ms. Arbour is a former Canadian Supreme Court justice and, as such, is used to being able to conjure up on her own without any support of tradition, common law or statute, new "norms" that are inviolable, but the breathtaking arrogance on display here is astounding.

This low dishonesty continues the devastatingly harmful trend of liberal politicians dressing up their personal policy opinions with the force of law, under the guise of human rights, in an attempt to foreclose opposition to their views and to, literally, make any such opposition illegal. This sad process, carried out with gusto by the Soros foundations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and a whole host of other NGOs and UN agencies whose stances are really nothing more than liberal political policy prescriptions dressed up, does nothing but harm the cause of securing human rights by turning the phrase into nothing more than a synonym for "liberal/left politics."

This, Mr. Sullivan, is why we reject your hysterical stance. We're not pro-torture. We're against defining "torture" in such a way as to force the President to fight an essential war in such a manner as to make victory impossible.

This attempt to paint supporters of the President's lawful conduct of the war to date as supporters of torture is contemptible.

The only good news out of this announcement by the U.N. was our ambassador's response to it. Said Amb. Bolton:

"Today is Human Rights Day. It would be appropriate, I think, for the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights to talk about the serious human rights problems that exist in the world today," Bolton told reporters. "It is disappointing that she has chosen to talk about press commentary about alleged American conduct. I think the secretary of state has fully and completely addressed the substance of the allegations, so I won't go back into that again other than to reaffirm that the United States does not engage in torture."

He added: "I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers."

Of course it would take courage to attack Cuba, Zimbabwe and Burma. Better to put that much-admired Canadian courage to work and attack the United States. That's a sure-fire winner in Ontario, every time. It's cost-free, routine and makes the Canucks feel all warm and fuzzy about themselves.

It's high past time our government started standing up for itself, don't you think?

Tuesday Morning Quick Notes (on Wednesday)

As has probably been obvious, we've had a few technical difficulties in the past 36 hours or so. First, Blogger went down altogether, then some of my posts were infected with a text type problem that resulted in apostrophes and quotation marks coming across as some sort of demented Euro sign, then I was unable to post at all for a bit. It appears now that the ship has been righted. (Note: The post below on the ACLU's latest loss to the Bush Administration has been restored to proper format, please do scroll down and read it). To celebrate, I now present Tuesday's Quick Notes, a day late and a Euro short:

-- The President dispatched his SecState to Europe to try to mend fences. It appears that all this has done is make matters worse, as Secretary Rice's comments have sparked derision and outright disbelief from Ireland to Germany to France to Greece. This further proves the maxim that Bush Can't Win: should he remain quiet in the face of the charges, he stands guilty, should he challenge the charges, his very defense is dismissed out of hand as being obviously out-of-touch with the reality that he is guilty.

The only proper response is to respond with the contempt such anti-American views deserve and for the U.S. to conduct itself as any other power would if similarly outraged, i.e. go on the offensive. Why shouldn't the Secretary of State challenge members of the Left Party in Germany with their horrific human rights record? Why shouldn't she mock them? However, our institutional culture prevents us from taking such a stand. So, we give the same boring speeches. We fight, both politically and militarily, with one arm behind our back, and, under present rules, doomed to lose.

The answer: create new rules. Remember the Kobiyashi Maru!

-- It is impossible to over-state the disaster that is occurring in Europe with regard to the European public's view of the United States. Make no mistake: we are seen by most as human rights violators, international law violators, war-mongers and criminals. In war, perception is all, and we have lost the battle. Only a radical change in direction in U.S. leadership and policy can correct this.

This is unfair and unjust, but it also simply is.

-- The best way forward would be to give Europe what it wants, i.e. drawing down U.S. troops, winding down Iraq, signing on to European-led multi-lateral initiatives, etc. At the same time, the U.S. should conserve its own strength for the battle that is to come, while doing what it can to prepare the terrain politically. In other words, a shift from leading a world to war that it does not believe in to a Churchillian/Rooseveltian opposition, ready to re-assume leadership of a then-united West after the disaster comes.

At times this approach strikes me as over-clever, but given the hardening of public attitudes in the West-where about 50% of the American public strongly oppose the War on Terror and about 80% of the publics in the rest of the West-no other course appears possible to me at this time. A war with such levels of support is bound to be a disaster.

In a world where the U.S. has become to appear to be the problem and not the solution, I don't see how anything else can help.

-- In a major speech, Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin asserted that "[t]he rule of law requires judges to uphold unwritten constitutional norms, even in the face of clearly enacted laws or hostile public opinion." So, really, this whole election of Parliament thing going on right now in Canada is just an empty gesture. To save time and money, Parliament should just be abandoned in favor of CJ McLachlin and her colleagues, who would then wisely rule according to unwritten norms demanded by social justice.

-- It is an event everyone who has been through Navy boot camp has gone through: witnessing the horrific film of the disaster on the deck of the USS Forestal (aka the USS Forest Fire) that occurred after a missle was accidentally unleashed top side. One image that has stayed with me was of the lucky pilot of the plane hit by the missle, who got out of the cockpit and off the nose of the plane just in time.

And who was that pilot? Wikipedia fills me in: "The impact ruptured the fuel tank on his aircraft, the leaking fuel instantly ignited, and knocked a bomb into the fire. McCain escaped from his jet by climbing out of the cockpit, walking down to the nose of the plane, and jumping off the nose boom. A minute and a half after the impact, the bomb exploded underneath the plane, starting a major fire which killed 134 sailors and nearly threatened to destroy the ship."

That would be Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

-- Agustin Mackinlay had a good post the other day commenting on a New York Times article about women's rights in Islamic families in Germany that bears repeating:

Hatun Surucu, 23 anos, muere asesinada en Berlin a manos de ... su hermano. Su crimen? Escaparse de la carcel del matrimonio forzado, una practica comun en los paises musulmanes. Son iguales todas las civilizaciones? Funciona el "multi-culturalismo"? Vale la pena defender nuestros principios judeo-cristianos? Que dicen los auto-denominados "progresistas"?

Translation: Hatun Surucu, 23-years old, was murdered in Berlin at the hands of....her brother. Her crime? Escaping the virtual jail of forced marriage, a common practice in Islamic countries. So, all civilizations are equal? Is this how multi-culturalism works? Who will defend our Judeo-Christian values? What do those who call themselves "progressive" have to say?

It's a good question. One to which the silence in response is deafening. Apparently, the women's rights discourse is only helpful insofar as it advances a line of attack on the West and its values.

-- Speaking of a ringing endorsement of Western values, I caught EuroTrip on television last night. I've always felt guilty about liking that film, until I ran across Mark Steyn's review. As always, the Great One is spot on. And any film featuring a double-decker London bus on the wrong side of the freeway in France while its soccer hooligan occupants shout at the "Fooking Frogs" to get "on the right side of the road" can't be all bad.

-- Further to EuroTrip, later in the film, Michelle Tractenberg's character is reading a French newspaper in the background of one scene. The headline:

"Merde Alors! L'Hooligans!"

Priceless.

-- It's official. Civ IV is an evil, evil game. It's destroying my life, taking over my spare time, making me think about whether or not I should declare war on India when I should be working. Damn you, Sid Meier!

-- Hey, look, the BCS fell in favor of east coast teams. Again. What an amazing coincidence. I suppose we're lucky that USC is recognized, though given the fact that they could probably play competitively in the NFL right now they would be hard to ignore. In any case, I'm looking forward to the Trojans defending Pac-10 honor and just running over Texas in early January. Sorry, Horns, you're out of your league. Literally.

-- New Paul Weller album (should I say "CD"?) is out and the master is back to top form. The Modfather is something else, even after all these years. Check it out.

-- David Cameron is the new Conservative leader. Make sure you catch the next Question Time, which will be Cameron's debut at the Dispatch Box. It's early days, but this young toff looks like a winner to me.

Civil Liberties Under Siege!

In my daily reviews of the world press, it strikes me as entirely amazing that a certain set of truths are almost everywhere accepted without question when it comes to the War on Terrorism and the Bush Administration. These include: that the U.S. conducts torture of what are invariably called "terrorism suspects," that the U.S. is holding these suspects without charge or any sort of judicial procedure, that there has been an immense deterioration in civil liberties in America, and that dissent everywhere is being quashed.

To us, conservative and actually in America, this all seems more than just faintly ridiculous. Despite Andrew Sullivan's best efforts, no policy of torture has ever been found to exist; the torture lobby merely either recites a list of obviously illegal abuses (Abu Ghraib! Abu Ghraib!) or pretends that coercive interrogations techniques are torture (they're left standing in the cold! Water-boarding!! Eminem records!!! Nooooooo!!!!). The combination of ignorance and pretended ignorance has, however, managed to convince a large swath of the world's population that the U.S. is torturing people on a daily basis.

The whole "suspects" things is so tiresome I barely have the energy to even speak of it again, but the use of the term is a deliberate tactic used by those who should know better to convince people that criminal suspects' rights are being infringed when, over and over and over again, the federal judiciary in this country has rightly ruled that the procedures of criminal law do not enter into the matter in the least. Enemy combatants are held because they are enemy combatants as part and parcel of the war fighting power, duly authorized by Congress and properly exercised by the President. The resulting detainees are no more "suspects" than the hundreds of thousands of Germans held by the U.S. Army in 1945-1947. Unlawful enemy combatants may be shot at will, but we've decided to hold them instead. This crowd has lost every challenge it has ever brought against the Bush Administration's handing of the war and its inevitable prisoners.

(Incidentally, that reminds me: did you hear Chris Matthews say that he was for ruthlessly tracking down the terrorists and killing them, like PM Golda Meir did after the Munich massacre? Apparently, it's okay for the President to decide which "suspects" are to be liquidated in third countries without any other country's consent-that is consistent with international law-but Matthews draws the line at doing the same thing while not killing them and merely holding them instead. I'm not sure they want your support there, Chris.)

(Speaking of Munich, Steven Spielberg says he hopes his new film helps the peace process. The script is by Tony "I Wish Israel Had Never Been Born" Kushner. I just can't wait to see the depths that self-hating moral equivalency can plumb!)

As for procedures, the same thing: the Supreme Court in Hamdi set forth an executive branch review procedure to ensure against erroneous detention and this process has gone forward smoothly. You'd be at a loss to find a MSM reporter who can tell you anything about this, however. I used to think some of this was simple ignorance and unfamiliarity with the law. However, this issue has been litigated and re-litigated so much one can only conclude that many commentators are feigning ignorance in exchange for the opportunity to continue to defame the Bush Administration.

Case in point: the American Civil Liberties Union. When the NYPD announced after the London Underground bombings that it would institute random searches in the New York subway system, the ACLU (through it's New York state branch, the NYCLU) went berserk. It marched right to District Court with all the indignation it could back with breathlessly worded fund raising letters about the death of civil rights in Bush's Amerikkka.

The result, after a full bench trial?

For the 842nd time since Sept. 11, 2001, the ACLU and the Bush-bashing left was laughed right out of the courtroom. (You can read the full decision and order here).
After hearing all the evidence, reading all the briefings, hearing all the expert testimony (interestingly, including that of Richard Clarke), and, one presumes, getting the full benefit of the ACLU's best legal talent, U.S. District Court judge Richard Berman concluded:

The Court finds that the governmental interest in preventing a terrorist bombing on New York City's subway system is vitally important, that the Container Inspection Program is effective in deterring such an attack, and the minimal intrusion entailed by subway searches is justified.

For the reasons set forth above, Plaintiff's application for a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction is denied. The Complaint is dismissed with prejudice, and the Clerk of the Court is respectfully directed to enter judgment in favor of Defendants and to close this case. (Citations omitted; emphasis added).

Yes, this is life in Bush's America: where the terrorist enemy is killed or captured, reasonable steps are taken to secure our security, all within the framework of existing law and in complete accord with our hallowed civil liberties.

But, that doesn't quite cut it for a good fund raising letter, campaign slogan or newspaper headline, does it?