Commentary Magazine

Posts For: April 1, 2012

Iran Lists War Aims Against Israel

| @mrubin1971 04.01.2012 - 3:30 PM

Last year, I visited Mlitta, a town in southern Lebanon which Hezbollah has turned into its version of an evil Disneyworld. One of the displays featured huge poster boards sporting Google Earth images of “the next targets.”

In his Alef article, Ali Reza Forqani, an ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader, goes further. After justifying a war against Israel, Ali Reza Forqani delves into how Iran should conduct its war:

Israel must come under heavy military strikes from the first blows until the last. The first step of the first stage of Iran’s military attack on Israel must lead to the annihilation of ground zero points in Israel. Iran can use its long-range missiles to accomplish this task. The distance from Iran’s eastern most point to western most point of Israel is about 2,600 kilometers. The Israeli targets deep inside Israeli territory are well within the reach of Iran’s conventional missiles.

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The Never-Dying Post 9-11 Backlash Myth

| @tobincommentary 04.01.2012 - 2:38 PM

Those determined to portray the life of American Muslims as a never-ending series of officially inspired torments have always confronted a basic problem: there is no tangible evidence that there is any wave of oppression that has reduced followers of Islam to second-class citizen status. Nor has there ever been. FBI crime statistics continue to show anti-Muslim hate cries dwarfed by those linked to Jew-hatred. Even when the mainstream media takes up the subject and treats the truth of this assertion as self-evident, such as last August’s TIME magazine cover story that asked “Does America Have a Muslim Problem?” the authors had to admit that all they can come up with to back their claim were anecdotes.

But that doesn’t stop those determined to force the country to repent of its supposed sins. The latest example is a blog post from New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal that is breathtaking in its lack of intellectual integrity. While readers of his editorial page are accustomed to outrageous hyperbole delivered in the Times’ trademark tone of condescension, Rosenthal appears to have no limits in the depths of absurdity he is willing to plumb on behalf of his cause. Rosenthal not only hypes the post-9/11 myth, but goes so far as to assert that the United States has now established a “separate justice system” for Muslims. His proof: the fact that the New York City Police Department conducted a program of surveillance on mosques and community groups where Islamists were suspected to congregate. Oh and don’t forget Guantanamo Bay, which the Times editor describes as a “special detention center for Muslims.” So intent is Rosenthal on proving that America is hostile to Muslims that it seems to have slipped his mind the only reason the NYPD or the federal government is somewhat concerned about radical Muslims is because Islamist groups attacked the United States.

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Yale Should Stand Up to Feds and Stop Babying Students

| @mrubin1971 04.01.2012 - 12:10 PM

Yale University and its sister universities have grown increasingly paternalistic over time, infantilizing their student body and saddling them with increasing regulation. Litigiousness has led the university to take the concept of in loco parentis to an extreme. Few universities any more allow the faculty to create policies. Just as university presidents have become fundraisers rather than intellectual leaders, university policies are now crafted in rapidly expanding general counsel shops. Lost is both a culture of accountability that allows students to fail or that hold students responsible for their own stupidity and also a culture that prizes individual freedom and liberty.

A little encouragement from the federal government can be a dangerous thing: A bit over a year ago, some fraternity pledges shouted silly things in front of Yale’s Women’s Center. Their words were stupid, but so too was the Yale Women’s Center’s response which, in effect, sought to criminalize speech—a truly noxious concept at any university. The Women’s Center’s response surprised no one: For decades, the group has marginalized itself by conflating women’s issues with leftism and then staking out positions which even many progressives would find extreme.

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Obama’s Push to Fund UNESCO is No Joke

| @tobincommentary 04.01.2012 - 11:33 AM

Even amidst the flurry of overt philo-Semitism that is the hallmark of President Obama’s election year Jewish charm offensive, some remnants of his less appealing foreign policy stands persist. One such anomaly is the administration campaign to restore American funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). U.S. law required Obama to cut off UNESCO after it admitted the Palestinian Authority as a full voting member of the group as part of the Arab effort to make an end run around the Middle East peace process. The Palestinian push for recognition of their independence without first making peace with Israel fizzled, but the president’s ardent love for the UN and its constituent agencies made him regret the fact that he was obligated to punish UNESCO.

There is little chance that Congress will amend the law so as to allow the flow of U.S. taxpayer cash to resume. But those supporting such a move got a boost recently when Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” did a segment intended to spoof the cutoff. The satire complimented UNESCO’s own efforts to persuade Americans that they are a collection of non-political do-gooders whose efforts are being hampered. But as Claudia Rosett writes in an important piece in The Weekly Standard, the truth about UNESCO is a familiar story for those who follow the world of international non-governmental organizations. The corruption of the agency and, in particular, its efforts in the African nation of Gabon (which was the focus of “The Daily Show’s” skits), serves as a warning of how the world body wastes American money intended for charitable purposes.

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Obama, Afghanistan and Life’s Vicissitudes

| @Peter_Wehner 04.01.2012 - 11:10 AM

When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he made some ambitious promises about Afghanistan. Under his leadership, we would see the Karzai government reform, greater allied support, a growing economy, improved training among Afghan security forces, a reversal in a deteriorating situation, and eventually success.

“Just as we succeeded in the Cold War by supporting allies who could sustain their own security,” Obama said in a 2008 speech, “we must realize that the 21st century’s frontlines are not only on the field of battle – they are found in the training exercise near Kabul, in the police station in Kandahar, and in the rule of law in Herat.”

So now that we are well more than three years into the Obama presidency, where do things stand?

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Emma Thompson Illustrates Beinart’s Slippery Slope on Boycotts

| @tobincommentary 04.01.2012 - 10:40 AM

Friends of Israel have been able to take some satisfaction in the fact that Peter Beinart’s intellectually vapid attempt to promote what he has the temerity to call “Zionist BDS” (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against the Jewish state has been panned by liberals as well as conservatives across the political spectrum. Few outside of the far left have been convinced by his call for a boycott of Jews who live in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem so as to save Israel from itself and bring about Middle East peace. Unlike the foolish Beinart, most Americans — like the overwhelming majority of Israelis — understand the obstacle to a resolution to the conflict comes from the Palestinians’ inability to make peace with a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.

All this eludes Beinart, but the writer, who has assumed the pose of the self-appointed conscience of American Jewry, also misses another key point. He fails to comprehend that his distinction between boycotts of the settlements and of the rest of the country inside the green line (which he tells us he loves passionately) is not one that the rest of the world is necessarily going to respect. As Oscar-winning actress and writer Emma Thompson proved this week, efforts to stigmatize West Bank Jews have a curious habit of morphing into boycotts of other Israelis, including those who, like Beinart, are not part of the settlement project.

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Is Justice Breyer a Swing Vote?

| @jpundit 04.01.2012 - 9:50 AM

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli was criticized by Obamacare supporters for failing, during his oral argument, to articulate a “limiting principle” on congressional power under the Commerce Clause — because he must have known the justices would ask for one. But Elena Kagan couldn’t answer the question two years ago; prominent Harvard and Georgetown professors couldn’t answer it a year ago; last year, the government conceded the lack of a limiting principle. The problem is a little deeper than Verrilli’s presentation.

The point was demonstrated again in the colloquy Justice Breyer had with Michael A. Carvin. Carvin noted that if Congress exceeded its power under the Commerce Clause, the law “doesn’t somehow become redeemed because it has beneficial policy effects in the health care market.” That would mean Congress could compel everyone to buy anything if Congress thought it beneficial, since “every compelled purchase promotes commerce.” Justice Kagan started to ask a question, but Breyer initiated a long colloquy with Carvin (Transcript, pp. 85-90), which ended as follows:

JUSTICE BREYER: … then the question is when you are born and you don’t have insurance and you will in fact get sick and you will in fact impose costs, have you perhaps involuntarily — perhaps simply because you are a human being — entered this particular market, which is a market for health care?

MR. CARVIN: If being born is entering the market, then I can’t think of a more plenary power Congress can have, because that literally means they can regulate every human activity from cradle to grave. I thought that’s what distinguished the plenary police power from the very limited commerce power. I don’t disagree that giving the Congress plenary power to mandate property transfers from A to B would be a very efficient way of helping B and of accomplishing Congress’s objectives. But the framers –

JUSTICE BREYER: I see the point. You can go back to, go back to Justice Kagan. Don’t forget her question. [Emphasis added].

JUSTICE KAGAN: I’ve forgotten my question. (Laughter).

MR. CARVIN: I — I was facing the same dilemma, Justice Kagan.

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Recognizing Kurdish Genocide Will Have Repercussions

| @mrubin1971 04.01.2012 - 9:30 AM

Almost a quarter-century after Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to utilize chemical weapons against Iraq’s Kurdish population, the Kurdistan Regional Government and many in the Kurdish Diaspora are gearing up to demand that the international community recognize the Kurdish genocide. The broader Anfal campaign—of which the bombing of Halabja was just the apex—was certainly ethnic cleansing, but if the Kurdish government succeeds broadly in gaining international recognition of genocide in which up to 182,000 Kurds died, then the repercussions may be wider than it would like.

After all, less than a decade later, Masud Barzani—the president of Iraqi Kurdistan—allied himself with Saddam Hussein and allowed the Iraqi dictator’s tanks and storm troopers into his capital in a devil’s bargain to liquidate his opposition. Saddam’s storm troopers also used Barzani’s open door to hunt down and summarily execute several hundred other Iraqi oppositionists who had escaped his thumb and settled in Kurdistan.

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