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6 postings: (1) Katrina: Tsunami, NOT--The Home Front; (2) Next for Tort Titans: Scabosis?--The Home Front; (3) Roberts: Beyond the Bench?--The Home Front; (4) Grievance Grifters--The Home Front; (5) Iraq: Marginal Before March 2003?--The Home Front; (6) Barbary Botch--Classics.
Yes, Katrina's toll is awful. Yes, there are 20-feet of water in downtown New Orleans (a 3-foot shark was spotted cruising downtown), but that is because several breaches in the existing levee system let Lake Ponchartrain's waters in. Yes, damage has been done to US energy supplies (restoring supply is what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is for, not keeping gas prices down). But when Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) likened the Katrina toll to "our tsunami" she lapsed into the "First World lives are worth $1; Third World lives are worth one cent" trope. Indonesia alone lost some 160,000 killed in the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami--adjust upward per capita, the US population being 1/4 greater (300M v. 240M) , and the US equivalent loss would be 200,000 dead (the full tsunami toll was around 250,000). The US toll at this writing is in the hundreds. Absent warning the toll could indeed have been far higher. What Katrina's devastation underscores is the magnitude of the risk Big Easy took, in that if a Camille-level storm had hit dead on, there would be no city to talk about restoring--which the authorities knew well in advance would be the case.
Ex-Mayor Marc Morial: "We've Lost Our City."
Estimate of Indonesia Tsunami Dead
In the 1963 film "Soldier in the Rain" Steve McQueen plays a supply sergeant, in cahoots with his master sergeant, played by Jackie Gleason. The two concoct endless schemes to cut corners, and in one scene McQueen comes down with a mysterious illness which he christens "scabosis," to avoid doing chores. Well it seems as if the tort bar has come up with its own version: silicosis allegedly suffered by plaintiffs who had previously sued claiming asbestosis. The two diseases are real, but their combination, while not theoretically impossible, has never been verified by physicans; only tort lawyers have "found" this. A Texas judge caught a silicosis tort lawyer filching X-rays in a silicosis class action. There are, as well, stirrings in other states. Meanwhile, treasure the brief judge/lawyer exchange below, in which a plaintiff's attorney admits that he did not believe his silicosis plaintiffs ever had the asbestosis in prior cases he handled for them. Reminds me of a definition once vouchsafed to me, of a lawyer, derivative of that for a law student: "A law student is a mouse studying to be a rat."
WSJ: Silicosis Judge Nails Tort Bar
Aug. 22 Courtroom Exchange: Judge and Tort Lawyer
When Democrats try to portray Supremo-nominee John Roberts as beyond the fringe, so to speak, a useful yardstick to gauge what is off the charts is Ruth Bader Ginsburg's suggestion that Mother's and Father's sweet Sundays might better be supplanted by a "Parents Day"--the better to minimize sex-role stereotyping. Don't believe me? Herewith the quote from an article she penned: "Replacing 'Mother’s Day' and 'Father’s Day' with a 'Parents’ Day' should be considered, as an observance more consistent with a policy of minimizing traditional sex-based differences in parental roles."
The last Beltway denizen to have such heretical thoughts about ancestors was ex-Nixon honcho Chuck Colson, who once said that he would "run over his grandmother to re-elect the President." He never did, but his quip generated one of the funnier 1972 Art Buchwald columns, in which Colson explains to his grandma that it will be over quickly, won't hurt too much and it is all for a good cause. Re Ginsburg, NRO's Ed Whelan has the exact quote and some apt thoughts.
Whelan: Ginsburg's Holiday Stance
In a sterling essay former Education czar William Bennett takes on the "grievences" argument raised to explain Muslim rage, likening it to the "black rage" defense that Norman Mailer and others made popular as an excuse for black-on-white crime. He writes:
"Churchill and Roosevelt took the war to the enemy, they didn't ask their leaders about their grievance-their countries had heard them loudly and clearly enough, through their actions. But, what our countries today do not hear loudly and clearly enough, is the call of the rightness (if not righteousness) of their own cause. We have replaced what Lincoln called our "political religion"-our dedication to knowing the causes of equality and liberty upon which we were founded-with a politics of religion, and race, and nationality, and culture. We have elevated individual grievances, ethnic thumb sucking and hundreds-year-old resentments and envy above our mutual protection and our commonweal, a word you do not hear much anymore."
Bennett blames the deterioration of education and the consequent mass ignorance of history and culture, a problem Britain has, as Tony Blair noted last month. The full essay is one to savor.
Bennett: The Cost of Ignoring History
Francis Fukuyama, prolific author and deep thinker of the highest order, has an op-ed today in which he lambastes 43 for going to war against a country marginally involved, at best, in the 9/11 attacks. It is not his best writing. Fukuyama blames an alliance of neo-conservatives and the "pugnacious isolationism" of Jacksonian Americans--author Walter Russell Mead's term for realist tough guys--for the war, and blames us for not working with our traditional allies.
What's missing here? Start with continental "old" Europe showing no serious signs of wanting to prosecute a broad war against terrorists--law and courts were its weapons of choice. Next, add the 9/11 Commission, striving for consensus, understating links between al-Qai'da and Iraq (Edward Morrissey's piece in the The Weekly Standard updates the tally). Recall a 2/11/99 e-mail from counter-terror czar Richard Clarke to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, warning about Pakistan tipping off UBL if the US planned to bomb Afghanistan camps: "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad." But there is more.
Bio-weapons expert Richard A. Spertzel, who headed the Iraq inspection bio-weapons team for UNSCOM (the original inspectors sent by the UN before 1998), testified to Congress Dec. 5 2001. He stated that the likely culprit in the anthrax attacks of September & October 2001 had help from some state with great expertise; the particles were finer than anything developed in the Soviet or US program, or known for the Iraqi program. But we did not know all about the Iraqi program (from a top defector, we knew the USSR program). Worse, the FBI's fixation on an anthrax Unabomber prematurely dried up avenues of potentially fruitful inquiry. We still do not know who did it, but Iraq is one of the few states with both the expertise plus a motive.
Which leaves the question: Where did the 9/11 hijackers receive the detailed training necessary to storm and commandeer a commercial plane? Iraq had a mock airliner at Salman Pak, and the expertise to train terrorists to do this. Al-Qai'da had never done anything like this before; their pre-9/11 attacks were car bombs, boat bombs and human bombs. If Salman Pak was not where they learned how to storm a cockpit, where did they get the training? The 9/11 panel is silent on this.
The 9/11 panel finessed the contacts issue by saying that there was no "collaborative" relationship between Iraq and al-Qai'da. They did not deny a relationship existed. And now the trail is cold. Thus the "Iraq was marginal" position likely gets a permanent free ride.
Fukuyama: Invasion of the Isolationists
Morrissey: Iraq Contacts with al-Qai'da
York on NRO: 9/111 Panel & Iraq
Spertzel Anthrax Testimony
FBI Turned Off Avenues of Investigation
Author Richard Zacks tells in The Pirate Coast (Hyperion 2005) the full story of America's first post-independence foreign war, the clash with the Barbary pirates, 1803-05. The tale would make for a terrific movie, if a non-politicized Hollywood film-maker without a political axe to grind could be found to make it. With today's Tinseltown, do not hold your breath.
The tale has more twists and turns than a brief blog can recount. Suffice it to say that in 1803 Thomas Jefferson decided America should end extortion by Barbary marauders--plying the Mediterranean from their havens in what today are Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Pirates even raided Italian towns to collect slaves. On one such raid in 1798 they collected a pretty 12-year-old girl named Anna Porcile. Her father went from door to door seeking aid in her recovery, whilst her virtue was still intact. He found a caring soul in William Eaton, who in 1801 manned the US consulate in Tunisia. Which led to Jefferson sending a mini-fleet to compel the pasha of Tripoli to give Anna back. Eventually, she was ransomed, her virtue intact.
Then a US ship, sent to coerce Barbary compliance, ran aground, and 300 Americans were taken hostage for what proved to be 19 months. Eaton led an intrepid expedition to free the brother of the piratical pasha. But in the end a diplomat-appeaser, one Tobias Lear, sold America's heroes out, negotiating a treaty with secret provisions calling for an indemnity paid the pasha, plus a sell-out of the pasha's brother, whose family was held several years after the treaty was signed despite assurance from the Americans that such would not happen. President Jefferson, alas, approved the secret cave-in. Not his finest hour.
It remained for Navy legend Stephen Decatur, who burned the captured ship Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor in 1805, to redeem America's honor by thrashing the pirates after his star turn in the War of 1812. Decatur refused ransom for ten Christian captives, collected damages for past wrongs and captured the flagship of the Bey of Algiers.
The author gives two priceless quotes from hero William Eaton. In the first, Eaton neatly contrasts the pasha that Lear capitulated to with the pasha's brother, whom Eaton marched with: "If parricide, fratricide, treason, perfidy...and systematic piracy [give guarantees] of good faith, Mr. Lear has chosen the fittest of the two brothers." Then in a note to the naval commander who evacuated him from Tripoli, Eaton wrote: "In a few minutes more, we shall lose sight of this devoted city,...thrown from proud success and elated prospects into an abyss of hopeless wretchedness.--Six hours ago the enemy were seeking safety from them by flight--this moment we drop them from ours into the hands of this enemy for no other crime but too much confidence in us! The man whose fortune we have accompanied thus far experiences a reverse as striking--He falls from the most flattering prospects of a Kingdom to beggary." Alas, for his troubles Eaton was humiliated upon his return home--by Jefferson, no less; Decatur's vindication of Eaton's view came after Eaton's death from alcoholism.
Touched on in the epilogue are nuggets that tell part of a tale at least as significant, if not more so, than the story the author recounts. Just as America's involvement with Arab and Muslim people was driven by a self-defense against piracy, so was France's 1830 move into Algeria. Not mentioned by the author are two other matters pertinent to today: Britain's involvement with the Gulf states around 1830 was in response to piracy and slavery as well. Oil drilling was not known then. Only in Egypt did Western imperialism raise its ugly head (Napoleon's 1798 invasion, scuppered by Britain, who wished to protect its "Jewel in the Crown," India).
So, 'twas less Western rapacity that led to Western moves into the Mideast, than a desire to curb Mideastern (dare we say Muslim?) rapacity.
5 postings: (1) 72 Virgins, Hah!--Cyber-Serendip; (2) Afghan About-Face--The Home Front; (3) "Love it or leave it."--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (4) Big Easy Breathes Easier (If Wetter)--The Home Front; (5) Mayor Mike Delivers--The Ap & The Cap.
Votaries of The Religion of Peace, behold the King of Swaziland, who each year at the Reed Dance gets to choose a new bride from virgins assembled. 50,000 candidates, sans tops, showed up this year to vie for wife #13. This in a country whose total population is 1,173,900 (July 2005). Multiply by 1,000 to see how much fun a Chinese emperor could have.
Washington Times: 50,000 Virgins
CIA Factbook: Swaziland
Mark Steyn's Washington Times op-ed reminds of us of a classic historical case of what he calls "columnar whiplash": Maureen Dowd's Nov. 7, 2001 column carped at the Northern Alliance: "They smoke and complain more than they fight." On Nov. 14, 2001, after Kabul fell, she carped that the self-same Alliance had "embarrassed" the US with its "savage force." Mo's motto: Carpe diem.
Learn more in my new book: The Long War Ahead And
The Short War Upon Us
