Someone Has to be the Grownup

David Warren brings to light some of the latest strategy in the War on Islamo-Fascism in "Next". What got me however, was this:

The reality is that the Bush administration now finds itself in the position of the one adult in a room full of unhappy children. The adult carries responsibilities that none of the children fully understand. A mortal threat presents itself to adult and children alike, but only the adult appreciates this. He must find a way to proceed in spite of the children's very active non-cooperation.

I realize this is not a flattering account of the spectacle of the "United Nations" at work, but it is unfortunately true. And it is the most useful analogy I have found to guess how the Bush administration must proceed, given the nature of its actual problem -- an enemy vowed to the destruction of the West, which will stop at nothing, and must soon be armed with unimaginably lethal weapons and nearly undetectable methods for delivering them.

Quietly and with unflinching resolve we will do what we need to do so as not to upset the "children"... Some of these European "children" have been a bit naughty. Some have taken sweet deals and money from the bad guys and in exchange have either kept their mouths shut or worked to stymie the grownups.

It's a topsy-turvy world. I have a feeling it's going to get even topsy-turvier in the next 5 years or so.

Po-Mo Mo-Do is Dodo, Switch to Wa-Po

Maureen Dowd sure is witty and smart. Just read her piece today: "Drunk on Rummy".

Ms. Decter is doyenne of the neocon movement, wife of the neocon patriarch Norman Podhoretz; mother of John Podhoretz, the neocon Iraqi war cheerleader and new "West Wing" adviser; and friend of the neocon clan of the über-hawk Bill Kristol.

Man is she good. She can write a one sentence paragraph with "doyenne", "patriarch", "cheerleader" and "über-hawk" and still have room for 4 "neocons".

Said's Fictional Past

David Frum has an elequent article in NRO today on the late Edward Said. He finds in Said's life the Middle East conflict in miniature:

For fifty years, Said put his passion and his intellect at the service of his grievances. And yet, when you look again at the details, you see something very strange: By far the greatest catastrophe to afflict the Said family was not the loss of a single house in Jerusalem, but the destruction of their family fortune in Egypt – first by mob attacks against their store in 1952, then the following year by outright confiscation by the Nasser government. Said was indeed the victim of dispossession by a tyrannical and bigoted state. Only, the state that dispossessed him was not Israel, but Egypt; and the grounds for his dispossession was not his Arab ethnicity, but his Christian religion.

Yet in all Said’s long life thereafter, he could never (as far as I am aware) bring himself to address this core truth. I used to read Said's column in the online edition of Al-Ahram, the state-controlled newspaper of the government that ruined his family. Somehow, the normally vituperative Said never quite found occasion to mention what Egypt had done to him. All his fury was concentrated on one target: the Jews.

Yes, absolutely... if the State of Israel had never been formed, all Arab countries would be paradise. That's what the Arab government strong men from Tripoli to Baghdad (oh wait... we took care of that one...) feed their people at any rate.

Even for a brilliant man like Said, it's often easier to live with a comfortable lie than face the truth. Go to NRO and read the whole article.