Antioch Road

One Paragraph Review: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, by Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)'s most useful aspects are its examination of Islamic texts, including the Koran, its historical overview of the application of those texts, especially the violent ones, and its defense, at least in part, of the Crusades. This quick read is divided into three parts. Part one deals with Islam generally and more specifically Islam's relation to war, intolerance, and oppression of women. Part two debunks the myths surrounding the Crusades and their aftermath. And part three addresses today's jihad movements, making the connection with Islam's past. This book will not make an Islamic-sympathizer happy. Throughout the book are enlightening Mohammed versus Jesus sidebars, in which the author contrasts statements of Mohammed with statements of Jesus. In order to address Islam's modern expansion and goals, it is important to understand Islam's past, and this book is a good place to start. One criticism of the book's format: the book has sidebars and text separated in boxes on what seems like every other page, and these sidebars and separated boxes interrupt the flow of the narrative of the book overall, forcing you to leave your place and come back repeatedly.

One Paragraph Book Review: Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

Subtitled "The Civil War Era," this book is less about the era than the war itself. It is a narrative telling of the military and political history of the times leading up to and including the Civil War. It is comprehensive, well written, laudatory to sources, and--perhaps most importantly for a book this size--consistently interesting. McPherson gives the South fair treatment, but he writes from a decidedly Northern perspective, which is even more evident in the 2003 Afterword in which he defends Abraham Lincoln from southern critics. Originally published in 1988, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and deservedly so. If you're looking for a one volume history of the Civil, this book will reward you. I also suggest Jay Winik's April 1865 as a good follow-up to this book. Winik's book provides a history of the final month of the war, the "month that saved America."

Judge Taylor's Political Statement

As many of you know, yesterday, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Chief Judge of the United States District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, struck down the NSA's international wiretapping program, which listens in on phone conversations of persons connected with Al Queda. The news was the top headline on internet news sites yesterday and this morning's newspapers. Some of those articles will miss this important context: 1) Judge Taylor's opinion will assuredly be reversed, and 2) anyone with any familiarity with judicial opinion writing will recognize it as sloppy.

I'll offer just one quote from the opinion, because this one is a doozy:

The President of the United States, a creature of the same Constitution which gave us these Amendments, has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA, and accordingly has violated the First Amendment Rights of these Plaintiffs as well.

(Slip op. at 33.) This sentence may be the stupidest sentence ever written by a federal judge in a ruling. The President cannot violate the Fourth Amendment by failing to procure judicial orders (i.e., warrants) because the FISA statute says he must; he can only violate the Fourth Amendment if the Fourth Amendment says he must procure such warrants. (Elsewhere, Judge Taylor writes without citation that the Fourth Amendment "requires prior warrants for any reasonable search, based upon prior-existing probable cause," which is patently false; the Fourth Amendment merely requires that if you are going to get a warrant, you must have probable cause, but in any event, the search must be reasonable. Additionally, as Paul Mirengoff at Power Line notes, Taylor appears to argue--her analysis is often lacking--that the President violated FISA because he violated the Fourth Amendment, circular reasoning if there ever was such a thing.) Moreover, a violation of the Fourth Amendment does not also constitute a violation of the First Amendment.

Crank at RedState.com offers the best breakdown of the opinion that I have seen. Bryan Cunningham at National Review Online also does an excellent job.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line writes: "Off hand, I cannot recall reading an opinion as conclusory and content free as the key portions of this opinion." Scott Johnson adds: "Anyone who knows what legal analysis and legal argument look like -- anyone who knows the requisites of legal reasoning -- must look on the handiwork of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in the NSA case in amazement. It is a pathetic piece of work. If it had been submitted by a student in my second year legal writing class at the University of St. Thomas Law School, it would have earned a failing grade."

Even the Washington Post editorial board recognizes how poorly contructed the opinion is: "Unfortunately, the decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful." (Hat tip: Power Line.)

Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online ridicules Judge Taylor's "separation of powers" analysis.

The Senator's Admission on National Television

How much time did Saddam Hussein have to get his weapons to Syria before the war? And what United States Senator gave him that time by speaking to the enemy in January 2002? Captain's Quarters has the answer.

UPDATE (11/15/05 12:10pm): Bill Bennett at NRO on "Rockefeller's Confession" (via Power Line).

UPDATE (11/18/2005 1:25pm): Update by Power Line here.

Freedom Spawns Freedom

The Washington Times reports (David R. Sands, "More troops planned for Iraq," 11/6/2004) that the "Georgian government, bucking a trend among U.S. coalition allies in Iraq, this week announced a fivefold increase in its deployment to Iraq." The nation of Georgia is going from 159 to 850 troops. The reason, according to one Georgian, is that "Georgians harbor a deep sense of gratitude to the United States for supporting the country's rocky path to independence with the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s."

Thank you President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Saddam Actually Did Seek Uranium in Niger

It turns out there was a legitimate basis for the famous 16 words in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, in which he noted that British intelligence had discovered that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Niger.

Mark Steyn has more on this in today's Chicago Sun-Times ("Bush's State of the Union speech redeemed," 7/11/2004):

Sixteen words that could break a presidency! Bush ''misled every one of us,'' huffed Sen. John Kerry. ''It's beginning to sound like Watergate,'' said Howard Dean. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man the CIA sent to Africa to investigate, wrote a piece for the New York Times titled ''What I didn't find in Africa.''

Can you guess what he didn't find, dear reader? That's right, he didn't find a big package of uranium bearing the address label ''S. Hussein, Suite 27, the Saddam Hussein Centre for Armageddon Studies, Saddam Hussein Parkway, Baghdad.'' Ambassador Wilson said relax, he'd been to Niger, spent "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people,'' and there's nothing going on.

Well, on Wednesday in London, Lord Butler will publish his report into the quality of the intelligence on which rested Britain's case for going to war with Iraq. The report is said to be critical of some of Tony Blair's claims, supportive of others. And, among the latter, he says that the statements about Iraq and Niger are justified and supported by the intelligence. In other words, the British Government did learn that Saddam Hussein did seek significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
. . . .
The fact is almost every European intelligence service reckoned Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa. The only folks who didn't think so were the CIA.

Let's weigh their comparative interest in the story. The Financial Times revealed last week that one continental intelligence agency had had a uranium-smuggling operation involving Iraq under surveillance for three years. In return, the only primary investigation initiated by the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth was to send a narcissistic kook from a Saudi-funded think-tank on vacation for a week to sip mint tea with government stooges. He didn't even bother filing a written report, and the ''Bush spurned my advice!'' column he wrote for the Times reads like a bad travelogue: ''Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger river.'' After that, the great narcissist somehow managed to make himself the center of the story -- But hey, enough about Saddam's nuclear ambitions; let's talk about me.
. . . .
Niger is a 99.5 percent Sunni Muslim country with the world's second highest birth rate and a load of uranium. It's exactly the sort of place an intelligence agency in the war on terror ought to be keeping an eye on. And that doesn't mean sending Mint Tea Boy to write it up for the travel section.

(Italicized emphasis in original; bold-faced emphasis added.)

Churchill on Bolshevism

The Great War was over. The Allies had won. But civil war was raging in Russia between the Bolsheviks and the anti-Bolshevik forces. Despite the importance of the outcome, and Winston Churchill's -- then Secretary of State for War -- pleas for greater aid to the anti-Bolshevik forces, Lloyd George, the rest of the British government, and the British people did not have the will to fight after the destruction of The Great War. In the fall of 1919, things were looking good for the anti-Bolshevik forces. They were on the verge of overtaking Moscow. But between October 1919 and April 1920, everything fell apart. Lenin and Trotsky would prove victorious (for seventy years or so, in any case).

Winston Churchill, on December 15, 1919, to the British War Cabinet:

It is a delusion to suppose that all this year we have been fighting the battles of the anti-Bolshevik Russians. On the contrary, they have been fighting ours; and this truth will become painfully apparent from the moment they are exterminated and the Bolshevik armies are supreme over the whole vast territories of the Russian empire.

(Quoted in Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert, 1991.)

After a great battle, it is difficult to immediately muster the will to fight another. Sometimes it is necessary.

Why Spend Money Protecting the Nation When We Could Prevent the Closing of Wading Pools Instead?

Let's spend, but not for war (Rekha Basu, Des Moines Register, 12/22/2002)

Senator Joseph Biden, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, figures war with Iraq would cost the United States $100 billion. So Jeffrey Weiss, a Des Moines anti-war activist, took that a step further and calculated Iowa's share at $638 million. He estimates Des Moines taxpayers would be responsible for $42 million.

That's a lot of dough at a time when the city is talking about closing wading pools and raising parking-meter fees and admission prices to the zoo and Botanical Center to plug a nearly $6.5 million budget hole.

That's right. $42 million is too much money to spend in order to protect ourselves and our allies against someone who would kill us en masse if given the opportunity, but not too much to spend on wading pools and maintaining low zoo admission fees.

Meanwhile, at the state level, we're hearing plans to merge school districts, close mental-health facilities, reduce prison populations and change Medicaid and child-protection services to save $100 million a year. We need a new $638 million expense like a hole in the head.

But which would you rather have?  The $638 million expense, or the hole in the head?

There may be good reasons for not going to war with Iraq.  This isn't one of them.

UPDATE (12/23/2002 6:35pm): Ms. Basu's column got a mention in "Best of the Web Today" today after I sent them a tip on the column.

            

Christian Leaders Seek Bethlehem Pullout

Christian Leaders Seek Bethlehem Pullout (AP, 4/8/2002)

Christian leaders called on Israel to leave this biblical city after a gunbattle and fire erupted Monday around the Church of the Nativity, site of a weeklong standoff between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinians that appeared to be straining delicate relations between Israel and the Vatican.

Strangely, the "Christian leaders" mentioned aren't similary denouncing the Palestinians having essentially stolen the Church of the Nativity because they knew Israel wouldn't attack the church.

Interestingly, the article mentions that last Thursday, Israeli troops "stormed buildings of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, locking the Rev. Mitri Raheb in his office for two hours and threatening him at gunpoint as they searched offices, a guest house and a conference center, the clergyman said." When I was in Israel in May 1999 with fellow class members from Wartburg College, I stayed in that guest house for four days. I also went to a church service at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. Rev. Raheb was out of town that day, though. (The entire service was in Arabic, so I didn't understand anything, but they welcomed us joyfully anyway.)

Because of my experience in Bethlehem with those Palestinian Christians, I have a sympathy for them. It doesn't seem to me that they would be people who would support suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism. That said, I haven't heard any Palestinian Christians denouncing terrorism. Israel may have had good reason to search the church. I'm not sure that it was necessary to destroy parts of the church, though. ("Raheb said at the time 35 doors were broken, 55 windows shattered and a 19th-century stained glass was cracked. The army had no comment.") That said, merely destroying some property is irrelevant compared to the slaughter of innocent Israeli citizens. If this helps Israel defeat murderers, so be it.

UPDATE: Rod Dreher has a good column on National Review Online on the standoff at the Church of the Nativity.