Economist.com | Israel and Palestine

This link is from Instapundit.com.

What the Economist forgets is that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no government. They are occupied as much by the P.A. as by the Israelis. If it were safe to say so, I'd bet that there are plenty of them who breathed a sigh of relief when Sharon sent in the tanks.

When we had riots in L.A. after the first Rodney King verdict, the governor called out the national guard. The Palestinians don't have a national guard. What they have is a bunch of terrorists using their children as walking land mines. The Israelis haven't withdrawn in the past because there is no government to keep the peace in the Palestinian territory if they did.

They are shooting at people who oppose them, but I haven't heard of any shelling of restaurants or hotels or pizza parlors. I'm sure that innocent people have been killed and wounded, but none were targeted merely because of their ethnicity.

The P.A. may be Palestinian, but it certainly isn't an authority in the sense of a provider of government services, or a keeper of the peace.

The Salt Lake Tribune -- McCain-Feingold Will Just Make the Money Harder to Track
Good piece on the unintended consequences of campaign funding reform.

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Charles Krauthammer

Note the Washington Post's position that we need the continued presence of "the leadership of the Palestinian Authority as well as its principal security services'' because they have been "the only available instruments for stopping Palestinian terrorism.''

This shows the bankruptcy of American liberals when it comes to achieving peace in the Middle EAst. Arafat and the PA are their teddy bear, their security blanket. As Best of the Web pointed out, they are like Charlie Brown falling for Lucy and her football time after time.

The fact that the Administration is giving in to this nonsense makes this phenomenon not only silly, but very sad.

Arafat gets 'one' chance

The reactions of the Palestinians described here just serve to prove how well they've mastered the art of stringing the West along with "hopeful" statements, while putting on a completely different face for the Arabs. If I were Sharon, I'd tell the Palestinians that I would only deal with a democratically elected Palestinian regime that renounces Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah and Islamic Jihad and any other terrorist groups and actively works with the Israelis to rid the area of them. Arafat should be deported to Belgium along with all of his gang and any other terrorists they catch.

Toughen Up!

I'm getting worried. We started off so well in Afghanistan, but when it comes to Israel, which has a far worse terrorism problem than we do, we've turned into Quakers. Remember Patrick Henry's lead in to "Give me Liberty"? "Gentlemen may cry Peace! Peace! but there is no peace!"

We are dealing with people who view the world in seventh century terms, whose religion teaches them that Jews and Christians are inferior and are to be subdued. The only thing that has worked to stop this mentality is sound military defeat at the hands of the Infidels, and while our principles honor all religions, we draw the line at doctrines that establish one as conferring superior status on its adherents.

Then there's Arafat. Our senators denounce Ken Lay as the biggest con man since Charles Ponzi. Maybe they just haven't been paying attention to Palestine, where we have been party to installing a thugocracy for a government. On second thought, Arafat is more like Al Capone than Ponzi. How long does he string us along until we start wondering if we've got STUPID tattooed on our foreheads? The Karine A should have torn it, but we blame Iran and Iraq and not the recipients of these weapons. So the Israelis raid his headquarters and turn up documentation that the PA is actively supporting the suicide bombing, and what is our response? "Shame on Sharon!:

The excuse proffered is that we can't allow this issue to become a distraction from our plans in Iraq. Here's a clue, we are not going to get any coalition for going after Hussein, at least until we start doing it ourselves. Then, like the Little Red Hen, we'll find plenty of volunteers.

That should be the lesson of history in dealing with Muslims, especially fundamentalist Shi'ites and Wahabists.

This fixation with the "peace process" is positively pathological. It's an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It reveals a failure of creativity and a timidity that is unbecoming of the George Bush who sent the military against terrorism in Afghanistan. It's an infectious groupthink inside the Beltway and in the Bicoastal Press. In the immortal words of Cher, in Moonstruck, "SNAP OUT OF IT!"

Americans need a gut check. We need to be told that the war for democracy and freedom will require courage and faith in our principles, never more than now, when abandoning Arafat may have the effect of playing pinata with a hornets nest. It is scary, but we have to do it.

Let's roll!

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, a leading Egyptian cleric, has words of praise for suicide bombers. "Those who blow themselves up among aggressors, who demolish houses, kill men, women and innocent people and assault honour and property of Palestinians, are martyrs," the Arabic News quotes Tantawi, the grand imam of Cairo's al-Azhar University, as saying.

This is an example of the peculiar reverse logic of the Palestinian terrorists: We kill you and when you react, we are the aggrieved party.

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web TodayFriday, March 22, 2002
Two great stories about guns. One involves a father standing guard at his son's place of employment who foils an armed robbery, and the mealy mouthed response from an anti-gun group. The second is about Sarah Brady evading the Brady law to buy a rifle for her son.

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web for Monday, April 1, 2002 contains an excellent discussion of what Israel and the rest of the civilized world is up against with the decision to use suicide bombers as a military tactic.

One thing that isn't mentioned is the effect a spread of such tactics will have on moderate, peaceful Muslims living in Non-Muslim nations. We are now used to hearing American Muslims complain about racial profiling and discrimination when people with Arab or South Asian features are given special scrutiny. Unfortunately this is a characteristic many innocent people share with the 9-11 hijackers, and it is reasonable, if regrettable, to give such people extra scrutiny. However, what they will suffer if Muslims begin suicide bombing in the U.S. is truly scary.

It is possible that our current policy that our war is not against Islam may change in the face of such tactics. I hate to think of such things, but they must be contemplated after recent events in Israel and Palestine. Unless Muslims stand up and take responsibility for cleansing themselves of the terrorist element, instead of maintaining a knee-jerk solidarity with all Muslims everywhere, the traditions of tolerance and freedom of religion are in danger. That is not my wish or that of any intelligent and patriotic American.

After the attacks in September 2001, I was concerned for Muslims in the this nation, and I was gratified and relieved that there weren't more attacks on them. But sympathy with and support for suicide bombing could change that. It is something we all, not just Muslims, should fear greatly.

On the other side of the issue are those American politicians and intellectuals who are reflexively calling for more negotiations and diplomatic initiatives are not helping the matter, because such efforts being imposed on Israelis will be seen by the bombers as progress toward achieving their ends. It has been obvious for too long that Arafat is either unwilling or unable to stop this insanity. His reaction to Clinton's efforts at winning his own Nobel Peace Prize should have made that clear, but apparently some are so captivated by peace politics that they can't acknowledge reality or think out of their own box.

It is time for the rest of the world to lay down the law to the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. Violence doesn't work. Non-violence does. If Islam is truly a religion of peace, it much recognize this and produce it's own Ghandi/Martin Luther King for this generation. Pulling Arafat off the stage might help that person to be discovered.

Palestinians kill suspected collaborators

This is Israel's chance. All they have to do is give Arafat an award for service to the nation of Israel, and his own people will kill him.

TCS: Enviro-Sci - Antarctica Is Cooling

Models are great as long as they can be tested, but when one tries to model something as complex as the earth's global atmosphere and its relationship to the oceans and land masses, it is practically impossible to verify the model's accuracy without waiting for a century. In the meantime, who knows what small factors will tip the whole thing into a different track, given that length of time?

Newton's models and even the complex models used in computer assisted engineering are vastly simple compared to global climate. But any doubts about global warming are not just seen as naive and ignorant by environmentalists. They are treated as heresy and criminal thinking worthy of inquisitorial persecution.

The thing that made me a confirmed skeptic was the issue of Scientific American in late 2000 with articles on the advances in science we could expect in the next 50 years. The one on atmospheric science lauded the advent of more powerful computers which would make more detailed modeling possible. It struck me then that if research consists only of modelling, it will be a long time before we'll really know anything from it.

Reuters | Breaking News from Around the Globe

Note the opeing paragraph:

Israel pledged to leave no stone unturned to halt a "campaign of terror" against it after a suspected suicide bomber killed at least 12 people in the port city of Haifa Sunday.

I wonder how Reuters defines a "suspected suicide bomber." First of all, they aren't protecting his right to be presumed innocent, if there is one in Palestine, because the guy is dead. Did he explode by spontaneous combustion? Or maybe it just escape his attention that he had C-4 strapped to his body. Maybe that happens a lot over there.

Please excuse me for being dense, but it seems to me that if a person explodes and, in so doing, kills a bunch of bystanders, there's nothing "suspected" about it.