Fish Fear Me

Perspective

Afghan President Karzai today on the notion that the Iraq war has "fueled terror growth around the world":

KARZAI: Ma'am, before I go to the remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11. The president mentioned some examples of it.

These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.

They came to America on September 11, but they were attacking you before September 11 in other parts of the world.

We are a witness in Afghanistan as to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York.

Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high?

Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again?

That's why we need more action around the world, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to get them defeated. Extremism, their allies, terrorists and the likes of them.

On the remarks of my brother, President Musharraf, Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction and occupation by terrorism and misery that they brought to us.

We lost almost two generations to the lack of education. And those who were educated before that are now older.

We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is, in extremism, in madrassas preaching hatred, places by the name of madrassas preaching hatred. That's what we should do together, to stop.

The United States, as an ally, is helping both countries. And I think it is very important that we have more dedication and more intense work, with sincerity, all of us, to get rid of the problems that we have around the world.

"Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high?"

I know I haven't forgotten. Extremists were with us long before Iraq and will be with us long after unless there is a miracle of some sort. If they don't use Iraq as an excuse they will use the Pope, or cartoons, or simply the existence of secularists or Christians or Jews. I quite frankly don't give a damn about the sensibilities of some screwed-up barbarian in Waziristan or Riyadh or Gaza or Anbar. They fight against the duly elected governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, governments that are strongly supported by the people. That should be enough by itself, but sadly isn't for some people.

I support the Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan who are on the front lines against those extremists/barbarians. You don't have to support them, but shame on you if you don't.

They're In

The Minnesota Twins have clinched a playoff berth with their win last night and the White Sox loss. The only drama remaining is who will capture the AL Central and what the final records will be for Minnesota, Detroit, and the Dark SideYankees. There are a lot of possibilities and I think it's fair to say that Oakland(assuming they don't collapse), Detroit, and Minnesota would all prefer not to start the playoffs against the Yankees. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

How the Twins will do in the playoffs is anybody's guess. Back in May it was looking like a rebuilding year. They kept bringing up guys, no names, to fill gaps in the roster and they kept plugging away. On paper, especially with a starting rotation that is suspect at best, they shouldn't even be here and they shouldn't last long in the playoffs. I don't know though. This team doesn't have the core group that struggled together for years before becoming World Champs in 1987. They have the same kind of intensity and spirit though. It matches that number 34 they have been wearing on their sleeves all season.

A fun final week to the season, that's for sure.

A cry for help

I'm not sure if I should be amused or saddened by Keith Olbermann's Monday meltdown on MSNBC, the most recent in a series of meltdowns. It's amusing because a few years ago, something like Olbermann's rant would have been perceived immediately as parody. No one would seriously say such crap on the air, least of all a journalist. Olbermann has become increasingly unhinged though, as we approach the election. I read him now just to see how far off the deep end he's actually going to go. As Allahpundit notes, "Not until he uncorks a commentary in which the words “controlled demolition” figure prominently will Keith’s mission be complete. I hope I get to see it."    

On the other hand, it's kind of sad to see a long-time journalist, even a Left-leaning one, publicly descend into such paranoia and hysteria. Ah well, sign of the times I guess.

There is something we can do for poor Keith. He's talking about Fox's Chris Wallace here, but I'm thinking that was a bit of projection:

Had I in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist, and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

It's just a matter of time for poor Keith and deep down, he knows it. He's not being clever here, he's sending us a message, a cry for help. So be a good soul and help Keith out. Send him a packet of seeds so he can land on his feet when the inevitable happens. MSNBC's mailing address is:

MSNBC TV
Attn: Keith Olbermann
One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, N.J. 07094

I'm sure that if enough of us send Keith a packet of seeds, he can succeed in his new profession and still afford his meds.

Update: In the news today is the story that some idiot sent Olbermann an envelope with a white powder that turned out to be soap. Sigh. Olbermann is deserving of all of the sarcasm and ridicule he gets, but doing something like that gets far into the criminally stupid. And unlike someone at the NY Post, I don't think it's funny at all.

Don't sweat it, Commander

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, one of the crew of the recently returned space shuttle Atlantis, collapsed twice today at a welcome home ceremony in Houston. She's fine, apparently just suffering a little from the effects of returning to gravity after 12 days in space. Her husband says she's ok but, "Basically, she's embarrassed".

Ah, no big deal. After all, she just risked her life to go into space for us and successfully completed not one, but two spacewalks. And check this out:

Piper, 43, of St. Paul, Minn., is a commander in the Navy and was a mission specialist and cosmic electrician aboard the shuttle.

Cosmic electrician? I don't know if that's an official title or not, but it's got to be one of the coolest titles ever. I mean really, cosmic electrician cuts one a lot of slack in my book.

I think I finally know what I want to be if I grow up.

Almost surreal

This morning I read an interview that Time Magazine's Scott MacLeod did with Iranian President Ahmadinejad that almost made me reel. Not too far into it, MacLeod asks a question and Ahmadinejad responds:

TIME: Are you ready to open direct negotiations with the U.S.?

Ahmadinejad: We have given them a letter, a lengthy letter. We say the U.S. Administration should change its behavior, and then everything will be solved. It was the U.S. which broke up relations with us. We didn't take that position. And then they should make up for it.

"It was the U.S. which broke up relations with us. We didn't take that position. And then they should make up for it".

Gee, you think storming our embassy in Tehran and holding 52 hostages for 444 days might have just had a little to do with that? What an asshat. I bitterly remember how those barbarians violated every standard of diplomacy and decency and to this day have not apologized. There never was and never will be any excuse for what they did. Screw you, Ahmadinejad.

And how can MacLeod just let him get away with that answer? He just goes on to the next question, doh de doh. That's not journalism, nor is it really an interview. It's being a propaganda mouthpiece. MacLeod apparently either doesn't have the balls or doesn't have the sense to follow up on that blatant bullshit. Or both.

Time and other big media outlets wonder why people hold them in low esteem. Well look right there folks. This isn't bias, it's just bad journalism.

Opportunity, or...?

I've been trying to understand the controversy over Pope Benedict's lecture last week and I still do not see what deserves the vehement response from some quarters of Islam. There may be valid criticisms of the example that the pope used, I'm not sure. There seems to be a few different schools of thought within Islam on both the meaning of jihad and the role of reason in faith. The reason part being Benedict's actual focus it seems to me, and not just relating to Islam. This is self-evident, or should be, to anyone who actually read the text of the lecture.

Perhaps the best take on this to me is Jacob Levy's at The New Republic. After noting the relevent passages, he points out:

"He did not endorse Paleologus' statement. And the lecture as a whole is not about violence, the subject of the second paragraph quoted, but rather about the dispute in the last paragraph quoted: the relationship between reason and man's understanding of God.* When he quoted Paleologus, it was only after noting one of the key countervailing sources in Islamic thought. So there is something absurd about the outrage being stoked--more absurd, I think, than the outrage over the Danish editorial cartoons. That those paragraphs make Benedict someone who "is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini" is hardly to be credited. No matter how politically serious the responses from the Muslim world, there is something morally unserious about many of them--a demand to unsay what was not said, an expectation to be immunce from criticism, and (again) an insistence that non-Muslims act with the same reverence toward Mohammed that is religiously demanded of Muslims themselves."

Levy notes, correctly I think, that while western politicians should stay clear of these religious discussions, it is right and proper for a religious leader like Pope Benedict to ask religion based questions and advocate his own faith. To expect otherwise is ridiculous and frankly, childish.

One thing that was very clear as I looked at Muslim reactions beyond the MSM, is that there are many different thoughts within Islam on this controversy and on the underlying issues. I've read stories that claim that Islam was never spread by holy war and then came across this website from a Saudi(I think) Islamic scholar that says, yes it was and yes, it will be. It seems to me that the latter is correct in history, though not in method. And it is that mindset that is threatening violence now.

So is this an opportunity for dialogue between Christians and Muslims? Between the different viewpoints of Islam within itself? Or another step forward to a clash of civilizations?

Update: I found this essay by Father Samir Khalil Samir, sj interesting. An excerpt:

"Benedict XVI does not want to reject modern Reason; he wants to broaden its meaning. In so doing, he joins Muslims in criticising the atheist view of Reason whilst offering a critique from “within” in order to “broaden” it. “Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.”

Therefore, the goal is to start a universal dialogue based on “Reason”. Violence stands against human Reason (a danger that looms over Islam) as does the belief that Reason is opposed to faith and spirituality."

There is a lot of heated rhetoric out there in defense of Pope Benedict. While I don't think people should appease those who are threatening violence or even just taking the pope's words out of context, there's no need to throw gas on the fire.

Light

My sister, Patty, went down to lower Manhattan last night and sent me this picture.

That's Trinity Church on the right.

Beautiful picture.

James Patrick Hopper

(this post is part of the 2,996 project to honor all of those killed on 9/11. The complete list is here)

Around 5:00 A.M. on Tuesday September 11, 2001, James Hopper looked in on his sleeping daughter and then went to work, just as he normally did. He headed for his job at Cantor Fitzgerald, in the north tower of the World Trade Center, where he worked with his brother-in-law, Richard Poulos (2,996 tribute here), as a security guard. He died there at age 52, a victim in those terrible attacks.

James Hopper was much more than a victim though. He was a son, and a husband, and a father. A beloved uncle. James Patrick Hopper is survived by his wife Rita, his son James and his daughter Lauren, and many others in his family and community. He was a retired NYC Corrections Officer who lived in Farmingdale, NY and he started working at Cantor Fitzgerald in 1993.

I didn't know Mr. Hopper, but what I found on the Internet describes a dedicated family man who had a sense of humor and had built a good life. In this Newsday article, his daughter says he was not only a father, but a friend:

She said her father was more of a friend to her than anything else. He accompanied her to get her belly button pierced last August, she said.

"I always begged to have that done. And one day, I finally bothered him so much that he finally gave in." Lauren said her father's grunts and moans drowned out her own. "I said to him, 'Dad, it didn't hurt!'"

A cousin pays tribute:

Your big smile and fervent banter with family and friends often come to mind. You're still bringing a smile to my face and thoughts, Jim. May you bring similar feelings to everyone you left behind. Rest in peace.

A good man I think, whose loss is still felt by many today. His daughter takes comfort that he was with his brother-in-law that day:

"Just knowing he wasn't by himself and that he was with my uncle made me feel a little better," she said.

Yes, I can see that too. God Bless you, James Patrick Hopper, and your family and friends also. You are all in my thoughts and prayers today.

Short takes

Another FFL season starts. I know, it technically started on Thursday, but today is the real start. Steve Smith is supposedly out so I start the year with a major player out from injury, yet hope springs eternal. We'll see.

Big game for the Twins today with Santana on the mound against the Tigers. I have no idea how things are going to end up with the Tigers, White Sox, and Twins as all three at this point could take either the AL Central title or the wild-card spot. What a great season.

On further review, I think those Senators in the post below are issuing a threat to ABC. If you want to use your right to speak to counter what you disagree with, fine. Threatening to use government power to intimidate someone into not speaking at all, is not. It's a disgrace and those Senators should be ashamed. That letter is going to come back to haunt them and it should.

As for the rest of the fury over The Path to 9/11, I've read section 4 of the 9/11 Commission Report that deals with covert action against Bin Ladin. If you haven't read it I would urge you to, you can get it here in pdf form. What's clear to me from that report is that the Clinton Administration was concerned about Bin Ladin and worked hard to come up with opportunities to kill or capture him. What is also clear is that when those efforts reached the point of being actionable, they failed for one reason or another to take that action.

Knowing what we know today, it's easy to say we should have killed him. We should have. I'm not going to use hindsight to criticize Clinton(or Bush) though, and I think most people feel that way. That doesn't change the record however. We should have been far more aggressive and taken Bin Ladin at his word. That is the lesson from the report and that I think is what troubles so many on the Left and many Democrats. The 9/11 Commission Report and The Path to 9/11 make the case for preemption, or at least acting far more aggressively, in this case for sure. Which means that preemption may be needed in other cases in the future. And that will not do in their minds. And that is the real big issue of this election: Return to the 1990s mindset or pull the trigger.

For the record, this "Dave in Minnesota" is not me. It's not even my other brother Dave.

Paging the ACLU...

Hmmm, I thought the appropriate response to obnoxious speech was more speech. I guess not:

"This letter was sent today by the entire Democratic leadership of the US Senate. This letter is such a major shot across the bow of Disney, it's not even funny. It is FILLED with veiled threats, both legal and legislative, against Disney. US Senators don't make threats like this, especially the entire Democratic leadership en masse, unless they mean it. Disney is in serious trouble."

Read the whole thing. I'm no fan of docudramas that composite individuals and events to give viewers an impression, accurate or not. In a free country though, the people have the option of embracing or punishing, through speech or boycott, such work. At least that's how I thought it worked.

I'm not sure that the author of the post linked to above has read this letter correctly. His analysis is:

"The Senate Democratic leadership just threatened Disney's broadcast license. Not the use of the word "trustee" at the beginning of the letter and "trust" at the end. This is nothing less than an implicit threat that if Disney tries to meddle in the US elections on behalf of the Republicans, they will pay a very serious price when the Democrats get back in power, or even before.

This raises the stakes incredibly for Disney."

Maybe, maybe not. We'll see what kind of clarifications and/or backtracks happen in the next few days.

There's one thing that's certain, somebody is showing their true face here. And it's not pretty.

(via Hugh Hewitt)