Weekly Dish
Eric Richardson
The Weekly Dish
Andrew Sullivan
Fischer's nonsense
Every now and again, you hear a statement by an apparently serious
politician and your jaw drops. That's what happened to me this week
listening to Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany. He was
appearing at a joint news conference with the foreign ministers of
Russia and France, pledging to do all they can to prevent any U.N.
resolution authorizing force against Saddam Hussein's regime. Of
course, that's a perfectly legitimate (if reprehensible) position and
consonant with the three powers' longstanding policy of appeasing
Saddam, doing business with him and selling him arms. But what made my
eyes widen was Mr. Fischer's defense of his position. He said: "We see
there is progress. I do not see personally how we can stop the process
of Resolution 1441 and resort to war."
What could he possibly mean? There is no "process" in Resolution
1441. There is simply the demand that Iraq completely and immediately
itemize its entire arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in order to
destroy them. U.N. inspectors would then be sent to inspect such lists
and monitor the immediate destruction. After 18 resolutions demanding
exactly the same thing, 1441 was a last, last chance for Saddam to
disarm. So, any serious interpretation of 1441 ‹ i.e. one that doesn't
simply deny the clear meaning of its words ‹ would have to conclude
that it is Mr. Fischer, Mr. de Villepin and Mr. Ivanov who are stopping
the "process of Resolution 1441" by essentially saying that it can be
suspended, while we continue playing the same game of the past 12
years. Remember that in 1991, Iraq was originally told to disarm
completely "within 15 days." Yet, 12 years later, this demand is still
being stretched into infinity. That's the reality behind Mr. Fischer's
interpretation of 1441: a distortion based on a fiction.
Male-bashing
Tina Brown is at it again. She has nothing to say about the
geopolitical realities we face in the world today. But, she does argue
that it's all the fault of men. Here's her take on Saddam: "Macho is
even more central to Saddam than to George Bush. When [Dan] Rather
asked Saddam if he felt competitive with Osama bin Laden's owning the
Arab street, Saddam replied, 'Jealousy is for women.' It's the kind of
line W likes to come up with. ('And peace is for [expletive],' Dick
Cheney would growl in assent.)" Huh? The truth, of course, is that the
president has never said anything remotely that misogynistic, and
anyone who knows him even vaguely will recognize that she simply
doesn't have a clue about the current White House. And Cheney simply
doesn't use words like that either. Ever. This is pure Dowdism ‹ make
it up to smear any man who happens to pursue policies with which you
disagree. The irony, of course, is that the last president who really
did talk of women that way was one of Tina's idols. In the same column,
she ascribes Republican animosity to Clinton as a function of sexual
jealousy. Huh? Of Monica? Jennifer? Paula? If that's Tina's definition
of "smoking sexual success," as she puts it, heaven knows what failure
looks like.
Campus anti-Semitism
Two banners have recently gone up at Rutgers University. They both
proclaim the same message: "Palestine Will Be Free From The River To
The Sea." One is in the student center, blessed by the university. The
University Council deemed the message to be "not inflammatory." Jewish
students naturally felt otherwise. Meanwhile, the Rutgers paper just
ran an editorial describing Israel as a fascist state, bent on ethnic
cleansing. Bit by bit, the anti-Israeli forces on campuses ratchet up
the smears and propaganda. And bit by bit, campus authorities do
nothing.
Quote of the day
"But those who survived the purges hailed Stalin as a supreme
genius." ‹ from the New York Times' fawning 1953 obit of the greatest
mass murderer of the twentieth century. Yep, all fifteen of them.
Begala award nominee
"The situation we're in right now [with regards to Iraq] looks
something like this: Imagine you've got a sick child in serious need of
medical attention. You could take him to the hospital yourself but it's
hours away over some difficult roads. You decide to bring in the pros.
You call an ambulance, hand over your sick child over to them, and tell
them to be careful! Now fast-forward a few hours. They're almost to the
hospital. But, a few problems have cropped up along the way. Before
hitting the road, the ambulance driver went and downed a quick
six-pack. He scraped up half a dozen cars getting out of the liquor
store parking lot. On the way to the hospital ‹ in a mix of drunkenness
and zeal ‹ he's already hit two cars and four pedestrians. Now they're
being chased by cops from two different counties. And there's a lynch
mob on their trail looking for revenge for the trashed cars and
mowed-down relatives." ‹ Josh Marshall, likening the Bush
administration to drunk drivers, in the Hill newspaper. The odd thing
is: The metaphor actually works in a way ‹ if you interpret the
ambulance driver being the United Nations, rather than the United
States. Better luck next time, Josh.
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