JawsBlog

Came across some very good reads today

Let’s start off with this piece by David Frum (author of “The Right Man” and the term “Axis of Evil”):
The president and the Middle East, post-9/11
(It shows how Bush became one of Israel’s best friends in the White House)

The next piece also about Israel, is actually also on NRO. From the Opinion Editor, of Arutz-7
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, asks Is the left always wrong???
(Hat tip: Israpundit)

Finally, an amazing essay on “War and Why We Must Fight It“
(Hat tip: Emperor Misha I)

These three should be manditory reading…especially the latter two!!!

I think that the above title should be pronounced like they’re doing on Fox News:
un-decision….because the UN–the ineffective body that it is will not act against
Saddam–repeating its pattern of ignoring dictators.

Brandeis people–come by the activities fair today in Usdan! I’ll be at the Free Press table.

(Via Instapundit)
“THE JUDENREIN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT:” Kesher Talk reports that even leftie Jews are being frozen out of A.N.S.W.E.R. – organized marches if they believe that Israel has a right to exist.

Huh? I thought this was all about peace, and Iraq. How did Israel get into this? You think there’s a bigger agenda here?

And despite the rabid anti-semitism and anti-Zionism (no, there isn’t really a difference as MLK Jr. once said).

Some “peace loving” “social justice” persuing Brandeis students went to DC anyway and made the front page of the Justice

On that note, I’d like to declare a Fiskwah™ on this article.

(I’ll start it at a later date–but contributions are accepted)

Here’s my column from the latest edition of the Brandeis Free Press.
It’ll be hitting the newstands here on campus within the next day or two, so pick up a copy!

Note: This is a very long column

Tens of thousands of individuals descended on the Mall in D.C. while others joined protests elsewhere
around the country to demonstrate the launch of a military campaign against Saddam Hussein.
While these so called anti-war protesters may be well intended on their utopian wishes
for peace, their movement is fueled by naivety and their actions
are often more beneficial for America’s enemies than they are for America.

For example, according to Reuters (Jan 18, 2003), Saddam Hussein lauded the anti-
war protesters as a demonstration of international support both for
his regime and against the United States.

It is the naivety and ignorance of this movement, which is so disturbing.
To paraphrase an argument put forth by Adam G. Mersere
in the NRO (National Review Online), the peace movement believes that America, in its role a
a superpower wields so much economic and cultural influence over the world that the action
and policies of other nations can be interpreted only as mere reactions to the actions and policies
of the USA. As such, these people believe that without an action by the
United States, there will be no reaction by others. Furthermore Mersereau argues: “The peac
activist concludes that the USA can make a unilateral decision fo peace, simply by choosing to la
down its arms. If the United States would ignore open and notorious breaches of U.N. diretives and treaties,
and simply refuse to disturb the current state of peace, then peace would prevail by default.” (1/15/03)
Merserau then, correctly, concludes that unless the dictators of the world share this same utopian belief, this course
of action is useless.Yet the peace movement believes that we should wait for the rest of the world to come to agreement with their
utopian philosophy which is absurd because by unilaterally disarming we are leaving ourselves wide open to attack.

Why would we ever do that?!?

Our country is currently engaged in a war – the War on Terrorism.
This was not a war that the US started, rather it was our country
that was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001, and ever since that
date we have been at war against terrorism and those regimes, which provide aid and a safe
haven to terrorism.

Yet the “anti-war/peace advocates” denounce this war
on terror. They protested our attack against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet, it
was our nation’s military that successfully ousted the Taliban from
power (something that diplomacy was unable to do).
It was our military that liberated Afghanistan, ending the rule
of an oppressive terror-supporting regime, and in the process
providing its citizens with liberty and a newfound sense of freedom
and peace.

President Reagan once said:
“America must remain freedom’s staunchest friend, for freedom is
our best ally… Every victory for human freedom will be a victory for world peace.”

Now we have Saddam Hussein and his regime in the crosshairs
as our next target in the war on terrorism. Hussein has repeatedly
posed a threat to the security of the Middle East, the United
States and her allies as well as to the Iraqi people. Saddam’s acts of
genocide, violations of UN resolutions, usage of chemical weapons. ons, and support of terrorism are
all well documented.

Saddam inspections, diplomacy, and economic sanctions have not had any major effect. As
David Limbaugh points out in his recent column: “what incentive
does this tyrannical sociopath have to disarm? Power is his very
reason for existence. He’s about as likely to disarm voluntarily as
he is to drain his own body dry of blood. Not only is power his life-
blood; it is the only thing he understands, the only language he
speaks”

Nevertheless, the peace activists want us to trust this man!
Have we not learned anything from history? Just as Hitler, another power hungry
tyrannical sociopath, continually did not respond to diplomacy, neither will
Saddam Hussein. If we fail to take action against Saddam Hussein,
and continue to appease Saddam as the peace movement wants us
to do, Hussein’s regime and support of terror will remain a threat to
the free world, and the Iraqi people. will continue to suffer under dictatorship.

As such, the use of (military) force is the only answer that we have to remove
Saddam from power. Removing Saddam will bring both liberty and prosperity to the Iraqi people and
will make the world a safer place. While many innocent Iraqi and patriotic American servicemen
and women may lose their lives, they will not be doing so in vain; they will be fighting to make the
world a better place.

As the great American patriot Thomas Jefferson once said: “From time to
time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants
and patriots.”

President Bush said on Sept. 20, 2001: “
We have seen their [kind of terrorists and their supporters]
before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th
century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by
abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in
the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow
that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked
grave of discarded lies.”

I’m just here at the BMC office, waiting to work on this week’s issue
of the Brandeis Free Press. Waiting is the key word you see. First
off when we got here, the keyboard and mouse to the computer
we use were missing (who’se the Klepto???)
Then we had some problems w/ Microsoft software…argh….
Microsoft….can’t live with it, can’t live without it
(the same goes for Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s law).

On the good side of things, Concord Bridge has some copies
of the California Patriot laying around, so that’s a good read.

Speaking of Edward Said (see below), here’s a great quote from Professor Makiya regarding this
“intellectual”:

When asked about his self-identification as the “father of what he calls a ‘non-Arab’ and decentralized post-Ba’ath” Iraq, as quoted in a highly-critical article by Edward Said, author of “Orientalism” and professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, Makiya said, “Nothing he said there is accurate or correct. I am for a non-ethnic Iraq. It does not matter what your ethnicity is, you are treated equally before the law. An Arab is not preferred over a Kurd or an Armenian.” He then aired his feelings about the controversial Said. “The man is pathetic. He is a sad case,” Makiya said. “He is to intelligent rational discourse in the Arab World what the suicide bomber is to politics.”

Makiya explained that Said — and two other Iraqi intellectuals dwelling in the halls of American academia — was furious, largely because of what was in the report that came out of the conference. The article, entitled “Misinformation About Iraq,” did not receive much press in America. The major reaction was in the Arab world, where Makiya accused Said of conducting a smear campaign. Contrary to Said’s intention, Makiya’s reputation was enhanced by the publicity. “Seven articles have appeared in El-Shayyat in support of me,” he said proudly. “The Internet is buzzing with articles.” The support is not merely from Iraqis, either. Kuwaits, Lebanese and others have backed the prominent dissident. (The Justice 1/14/03)

I’ve just about officially lost all respect for Columbia University…as it has just hired
Rashid Khalidi to hold the Edward Said chair in Middle Eastern Studies (story here)

I have no admiration for either Khalidi or Said, both of whom are supporters and/or affiliates
of the PLO. (Info on these two from CAMERA and
a great critique of Said by Emperor Misha)

On this topic, here is a column that I wrote for an issue of the Brandeis Free Press last semester.

In the November 15th, 2002, edition of the New York Sun, the paper ran a story about CUNY- Brooklyn College History Professor Robert David ‘KC’ Johnson, who is regarded by his students and peers as a brilliant scholar and also had just been denied tenure by his university. Why was his application for tenure rejected? Not on the basis of scholarship or teaching ability, but rather on the basis of a new invented category of “collegiality.”

What is “collegiality”? That’s a good question. Professor Johnson and his supporters say that the only offenses against “collegiality” were objecting to a one-sided college-sponsored panel following the September 11th attacks (a panel that included no known supporters of either American or Israeli government policies) and suggesting that a search that seemed predetermined to pick a woman, instead of being conducted on the merits of academic ability for an open university position, in need of “therapy” (a direct quote from the university official’s memo).

Should Mr. Johnson’s allegations be true, he will be one of the latest victims of the new form of discrimination on college campuses across the country— discrimination based on one’s opinions. Who are these victims? It is most often those who express a viewpoint that is not liberal or progressive.

In his November 19th column for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby wrote that conservative students at Tufts and Amherst have had their publications stolen and set ablaze and have become the victims of vandalism, verbal and physical harassment…but yet, their respective Universities have turned a deaf ear to these students.

The incidents of discrimination that Jacoby highlights are not isolated. On campuses across the country similar events have occurred from here at Brandeis to University of California-Berkley. Why can’t a student express his opinion without fear of reprisal? One need not agree with the opinion being expressed, yet one should at least respect this individual’s right to free speech.

Colleges and universities are institutions of higher learning. However, how can one actually learn when they have only heard one side of the story, and they are not allowed to challenge it? Our Universities should be filled with true intellectual debate discourse…for such activities help us obtain knowledge. For example, one of the most important works in American political theory and philosophy, The Federalist Papers, came out of an intellectual argument between Hamilton, Madison and Jay.

Earlier this year, the Philadelphia based Middle East Forum and notable scholar Daniel Pipes launched a site called “Campus-Watch.org,” whose stated mission is to monitor and critique Middle East studies in North America, aiming to improve them. The project mainly addresses five problems— “analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students.”

Instantly, professors who were critiqued by the site decried it as an act of McCarthyism, impeding on their right of free speech. Yet, freedom of speech does not mean that one is free from critique and criticism. The purpose of the site is to “monitor and critique with the aim of improving them” and at the same time, to spark discussion about what is being presented in our institutions. Campus Watch is a site that encourages a search for the actual facts and the truth. In fact, aren’t those who have denounced the site as an act of McCarthyism in fact practicing McCarthyism themselves by attempting to silence opposing viewpoints, by censoring free speech, and by doing masks the truth?

CampusWatch.org should be commended for its actions, as it shines a light on the controversies and biases that exist on college campuses, which otherwise may never be seen. As Justice Brandeis once said “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The authors of Campus Watch should be commended for doing just that— disinfecting the bias, which currently infects many campuses and current scholarship and simultaneously promotes the quest for the truth.

The current state of America’s universities is perhaps best summed up in Alan Keyes and Harvey Silverglate’s book The Shadow University. The book is about the decline of liberty and free inquiry on college campuses. “All that the social engineers of diversity mean,” Keyes wrote, ” … is the appreciation, celebration, and study of those people who think exactly as they do…”

One can only hope that this trend does not continue into the future. Students and professors of all opinions should be able to exercise their right of free speech—and in the process, we should strive to make our institutions of higher learning the forums of free speech and the exchange of ideas.

Welcome to my Blog….
I hope to have some things up on here soon.
And I’ll put up my latest column for the Brandeis Free Press on later tomorroow after the paper goes to print…

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