October 31, 2005
Paris v. Islam
You’ve probably read about the nighttime riots in Paris this weekend, pitting "French youths" against the police. Why don’t they go on strike as the French usually do? Because, well, they are not ordinary "French youths." The Brussels Journal pulls back the politically correct curtain...
Posted by Richard Miniter at 11:56 AM
August 13, 2005
Why He Left and Why it Matters
When Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick interviewed now former finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu, she thought he was struggling with something. It turned out to be his momentous decision to resign. Her column is the best analysis of that decision and its consequences that I have seen. She doesn't mention it, but I know that she has worked for Netanyahu and knows him relatively well. Her view: Netanyahu is acting out of principle and she may well be right. She is right about one other thing that she barely touches on: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, National Review and the major blogs have all but ignored the Gaza pullout or the national security consequences (for the United States) of creating a terrorist state with its own seaport and a land border with Egypt, which has funded terrorist operations in the past. What if Gaza becomes an al Qaeda haven? What will be the political consequences if the next president has to take military action for the mistakes of the Bush Administration?
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:41 PM
July 27, 2005
The Master of Terrorism
Hassan al-Turabi, the former speaker of the Sudanese parliament—the architecture of which is nearly identical to the Israeli Knesset (I guess the architect was fairly confident that the two nations' officials would never visit each other)—and later enemy of government and inciter-in-chief of the butchers of Darfur, is now hailed as "the pope of terrorism" in the Weekly Standard.
Most readers of this site will know most of the facts in this piece, but there are few noteworthy surprises: the connections between Saddam Hussein and the radical Islamist thinker and that the express purpose of the infamous Popular and Islamic Conferences in Khartoum—which included every murder-minded Muslim terror group in the world and every major Arab intelligence service—was to weld together the Islamists and the seemingly secular Arab Nationalists. This pokes a pretty big hole in the idea that Salafis like Osama bin Laden and secular socialists like Saddam Hussein would never form alliances of convenience. I have never met Turabi on my various visits to Sudan (though I tried to see him when he was under house arrest), but I did talk to a number of his friends and former associates. Gutbi, who when I met him in 2002 was the head of Sudan's intelligence services, said that Turabi was bored of bin Laden because he could only talk about two subjects, jihad and horses. So Turabi's extensive help for bin Laden was nothing personal, just business. For whatever that it worth. Gutbi did not mention what Turabi thought of Iraq, but he personally hated it. He and his wife were followed constantly by the secret police and he, as Sudan's ambassador, was forbidden to leave Baghdad. Turabi's son used to go to horse races with bin Laden, who plugged his ears when the horns sounded because music is "un-Islamic." Neither Turabi nor his son covered their ears. Sure, they were radicals who believed that killing infidels just gives them another chance to convert to Allah, but sometimes a horse race is just a horse race. Other friends of Turabi fill in other details. The onetime Peace and Development Minister (the man in charge of the two things that Sudan doesn't have much of) is a charming man named Ghazi. He points out that Turabi changed after a sudden beating in a Canadian airport; after that, his thoughts were more erratic and less connected. This was the reason that Turabi was pushed out of power in 1996; he could no longer be trusted to follow government policy and was endlessly scheming against his onetime student, President Bashir. (Anyway, any serious consideration of Turabi needs to take account of this beating and of the feminist views of his wife). Another friend of Turabi's said that he is more fond of revolution than rule; that is why he fomented the crisis in Darfur that has killed and displaced millions. The role of Turabi and perhaps al Qaeda in causing the misery in Darfur is also largely unexplored. Thomas Joscelyn's piece in the Standard would have been improved if he offered a fuller picture of the master of terrorism.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 10:45 PM
May 10, 2005
Clash of ideals, not civilizations
I found Bernard Lewis' latest remarks irresistible. Let us hope he is right. "To speak of dictatorship as being the immemorial way of doing things in the Middle East is simply untrue. It shows ignorance of the Arab past, contempt for the Arab present, and lack of concern for the Arab future. Creating a democratic political and social order in Iraq or elsewhere in the region will not be easy. But it is possible, and there are increasing signs that it has already begun."
Author of What Went Wrong and other books on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis is Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:41 PM