Bush's Hour of Peril

Bush’s Hour of Peril

My initial shock at President Bush’s contradiction of his heretofore inviolate policy on terrorism–the announcement last Thursday that Colin Powell, the administration’s internationally popular Empty Suit, would attempt to sort out the impossible Middle East war–passed over the weekend and subsided into weary resignation. Put in the worst possible light, Bush acquiesced to the criticism of the U.S. opinion mafia and timid, often anti-Semitic European heads of state, and temporarily abandoned his stalwart support of Ariel Sharon.

George W. Bush is the most pro-Israel president America’s ever had, far more willing to publicly declare right from wrong than his own father and Bill Clinton (who hosted Yasir Arafat at the White House more than any other foreign leader), and I’m hopeful that once Powell has returned from his useless mission, he’ll get back on track. Bush was roundly whipped for his unscripted remarks in Crawford on March 30, strongly asserting Israel’s right to defend itself (despite the U.S.’s participation that morning in a toothless UN resolution condemning Sharon’s entry into West Bank cities), but that was the real Bush speaking. His polished speech last Thursday was more eloquent–thanks to the gifted Michael Gerson–but it was the mush of appeasement.

And what’s this nonsense about Arafat not being a terrorist? Just because he’s participated in "peace" charades in the past doesn’t mean that he’s not the same sort of butcher–dedicated to destroying Israel’s very existence–that Bush has refused to negotiate with. Can you spell Oslo? Arafat’s a pro in duping the press, which was illustrated by an April 1 Reuters report on the mass-murderer in which he expressed "deep sadness" at the passing of England’s Queen Mother. He cabled this message of condolence to Queen Elizabeth and Tony Blair: "We offer you, your government and your friendly people our sincere sympathies in the name of the Palestinian people, its leadership and in my name personally."

That rank hypocrisy alone calls for an immediate bullet to the head.

As others have pointed out, when The New York Times and Washington Post endorse a Bush proposal, it’s 90 percent certain that something’s gone awry. An April 7 Times editorial began: "Amid the daily scenes of horror and hatred in the Middle East, people may be tempted to dismiss Secretary of State Colin Powell’s new peacemaking mission as hopelessly unrealistic. They shouldn’t. In recent months, a broad new consensus has begun to gel, in Washington and Arab capitals and across much of the Israeli political spectrum, about the steps needed to move the region from war to peace. If Mr. Powell can build on these shared ideas and bring them to bear on recalcitrant Palestinian and Israeli leaders, he can transform a deadly crisis into an opening for lasting peace."

What a detachment from reality. Since Sharon began the current military operation, his popularity has skyrocketed in Israel; in addition, there’s absolutely no "consensus" among the involved countries in the conflagration. As for Powell’s possibility of forging a "lasting peace" in the region, one can only recommend that Times editorialists audit a few world history courses.

The coddling of Arafat in the liberal media is astonishing. Any day, I expect a Times editorial to suggest that a delegation of Jimmy Carter, Janet Reno, both Clintons, Jesse Jackson, Jerry Ford, Madeleine Albright and Katie Couric be dispatched to wherever Osama bin Laden’s hiding out, and through dialogue and process and soul-searching, attempt to find common ground with this resilient warrior. This isn’t completely facetious: there’s no moral difference between OBL and Arafat, or, for that matter, our back-stabbing "allies" in Saudi Arabia. Yet Arafat, who’s proved 100 times he can’t be trusted, is given the unspoken status of most-favored-dictator.

A more cogent view was published in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. Reuel Marc Gerecht, in an essay headlined "They Live to Die: Only War Can Stop the Suicide Bombers," concluded: "Secretary of State Colin Powell’s upcoming trip to the Middle East is bound to fail embarrassingly, as did his first sojourn into the peace process in 2001, because the mission makes no sense. His ‘engagement’ is premised on a political culture among the Palestinians which simply does not exist.

"So what will work? [A]n Iranian parallel is illuminating. By late 1987, the carnage of the Iran-Iraq war had burned out the martyrdom syndrome among young Iranian men. Boys who’d once believed with seemingly invincible conviction jang jang ta piruzi (‘War! War until Victory!’) were left lost and shell-shocked. Within a short time, they loathed the leaders who’d once so inspired them.

"Unfortunately, it is only war–not the well-intended but meaningless Tenet and Mitchell plans–that can now burn out istishhad among the Palestinians. The sooner the Bush administration realizes this, the sooner the suicide bombers will cease. If the administration tries to ‘negotiate’ with this syndrome, it will only fuel the fire and make America, not just Israel, look weak. As Osama bin Laden should have taught us, weakness in the Middle East never goes unpunished."

More optimistically, one assumes that Bush, who’s in the midst of the worst international turmoil since the Cuban Missile Crisis, is trying to buy time for the inevitable invasion of Baghdad, which unfortunately must be delayed until late summer or fall after the U.S. military’s arsenal is replenished.

Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, in an April 15 Weekly Standard editorial, were remarkably restrained in their disappointment about the Powell trip. Their most important point was about Saddam Hussein, writing: "President Bush needs to stay focused on Iraq. Many of those who want him to become deeply and personally involved in the Middle East peace process also want him to do nothing about Saddam Hussein. In the Arab world, in Europe, in Washington and New York, and in some corners of the administration itself, there is the hope that Bush will become so immersed in peace-processing that he’ll have neither the time, the energy, nor the inclination to tackle the more fundamental problem in the Middle East. By turning Bush into a Middle East mediator, they think they can shunt him off the road that leads to real security and peace–the road that runs through Baghdad. We trust the president will see and avoid this trap."

It’s small consolation to those cable subscribers who are blacked out from the Yankees’ new shrine to George Steinbrenner, YES, but the station is awful. It’s not the increased partisanship for the home team from commentators that rankles–Michael Kay, Jim Kaat and Ken Singleton are over-the-top boosters no matter whose mic they’re using–but the constant, almost religious, promos of Yank legends in between innings is maddening. Also, you’re lucky if scores from other games are announced even once during a game. Just another reason to hate the Yankees.

At the same time, it’s no wonder that AOL Time Warner is in such a financial pickle: in the past month, the Internet provider has been almost impossible to use, with "system busy" signals frequent, e-mails taking minutes to send and an horrific new baseball scoreboard (reflective of its "synergy" with Sports Illustrated) that sometimes loads, more often not. The conglomerate’s new chief, Richard Parsons, happens to be a friend, and I can only imagine the headaches he’s enduring right now.

I’m open to ditching AOL, even though I’ve been a customer for years, and wonder if any readers have suggestions for a superior service.

Speaking of Sports Illustrated, it’d be swell if its fabled jinx stymied slugger Jason Giambi’s debut with the Bombers this year. (Giambi was on the March 25 cover; last year, the Red Sox’s Nomar Garciaparra was on SI’s cover and within a month he had surgery that ended his 2001 season.) I love how the boo-birds have turned on Giambi so early in the season, just because his offense resembles that of Luis Sojo and lousy defense already reminds fans of Tino Martinez. But Giambi’s a bona fide superstar; by the end of April he’ll be posting his typical stellar stats. On the off-chance that his adjustment to New York City takes longer than expected, I wonder how long it’ll be before Steinbrenner pops off to the newspapers that his prized free-agent is a lemon.

The boys and I went to Yankee Stadium for the first time this season last Saturday, enduring another remarkable pitching performance from a Yank (in this case, El Duque), reducing the Tampa Bay Devil Rays–a team to reckon with maybe even next year–to Double-A status. It was the coldest afternoon game I’ve attended in more than 30 years, with snow falling as our cab huffed and puffed on the FDR Dr. Junior and MUGGER III, dressed in Red Sox uniforms under their leather jackets, were dumbfounded when in the first inning, out of nowhere, a chant of "Boston sucks!" emerged from right field. It seemed a little weird to me, too, and dispelled the myth that New Yorkers are nonchalant about the rivalry between the two ballclubs. Fenway Park regulars are certainly more churlish when the subject comes up–who wouldn’t be given the circumstances, as in the date 1918, just two years after my own dad was born in Massachusetts–but their counterparts at the Stadium can be just as nasty.

All of which is fine with me. When the Sox, one of these years, win a World Series, New Yorkers will pretend to shrug it off, but it’ll sting far worse than, say, a loss to the Mets in the October/November ultimate sporting event.

Chattin’ with the Folks

One of the most asinine articles I’ve run across in The New York Times Magazine–at least in the past month–was an endorsement of random pat-downs at airports since Sept. 11. Last Sunday, Michael Berube, "an indistinct 40-year-old white guy" who’s a professor at Pennsylvania State University, reveled in the "civics lesson" that’s rendered when clueless security officials waste valuable time by interrogating passengers who pose no safety threat.

He writes: "What precisely is all the fuss about? The new security standards are good for you, and they (finally!) treat air travel with the high seriousness it always deserved. But more than this, they’re actually interesting. They create new social relationships and new forms of human commonality as the guys who’ve just breezed through the first-class check-in to take their places alongside the first-time travelers, and the Daughters of the American Revolution wait their turns behind the Arab-Americans of Dearborn."

How jolly for Berube that he’s making new friends, but maybe he’ll think differently when a suicide-bent fanatic scoots onto the aircraft while he’s chatting up those chipper employees who are directed, in the interest of an insane policy of political correctness, to search 80-year-old nuns and little kids. Just last week, for example, 14-year-old Elliot Gosko, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to drink at Aspen Airport some water he’d collected from a creek for a school biology experiment. According to a New York Times News Service short in the April 5 Arizona Republic, "[Gosko] said the water made him nauseated and might have contained giardia, parasites that can cause life-threatening intestinal illness."

As I mentioned last week, after my nine-year-old son, whose complexion is so fair he suffers sunburn from just five minutes of exposure, was singled out at Newark Intl. for a near strip-search, the utter failure of the government’s security crackdown was frustratingly apparent. Had the Irish Republican Army attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center last fall, I’d fully endorse thorough scrutiny of Irish citizens and Irish-Americans (like my family) at the country’s airports.

But that wasn’t the case, and until Tom Ridge enforces strict profiling of people from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, etc., there’s no reason to feel comfortable aboard an airplane, no matter how pleasant Berube’s weird celebration of human interaction is for him.

A Respite from the Times

As Lipsky, 55–a veteran of The Wall Street Journal and The Forward–admitted to the New York Post’s Keith Kelly on April 7, the Sun faces a formidable challenge in the midst of a severe media recession. "It’s very risky," he said. "But there is a possibility of success financially and that’s an important fact."

In a promotional piece released last week, the editors wrote: "The New York Sun is being launched this spring to fill the need for a serious daily broadsheet that places a priority on news of the city. Its news and feature pages will provide honest and objective daily coverage of the politics and policy debates, the cultural questions, philanthropic trends and spiritual quests of all New Yorkers. Its editorial page will join the debate over the future of New York as a voice for free markets and limited government, for constitutional strength and equality under the law... The New York Sun will aspire to be become the newspaper for serious New Yorkers."

Stoll, 29, in addition to his contributions to the Journal and working with Lipsky at The Forward, has acquired a degree of notoriety for his excellent website–smartertimes.com–which daily catalogs the contradictions, factual mistakes and escalating hypocrisy of The New York Times.

Last week, a Swiss reporter based in New York called to ask me if I thought the Sun was a vanity enterprise, similar to Mort Zuckerman’s Daily News or Arthur Carter’s New York Observer. The difference, as I explained, is that Lipsky and Stoll are journalists, as opposed to wealthy men who made their money in different fields and simply desired the ego gratification of owning a newspaper. The Sun is ideologically driven: whether it can succeed or not is open to debate, but it’s clearly not a vehicle designed to cadge party invites.

As noted before in this column, I’ve been invited to contribute on an occasional basis to the Sun, a request that pleases me. But that’s a minuscule point–thrown in to squelch the conflict-of-interest police–for knowing the past work of Lipsky and Stoll, this is a newspaper I’m eagerly anticipating.

If you live in NYC, call toll-free at 1-866-NYC-SUN1 for home distribution. Out-of-staters desiring mail delivery can call the same number or write the subscription manager: The New York Sun, 105 Chambers St., New York, NY 10007.

Earning a Few Bucks

Skenazy was incensed, in her barely literate writing, that Playboy is preparing a "Women of Enron" issue that’ll feature nude pictures of now-unemployed females at the scandal-ridden corporation. Exploitation! Pimps! I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!, was Skenazy’s theme, ignoring the fact that the soft-porn monthly has received numerous inquiries from Enron gals who are eager to receive $10,000 for their participation (far more dough than the standard $500 college students are paid to take it all off).

The News’ woman-on-a-mission says: "In the past, Playboy’s pictorials didn’t focus on the downtrodden. They featured college students–the Women of the Ivy League, for instance–or the women of sundry piquant professions: the Women of Wall Street, of Washington, even the Women of the IRS. What did all these ladies have in common? Power. Those Ivy League lasses will one day run America. The women of Washington already do [she might get an argument from NOW on that naive claim]. And the chicks at the IRS can reduce any man to tears... But the women of Enron are the opposite of powerful. They are out of work. Many have children to feed. Some may feel they have only one thing left to sell. And Playboy’s buying."

An article as dumb as Skenazy’s probably would’ve been rejected by even the 70s-era Ms. magazine.

Tunku Varadarajan offered a far more neutral take on this particular Playboy marketing scheme in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. Although somewhat mystified by the enthusiastic response from ex-Enron workers–one of the magazine’s requirement is proof of past employment at Enron, which disqualifies similarly displaced Arthur Andersen employees, some of whom are envious, according to Gary Cole, Playboy’s director of photography–Varadarajan approached the mini-controversy with an open mind.

He writes: "Is Playboy, perhaps, exploiting these women? ‘No,’ said Mr. Cole, ‘absolutely not. The offer’s out there, and nobody’s forcing them.’ Indeed, one woman declared jauntily in her e-mail [to Cole], after first lamenting that she’d lost most of a 401(k) account that was to be a down payment on a home, that ‘I have always had a desire to be in Playboy, and now this is my chance!’"

Varadarajan, who included nonjudgmental comments from Helen Fisher, an anthropology professor at Rutgers and author of The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World, concluded his column on a sensible note. "Naturally, Playboy stands to profit, too, presumably in enhanced newsstand sales and a brand-new buzz. And in our amoral age–where notoriety offers a direct avenue to financial success [which explains Bill Clinton’s $200,000 speaking fees]–the Enron women who pose for Playboy will gain social power rather than lose it. What could be more elegant for our times than this perfectly symbiotic arrangement?"