Readworthies XVII

A handful of interesting, informative, and insightful articles.

News, editorials, columns, essays, et al.

Zawahiri-Zarqawi Communique @ U.S. Central Command:

We note seven critical themes from the Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter. The first four confirm al-Qaida’s long-term strategy and core beliefs; the latter three reflect new information about how senior al-Qaida leader Zawahiri views developments in Iraq – and elsewhere – turning against them....

Calvin and Hobbes, All Over Again by Gregory E. Favre @ Poynter Online (ht):

A 22-pound package of joy arrived at our front door. No, it was not delivered by the neighborhood stork, but rather by the man in the big brown truck.

It was the arrival of the long-awaited and anticipated three-volume set of every Calvin and Hobbes comic strips ever published during its much too-brief life. Every one of them, from 1985 through 1995....

Slighting This Greatest Generation: We Focus on the Bad Apples and Ignore the Courageous Heroes by Bing West @ The Washington Post (ht):

Recently the refractory city of Fallujah reemerged as a front-page story. Fallujah first leaped to national attention last November when it became the scene of the fiercest urban combat in the past 35 years. During that battle, 100 Marine squads engaged in more than 200 firefights inside small, dark cement rooms against suicidal jihadists. A single such ferocious gunfight between police and gangs anywhere in America would receive overwhelming and immediate press attention. The Marines did that 200 times in one week in Fallujah.

Since then Fallujah has received scant press attention. I was in Fallujah in September, shortly after Pfc. Romano Romero, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb — the 160th American to die in and around the city since the Iraq war began. The Marines staked out the area and days later shot two Iraqis brazenly placing another explosive device at the same spot. This grueling routine of counterinsurgency did not merit front-page coverage....

Peace is not the answer: Calls to end Iraq's bloodshed are hardly noble when those who would triumph slaughter teachers as children weep. by William Shawcross @ The Los Angeles Times (ht):

It seems unlikely that many of the so-called peace marchers who trooped through Washington and London two weekends back listened on Thursday — at least not with an open mind or sympathy — to George Bush's cogent explanation of why coalition troops are fighting and dying in Iraq.

You did not see in those demonstrations, after all, many banners reading, "Support Iraq's New Constitution," "No to Jihad" or "Stop Suicide Bombers." The crimes committed daily against the Iraqi people by other Arabs who wish to re-enslave them seem to be of little interest to Michael Moore, Jane Fonda and their followers. Rage against the daily assaults on children, women, anyone, by Islamo-fascists and ordinary national fascists is not fashionable. Only alleged American crimes are cool to decry.

It's hard to think of a more graphic illustration of the horror the U.S.-led coalition is fighting in Iraq than the mass murder on Sept. 26, in which terrorists disguised as policemen (a New York Times headline called these butchers "fighters") burst into a primary school in Iskandaria, south of Baghdad, seized five teachers (all Shiites) and shot them dead. Children stood weeping through this atrocity.

Why do crimes like this make so little impression on those Americans and Europeans who want the coalition to abandon Iraq? The demonstrators think of themselves as moral, but it is hard to think of any policy more amoral than abandoning Iraq to such an enemy....

Arabian Sex Tourism by Daniel Pipes @ FrontPageMagazine.com (ht):

Indian media have been publishing exposés documenting the foul behavior of Gulf Arabs in the southern Indian town of Hyderabad: “Fly-by-night bridegrooms,” by R Akhileshwari in the Deccan Herald and “One minor girl, many Arabs,” by Mohammed Wajihuddin in the Times of India are two important examples. Wajihuddin sets the stage: ....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 10/15/05 09:11:34 AM
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