Off the Fence

"We are very much concerned about the situation of Syria," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said earlier this week at the military alliance's annual summit in Chicago. Yet NATO has “no intention whatsoever to intervene.”

It is bewildering that the leader of NATO continues to make such blanket statements about his alliance's intentions, or lack thereof. Two months ago, I wrote about a similar Rasmussen pledge in Brussels. There, the former Danish Prime Minister stated that, "It’s important for me to stress that NATO has no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria." All this does is give Bashar Assad the peace of mind he needs to continue killing his people, (at a rate of dozens per day since March 2011), safe in the knowledge that the only force capable of stopping him -- NATO -- will continue to sit and dither on the sidelines. 

I would be remiss in not urging you to read my friend and colleague Michael Totten's lastest entry on his blog, entitled, "The Woman Who Blew Up the Arab World." It's about Faida Hamdi, the Tunisian police officer who slapped Mohamed Bouazizi, whose later self-immolation set off the events we've now come to call the "Arab Spring." Except Ms. Hamdi was neither a police officer, nor did she slap Bouazizi. Yet this creation story has nonetheless taken hold. 

One would think that a major newspaper or magazine would have interviewed the woman whose actions allegedly sparked the domino-like fall of regimes across North Africa. Yet it was left to an independent journalist like Michael—whom I'm honored to call a friend and colleague—to root out this important story on his own. Michael is one of the most underappreciated foreign correspondents out there; read his story and see why. 

Last year, I wrote an essay for World Affairs Journal about how Occupy Wall Street looks to us here in Europe. Over at the American Interest, the estimable Walter Russell Mead confirms my prediction that the movement would soon run asunder. The post is well-worth reading in full; here's an excerpt: 

Historically, the American left has found its base among immigrants who have not yet found a place in American society, African Americans excluded from it on the grounds of their race, workers savagely exploited by the rawest kind of capitalism and farmers being driven from the land. Organizing an effective left has always been exceptionally difficult in America because these groups were (and remain) much less cohesive than, say, the traditional blue collar factory proletariat of a conventional European ethnic nation-state.

Tuesday was not an auspicious day for Reason magazine senior editor Brian Doherty to release his new biography of Texas libertarian congressman Ron Paul. Just the day before, Paul announced that he would suspend active campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. You can read my review of Doherty's book for the Daily Beast here. 

Peter Beinart's new book, "The Crisis of Zionism," has stirred up a great deal of controversy. I add to the debate with a review in the current Books supplement of Ha'aretz. You can read the full review here (registration required) and I've posted an excerpt below:

It is hypocritical of Beinart, who places nearly all of the blame for the lack of a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict on Israel while pretending to see shades of gray, to accuse others of having a “monist” worldview. It is naive to think that Israel, given present political realities, could ever hope to please him. And it is myopic for Peter Beinart to think that Israelis should be most concerned with making Peter Beinart feel proud.

Last month, I attended a memorial service for the late Christopher Hitchens, a member of this humble journal’s editorial board, who died last December after a struggle with esophageal cancer. In addition to being a world famous polemicist and author, he was a friend and mentor.

Which is why it pains me to report that the service did neither Christopher nor his career justice. Hosted by Vanity Fair (one of the many publications for which Christopher wrote), it was geared toward the left-wing, Manhattan literary elite whose pieties Christopher worked to shred over the last decade of his career. Far be it from me to speak for the dead, but I think Christopher would have been more than slightly perturbed by the program, or, more precisely, what was left off it.

Writing in the Financial Times, Die Zeit editor Joe Joffe argues that newly-elected French President Francois Hollande would do well to imitate former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder:

Why the former German chancellor? Because he dared tell his own electorate what neither Mr Hollande nor Nicolas Sarkozy would have uttered even on the rack. Nine years ago, Mr Schröder warned his country: reduce social benefits, loosen up labour markets and accept individual responsibility – or else. Then he carried through with his “Agenda 2010”. And lo, Germany went from zero to 3 per cent growth in the two years before the crash – and back to 3 per cent thereafter.

For my latest column in Ha'aretz, I critique the Obama administration's newly unveiled "Atrocities Prevention Board," the aim of which is to prevent mass-scale killing. Given the ongoing slaughter in Syria, I'd say that the record so far is not encouraging. 

I have a piece today in Tablet about Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London running to regain his seat against incumbent Conservative Boris Johnson. Among his many faults, one is a tendency to make outrageous remarks about Jews and Israel. Even D.D. Guttenplan, London correspondent for the far-left Nation, agrees that Livingstone has a Jewish problem, as he lays out in today's Ha'aretz:

But the argument that a progressive stand on social issues excuses callousness toward Jewish pain is no better than the claim, frequently heard among American and British conservatives, that support for Israel trumps any concern for social justice at home.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been predictably ridiculed for his statement earlier this year that Russia is “without question our number one geopolitical foe.” I say “predictably” because we now live in a post-ideological age where enmity between nations doesn’t exist, where the very word “enemy” is a construction of fearmongering “neocons,” a world where, according to President Barack Obama in his 2009 speech to the United Nations, “The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense … nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.”

Obama returned to Romney’s March comment last Sunday at a campaign event with Bill Clinton in Virginia. “I didn’t know we were back in 1975,” the president quipped.

Remember “leading from behind”? That was the phrase an anonymous administration official used in an interview with the New Yorker last year to describe America’s role in NATO’s Libya intervention. Reporter Ryan Lizza characterized it thusly:

It’s a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world. Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength.

Last week in Tablet, I published a reported piece about the rise of Hungary's Jobbik, Europe's largest parliamentary fascist party. Jobbik focuses its ire on Jews and Gypsies, and is now adding gays to the mix:

The radical nationalist Jobbik party on Wednesday submitted an amendment proposal seeking to ban “promotion of sexual deviations”, MP Adam Mirkoczki, the proponent of the bill, told a press conference.

The bill is aimed at protecting “public morals and the mental health of the young generations” from homosexuality, trans-sexuality, transvestitism, bisexuality, and paedophile behaviours, the deputy said.

The legal changes to several laws would include a ban on advertisements or programmes presenting the above behaviours as socially acceptable or as examples to be followed.

I've written before about the phenomenon "Pinkwashing," or, rather, claims that such a phenomenon indeed exists. The term describes the alleged attempt by Israel and its defenders to obscure or deny the oppression of Palestinians by hyping the Jewish State's record on gay rights. In my monthly column for Ha'aretz, I detail the latest episode in this intellectually specious campaign to delegitimize Israel. 

Last week, former DC mayor and present councilman Marion Barry apologized for comments he had made about Asian-American businessmen in the District. “We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses—those dirty shops,” Barry said. “They ought to go. I’ll just say that right now, you know. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.” It was the latest embarrassment for a man who seems to know no shame.

Tablet has just published a blockbuster piece by Swedish journalist Paulina Neuding about rising anti-Semitism in that country. It is a hatred being spewed mainly by Muslim immigrants, with Social Democrats providing political cover. And the typical excuses offered for such asocial, and at times, violent, behavior, will just not do: 

In Swedish discourse, the violence, rioting, and attacks on fire-fighters and paramedics in areas like Rosengård are often explained with the same well-worn references to social inequalities that the left uses to account for similar phenomena in London and Paris. But those explanations are even less convincing in Sweden: When young people in Rosengård torch cars and attack ambulance drivers, their actions take place in one of the world’s most generous countries of asylum for refugees in one of the world’s most generous welfare states.