Saturday, February 18, 2006

Double Takes in Reading Yesterday’s (February 17, 2006) New York Times

Department of Homeland Security’s response to fears about an Arab company having “a major role in operating ports in and around New York City”:

Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, said his department had no information about Dubai Ports World that justified an objection to the deal. . . . "We did not find derogatory information in our review," he said. [See full article.]

Isn’t something glaringly obvious being overlooked here? Something that everyone can easily see who is not blinded by “political correctness”? Namely, that when the immense majority of terrorists are Arabs, such as nineteen out of nineteen of the 9/11 airplane hijackers, you don’t put Arabs in a position to wreak even greater havoc, such as bringing in an atomic weapon in the hold of a ship and detonating it in New York harbor.


Op-Ed Columnist Thomas L. Friedman on how Israel can get rid of Hamas:


If Israel truly wants to get rid of Hamas, or at least see it disarmed, the only people who can do that effectively are the Palestinians. . . . If Hamas is going to fail now in leading the Palestinian Authority, it is crucial that it be seen to fail on its own — because it can't transform itself from a terror group into a ruling body delivering peace, security and good government for Palestinians — not because Israel and the U.S. never gave it a chance. [See the full column.]

Success and failure depend on a comparison of results achieved with results intended. If the Palestinian people had wanted Hamas to be disarmed, the very least they would have done would have been to abstain from voting for it. If they wanted a ruling body delivering peace and security, the last thing they would have done is vote for a government to be run by terrorists openly bent on the annihilation of a neighboring country. Waiting for the Palestinian people to get rid of Hamas is about as reasonable a prospect as waiting for the German people in the 1930s to get rid of Hitler.

Indeed, I think I remember another column by Friedman, in a previous life:

If Britain and France truly want to get rid of the Nazi party, or at least see it disarmed, the only people who can do that effectively are the German people . . . . If the Nazis are going to fail now in leading the German people, it is crucial that they be seen to fail on their own—because they can’t transform themselves from a terror group into a ruling body delivering peace, security, and good government for Germans—not because the Allies never gave them a chance.


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