The Lip-Service Liberators

Columnist E.J. Dionne wrote recently in the Washington Post about what he called the "wreckage" caused by President Bush's Iraq policy. The column consisted of unmitigated criticism of Bush, but Dionne suddenly threw in this sentence: "Of course the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein." This is lip service of a special kind. The Bush critic offers no credible plan for liberating Iraq and scarcely mentions Saddam but wants you to know he or she has no illusions about the Iraqi dictator and is as eager for his ouster as any hawk. The Scrapbook has a name for these folks--lip-service liberators.

There are many of them and the list is growing. The French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, is one. At a breakfast with Washington reporters, he spent an hour defending the French position of doing as little as possible to remove Saddam. But he's no squish on the subject. "If Saddam Hussein disappears, that would be best for the Iraqi people." Of course there's no French strategy for making him disappear.

Another lip service liberator is Bob Herbert, columnist for the New York Times. He wrote last week about the plight of Iraqi children, noting that "1 out of every 8" dies before age 5. "This generational catastrophe is the fault of Saddam Hussein, no question," he writes. He devotes the rest of the column to arguing against military action to liberate Iraq. Finally, he suggests "a search for a better alternative." What alternative? Herbert hasn't a clue. His knock on Saddam is just lip service.

Robert Scheer, the shrill leftist columnist for the Los Angeles Times, barely qualifies as a lip-service liberator. He hates Bush but notes in one column that Saddam is "clearly a brutal bully, savage in the repression of his own people." But he's not as bad as that awful Bush, according to Scheer, who exonerates Saddam on several counts. A subordinate clause in another Scheer screed zinging Bush's Iraq policy says Saddam is "evil in so many ways." That's it. No elaboration. Pure lip service.

Also unable to muster more than a subordinate clause is the only Nobel laureate from Plains, Ga., Jimmy Carter. His March 9 New York Times op-ed, ostensibly on "just war" theory, manages this scant mention of Saddam: "Despite Saddam Hussein's other serious crimes . . ."

Even the normally hawkish AFL-CIO showed lip-service-liberator tendencies in its resolution last month on Iraq. The gist was that Bush needs "the support of our allies and the major nations of the world" before going to war against Saddam, and that the president has "not fulfilled his responsibility to make a compelling and coherent explanation . . . about the need for military action." But all this is preceded by a paragraph about the horrible deeds of Saddam. "Everybody starts off by saying that" in their antiwar resolutions, said one labor leader. Indeed, they do.

Why We Fight

Norman Mailer--who certain readers over the age of 50 may remember having taken seriously once upon a time--has signed his name to an . . . essay, we suppose you'd have to call it, in the current New York Review of Books. The piece is called "Only in America," and it purports to reveal the "undisclosed logic" by which "the president and his inner cohort" are leading the nation toward war with Iraq. And what is this "logic," you ask? What turns out to be the "prime subtext" of U.S. international security policy with respect to Saddam Hussein, his Iraqi subjects, and the Persian Gulf generally?

No, not weapons of mass destruction or terrorism, silly. Not even oil. To "flag conservatives" like George W. Bush, Mailer explains, the most attractive "perk" of wars like the one now under discussion is their likely deterrent effect on the American orgasm. "Should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries . . . American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back into the closet again."

You hadn't thought of that, had you? For that matter, Mailer acknowledges, "the flag conservatives themselves may not even be wholly aware of the scope of it, not all of them. Not yet."

Long as we're on the subject of undisclosed logic, The Scrapbook feels it ought to reveal the prime subtext of the New York Review's decision to publish Mailer's latest senescent discharge in the first place. To the Review's editors, we imagine, what Norman Mailer has to say about war and sex is actually important.

Trouble is--though the Review itself may not be wholly aware of the scope of it, not all of them, not yet--there's zero evidence for that proposition.

Sami Al-Arian Update

At last report, former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, confined to a cell in Tampa's Hillsborough County Jail pursuant to a 50-count federal terrorism-conspiracy indictment released on February 20, was conducting a hunger strike "to protest this unjust persecution of me, because of my beliefs and opinions."

Or, at least, "he calls it a 'hunger strike,'" Col. David M. Parrish, commander of the Hillsborough facility now tells the Tampa Tribune. But "it's not like any I've ever seen before." Al-Arian, Parrish reports, is downing Carnation Instant Breakfast three times a day. Technically speaking, no, that "would not be considered a hunger strike," the Tribune's quoted expert, University of North Carolina nutritionist Carolyn Barrett, explains. "You definitely wouldn't starve on it." In fact, given that the six-foot, 215-pound, diabetic Al-Arian entered jail a full 37 pounds over his recommended weight, the professor's current Carnation consumption might even be beneficial.

In other news, the St. Petersburg Times reports that in May 1987, a group of the professor's family and friends "stormed a Ramadan service at the mosque that would later become a spiritual and political base for Sami Al-Arian." Al-Arian's sister-in-law, Hala Al-Najjar, was arrested for assault in the incident after a pregnant worshipper she'd attacked and knocked to the ground suffered a miscarriage. Al-Arian's wife, Nahla, and her brother, Mazen Al-Najjar, were also questioned by police. As was a man named Muhammed al-Khatib, since indicted with Al-Arian as a terrorist co-conspirator.

No prosecution resulted from the fracas; the apparently fearful miscarriage victim declined to press charges. But over the next two years, the Times notes, Al-Arian's clique completed a purge of the mosque's previously moderate congregation, "handed title" of the property to a radically inclined "clearinghouse for Wahhabism" called the "North American Islamic Trust," and began to receive "secret funding linked to Saudi Arabia."

Such are the "beliefs and opinions" in defense of which Sami Al-Arian is brave enough to go on a diet.

How About an Order of Lies with That?

Wesley J. Smith wrote in these pages recently of the latest outrage from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--a PR campaign called "Holocaust on Your Plate," which compares the killing of food animals to the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis. But there's something rotten about this campaign besides the concept.

--An Isaac Bashevis Singer quote credited as the idea for the campaign was never spoken by him. It was a piece of dialogue in his novel "Enemies, A Love Story." But that hasn't stopped PETA from misrepresenting the quote.

--The U.S. Holocaust Museum says Matt Prescott, a 21-year-old youth outreach coordinator, used a personal e-mail account and never identified himself as part of PETA when he obtained permission to use the museum's photos in the campaign. But PETA continues to use the photos.

Fred S. Zeidman, chairman of the museum, has called PETA's campaign "utterly shameless and contemptible." That's putting it mildly.