September 2001

Indiscriminate beating of straw man
In an admirably succinct letter in the Sept. 30 San Jose Mercury News, Tom Halla observes that most of the "peace and justice" activists writing to the paper are "denouncing a straw man. No one in the administration or military is advocating indiscriminate bombing of innocent civilians, despite the fact that was exactly what was done to us."

Halla goes on: "A common theme is that foreigners somehow lack the ability to be evil without our assistance. The activists' sole solution to all international problems is that the United States should set a `good example' of pacifism. The probability that the troublesome foreigners would not be shamed into following suit is not something they ever mention."

If you hit the link you'll see a few letters of the sort Halla is talking about. In a sort of moralistic imperialism, one writer assumes that the U.S. indeed is responsible for evil around the world. Foreigners are, implicitly, "lesser breeds without the law.''

I've noticed "Stop Racist War'' signs in peace protests and wondered, racist? Osama's fatwa says it's great to kill Americans (nationality), Jews (religion) and Christians (religion) residing on the Arabian peninsula. No mention of race. And they killed people of all nationalities, religions, colors and creeds in the 9-11 attacks. The U.S. hopes to kill or capture bin Laden and his terrorist network. Their race -- white, according to the Census -- is not our motivator. We object to them hijacking our airplanes, destroying part of an American city and murdering thousands of people. -- 9/30

Osama speaks
The Jews did it, says Osama bin Laden, in answer to written questions submitted by a newspaper in Pakistan. The terrorist leader denied launching the Sept. 11 attacks. He speculated that Florida Jews, angry at Bush's victory in the disputed election, hijacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing 6,500 people.

Pretty good for a bunch who couldn't figure out the butterfly ballot.

The newspaper got its questions to bin Laden by giving the list to Taliban officials, who were claiming they had no idea where to find their guest. -- 9/28

Independent study backlash
California legislators are cutting funds for charter schools that don't offer traditional classes -- unless they meet as yet undefined guidelines that will kick in mid-year. It's a reaction to a for-profit charter company that seems to offering limited services to home-schooling parents while collecting the full per-student reimbursement from the state. However, public districts, which aren't covered by SB 740, also profit from independent study reimbursements, writes Daniel Weintraub in the Sacramento Bee. And some independent study charters offer innovative, effective programs to educate high-risk students who've failed in traditional classrooms. -- 9/27

Vouchers ahead?
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to consider the Cleveland voucher case opens the door for a reversal of its 1973 decision barring public support for religious K-12 schools. In Cleveland, 4,000 low-income students -- almost all black -- have escaped dreadful public schools with a voucher worth up to $2,500. Some 96 percent now attend church-affiliated schools.

If the court OKs the Cleveland plan -- I think it's a toss-up -- look for a lot more voucher proposals aimed at low-income kids trapped in failing schools. Making church-sponsored schools eligible greatly expands parents' choices. It's clear that inner-city parochial schools outperform inner-city public schools.

Those who want more secular private schools to take vouchers need to raise the amount to what the public system is spending, argues Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby. At $2,500 a student, it's impossible to start a school without a subsidy, which usually means church support. -- 9/26

Operation Multisyllabic Puffery
Operation Infinite Justice -- deemed offensive because only Allah's justice is infinite -- is now Operation Enduring Freedom. This is offensive to me on grounds of excessive length and pomposity. Why not Operation Justice, if we must have publicly announced code names. Or Operation Firefighter, which offers multiple meanings.

Andrew Sullivan's readers have come up with suggestions for Reuters, which has banned the word "terrorist'' in the name of neutrality. I like "deconstructionist.'' -- 9/26

There is a difference
The clear-thinking Leonard Pitts takes on moral equivalence in another excellent Miami Herald column:

For all our faults, we don't drive planeloads of noncombatants into buildings filled with same. We don't willfully rain carnage upon civilians. And we don't dance in the street when innocents die.

When forced to take up arms, we attempt to limit our military actions to military targets. Yes, innocents sometimes die regardless of our best intentions. But for all our transgressions, we don't sanction the murder of those who have neither the capacity nor the intention to harm us.

Pitts concludes that now is not the time to doubt our values. "We are right and they are evil."

Pitts' Sept. 12 "monster'' column is said to have engendered 21,000 e-mail responses, which is just astounding.

In a Nation column on "Islamic fascism," Christopher Hitchens blasts the blame-America-firsters: "The Taliban and its surrogates are not content to immiserate their own societies in beggary and serfdom. They are condemned, and they deludedly believe that they are commanded, to spread the contagion and to visit hell upon the unrighteous. The very first step that we must take, therefore, is the acquisition of enough self-respect and self- confidence to say that we have met an enemy and that he is not us, but someone else." -- 9/25

Peace in our time
The post-WTC peace movement is "fundamentally unserious," argues Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit. Warped by anti-Americanism and phony moral equivalence, it's "far more about posturing to their base than about real argument." As a result, we aren't having a real debate about how the U.S. should respond to the terrorist attack on our country.

The hawks are serious. They're not advocating carpet bombing Kabul, killing 6,000 innocent Afghanis to get revenge, flinging symbolic missiles at meaningless targets or fighting a conventional war aimed at occupying Afghanistan. President Bush has made it clear that he's going to wait patiently and relentlessly for a chance to strike at the terrorists. These are people who've declared holy war on America. They are not willing to give peace a chance.

It comes down to this: Our country has been attacked by a ruthless enemy. Not only do we have a right to defend ourselves, we have an obligation to defend ourselves. If we do not, we will have more victims to mourn, more prayers and songs and candelight vigils and telethons. We will not have peace. -- 9/24

No terrorists here
In unwitting tribute to George Orwell's "newspeak,'' Reuters has told correspondents not to use "terrorist'' to describe the Sept. 11 attacks. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,'' explains global news director Stephen Jukes in an internal memo. "We're not there to evaluate the moral case," says Jukes, according to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post.

In its quest for neutrality, Reuters is losing accuracy. These, uh, activists crashed hijacked planes laden with jet fuel into office buildings, killing more than 6,000 civilians. If that's not terrorism, what is?

Reuters did use "terrorist'' to describe the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But this time fear won out. "Our people are on the front lines, in Gaza, the West Bank and Afghanistan,'' Jukes says. "The minute we seem to be siding with one side or another, they're in danger." From freedom fighters, presumably. -- 9/24

Teetering Taliban
The "Taliban Isn't So Tough'' writes Michael Rubin in The New Republic. The group is made up of Pushtuns -- also found in Pakistan -- and doesn't represent the tribal or religious allegiances of all Afghanis, Rubin argues. And the Taliban's military won mostly by co-opting exhausted warlords, not fighting.

Diplomatic sources tell the UPI about U.S. plans to set up a coalition government in Kabul, including the Taliban and the rebel Northern Alliance. -- 9/22

Pity the poor terrorists
President Bush won 91 percent approval ratings for his speech promising a long, dangerous, tireless campaign against terrorists. I admired the clarity, logic, power and relentlessness in Bush's speech. Not much rhetoric there. He didn't need it.

But there are still a few people who think we can stop the "cycle of violence'' by apologizing to those who attacked our country. They don't want us to go to war, forgetting that this war came to us.

National Review's "Kumbaya Watch" cites Strobe Talbott, Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of state, and Michael Lerner of Tikkun, for arguing that the attack sprang from U.S. neglect of Third World poverty.

In Opinion Journal, James Taranto notes: "At the moment, the two leading suspects for having sponsored the attacks are Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The Washington Post reports today about bin Laden that 'estimates of his personal fortune vary widely, from a few million dollars to $300 million.' Forbes last year estimated Saddam Hussein's personal fortune at $7 billion."

Bin Laden has spent his fortune to kill infidels. Saddam Hussein has enriched himself and his cronies, built lavish palaces and refurbished his military while blaming sanctions for the shortages of food and medicine.

Furthermore, most of the hijackers came from the middle or upper classes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They were the sons of lawyers, not peasants. -- 9/21

Hot news
Netsurfers want news -- and Nostradamus -- not sex, reports Reuters. Last week, "sex" dropped to 17th in popularity for searches on Alta Vista, apparently its first time out of the top 10. "Osama bin Laden has displaced Pamela Anderson in cyberspace and people looking for information about the American flag outnumbered those curious about Britney Spears," writes Reuters. On Google, sports, TV and computer topics were replaced by searches for CNN, World Trade Center, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, American Flag, FBI, Pentagon, American Airlines and American Red Cross. Thanks to a phony prediction circulating in cyberspace, Nostradamus, a 16th century psychic, is also hot. -- 9/20

Decent people
Dave Barry's entirely serious column is also entirely right-on:

I'm not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don't set out to kill innocent people. We don't cheer when innocent people die. The people who did this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse.

They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people. -- 9/19

Offensive sensitivity
To avoid possible offense to foreign students, Lehigh University's vice provost ordered an American flag removed from a university bus Sept. 13, reports the student newspaper, The Brown and White. That offended the patriotic, who got the no-flag rule reversed. John Smeaton apologized formally a few days later. He told the Allentown Morning Call, "This was a misunderstanding that was quickly rectified. The message was supposed to be that we are sensitive to everyone."

Sensitive to whom? I think Smeaton owes an apology to Lehigh's foreign students for suggesting they'd be offended by the display of an American flag.

Lehigh is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That's in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. If you don't mind. --9/18

A new year
Tonight marks the start of the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I got a letter from my congregation assuring us that there will be security to protect religious services. That's routine. There's always a threat.

I was struck by the special note to parents with kids in Sunday school, which started classes yesterday at a local middle school. An Islamic school also rents space on the same campus. "It is important that we communicate to our children that while it is widely suspected that the terrorist acts committed this week were caused by Islamic extremists, the children and families of the Islamic School are NOT these people. In fact, they are our neighbors, and they share in the sorrows of Americans all over. We need to be kind and considerate neighbors in our common facility. We cannot tolerate prejudice. We will not let our identity as Jews or their identity as Muslims keep us from being kind and considerate neighbors."

It doesn't feel like a very happy new year. But I am happy to be a citizen of a country that expects people to rise above their differences, live together in peace and unite in times of crisis.

Thanks to Virginia Postrel for this survivor's story from a Pakistani Muslim saved by a Hasidic Jew. I also was moved by Sarah Bunting's account in Tomato Nation of how strangers, finding themselves suddenly in a war zone, helped each other to get home. -- 9/17

Sympathy for the devil
Taliban supporters in Pakistan held up a sign at a protest telling Americans to ask ourselves why the world hates us. Actually, most of the world is with us. But I have an answer to why some in the Arab world hate us so much they're happy to see our airplanes turned into bombs to murder thousands of civilians.

They hate us because we're big, powerful and rich, while they're small, weak and poor. Our culture is dynamic, confident, global and free. Their culture is rigid, defensive, parochial and tyrannical. We're winners. They're losers, and they resent it.

U.S. support for Israel is a detail. We could let our foreign policy be dictated by Yasir Arafat, and they'd still hate us. Remember our foreign policy once aligned us with the Afghan resistance to the Soviets. All the weapons we gave them didn't make the Taliban like us.

To remove the cause of the hatred, the U.S. would have to become weak and meek: Retreat within our borders, bring home our troops, ships and planes, refrain from trade and ban the export of books, TV shows, movies and hamburgers. We'd have to surrender militarily, economically and culturally. We're not going to do that.

I don't know what military action is feasible in a war on small terrorist cells around the world. It probably won't look like World War II or even like the Gulf War. But I know we've got to defend our country. If that makes the Taliban mad at us, well, they're mad already, so big deal.

In Salon, Gary Kamiya concedes we'll never "win the hearts and minds'' of religious fanatics who hate us for being a superpower. But he wants us to woo America-hating Arabs by pressuring Israel to cut a land-for-terror deal with the Palestinians. Andrew Sullivan's "Appeasement Watch'' responds:

The solution to this conflict, Gary Kamiya of Salon suggests, is to hold Israel's aid hostage until they agree to let the people who celebrated this atrocity march into Jerusalem to conduct their Jihad from a closer vantage point. How anyone can even take a passing look at the developments since the Oslo Accord and blame Israel for unwillingness to take a risk for peace is beyond me. Kamiya's response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia would be to hand Hitler a nice chunk of Poland. After all, isn't it the underlying grievances of the German people that need addressing first?

Arafat is suppressing coverage of Palestinians cheering for Osama bin Laden, reports the Washington Post. Journalists have been told their safety is at risk if footage of celebrations is broadcast. Friday, five journalists were arrested while covering a Gaza rally. -- 9/17

Call out the Power Rangers
Teachers are being told to tell children they're safe, everything's being taken care of, time to get back to normal. Wrong lesson, says Lisa Snell, director of Child Education and Welfare at the Reason Public Policy Institute and the mother of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. For one thing, kids notice that their parents and teachers don't feel safe. For another, it teaches passivity.

My five year old saw the live coverage of the second plane crashing into the WTC. He immediately went and found his Spiderman t-shirt and told me that he and Gavin would not be at school when I picked them up because they were going with the Power Rangers to save the world. He urgently wanted to get to school to call a meeting with Gavin and Tanner, his five-year-old compadres, to decide what to do--a typical reaction from a boy who lives and breathes bad guys versus good guys. . . . I would rather be on a highjacked airplane with someone inoculated by Power Rangers than someone who believes the inherent message of every school institution: that weapons are bad and that the authorities and the government will solve all problems
and protect you.

Snell also complains that while Education Week recommends lessons on geography, letter writing and civic involvement that can be drawn from the tragedy, it never mentions lessons "about liberty, about constitutional guarantees, about how these terrorist acts will test fundamental values of freedom versus safety.'' -- 9/15

Fight for freedom
"Don't Sacrifice Freedom'', says Glenn Reynolds in a Fox News commentary. It's just what the terrorists want. "Make no mistake. They hate us not because of what we do but for what we are: rich, free, and happy. To the extent that we give away our freedom in the vain hope that its sacrifice will purchase us a little security, we are playing into their hands. And, as Benjamin Franklin famously predicted, in making that sacrifice we will in fact wind up with neither freedom nor security.''

Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is also InstaPundit.com.

Hijacking is going to get a lot harder, observes Virginia Postrel. And not because of all those new security checks. "How can you hijack a plane with a box cutter, or even a serious knife? Why didn't the crew and passengers resist?'' Because they assumed, based on past history, that the hijackers were hostage takers, not suicide bombers.
"After yesterday, you will no longer be able to hijack a plane with a knife. You may not even be able to hijack a plane with a gun. In fact, you may not be able to hijack a plane at all. The incentives have completely changed. Now resistance could save thousands of lives.'' -- 9/13

Horror
I don't have a lot of rational thoughts about the murders of Americans at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Just anger. A desire for revenge without knowing how or who. And sadness, of course. So many dead in the name of . . . Anger. Revenge.

I got one bitter chuckle over the video left by the latest Sacramento serial killer. I forget his name. The security guard with white supremacist fantasies. Before his suicide, he bragged his crimes would guarantee him a week on the front pages. Tough luck, mister. -- 9/11

Butterflies are fine
Corn genetically designed to kill pests doesn't harm monarch butterflies, concludes six research papers to be published next week in a scientific journal. In a Cornell lab, monarchs sickened when forced to eat pollen from genetically modified corn. In the fields, monarch larvae don't encounter enough pollen to make a difference.

"I don't think there's a need to consider monarchs at risk due to this technology," said researcher Mark K. Sears, a professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelth in Ontario, to the New York Times.

Biotech opponents aren't satisfied, complaining that one high-toxicity brand -- little used and now being phased out -- was risky for monarchs.

However, the greatest risk to monarchs comes from non-biotech crops that need to be sprayed with pesticides. Researchers found a significant risk to butterflies from spraying of pesticides and herbicides, as well as from natural predators such as spiders and beetles. -- 9/11

JD esteem
If juvenile offenders don't feel good about themselves, is that a bad thing? Sacramento's self-esteem guru is back in action, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. State Sen. John Vasconcellos is pushing through a bill to train probation officers in how to identify low-self esteem in young offenders and how to encourage "personal security, selfhood, affiliation, mission and accomplishment." The cost is estimated at $1 million or less.

"Vasconcellos cited several academic studies showing that, not surprisingly, self-esteem deteriorates during incarceration,'' writes Robert Salladay. However, there's no evidence that boosting self-esteem lowers the crime rate. In the '80s, Vasconcellos got state funding for the Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, Personal and Social Responsibility. Members looked hard for a causal link between low self-esteem and social ills, such as crime and violence, school failure and welfare dependency. They didn't find it.

In "Feel good, do bad'' on March 28, I wrote about Ray Baumeister's research, which found that violent criminals have higher self-esteem than peaceable law-abiding folks. An inflated sense of worth not grounded in reality is dangerous, Baumeister argues.

Stephen Green, assistant secretary for the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, told the Chron: "We think it establishes a bad precedent by replacing training based upon scientific research with training based on somebody's opinion." -- 9/9

Silicon Pines
"The toughest decision: Should my loved one be placed in an "assisted computing facility? For family members, it is often the most difficult and painful decision they will face: to accept that a loved one — a parent, a spouse, perhaps a sibling — is technologically impaired and should no longer be allowed to live independently, or come near a computer or electronic device without direct supervision."

I found this SatireWire site on "Silicon Pines'' truly funny, despite being at risk of placement myself. It goes on to pose these questions: "How frustrated am I that my parent/sibling/spouse is unable to open an email attachment?" "How much of my time should be taken up explaining how RAM is different from hard drive memory?" "How many times can I bear to hear my dad say, 'Hey, can I replace the motherboard with a fatherboard? Ha ha ha!'"

Among the 10 warning signs of technological impairment: "After sending someone an email, you phone to tell that someone that you've sent them an email." -- 9/7

Double test
In a few years, California's 11th graders could find themselves spending more time taking tests on what they've learned than actually learning it. They already take the statewide STAR, which now includes questions linked to state standards; soon they'll have to pass the state graduation exam. Many take the SATs to qualify for college; some take several Advanced Placement exams. And there's a move afoot to give 11th graders the California State University's placement exam, which sorts out those who require remedial English or math, so students have time to improve before they hit college.

I've never understood why the tests have to be different. Why not use STAR as a graduation exam and a CSU entrance exam, adjusting the cutoff as needed? It turns out I'm not the only one. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, CSU wants to replace its placement exam and the SATs with the standards-linked portion of STAR, plus a writing test.

In addition to cutting test time, consolidation would send a useful message: Learn what you're supposd to learn in high school if you want to make it in college. And don't blow off STAR. It counts.

As part of his anti-SAT campaign, University of California President Richard Atkinson wants achievement exams based on state standards used for UC admission. That would require developing a series of state tests in various subjects, an expensive duplication of the SAT achievement tests. -- 9/7

Good reads
Racial profiling attacks conservative values, argues James Forman, Jr. in "Arrested Development'' in the Sept. 20 New Republic. Forman helped found a charter school in Washington, D.C. Police regularly search black students outside the school, though no drugs, weapons or other evidence of crime has ever turned up.

"For the conservative ethos about work and responsibility to resonate, black citizens must believe they are treated the same way as white citizens--that with equal responsibilities go equal rights. . . . Random and degrading police searches radically undermine this message. They tell black kids that they are indeed pariahs--that, no matter how hard they study, they remain suspects."

In "A Bad IDEA is Disabling Public Schools'' in the Sept. 5 Education Week, Clint Bolick analyzes the perverse effects of federal law on special education. Bolick, whose son acquired a disability label to get help with his writing skills, argues that the law should cover only students with actual physical or mental disabilities, not those with "learning deficiencies.'' -- 9/6