Quick Roundup 75

Did Zizou take the French intifada to the pitch?

Before the final of the World Cup yesterday, I quickly went through the rosters of the Italian and French national teams. On doing this, I noted with mild interest that France, so recently wracked with civil unrest from its unassimilated Moslem immigrant population, apparently fields a team drawn mostly from its poor, Moslem suburbs. Indeed, its captain, whose sorcery as a ball-handler had me initially pulling for France, Zinedine "Zizou" Zidane, is the son of Algerian immigrants. This was to be his last international soccer appearance.

At least before the game, Zidane was held up as an example of a quasi-assimilationist ideal of dual French-Moslem identity and had been found in a poll to be the nation's most respected Frenchmen.

[M]any French Muslims believed that they could at least strive to maintain a dual identity. Moderate Muslim leaders encouraged the youth of the banlieue to see themselves as simultaneously Muslim and French. And, to some extent, it worked. Perhaps the most prominent example is Muslim soccer star Zinedine Zidane, the child of Algerian immigrants, who was chosen in a recent national poll as the most "respected" Frenchman in the country. Salman Rushdie has said that Zidane "has done more to improve France's attitude toward its Muslim minority ... than a thousand political speeches."

This -- along with my weak allegiance to the French side -- went down the toilet yesterday when, in an inexplicable display that ranks among the worst examples of sportsmanship I have ever seen, Zinedine Zidane closed out an otherwise legendary international career by being ejected for head-butting an opponent in the chest, knocking him to the ground. This foul was nowhere near the ball, was clearly deliberate, and apparently was Zizou's response to something that had been said to him. Until that event, he had already been responding properly to his opponent's apparently ongoing taunts -- by playing very well. His outburst occurred during overtime and arguably cost his team the World Cup, which Italy went on to win in the tie-breaker.

Zizou failed as a man yesterday. In doing so, he let his teammates and his country down. I will not speculate as to why he did what he did, but it bears a very disconcerting similarity to how too many of his fellow Moslems the world over respond to taunting real or imagined -- by abandoning the rules of civilized behavior and resorting to physical force instead.

If there is to be hope for a peaceful assimilation of France's substantial immigrant population, a better positive model than Zizou will be needed. Perhaps any of the other immigrant players who maintained their composure throughout the match would serve as a better example.... As it stands, Zizou has merely shown all of us how not to behave when playing the Gentleman's Game.

Dead End for the Bush Doctrine

Drudge reports on a disgusting, gloating article by the pacifists at Time Magazine concerning the paralysis of the Bush Administration regarding North Korea.

In the span of four years, the Bush Administration has been forced to rethink the pre-emptive "Bush doctrine" by which it hoped to remake the world, as the strategy's ineffectiveness was exposed by the very policies it prescribed, TIME's Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar report in this week's cover story on 'The End of Cowboy Diplomacy' on newsstands Monday, July 9th.

President George W. Bush came to office pledging to focus on domestic issues and pursue a "humble" foreign policy that would avoid the entanglements of the Bill Clinton years. After Sept. 11, however, the Bush team embarked on a different path, outlining a muscular, idealistic, and unilateralist vision of American power and how to use it, TIME reports. They aimed to lay the foundation for a grand strategy to fight Islamic terrorists and rogue states, by spreading democracy around the world and pre-empting gathering threats before they materialize. And the U.S. wasn't willing to wait for others to help. The approach fit with Bush's personal style, his self-professed proclivity to dispense with the nuances of geopolitics and go with his gut. "The Bush Doctrine is actually being defined by action, as opposed to by words," Bush told Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One in 2003.

The swaggering Commander in Chief who embodied the doctrine's aspirations has modulated himself too. At a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in May, Bush swore off the Wild West rhetoric of getting enemies "dead or alive," conceding, "in certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted." Bush's response to the North Korean missile test was equally revealing. Under the old Bush Doctrine, defiance by a dictator like Kim Jong Il would have merited threats of punitive U.S. action-or at least a tongue lashing. Instead, the Administration has mainly been talking up multilateralism and downplaying Pyongyang's provocation. As much as anything, it's confirmation of what Princeton political scientist Gary J. Bass calls "doctrinal flameout." Put another way: cowboy diplomacy, RIP.

Concerning the Bush Doctrine, Time may think it is reporting news, but it is about four years behind schedule. When has Bush preemptively invaded any country? Both Iraq and Afghanistan were already guilty of acts of war when we invaded each of them. Iran has been since 1979 and remains untouched even as it develops a nuclear capability. Only an invasion of North Korea could be arguably called "preemptive", but we're apparently going to just sit on our hands while they work out the kinks in their missile systems.

And as for the notion of spreading "democracy", that has already been shown to be flawed on more than one count by the recent elections in "Palestine". At the very least, a process analogous to the de-Nazification of Germany after WW II would be needed in any Islamic state before a secular government that respects individual rights (not a "democracy") would stand a chance.

Having said that, while I have major problems with Bush's prosecution of this war, I find Time's attack on him in poor taste. This is nothing more than a thinly-veiled swipe at American sovereignty, just as its criticism of the war effort is not of the constructive kind.

If Bush has done anything differently from Bill Clinton, it has been to bluster about our nation's right to defend itself before he asked permission from the United Dictatorships -- er, Nations -- to take small steps against only the most blatant aggressor nations. When this policy of "preemptive blustering" predictably failed, Time took it as the opportunity to declare that the whole idea of American self-defense (with the "Bush Doctrine" as proxy) is dead.

This not only shows where Time stands, it indicates the importance to those of us in favor of war of making it clear that we do not agree that Bush has been effective in asserting America's right to fight in this war, or in being "preemptive" enough. The war debate is too important to allow the likes of Time Magazine to set its terms.

The Bush Doctrine has muddied the war debate and the left is looking to cash in on the confusion. Look for more of this as Bush flails about aimlessly in the face of Kim Jong "Mentally" Il's dangerous antics.

Too Much "Bang" for the Buck?

This article, which includes a sequence of photographs of a Dell Laptop exploding in Japan, had me checking the one my wife just used to write her dissertation against a couple of old recall lists. And, since the model of the one in the story was not disclosed, my antennae will be out for news of any further laptop recalls.

Idiot Leftist "Proves" WTC Collapse not Caused by Fire


Reader Michael Gold points to a hilarious post (via LGF) about a particularly silly "experiment" involving a cinder block and some chicken wire that is supposed to "prove" that fire did not bring down the WTC towers. He also points to three sites that discuss engineering aspects of the collapse of the towers in more credible terms than "I don't think the wire structure would hold more than three of these blocks...." and a cup of kerosene spilled onto newspaper and set ablaze.

Hollywood has its hunger strike and bites it, too.

Reader Hannes Hacker writes in to inform me that Hollywood actors have decided to show their solidarity with Cindy "More Food for the Rest of Us" Sheehan by embarking on a "rolling fast". That is, they will fast for a day -- that's a whole 24 hours for anyone who found the above experiment to be convincing -- and then pass the torch to other equally "committed" actors.

The following sums it up pretty well, I think.

Americans may harbor that politically active celebrities are a lot of vain dilettantes unwilling to discombobulate their pampered lifestyles. It's unclear whether any of these celebrities will be ''starving'' long enough even to feel hungry. Bobby Sands and the IRA hunger strikers of the 1980s were never going to force Mrs. Thatcher to back down, but at least they did actually starve themselves to death.

How about if the celebs did that? Wouldn't that, after all, get right to the heart of the matter? Wouldn't that bring piercing clarity to the issue by forcing the American people to choose between tedious geopolitical responsibilities and Jennifer Aniston? Imagine if the flailing neocon warmongers had to explain to the American people why we were now down to one Dixie Chick. Bush would be cowering in the Oval Office while his spinmeisters attempted futile damage control on one horror story after another....

Half-assed backyard experiments and make-believe hunger strikes both remind me of a post about fantasy politics I read a long time back....

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-- CAV