I think most of us understand that a core strategy of the Bush administration in the attack on the Saddam regime was to foster democracy in the Middle East. This strategy has come under incessant fire mostly from liberals, but also some conservatives. The question was, would it work?
I take note of two different stories from the middle east. In the first, Hosne Mubarak of Egypt announced that opposition parties would now be allowed in proper, multi-party elections.
Could it be that these two episodes are the direct result of successful elections in Iraq and Afghanistan? It almost seems too much to hope for, but if it is true, then these are the first signs of a truly massive and unprecedented change in Middle East politics. Could it be that barely a month after the Iraqi elections, two formerly intransigent regimes are either embracing proper democracy or are facing wholesale collapse of their regimes?
I am skeptical, of course. There are ways to game elections. The Egyptian proposal needs to be vetted by a proper and open election, and the Lebanese situation could go either way. But I would be a fool to ignore the implications of two spasms of democracy so close on the heels of the Iraqi elections. If they pan out, then the "Bush Doctrine" could be the most successful foreign policy initiative of the last fifty years.
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has announced that he is not interested in joining in America's anti-ballistic missile program. This program, as you may know, is intended to grant the US the ability to shoot down ballistic nuclear missiles. If it is successful, it would be the first such system in the world, and the only system capable of defending a nation against ballistic missile attack.
It's not hard to see why Canada is not interested in this. As a secondary player, they know that they are not on the first strike list of anybody with nukes, and in the unlikely event that any nuclear missile is ever fired at it, the US will probably defend them anyway. Canada is a lot like Europe in this regard; their national motto could be "Let the Yanks Do It."
Martin has said Canada would not support the "weaponization of space." I wonder; does this guy have any idea how ballistic missiles work? I mean, I hate to suggest that a leader of a modern Democracy could be an idiot about important things like nuclear missiles, but I have to pose the question because apparently, he does not know how ballistic missiles work.
Ballistic missiles, you see, are called "ballistic" because they follow a ballistic trajectory - that is, you shoot them up at a certain angle, and then they fall down somewhere based on the angle that they followed when they were launched. They're unguided, in other words, once their engines turn off (about half-way through their flight). Ballistic missiles, therefore, have to fly into space in order to go anywhere.
As an interesting aside, the Germans during World War II were the first nation to send a man-made object into space. Their V-2 missile was the first ballistic missile, and when it was fired at England, it made a brief sojourn through space on the way. So it is quite curious that the Prime Minister of Canada is opposing the "weaponization of space", an event that happened over 60 years ago.
(Interesting sub-aside: There is some question about whether German V-2's fired at England made it into space. If they didn't, Americans surely did when they launched a modified, captured V-2 in 1946.)
Our ballistic missile defense shield currently consists of missiles fired at incoming ballistic missiles. But even if our missiles do go into space (thus "weaponizing" space), they're only going there because that's where the enemy missile is.
But Canada's government is pretty liberal. We shouldn't be surprised at silly errors like this, even from their Prime Minister.
In an apparent attempt to oh-so-quietly admit the truth about his fraudulent claim to Native American ancestry, Ward Churchill now admits that he has lied all these years and is not, in fact, a Native American at all.
You'll remember Ward Churchill as the king of left-wing hate speech and International Socialist professor from the University of Colorado, who has called the victims of the World Trade Center attack "Little Eichmanns", a reference to Nazi collaborator Adolf Eichmann.
"Is he an Indian? Do we really care?" he said, quoting his critics during a speech at the University of Hawaii.
"Let's cut to the chase; I am not," he said.
Now he professes to want to avoid the whole issue of his ancestry, saying his pedigree was "not important." Oh really? Now your ancestry is not important? That's funny, Mr. Churchill, because all these years, the only person who has been making a big deal about your ancestry is you.
Nobody cared whether you were a Native American until you shouted it from the rooftops for years on end. "Look at me everyone! I'm an Indian, so I can talk about Indian things with the greatest authority!" Nobody cared, that is, except those who appointed you to chair the Native American Studies program at the University of Colorado. Now that your fraud is revealed, it is "not important". Charming.
Now we will see if the left-wing academia at the University of Colorado will buckle to pressure and fire him for his dishonesty, or will stand by their anti-American man. With this bunch of fanatics, your guess is as good as mine.
Russia, always ready to assist in the nuclear ambitions of whatever country happens to have them, is said to be near to an agreement to begin fuelling a $1 billion nuclear plant in Iran.
Now, I don't know the in's and out's of how this plan is supposed to work. It could be that the plan is going to guarantee that Iran will not be able to create nuclear weapons. I have my doubts, though.
I'm surprised most of all by the sheer number of European nations that are willing to help Iran out in this regard. I understand that most of them are hostile to Israel on one level or another, but it doesn't seem to me that they are looking ahead in this matter. Israel is not going to let Iran get a nuclear weapon, period. If they feel at all threatened by an Iranian nuke, they're going to do whatever they must to remove the threat. And who can blame them? For nearly 60 years now they've been invaded, re-invaded and terrorized by the Islamic middle east. I wouldn't allow it either, if I were the leadership in Israel.
Israel has nukes, folks. They might not need to use them, but then again they might. And if the alternative is a fundamentalist Islamic nation with the ability to wipe out Israel, they're not going to sit around.
They've already done this once before. Iraq was building a similar nuclear reactor in the early 80's. Israel destroyed it in an air strike shortly before it was supposed to begin operation. The reactor in that case was French.
Even aside from the fact that an Ayatollah with a nuke is far too great a security risk for the entire world, someone with some foresight should think about how Israel is going to react. If we don't stop the Iranian Bomb, the Israelis surely will.
