Federal Judiciary

When reality intrudes, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

By Jay Nordlinger

In recent days, I?ve been expressing dismay at Hillary Clinton: in this column, for instance, and in this Corner post. Can you stand some more quotation of her? In an interview, she said, ?There are some days when we?re dealing with very difficult security issues when you kind of wish, ?Oh man, I wish I didn?t know that.??

Yeah, it?s terrible when the world does that to you. Say you want to come to terms with the Iranian regime -- want to reason with them. But you find out that, really and truly, they?re bent on acquiring nuclear weapons -- which they indicate they?re itching to use. It?s a pain when you have to know something like that -- something that will intrude on your fantasy.

I treasure one particular story, which comes from a reporter in Israel/the PA. When the peace-processors summoned Arafat and his gang back from Tunis, the reporter went out into the territories. He came upon a policeman and said, ?So, now there?s to be peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, huh?? And the policeman scoffed, ?Oh, no: This is just the old incrementalism. We?re just lulling them. One day, all of Palestine will be ours.?

The reporter naturally put this in his story -- and his Israeli editor spiked that part. When the reporter asked why, the editor said annoyedly, ?Can?t you give peace a chance??

Some people just don?t want to know . . .

Here is something related -- something outrageous, really: The Associated Press tells us, ?For close to a year . . . a report on Iran?s alleged nuclear weapons experiments has been sitting in a drawer of a U.N. nuclear monitoring agency, with access limited to only a few top officials. The question is whether the document -- a summary of all the International Atomic Energy Agency knows about Iran?s nuclear program -- will be made public when [the] agency publishes its latest report on Iran within two weeks.?

The IAEA?s chief, as you know, is Mohamed ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005. I wrote an article about him when he won that prize -- and here is an excerpt:

Back in January, I watched ElBaradei at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. He was on a panel with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi. They gave the appearance of being chums and allies, and spoke as though Washington?s concern about Iranian nukes were terribly silly. After all, Bush and his team had been wrong about Saddam, yes? And yet Iran succeeded in fooling the IAEA about its program for 18 years. It took an Iranian dissident group to blow the whistle on the nuclearizing mullahs.

Back to that recent Associated Press report (which can be found here, incidentally): ?But although even some of his senior aides favor publication, ElBaradei has balked, they said. The agency chief has been keen to avoid moves that could harden already massive Iranian intransigence on cooperating with his agency on probing the allegations and on other issues -- and of pushing the U.S. or Israel closer to a possible military strike on Tehran?s nuclear facilities.?

That sentence is garbled, but we get the point: Don?t give the world the information it needs, because doing so may lead to a result you don?t like. This is what the International Atomic Energy Agency is for?

If you would like to read that article of mine on ElBaradei and the peace prize: Here ?tis. We titled it, ?How Low Can They Go?? (they being the Nobel committee).

That Hitler and other top Nazis were vegetarians and animal-rights enthusiasts should not embarrass vegetarians or animal-rights enthusiasts. For all I know, Pol Pot liked ice cream -- which should not embarrass us ice-cream lovers at all.

Come to think of it, Hitler loved -- adored -- The Merry Widow. It was apparently his favorite work of art. And, naturally, he loved Wagner. Lehár?s operetta and Wagner?s operas are great, in their own ways -- and Hitler?s admiration should not embarrass us in the least. (Well, Wagner is a special case, but we can take that up some other time, as we have taken it up before.)

I am leading into something, as you may guess. Just chew over this report from Reuters:

President Barack Obama is trying to make positive changes in the United States, but is being fought at every turn by right-wingers who hate him because he is black, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday.

 

In an unusually conciliatory column in the state-run media [as opposed to the other media!], Castro said Obama had inherited many problems from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and was trying to resolve them. But the ?powerful extreme right won?t be happy with anything that diminishes their prerogatives in the slightest way.?

 

Obama does not want to change the U.S. political and economic system, but ?in spite of that, the extreme right hates him for being African-American and fights what the president does to improve the deteriorated image of that country,? Castro wrote.

 

?I don?t have the slightest doubt that the racist right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game one way or another, at the least political cost,? he said. 

(For the complete article, go here.) Castro, the totalitarian dictator, sounds like a good number of our liberal commentators. Does this embarrass them, at all? When bin Laden came out with that statement that sounded like cribbing from Michael Moore -- was Moore embarrassed, or anyone else? I mean, Castro?s language: It?s just astounding. He could be in almost any American faculty lounge.

You always sound McCarthyite when you say these things. But then, they?re just -- like, true.

As you may know, I?m not a big fan of apologies for America by presidents and Congresses -- although some are surely justified. Yet I was pleased and a little moved by the following:

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan?s prime minister expressed deep regret over the suffering his country inflicted on Asian countries during World War II in a solemn ceremony Saturday that marked the 64th anniversary of Tokyo?s surrender.

 

Prime Minister Taro Aso joined some 4,800 bereaved families to pay respect to 3.1 million Japanese war dead -- 2.3 million soldiers and 800,000 civilians -- at the Nihon Budokan hall in Tokyo. Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko also attended the ceremony, leading a one-minute silence at noon.

 

?Our country inflicted tremendous damage and suffering on many countries, particularly people in Asia. As a representative of the Japanese people, I humbly express my remorse for the victims, along with deep regret,? Aso said in a speech at the nationally televised ceremony. The prime minister vowed that Japan would never repeat the tragedy. 

(Full article, here.) This was right, very right. Does that mean I have double standards? Liking this apology but bridling at Obama?s performances abroad, when he all but slaps a maple leaf on his backpack? I don?t think so -- the point is judgment, or moral sense.

Speaking of our representatives abroad, I thought of something, when Hillary went nuts toward that student in the Congo. The standard charge of the Left for eight years was that Bush and his people had abandoned diplomacy, or were terribly clumsy at it when they tried it. They were Ugly Americans. In contrast, Obama and his people were going to be all smoothness, making the world positively swoon for America. And here was our secretary of state, going crack-a** on a student -- a black-African student!

Imagine if a conservative Republican had done that . . . (Of course, George W. Bush appointed only black secretaries of state.)

Did you read Fouad Ajami on ?Obama?s Summer of Discontent?? What a writer. He is not only a Middle East sage, he knows the presidency and American politics very well. It?s not enough to be Bernard Lewis and Elie Kedourie; he has to be Michael Barone and George Will, too. Extraordinary.

I thought these words from an Ed Koch column were almost sigh-making, and see if you think so, too: ?Carthago delenda est are words I recall from my days as a student at South Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, now called Malcolm X Shabazz High. I attended South Side High from 1937 to 1941, and in those days its core curriculum required the study of Latin.?

A little language? I had a dear old southern friend who said ?intending on?: ?I?m intending on playing 36 holes on Saturday. Want to join me?? It was akin to ?planning on? -- not ?intend to,? but ?intend on.? I was amazed to find this formulation in a Martin Peretz piece, which I learned about from this Commentary item: ?It is rumored that Panetta . . . intends on resigning . . .?

If you want to be a little refreshed about America, talk with an immigrant. I was pleased to meet a Pakistani a few weeks ago -- he is probably an American citizen, actually. By some miracle, he gained permission in Pakistan to leave for America. And that, he said to me, made his life. ?In Pakistan, you can work very, very hard, and get nowhere. Here, if you work hard -- you will get somewhere.? Pretty common stuff.

But here was the really touching part: He said that what he loved most about America could be summed up in one thing: We have the motto ?In God We Trust? on our money. ?That shows where a people?s heart is -- God is the most important thing, even on the money.?

All my life, I have heard the placement of this motto mocked: ?Ha, ha, ha. America has ?In God We Trust? on the money! That tells you what their god really is: money. The almighty dollar! Ha, ha, ha!? And here was a man, a newcomer, who saw the truth of the matter: or at least who clearly saw the original intent.

As I said, refreshing.

Friends, I was going to give you a string of Salzburg items, but I?m pretty much out of time. Let me throw just two at you. (Perhaps I should say first that I spent the middle two weeks of August in Salzburg, working at the festival.) (I have a piece on the festival -- performances and aspects of -- in the new National Review. Do you have your copy yet? Digitally, it is here.)

You know how liberals object to the term ?messiah? in reference to President Obama? ?Oh, the right-wingers say we regard Obama as the Messiah. That is nonsense -- a slur upon our honest admiration, appreciation, and good wishes.? Well, on a lovely night at an outdoor party in Salzburg, I met a man, an American, who worked in Europe for some 30 years. A cultivated man, with exquisite manners. Talking about our new president, he said, ?He is almost too good to be true. Frankly, I call him ?the Messiah.?? He said this with no irony whatsoever.

So the next time a liberal says to you, ?Oh, none of us thinks of him as the Messiah, damn you!? think of that man in Salzburg. I will.

Okay, Item No. 2: At this gala dinner, the subject of Linz was in the air. A man at our table was from Linz. We talked about another man from Linz: the conductor Franz Welser-Möst (who was working at the festival). And one of the speakers of the evening, a third man, was from Linz, talking a little about the city. Linz, Linz, Linz.

I turned to the elegant, senior New York lady -- Bronx-born -- sitting next to me, and said, ?You know who else was from Linz, don?t you?? She thought for a second -- and laughed and laughed and laughed. Kind of hard to explain: an exuberant, quasi-conspiratorial private moment.

See you, dearhearts!

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on August 27, 2009 (boomark / email).