ORIGINAL INTENT: Mark Kleiman has contacted Michael Moore (no, not that Michael Moore), the cartoonist behind a cartoon that I didn’t like, and has posted his views on what the cartoon means. Kleiman seems to think the cartoon isn’t about moral equivalence, but (and this is where differences in perception perhaps reflect differences in starting points) the response doesn’t seem to me to support Kleiman’s position as much as he suggests. Then there’s this:

At any rate, I saw a lot of equivalency: as civillians, as victims of war, as fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, as workers, as human beings. Events soon proved me, sadly, prophetic: roughly the same number of Afghani civillians were killed by U.S. bombing as civillians killed on 9/11.

No, actually not. The “roughly the same” estimate appears to be from the multiply-debunked Marc Herold “study” finding 3,800 civilian deaths in Afghanistan, which I last mentioned in this post. (Follow the links for some of the many Marc Herold debunkings). Interestingly, Eric Schmitt, the New York Times reporter I criticize there, emailed me later to say that he thinks Afghan civilian deaths were more likely in the hundreds than the thousands.

UPDATE: The cartoonist is Kevin Moore, not Michael Moore — the (Freudian?) slip is Kleiman’s not mine. Looking at the post again, I think that what Kleiman thought was significant about the cartoon was its recognition that innocent civilian deaths go with military action. This strikes me — and will no doubt strike many so-called “warbloggers” — as rather obvious, and certainly not profound. I support war in full recognition that innocents will die; I simply believe that more are likely to die if we do nothing.

GARETH PARKER has a great post on the logical contradictions displayed among some antiwar critics who simultaneously argue that (1) there’s no Al Qaeda / Iraq connection; and (2) Australia got what it deserved for supporting the United States against Iraq: “If there is no Al Qaeda link to Iraq, then why were Australians attacked by Al Qaeda for supporting the US in the expected war with Iraq?”

D.C. SNIPER UPDATE: Clayton Cramer notices something odd in this report:

Authorities in Baltimore, meanwhile, seized a white van and found an assault rifle, sniper manual and ammunition similar to the .223 bullets used in attacks that have killed eight people and wounded two others, WBAL-TV reported.

MSNBC reported that a tarot card was found in the van and a sign on the dashboard read “Gihad in America.” A tarot card was also found at one of the shootings.

The van’s owner was being questioned by police Monday night.

“At this time, the task force believes this is not related to our sniper incidents,” said Louise Marthens, a Montgomery County police spokeswoman.

Uh, okay. Sure sounds related to me, but then I’m not a law-enforcement professional.

UPDATE: BTW, visit Jim Henley’s site for a lot more information. He’s all over this story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Tarot card is apparently a mis-report, and the rest of this story seems to have been explained:

A Baltimore shooting was investigated by the sniper task force but police later discounted any link. In the Baltimore case, a former Marine was shot over the weekend by his girlfriend in a domestic dispute. Members of the sniper task force went to Baltimore to examine the man’s white Astro van.

A book about snipers reportedly was found in his apartment and a sign on the van’s dashboard read “Gihad in America.” But police said initial reports that a tarot card was found in the van were incorrect.

The man was not charged, and was released Monday night shortly after the Falls Church shooting.

Huh. A former Marine with a pro-Jihad sign on his car. I wonder if it’s this guy, who really was a Marine, and very well may be “former” by now.

N.Z. BEAR has some pointers on what to do about spam and telemarketers.

MICKEY KAUS has some thoughts on political correctness and genocide. I’ve got a piece on that coming out shortly, and though it won’t say the same thing as Kaus’s post, it does suggest that the human rights crowd needs to think more flexibly in the future. Or just think more, period.

I WASN’T GOING TO POST ANYTHING MORE on this subject, but Richard Cohen has this brutal takedown that’s worth quoting:

In honoring Carter, the committee evoked the smugness of little powers — the many nations whose role is to carp from the sidelines while America does the necessary business of protecting them from their own folly. In this regard, it will be a minor miracle if next year’s prize does not go to French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who criticized the United States last week for its “simplistic vision of the war of good against evil.”

“Young countries,” Raffarin told the National Assembly, “have the tendency to underestimate the history of old countries.” Oui! But old countries are sometimes world-weary and cynical, urging a “realism” that is sometimes a misnomer for the moral corruption they know so very well. I will take the idealism of the young any day.

I think even Charles Austin is going to have trouble criticizing this piece.

WILLIAM SJOSTROM writes that today’s Rick Perlstein op-ed in the New York Times reads like damage-control for yesterday’s Evelyn Nieves piece on antiwar protesters in the Post:

Nieves told us the protesters were out; since she couldn’t back up her claim with real evidence, the New York Times tells us that the protesters are really there, they just look different than they usually do. The rest of the article ranges from silly to petty.

Sjostrom is using the timezone difference in his transatlantic perch to good advantage. Sloppy reporters — and editors — beware!

RALPH PETERS SAYS that the Bali attack is actually more evidence that Islamist terror is on the ropes. Excerpt:

After suffering devastating losses around the world, Islamic terror networks are attempting to return to the offensive, to prove they are still viable. But the half-dozen targets they recently struck in Asia illuminate their weakness and rage, not an intelligent global strategy. Far from striking major governmental or military targets, the terrorists have been reduced to sloven assassinations and, now, the calculated mass murder of young people. Once again, the terrorists have chosen targets that strengthen the hands of their enemies. . . .

The Megawati government has been reluctant to antagonize fundamentalists by taking on domestic organizations associated with terror, such as the Jemaah Islamiyah. Now the government will have the motivation, the evidence, and the anger necessary to take action at last. Jakarta needed a good excuse to crack down hard. The terrorists themselves just provided it.

Part of a desperate, world-wide attempt by Islamic terrorists to resume the offensive after the beating they’ve taken for the past year, these bombings brought global terrorism on a grand scale to Indonesia. A combined effort between the home team and foreign terrorists, the Bali massacre is doubtless being greeted as a triumph by terror’s fugitive overlords. But the provocation was too great. This is a moment of truth for Indonesia, but its ultimate result is going to be the further destruction of terrorist networks and their active exclusion from one more significant country. For the human devils who planned the slaughter and placed the explosives, these truly were suicide attacks.

Another crack suicide squad from the Judean People’s Front. Last words: “That’ll show ’em!”

TIM BLAIR’S PAGE remains a must-read source on the Bali bombing. And check out the emails he’s received from Americans.

UPDATE: Jen Taliaferro has a picture and a sad story. Actually, it makes me more mad than sad.

DC SNIPER UPDATE: Rod Dreher reports that police are looking for an “olive-skinned man.” Meanwhile this roundup from the Washington Post reports that authorities are saying there’s no evidence that it’s terrorism.

HERE’S THE LATEST on the Bali bombing. Indonesian authorities are openly blaming Al Qaeda, and have a couple of men in custody.

DAVID CARR AND PERRY DE HAVILLAND are rounding up the more idiotic responses to the Bali bombing.

BLOGALATERALISM: Nelson Ascher tells Australians how the rest of the world feels.

HERE’S MORE ON THE ALABAMA DILDO CASE. And if sex toys are your thing, there’s always the antique vibrator museum.

MICKEY KAUS WRITES THAT TAPPED IS DOOMED, “the victim of editor Robert Kuttner’s instinctive urge to squash anything interesting.” But the real sin, according to Kaus, was giving favorable attention to Josh Marshall.

I think that TAPPED’s crew should start a blog of their own. My guess is that it’ll outdraw — and outlast — the magazine.

HERE’S A STORY ON NASHVILLE’S HOMELESS BLOGGER, in Salon, by Noah Shachtman.

THIS OPINION-EDITORIAL in the Sydney Morning Herald slams moral equivalency:

Bleeding hearts left exposed as fools

October 15 2002

Perhaps those who blamed the US for September 11 will now realise they have been deluded.

Who will be on Michael Leunig’s Christmas card list this time? Last year, in the aftermath of the terrorist murders in the United States, the Melbourne-based cartoonist declared that it was time to extend “mercy, forgiveness, compassion” to, wait for it, the leader of al-Qaeda.

Writing in The Age on Christmas Eve, the intellectual guru of Down Under’s leftist luvvies declared: “Might we, can we, find a place in our heart for the humanity of Osama bin Laden and those others? On Christmas Day, can we consider their suffering, their children and the possibility that they too have their goodness? It is a family day, and Osama is our relative.” It remains to be seen whether Leunig will exhibit similar sentiments this Christmas with respect to the weekend’s massacre of the innocents. . . .

Bush’s stance on the coalition against terrorism and/or Iraq may, or may not, be correct. It is driven by an assessment of the threat to US lives rather than by the availability and price of imported fuel. Those who do not recognise this fail to understand contemporary America. It is this lack of comprehension which has dated the views of such well-known leftists as John Pilger in Britain, Noam Chomsky in the US, Scott Burchill and Michael McKinley in Australia, among others. . . .

Whatever personal positions are held about Bush, Blair and John Howard, contemporary terrorism amounts to an attack on Western civilisation. The sooner this is understood, the sooner the likes of Leunig will recognise that bin Laden is one of those brothers who, if given the chance, commits fratricide; before, during or after Christmas.

Indeed.

HERE’S THE ISLAMIST PRESS RELEASE on the Bali attack. It’s only sort of a parody.

CONGRESSMAN LAMAR SMITH (R-TX) is getting savaged in his own district over his introduction of new anti-rave legislation:

This is the second time that Congressman Smith has attempted to run rough-shod over the idea of presumed innocence. The first is his siding with the big media conglomerates and the RIAA on the so-called “anti-piracy” law that would allow these media conglomerates to unilaterally hack your computer. . . . Gee thanks, Lamar.

There’s contact information. And with an election coming up, I hope that his constituents thank him properly.

I’M NOT BELIEVING THIS until I see live video of him reading aloud from the New York Times.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “It’s ‘False Dmitri’ without even a Dmitri!”

MICHAEL MOORE IS BEING SAVAGED in this story that quotes Scott Rosenberg of Salon and Ben Fritz of SpinSanity:

“Regardless of whether Michael Moore is right or wrong in his philosophy, he advances his points through lies and distortions,” says Ben Fritz, a co-editor of the nonpartisan Spinsanity.com. Fritz admits no animosity toward Moore — when he was a student at Swarthmore, he brought the director to speak there — but insists “it’s not a fair way to argue.”

“I think Michael is a great showman and propagandist for political causes that I support, and I’m delighted at his success,” e-mails Salon editor-in-chief David Talbot, whose Web site also runs Spinsanity’s articles. “I just don’t think people should confuse him with being a journalist.”

Don’t worry. We don’t. Moore also says that everybody’s out to get him. But there’s at least one point where I agree with Moore: “‘I tell you what I cringe at,’ Moore says. ‘I cringe when I see me up there, because I think this is disgusting.'”

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Chas Rich says Moore has sold out.

NICK DENTON WRITES ON “THE STUPIDITY OF RADICAL ISLAM” — as evidenced in the Bali nightclub attacks: “Like fascists of an earlier era, Islam has a deluded notion of its own power, and a dangerously indiscriminate hostility to the outside world.”

CLAYTON CRAMER looks at Islamofascism.

“They are all infidels.” Liberals had better face up to this. It isn’t about Israel. It’s about Islamofascism. Until American courts are stoning women to death for having children out of wedlock; until French courts are amputating hands for theft; until Britain abolishes television (which, after all, shows images of living things, a violation of the Koran); until Sweden requires women to wear burkhas; until Italy prohibits the making of wine; until Denmark stops making pornography; until Canada makes homosexuality a capital offense–there will be no peace.

Or until we squash this movement like a bug.

WILLIAM SJOSTROM seems to have identified an instance of “Rainesism” at the Washington Post, in the form of a puff-piece by Evelyn Nieves on the peace movement that lacks much support for the reporter’s key assertions.

Well, there are some key assertions attributed only to “veteran peace organizers,” and “some say,” and the tone is pretty friendly. Creeping Rainesism? Say it ain’t so!

UPDATE: Reader Charles Beatty writes:

I subscribe to the Washington Post and I was also struck by the Evelyn Nieves article yesterday. The Post is usually a decent paper and I thought that piece stuck out as very Howell Raines like. It had an agenda, quoted no real sources, passed opinion as fact, etc.

Well, a brief googling of “Evelyn Nieves” explains why. Ms. Nieves is

apparently the San Franscisco bureau chief for the, yes, New York Times.

She also has written at least once for Mother Jones. I am pretty

disappointed that the Post would pick this up and run it.

Great Scott, he’s right — though she’s apparently left the Times for the Washington Post. And sympathetic stories about protesters seem to be a specialty! Creeping Rainesism, indeed.

PAUL MCCORD HAS THOUGHTS on post-Saddam Iraq, and a poignant comment about what might have been where Bush and Hussein are concerned.