FEBRUARY’S TRAFFIC has already passed the figure for all of January. Go figure.

ONE OF MY LEFTY READERS EMAILS:

You seem a talented fellow with a generous nature

too bad you use your skills for evil.

Me? Evil?

UPDATE: Just got myself tested:

How evil are you?

So there you have it.

AS A SLUG MIGHT CALL A BUTTERFLY “UGLY” — so Noam Chomsky calls Vaclav Havel “morally repugnant.”

THE VIEW FROM EAST TIMOR:

I still acutely remember the suffering and misery brought about by war. It would certainly be a better world if war were not necessary. Yet I also remember the desperation and anger I felt when the rest of the world chose to ignore the tragedy that was drowning my people. We begged a foreign power to free us from oppression, by force if necessary.

So I follow with some consternation the debate on Iraq in the United Nations Security Council and in NATO. I am unimpressed by the grandstanding of certain European leaders. Their actions undermine the only truly effective means of pressure on the Iraqi dictator: the threat of the use of force. . . .

Abandoning such a threat would be perilous. Yes, the antiwar movement would be able to claim its own victory in preventing a war. But it would have to accept that it also helped keep a ruthless dictator in power and explain itself to the tens of thousands of his victims.

History has shown that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberation. A respected Kosovar intellectual once told me how he felt when the world finally interceded in his country: “I am a pacifist. But I was happy, I felt liberated, when I saw NATO bombs falling.”

Me, I’m pro-liberation.

HERE’S A REPORT on the spread of radical Islam in prisons. Something to worry about, especially as the government seems to be more or less encouraging it.

MICHAEL TOTTEN WRITES:

The oil companies want stability. It makes no difference to them who owns the oil wells. It could be Satan or Uncle Sam; their profits will not change. The one thing they don’t want is upheaval and war.

For these reasons, the oil companies have been lobbying for peace with Saddam. Everyone who was paying attention to Iraq before September 11 knows this is true.

The radical left is right about one thing. The oil companies have a nefarious agenda in the Middle East. They want to keep all the nasty dictators in place. It is good for business. That, folks, is blood for oil.

The radical left used to be against this sort of thing. I liked the radical left then. I do not like them anymore.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Will Allen emails:

Glenn, an ever-growing group of people have come to realize that the forces of reaction are just as strong, if not stronger, on the left as on the right. As a radical advocate of human freedom (wanna overthrow a dictator? fine by me!) , this is encouraging, in that many people will be more hesitant to automatically assign concern for the well being of the masses (a term of condecension if there ever was one) to those who label themselves as being of the left.

I think that realization is spreading.

RICHARD BUTLER says that “Iraq is toast.”

DONAHUE’S TV SHOW IS HISTORY: His last show featured Rosie O’Donnell speaking against war.

TEACHERS PICKING ON SOLDIERS’ KIDS: I was skeptical of these reports at first, but Joe Katzman offers evidence that it’s real. And Trent Telenko has more on the subject.

It’s a disgrace, of course.

UPDATE: Naval reader Mike Martin emails:

Our son’s high school (Catholic) recently sent home a flyer with the monthly notices about homework help, teen mood swings and current fund raisers titled “War Causes Hunger”. It had a generic blurb, if not targeting the current administration then quite coincidentally timed, declaring that war causes hunger and hunger is bad. I had an urge to write to the principal to ask when they would send the notices home about dictators causing hunger and dictators are bad. I didn’t, but I still might.

Let me know what response you get. . . .

YEAH, NOT MUCH POSTING TODAY: I’ve been busy with meetings and classes. But go read more about the burgeoning pro-war — or, I guess I should say, “pro-liberation” — movement, over at GlennReynolds.com where there’s a brand-new post up.

UPDATE: Dick Aubrey emails:

If the pro-war folks are going to be called “pro-liberation”, then I guess the anti-war folks should be called, “anti-liberation.”

Well, if the shoe fits. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Randy Paul emails that the above is unfair to antiwar people. But as Jose Ramos-Horta writes in the New York Times op-ed I quote here, “History has shown that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberation.” And as he notes, the anti-war movement (which he characterizes as noble) needs to accept that keeping Saddam in power means preventing the liberation of Iraqis.

One of my problems with the “peace” movement as it’s currently constructed is that it’s not willing to admit that its positions can have dreadful consequences, and that being for “peace” is potentially as risky, and as deadly, as being for “war.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Randy responds.

HOMELAND SECURITY IS STILL A JOKE:

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico — There are no armed guards to knock out. No sensors to deactivate. No surveillance cameras to cripple. To sneak into Los Alamos National Laboratory, the world’s most important nuclear research facility, all you do is step over a few strands of rusted, calf-high barbed wire.

I should know. On Saturday morning, I slipped into and out of a top-secret area of the lab while guards sat, unaware, less than a hundred yards away.

Not quite as James Bondian as it might sound, but bad enough. Noah Shachtman, who wrote the story, has more on his blog, DefenseTech.

BROOKLYN COLLEGE TENURE BATTLE UPDATE:

February 25, 2003 — The CUNY trustees yesterday granted tenure to a Brooklyn College history professor who ripped the school’s post-9/11 forum for promoting hatred against America – overruling the college’s appointments panel, which sparked outrage by passing him over.

In a rare reversal on a personnel matter, City University Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and the policy board concluded that Assistant Professor Robert “KC” Johnson is a nationally renowned scholar who should not have been denied promotion and tenure.

Interesting. Erin O’Connor has more, naturally.

RESPONDING TO AN EMAILED CHALLENGE FROM A CNN PRODUCER (c’mon, Juan, tell us his name) Juan Paxety points out that we’re not talking about a second UN resolution, but a nineteenth resolution — and he lists them all.

“Rush to war,” my ass.

TIM BLAIR’S WEEKLY COLUMN IN THE BULLETIN opens with this wonderful pair of quotations:

“No one can doubt its cruelty and atrocities, but comparisons with the Third Reich are ridiculous.” – John Pilger on the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, November 15, 1999.

“The current American elite is the Third Reich of our times.” – John Pilger on the government of George W. Bush, January 29, 2003.

See, these international antiwar journalists have so much more perspective than we simplistic Americans. . . .

DEREK LOWE has a couple of posts on the VaxGen AIDS vaccine story, which seems a bit disappointing to me. He’s not quite as disappointed, though, and he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do.

CHARLES MURTAUGH WONDERS if the Klan is going Green. Or vice versa.

JOHN COUMARIANOS criticizes Paul Berman.

ANDREW SULLIVAN WRITES:

It is therefore a gamble Bush cannot completely lose (whatever diplomatic and popular damage it does would be more than undone by a successful war). But it’s a resolution the Security Council (and France and Germany) can easily lose. If the resolution is defeated, but war ensues, Bush will take a small hit at home, a huge hit abroad (still, how much worse could it get?) – but, precisely because of these things, an even bigger domestic gain if the war is successful. Bush will be seen as someone who did all he could to win over the U.N., but in the end, did what he believed was right. He will emerge principled and triumphant. Ditto Blair, especially if a liberated Iraq reveals untold horrors, human rights abuses and French arms contracts. Machiavelli’s dictum applies powerfully now: all that matters is that Bush win the war. If he does, this conflict will be deemed to have been just and justified. That’s why calling the French bluff is especially important – particularly if it isn’t a bluff.

This seems right to me. What’s interesting is that though Bush’s critics accuse the United States of “imperial overstretch,” it’s really the post-1945 international system that has obviously bitten off more than it can chew. It purports to be in the business of policing international relations according to some standard of civility, and of reining in rogue states before they become a threat to their neighbors, but in fact the current international system lacks the will and the wherewithal to do either.

As Jim Bennett noted last week, Bush and Blair are, in fact, engaged in a neck-or-nothing effort to save the international system. And those — like the feckless French and Germans — who oppose them are in fact the would-be midwives of something far less civilized:

In reality, a failure of the Bush-Blair coalition would sooner or later (probably sooner) give rise to a world in which a number of regional tyrannies who gradually, under the cover of their weapons of mass destruction, would annex first the states that are sovereign by convention, such as Kuwait, and eventually many that have been sovereign by circumstance.

The existence of such states would force other nations in the region to calculate that their own sovereignty depended on their acquisition of nuclear weapons. Given that most nuclear tyrannies would be happy to sell weapons to out-of-area states with ready cash, such proliferation could proceed more rapidly than many imagine. Alliances would be discounted; if America were to shy away from attacking a nation for fear of non-nuclear terrorism, it could hardly be expected to stand up to nuclear blackmail. This logic ends up favoring the nuclear over the non-nuclear, the ruthless over the constrained, and the closed over the open societies.

Some of them realize this, and think such a world would be fine. Others are just foolish and irresponsible.

JAY MANIFOLD reports from a real peace rally.

TED BARLOW’S GRAMMY ROUNDUP is a lot better than the real thing.

“HIGH STAKES FRAUD:” Joyce Malcolm has a Bellesiles postmortem.

UPDATE: Chris Mooney has a Bellesiles confession on his blog.

TALKLEFT says it best:

We are on the precipice of war. The American public is constantly reminded we are under high to very high terror alerts, and Ashcroft and Bush want to go after bong sellers?

Jeez. Oliver Willis has a photo of the particular menace to National Security in question.

TWO NEW PRO-WAR STUDENT GROUPS: Students Protecting America (organized by Harvard Law students) and Students For War. Check them out.

And here’s a page with links to other organizations at Brandeis, Columbia, Oxford and Princeton.

UPDATE: More links here.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING STORY:

A Muslim cleric, Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, was today convicted of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, in the first prosecution of its kind in Britain.

The Old Bailey jury found El-Faisal guilty of three charges relating to inciting racial hatred as well as three charges of soliciting murder. He was remanded in custody for sentencing on March 7.

El-Faisal had denied five charges of soliciting the murder of non-believers, Jews, Americans and Hindus, and four charges relating to inciting racial hatred.

The ground-breaking trial was the first prosecution of a Muslim cleric in Britain. It was also the first time potential jurors were banned from sitting on the jury because of their religion. The judge agreed to a defence plea not to allow Jewish and Hindu jurors – but in the end none came forward.

This last seems a bit much — it’s like the state engaging in the kind of discrimination the defendant is accused of. Isn’t it?

MORE ON OLD VERSUS NEW EUROPE.