Category: Commentaries

Robert Tracinski has written a terrific article for The Intellectual Activist about what is taking place in New Orleans. It begins:

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can’t blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city’s infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists–myself included–did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

Read the full article to find out why.

In the wake of the recent London bombings, a number of writers around the web are re-asking the very good question “Why don’t Islamics denounce and suppress their own so-called ‘extremists’ more effectively?”
In his aptly titled blog entry “Is it Islamic “extremism” — or is it Islam itself?” Objectivist writer Robert Bidinotto begins:

In the wake of the London bombings, we are forced again to confront this most uncomfortable question:
Do the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists truly represent a marginal minority among Muslims worldwide?
Or is the term “Islamic fundamentalist” really just a redundancy?
I am by no means an expert on Islam. But since 9/11, and countless terrorist incidents since, I have been patiently awaiting evidence that the majority of Muslims worldwide repudiate the premises and tactics of Islamic terrorists.
Well, I’m still waiting. And there comes a time when one must finally draw conclusions, however painful, from the facts presented.
If there really is some sort of ongoing war between “extremists” and “moderates” for the soul of Islam, it appears to be one of the quietest contests in the history of ideological warfare.

Instapundit addressed this topic yesterday as well, and provides this quote from an article by Tom Friedman in the NYTimes:

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists – if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings – or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way – by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.
And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. . . .
The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day – to this day – no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

See Instapundit’s full discussion for more analysis and a link to information about one Muslim group that has, in fact, issued a Fatwah against Osama bin Laden.

Yesterday’s LATimes.com included an excellent article by Max Boot (“Mercenaries, Not Musicians, for Africa“) exposing the real problem in Africa, and why all the various charity concerts absolutely will not help:
In the last 50 years, $2.3 trillion has been spent to help poor countries. Yet Africans’ income and life expectancy have gone down, not up, during that period, while South Korea, Singapore and other Asian nations that received little if any assistance have moved from African-level poverty to European-level prosperity thanks to their superior economic policies.
Economists who have studied aid projects have found numerous reasons for the failures. In many instances, money was siphoned off by corrupt officials. Even when funds did reach the intended beneficiaries, the money often distorted local markets for goods and labor, creating inflation that drove local businesses out of business. . . .
Oddly enough, Sachs ignores the most obvious obstacle to Africa’s escape from the “poverty trap,” what his pal Bob Geldof has accurately described as “corruption and thuggery.” (This was also Sachs’ blind spot when he tried to reform the Russian economy in the 1990s.) Yet not even Sir Bob has offered any plausible ideas for addressing these deep-rooted woes.
Africans continue to be tormented not by the G-8, as anti-poverty campaigners imply, but by their own politicos, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is abetting genocide in Darfur, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is turning his once-prosperous country into a famine-plagued basket case. Unless it’s linked to specific “good governance” benchmarks (as with the new U.S. Millennium Challenge Account), more aid risks subsidizing dysfunctional regimes.
Any real solution to Africa’s problems must focus on the root causes of poverty ? mainly misgovernment. Instead of pouring billions more down the same old rat holes, maybe the Live 8 crew should promote a more innovative approach: Use the G-8’s jillions 2 hire mercenaries 4 the overthrow of the 6 most thuggish regimes in Africa. That would do more to help ordinary Africans than any number of musical extravaganzas.
See the full article for more great information. (Found via Instapundit.)