Right Opinion

Been There, Didn't Do That

WASHINGTON -- For 11 days in late August and early September in 1995, U.S. and NATO air power defended Bosnian Muslims, who were being attacked by Bosnian Serbs, who were supported by Serbian Serbs. This was merely the overture to something much more ambitious -- a grand concert of nation-building that began when the Dayton agreement reached in December of that year calmed the Balkan furies of revanchism and revenge, for a while. But agreements, like flowers, last while they last, and today's fraying of Bosnia is not the fault of Richard Holbrooke, whose skill and tenacity produced the Dayton peace. Or perhaps the Dayton pause. Holbrooke, whose diplomatic career began in Vietnam, continues in the Obama administration, where his portfolio is Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the president contemplates an ambitious mission in the former, as a prophylactic measure to stabilize the latter, he should read "The Death of Dayton: How to Stop Bosnia From Falling Apart," in Foreign Affairs. Political scientists Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western note that Bosnia was "once the poster child for international reconstruction efforts" and was considered "proof that under the right conditions the international community could successfully rebuild conflict-ridden countries." Now, however, Bosnia "stands on the brink of collapse."

Land of the Second Chance

CHICAGO -- The streets of West Garfield Park provide a distant vista of the Sears Tower and closer views of corner drug dealers, abandoned buildings still defended by barbed wire and trash pickers pushing shopping carts on their slow rounds. It is a place, in T.S. Eliot's image, of "rats' feet over broken glass." It is also one of the two or three Chicago neighborhoods receiving the most ex-offenders back from prison. Their welcome is uncertain, but their success is essential. America's incarceration rate -- massively higher than other democracies and the highest in our history -- has been arguably effective in reducing crime. It also means that about 650,000 men and women return from state and federal prisons to communities each year, a number larger than the active-duty U.S. Army.

Does He Lie?

WASHINGTON -- You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that. He ... well, you judge. Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth. (1) "I will not sign (a plan)," he solemnly pledged, "if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."

ACORN's Illegal Alien Home Loan Racket

There's one thing more shocking than the illegal alien smuggling advice that an ACORN official in San Diego gave undercover journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. It's the illegal alien home loan racket that ACORN has already been operating with the full knowledge of the U.S. government. On Wednesday, O'Keefe and Giles published the fifth in a series of BigGovernment.com sting videos. ACORN official Juan Carlos Vera coached the pimp-and-prostitute-posing pair on how best to pull off a border-busting smuggling operation. It would be "better from Tijuana," he counseled on videotape. Vera then generously offered the investigative couple his Mexican "contacts" to bring 12 illegal alien girls into the country for prostitution.

It's Multicultural, Stupid

The attack on America on Sept. 11 set off alarms everywhere. We were shocked to discover that few Foreign Service officers were fluent in Arabic or Farsi, the dominant languages of the Middle East. We didn't know much about Islam. Children grew up on the engrossing and romantic "Tales of the Arabian Nights," but few parents thought much about the implications of women portrayed in veils and harems, as the property of men. College students grooved on "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam, the medieval Persian poet and philosopher, whose poetry was tailored to Western sensibility by the 19th century English translator Edward FitzGerald in "A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -- and Thou." There's a small park on Embassy Row in Washington dedicated to the poem. The popular culture glibly entertained us with tales of flying carpets and genies popping out of magic bottles, and serious study of Islamic history and culture was grossly neglected.

Dowd and Carter Guilty of That Which They Decry

I'm sure New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and former President Jimmy Carter derive a great deal of self-satisfaction slandering other people with false charges of racism, but the damage they're doing to race relations is worse than any bona fide racist could dream of doing. I ask you: Who is more likely racist, the person who sees race every time she turns around or the person who aspires toward colorblindness? Could those always pointing the accusatory finger be projecting their own discomfort with race? Listen to how Maureen begins her snarky Sept. 12 column, in which she posited that Rep. Joe Wilson's "you lie" outburst was driven by racism. She writes: "Surrounded by middle-aged white guys -- a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men's club -- Joe Wilson yelled 'You lie!' at a president who didn't. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"

A Tackle Box Full of Race Bait

Of all the poisonous, ugly and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus' Dance over the "racist" opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious. Al Sharpton tells CNN's Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn't let a small minority make health care into a "racial issue." Someone in the control room surely yelled, "Cue the laugh track!" In case you don't get the joke, this entire "debate" over whether opposition to Obama's health care reform is racist is totally, completely and in every way conceivable an invention of the left. Oh, sure, there are some racists who oppose Obama. Shocking news, that. And, yes, a tiny, tiny fraction of the signs at the Tea Party protests last weekend were racially insensitive. But if that's how we're going to score, then opposition to the Iraq war is anti-Semitic. After all, I saw a bunch of signs at antiwar protests that said bigoted things about Jews.

U.N. Disgraces Itself Again; Obama Helps

The United Nations Human Rights Council, a putrid perversion of every high ideal upon which it was founded, has issued a report calling the Israelis war criminals. The HRC has also, in obedience to the wishes of Chavez and Castro, ejected the representative from Honduras. In the very week it has committed these outrages, the Obama administration has announced that the United States, which quit the organization in 2006, will rejoin. Brilliant. The Human Rights Council is the successor to the thoroughly discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission, which boasted such members as China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. In 2004, the commission unanimously accepted membership for Sudan, a state actively engaged in genocide in Darfur. (That was when the U.S. walked out.) Changing one word in its name, the Human Rights Council instantly resumed its former practices: ignoring massive human rights violations around the globe and condemning Israel. Anne Bayefsky of Eye on the UN summarizes:

Diversionary Tactics on Both Sides

Instead of a debate on the merits of President Obama's health care proposals or congressional Democrats' failure to produce a bill that has any chance of bipartisan support, we've been diverted this week by a disgraceful sideshow. Thanks to pundits and bloggers and political opportunists of all stripes, Rep. Joe Wilson's (R-S.C.) cry "You lie" became the shot heard 'round the world. Now, we have the unpleasant spectacle of the president's most fawning supporters suggesting anyone who opposes his policies must be racist, while the president's opponents defend discourtesy as a badge of honor. Let's take a deep breath and go back to what actually happened in the House chamber when the president addressed a joint session of Congress to promote health care reform. Ironically, President Obama had just finished declaring that critics were telling lies about his health care proposals. He referred to "bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any costs," and then said that the best example was "prominent politicians" who had accused the administration of planning to "set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens." He then went on to say that the claim was "a lie, plain and simple."

The Raiders

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHINDAND, Afghanistan -- According to colleagues back home, our Fox News team here in Afghanistan has missed all the excitement. They note that since we left the USA last month, Washington has been the scene of the largest peaceful protest in history against a sitting government. We didn't get to see a bold congressman rise during a televised joint session of Congress to accuse the president of the United States of prevaricating. We were unable to witness the outing of White House "green jobs czar" Van Jones or the sudden demise of a corrupt, scandal-ridden, "anti-poverty" organization called ACORN. And because we don't have television or radio or newspapers out here, we also missed Vice President Joe Biden's blitz on Baghdad. All pretty exciting stuff. But I wouldn't trade a single day with the raiders with whom we have been keeping company for any of that.

The Absurdity Meter Blowup

WASHINGTON -- My absurdity meter has blown up. The current news has been simply too much for this frail device, which I attach to my television set to give me a daily reading of the news' absurdity content. First, two wholesome young people conduct a sting operation in the offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, presenting themselves as dealers in the sex business and receiving practical advice as to how to successfully conduct business and launder money. Then former President Jimmy Carter claims a congressman's terse, albeit ill-tempered, declamation was "based on racism." Finally, a United Nations "fact-finding" mission reports that Israel is morally equivalent to the terrorists who have lobbed 8,000 rockets and mortars into southern Israel since 2001. It was all too much for my little absurdity meter. Its dial spun madly. Its buzzer began to scream. Then it simply went pop and expired. I shall have to return it to Andrew Breitbart for repairs.

Liberal Lies About National Health Care (Bonus)

Bonus Joe Wilson Edition!

Jimmy Carter and the Elvis Factor

Jimmy Carter strikes again! The former President is not content having left office with high inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. Nor is he content with having signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act -- strengthened by President Bill Clinton -- which played a major roll in the eventual housing market meltdown. Nor is he content with having cut the legs from under the Shah of Iran, which led to the establishment of the Islamic theocracy in Iran -- a state that pursues a nuclear weapon, funds the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and continues to undermine the fledgling democracy of Iraq. Nor is he content -- as ex-President -- with writing a book in which he likened the state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians to South Africa under apartheid. Now the former President claims the opposition to President Obama in general -- and his attempt at "health care reform" in particular -- stems from ... "racism"!

The Racism Card

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, some suggested that race played a factor in his success. People "wanted" to elect a black man president because of our history of slavery and the denial of civil rights for so many years to African-Americans. It is never "racism" to vote for someone because he is black. It is only racism to oppose the policies of a black Democrat. As the president's approval ratings fall and rise and fall again, some of his supporters in journalism and politics are returning to days of old when the label "racist" could end any discussion and force the accused either into stunned silence, or groveling repentance. I suspect the tactic won't work this time because Obama supporters will have difficulty explaining how a mostly white country could elect a black man president last November and ten months later become a racist majority.

Artistic License Indeed

WASHINGTON -- "This is just the beginning," said Yosi Sergant to participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and certainly was joined by a functionary from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The call was the beginning of the end of Sergant's short tenure as NEA flack -- he has been reassigned. The call also was the beginning of a small scandal that illuminates something gargantuan -- the Obama administration's incontinent lust to politicize everything. Sergant's comments, made to many individuals and organizations from what is vaguely and cloyingly called "the arts community," continued: "This is the first telephone call of a brand-new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government." Wrong preposition. Not "with" the government, but for the government.

Inside the Glorious Nation of ACORN

I would not go see the film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" because I found more cruelty than humor in deliberately exposing unwitting civilians to the easy ridicule of smug sophomores. Now the right has its own Borat-style entertainment. Equipped with a video camera, conservative activists James O'Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, sought the answer to this question: "What if a 'prostitute' and her alleged law school boyfriend walk into ACORN seeking housing for an underage brothel to fund his future congressional campaign?" The answer, they discovered, was that some of the folks who work at ACORN (the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were overly adept at looking the other way -- even after O'Keefe and Giles told them that Salvadoran girls as young as 12 would be working as prostitutes in their brothel.

No Rules in the Arena?

It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., to scream out "You lie" at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama's recent health-care speech before a joint session of Congress. And others who keep insisting that the president doesn't have an authentic U.S. birth certificate clearly come off as unhinged -- much like just-resigned White House green-jobs czar Van Jones does for having signed his name to a petition stating that the Bush administration may have allowed the 9/11 murders of 3,000 people to happen. During his speech the other night, the president calmly called for a new civility --although he had just accused his opponents of dissimulation in their attack on his health-care plan, while himself presenting many dubious suppositions as fact. Over the last three decades, we saw vicious attacks on Ronald Reagan and on Bill Clinton, and their tough replies in turn. But recently the vicious rhetoric has escalated far beyond anything in the past. The smears seem reminiscent more of the brawling on the eve of the Civil War, or the nastiness during the 1960s that took decades to heal.

The Man Who Hated Hunger

Job-Killing Policies Could Doom Democrat Hopes

"The level of unemployment is unacceptably high. And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years." Who do you suppose said that? A Republican political operative? A Fox News political analyst? One of those several hundred thousand Tea Partiers who assembled in Washington on Sept. 12? No, it was Lawrence Summers, the director of Barack Obama's National Economic Council and, by common consent, one of the world's leading economists. Summers made this gloomy forecast in the course of arguing that our economy is headed to "sustained recovery." And while it sounds like self-protective political rhetoric, it is also in line with the thinking of Democratic economists who bemoaned a "jobless recovery" during the first Bush term. They argued then that a variety of factors -- big increases in the incomes of high earners, the crowding-out of wage increases by the fast-rising costs of health insurance -- prevented the rapid job growth that followed previous recessions. There was something to these arguments.

Jimmy Carter's Ill-Advised Effort to Atone

Oh, the irony that former President Jimmy Carter has claimed big headlines by saying that South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst against Barack Obama during the president's speech last week was racially motivated. The irony stems partly from the timing of all this: Just days after the incident, Carter's former press secretary Jody Powell died. Perhaps more than any other Carter aide of yesteryear, Powell helped the Carter White House to conquer a Washington establishment that had a bias of its own against Southern politicians. Nothing is harder for me to write about than Jimmy Carter. I grew up circulating among his closest aides while he was Georgia governor. I swelled with pride when he won the presidency. And even with my own career background of having written speeches for Mack Mattingly, the man who became Georgia's first Republican U.S. senator in a century, and of having done debate preparation work for Newt Gingrich, I've still been more willing than many to point out some of the positives from the Carter administration.