Mugabe Government in Zimbabwe Illegitimate

Word today that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition in Zimbabwe, has taken refuge in the Dutch Embassy in the capital of Harare introduces a new stage in the struggle to restore democratic government in the African nation next to South Africa.

The Dutch and other Western nations, including the U.S. and Britain, are now obliged to safeguard Tsvangirai and grant refuge to other members of the opposition who are being victimized by the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe.

After calling a runoff election for the 27th of this month on the very possibly spurious grounds that Tsvangirai did not win a majority of the first votes cast, Mugabe has now vowed that, regardless of the results of the runoff election, he will not allow himself to be deposed. Instead, he has sent military, police and simple thugs associated with the government to arrest, beat and even sometimes murder members of the opposition. At least 85 deaths have been reported, as well as thousands of injuries and the arrest of the chief strategist of Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, on bogus treason charges.

Just the day before going to the Dutch Embassy, Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the runoff election, declaring that attacks against his followers made it unsafe for them to go to the polls.

Members of the British and American embassy staffs seeking to check on the government actions have been forcibly detained as well for brief periods.

Mugabe, 84, has emerged as the head of a criminal cabal that has wrecked the Zimbabwean economy and sent thousands of refugees fleeing into South Africa, where some have been subject to attack there by xenophobic mobs.

It is clear now that Mugabe and his minions should be removed and new elections called under international supervision to install a government desired by the people of Zimbabwe. It would be most proper for South Africa to undertake to do this, subject to a possible call by the UN Security Council. Western nations should give all necessary aid, if called upon. So far, the South African government has given far too much comfort and support to Mugabe, although in April South African courts ordered a Chinese shipment of arms to Magabe halted at the South African port of Durban.

The world should not stand by when such thuggery as taking place in Zimbabwe occurs. It is now obvious that the government should be taken down and a new one elected.

As is becoming depressingly common, the L.A. Times Web site was not reporting on its main page this afternoon the important developments in Zimbabwe. The Web site is following the yokels in Chicago and the L.A. Times editor, the Tulare twerp, in downplaying foreign news.

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Kevin Roderick continues his excellent job of reporting what can only be termed a crisis at the L.A. Times and other Tribune newspapers. Today, he reports that the Times' great local columnist, Steve Lopez, was highly critical of Sam Zell, the Tribune Co., owner, at a Press Club dinner in Los Angeles last week.

Also, Roderick runs a long, stupid memo on the Orlando Sentinel "redesign" from Lee Abrams, a Tribune executive who has the title of Innovation Editor. It is clear from this that Abrams has little idea of what pleases most readers of newspapers. The one piece of good news, however, is that other Tribune papers will not necessarily be forced to follow the Orlando design.

Meanwhile, the New York Times' media writer, Richard Perez-Pena, has a report in the NYT Business section today that 2008 is shaping up as the worst year ever for ad revenues at newspapers. He says declines of 12% or more compared to last year threaten the survival of some newspapers and the solvency of their companies. Declines in ad revenue ran to 15% in the month of May. No figures are given for Tribune, which has in the past reported among the worst record of declines in business, a situation which has only intensified under Zell.

In 2008 Vote, Will There Be An October Surprise?

(Bulletin Precede: The Quinnipiac University poll this morning shows Barack Obama ahead of John McCain in three key states -- Florida, 47% to 43%, Ohio, 48% to 42% and Pennsylvania, 52% to 40%. There's got to be a lot of Hillary votes in there).

So far, there has been little talk, unlike past election years, about an "October surprise," something happening like a terrorist attack, that could have a major effect on the American election.

Yet, I don't think this can be ruled out. We see in Iraq and Afghanistan, just in the past week, with a bombing that killed 50 Shiites in Baghdad, and a prison escape that freed hundreds outside Kandahar, that the U.S. still has Islamic enemies capable of brutal conduct. Who is to say that, just as in the Spanish train bombings, or the London subway bombings, there won't be an attempt by terrorists to take some pre-election action that would have a dramatic effect on domestic politics.

Another possibility, probably not as great, is that the Israelis, or even the Bush Administration, would attack Iranian nuclear facilities before the election, sparking off a wider Middle Eastern conflict. Or that the North Korean nuclear program, which has not been shut down, may create a crisis.

It may seem that a threat to U.S. security would inevitably benefit the presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain. Already, he is trying to make the security argument against Sen. Barack Obama, and it might seem that any step-up in tensions in the world would aid McCain in making that argument.

Yet in Spain, the train bombings of 2004 which killed 191 persons in and near Madrid, actually had the consequence of moving the country to the left. The conservatives were ousted from power just days later and replaced by the socialists, which are still in power. Part of the reason for this was that the conservative incumbents mishandled the situation, blaming the attacks initially on Basque separatists, when it quickly became much more likely that they were Islamic in origin. Also, like the American people today, the Spanish electorate was very tired of what Spanish intervention there was in foreign countries, and it was anxious to use any excuse "to bring the troops home."

So, I think it has to be said, out of caution, that we cannot say for certain that an attack in October would benefit McCain. It would depend perhaps how it unfolded.

Already, it is clear that Obama has, to some extent, moved toward the center on security questions. Just yesterday, he flared up when the Republicans suggested he might be soft on terrorism. He has announced the intent of visiting Iraq and Afghanistan before the election, and he might well select a foreign policy expert, like former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, as his vice presidential running mate, with the point of view, in part, of insulating himself against suggestions he is too inexperienced in foreign affairs.

What is the intent of the enemy? I'm not at all sure we understand it. Americans have been more or less expecting a new terrorist attack since 2001, but with the exception of some abortive attacks, such as the alleged attempted bombings of planes crossing the Atlantic, nothing has actually happened.

Indeed, just this week, there is new talk of a cease fire in Gaza between the Israelis and Hamas that would last six months. In the Middle East, that would put us past the election, and it is felt in many quarters that the Israeli-Arab conflict is one of the great exacerbents of extreme Islamic feeling.

We don't know. Something could happen. But, then again, perhaps it won't. Sam Zell may be more likely to upset the American psyche than Osama bin Laden in the near term.

What To Do About Tyrants A Key Issue In 2008

It was the poet W.H. Auden who suggested Hitler was "a psychopathic god," and wrote the classic short poem, "Epitaph On A Tyrant." It is certainly pertinent to the security debate now raging in the presidential campaign that I quote it here:

"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand
He knew human folly like the back of his hand
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter
And when he cried, the little children died in the streets"

That is not just a fanciful poem. In the world today, we have tyrants like that: Than Shwe in Burma, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Bashir Assad in Syria, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. There are others in The Sudan and Belarus. Not to mention terrorist leaders who call for the extinction of Israel, but primarily just slaughter other Muslims.

Just today, there are reports that Al-Qaeda is vowing to obtain nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and use them against the West. This is no more fanciful than Auden's poem: It could actually happen. Who is the new American president will be preoccupied with trying to see it doesn't happen.

That's a good reason that the vital debate over the security of the United States and other free nations shouldn't be just a series of gaffes, one-liners and provocative television spots.

The fact that Barack Obama refers to his great-uncle liberating Auschwitz when he should have said Buchenwald is not consequential. Neither is a Hillary Clinton ad suggesting she is ready for a call about a terrorist attack at 3 a.m., while Obama as president would not be. And neither are the one-liners John McCain is fond of throwing out: "I will never surrender in Iraq." "We might be there 100 years."

The trouble with the last, by the way, is not that McCain is not expressing his true sentiments. It is just that the American people will never have the patience to keep armed forces in Iraq for 100 years. Unless our leaders can figure out how to wind this operation up expeditiously, we are going to lose in Iraq, or at least have to concentrate the War on Terror somewhere else.

As we go forward in the fall campaign, I hope it's not just a tit-for-tat between McCain and Obama to see which one can one-up the other. I'm sure both men will be diligent campaigners, leaving no stone unturned in their efforts. It's obvious that neither is lazy.

But what is most important is that it be a substantive discussion, that it draw out each of the candidates to give us a clear idea of how they think, how they would begin confronting the pro0blems we face, in short what kind of president each would be. That is what individual voters have to decide for themselves in choosing how to vote.

We haven't always had that in campaigns. Lyndon Johnson ran as the peace candidate in 1964, but within three weeks of his inauguration sharply expanded the fruitless war in Vietnam. Woodrow Wilson ran in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of war," but a month after his inauguration called for, and got, a declaration of war against Germany. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't completely candid about the options facing the U.S. in 1940.

Can we do better this time?

I'm not at all adverse to McCain's suggestion that he and Obama campaign on occasion together throughout the country with a series of discussions about the issues. It would not be necessary to have ambitious, attention-seeking reporters moderate these talks, thus possibly avoiding the pointless negative questioning of some recent candidate encounters. Maybe, it wouldn't work, but I think it's worth trying. I see no merit, however, in McCain's suggestion that he and Obama take a trip to Iraq together.

We already know, to their credit, that neither McCain nor Obama want to make much of divisive racial issues. Both have denounced religious supporters who were peddling hate and nonsense. Both have fired campaign advisors who decided to go off on their own tacks. We have the sense that both want to be good presidents, and, are not, as the Clintons have been doing, simply grabbing for power.

But the two candidates do profoundly differ with each other on such issues as talking with our enemies, Iraq, and, as it will likely develop, a whole range of other issues.

So, let's go ahead. Let's not cede the field to clever lobbies, fake advertising arrangers, and people with hidden agendas. The times are critical. It is to be hoped that our democracy will live up to them.

North Korea, Gaza, Even Dubai, Evils Persist

Written from Takoradi, Ghana--

No matter that some situations, like in Zimbawe, show signs of improving, there are many that seem intractible.

We hear today that, once again, the duplicitous North Korean regime, which has repeatedly welshed on the commitments it made last year to eliminate its nuclear weapons programs and provide a full accounting of what it developed to the U.S. and other countries in exchange for aid, is threatening the new South Korean president and has expelled many South Koreans there to help its economy. It shows once again that nuclear proliferation is very hard to eliminate when we have people like Kim Il Jong in the world.

Then there was a story in the International Herald Tribune yesteday about the hatred being officially spewed by the Hamas regime in Gaza, comparing Jews to vermin and calling for eradication of Israel. These too are scoundrels, and if they have to be destroyed to stop cease issuing venom, and rocketing Israel, they should be.

Also, today, there's a story out of Washington that the United Arab Emirates, which would like to invest in the U.S., has been taking U.S. exports with military components and reexporting them to Iran and Syria. Repeated efforts to stop this have been resisted. American soldiers are dying in Iraq, because Iran has been sending detonation components originally produced in America to Iraq.

There are rumors, too, that United Emirate interests have bribed the Clintons. We may find out, if Hillary ever releases her tax returns. And my son-in-law tells me that some Arabs are circulating the rumor that Barack Obama is Jewish. The reason is that his first name is similar to Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak's last name. Poor guy. He is damned no matter which way he turns. Yet he bravely carries on.

It is truly a dangerous world, and it is clear we need a new President who will keep America as safe as possible in these treacherous times, and is not afraid to take military action when necessary. On Dec. 26, this blog endorsed Obama for the Democratic nomination and John McCain for the Republican. I will make up my mind finally between these two candidates later, and will be endorsing no others in the fall.

Also, I note that Gov. Bill Richardson has an Op Ed page piece in the Washington Post defending his endorsement of Obama as an example of loyalty to the country. He is responding to the scullilous assaults of James Carville and other Clinton patsies that he sold out Hillary with the endorsement.

Richardson is eminitely qualified to advise the American people on who he thinks would make the best president. We owe him our deepest thanks and highest respects.

Moroccan Security There, But Not Too Obtrusive

Written from Casablanca--

Casablanca has had terror attacks, but the security surrounding my ship's docking in the Moroccan city Monday, and a tour I took to the Moroccan capital of Rabat was not all that obtrusive.

The dock area is well guarded and locked down. Anyone entering requires a pass, and cruise passengers must provide their cruise identification card. But this is common these days with many ports.

When we boarded our tour bus, there was an extra person aboard, kind of riding shot gun, beside the tour guide and driver. This man identifiied himself upon my question as "an agent." He may have been armed, but that was not clear. The bus had a radio, but that too is common.

When we reached the royal palace in Rabat, the entire governmental zone was cordoned off and well-guarded. But all the driver had to do to get us in was to say one word: "Americans," and there were no questions asked.

Three separate kinds of police or army were evident at the tombs of King Mohammed V and King Hassan II.

In Casablanca itself, there was not heavy evident police presence. And the great mosque, with the second highest minaret in the world had no outside police presence.

Casablanca has a "Rick's Cafe," but of course it is not the one shot in the classic film with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. That film was shot in a Hollywood studio in Los Angeles.
However, our guide told us that the film "Casablanca" is credited with bringing other moving shooting to the city in recent years. The film Syriana and two others were recently shot there.

The Euro is much more readily accepted in Casablanca than the dollar. The dollar has sunk to a new, lower level of esteem, and sending a postcard home cost $2 in postage, much, much more than when I was in Morocco 12 years ago.

In Gaza, Clear All Arabs, And Turn It Into A Park

The time has come to strike definitively at the Gaza Arabs, ousting them from the 25-mile long strip and turning it into a cleared area, a park. With their rocket attacks against Israel, they have proved themselves unfit occupants and thoroughly unacceptable neighbors.

It is unclear where these miserable people can be pushed to, but once strong military operations begin, perhaps they can be helped to breach again the Egyptian border and move, initially, into the Sinai, and perhaps later to Iran, which has assumed responsibility for supplying them with the weapons they have been using to attack Israeli cities.

Gradually, the weapons they use have become longer range and more sophisticated. Iran Grad missiles, smuggled in during the last border breach with Egypt are now striking Ashkelon, a city well north of the border. Disruption of Israeli civilian life has increased, and deaths are occurring.

In Israel, the weak government of Ehud Olmert has temporized with this problem. Its strategy of pinpoint attacks against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists is killing a few of the terrorists each day, but it has not halted the attacks. Since he is unwilling to take steps to halt the rocket fire, Olmert should resign and give way to a braver leader.

It is clear now that the attempt of the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza and let that area govern itself has been an abject failure -- as if Arab leaders could be trusted at any time.

They cannot be, and if Ariel Sharon, who has been lying comatose for two years since suffering a stroke, were well today and still in charge, he would have taken strong action a long time ago.

Calls for restraint from the Bush Administration are neither helpful nor appropriate. At each time in the past when the Israelis have had a security crisis, the U.S. has always urged restraint, and the United Nations has been opposed flatly to the Israelis defending themselves. And in each case, the Israelis have finally taken necessary action, and the rest of the world has, more or less, gone along, putting in peacekeeping forces, such as along the Lebanese border two years ago, which have quieted the situation.

But no one from the outside world wants to go into the cesspool that is Gaza. This time, once again, the Israelis must initiate action and let the chips fall where they may.

Some will say, don't take collective action against a whole population. But the Gaza Arabs are responsible for their own plight. Rather than try to form a peaceful, self-governing entity, they, as a people, have put extremists in charge and persistently supported violent attacks.

Now has come the time for them to live somewhere else. They must go to a safe area where they can do no further harm.

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The same might be said of newspaper magnates William Dean Singleton and Sam Zell. They are as destructive as the Gaza Arabs, in a different way. Rather than seeking to destroy Israel, they are conspiring in the destruction of their own newspapers and other holdings.

Certainly, we see that today at the Daily News in the San Fernando Valley. Singleton has pretty much ruined the newspaper already with cutbacks. Yesterday, he forced editor Ron Kaye to announce new layoffs, paring the editorial staff from 122 to 100. Kaye broke down emotionally as he announced the layoffs to the staff. Of course, such cutbacks generate only new losses of circulation and advertising. The Daily News may not survive much longer.

As for Zell, proof comes today that he hates Chicago just as much as Los Angeles. It's announced that he is making plans, before he sells the Chicago Cubs, to first sell the naming rights at Wrigley Field. Maybe, the venerable old stadium, the heart of the Chicago psyche, may soon be called Chinese Import Field, or Hillary Clinton Field, just depending who is willing to pay Zell the most.

Afghanistan, A Costly Stalemate, Looms After 2008

As usual Sunday, some of the best reporting was in the New York Times magazine. The subject was Elizabeth Rubin's long cover story on her sojourn with U.S. troops in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, where men on 15-month tours are slowly going crazy combatting the intractible Taliban insurgency.

Afghanistan is like Vietnam was in 1964: Major decisions loom after the U.S. election. The embattled and unpopular Bush Adminisration may be able to put them off until the next president takes over. But, then, he or she is going to have to make decisions possibly entailing a much greater U.S. commitment and even a wider war, into Pakistan, or getting out. For the NATO countries which have somewhat halfheartedly joined us, it's going to be decision time too.

On Feb. 7, 1965, less than three weeks after being sworn in for another term, President Lyndon B. Johnson fatefully ordered bombing of North Vietnam and expansion of U.S. forces, after having campaigned as a comparative dove against the hawkish Republican 1964 candidate, Sen. Barry Goldwater. He had put off crucial Vietnam decisions in 1964. In 1965, he felt he could not any longer.

We face a similar situation now. It is comparatively easy for the Democratic 2008 candidates for president, Sens. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, to talk about how Iraq is a diversion, and, while pulling troops from there, they intend to focus more effort on Afghanistan, where both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda pose a greater security threat to the U.S. But if one of them defeats Sen. John McCain, and becomes president, he or she is going to be up against it, and a decision to do more in Afghanistan could be a somber beginning to either one's presidency, unpopular with the doves who have fueled their campaigns.

The insurgency in Afghanistan is growing more serious. Suicide bombings and other attacks, even in the Afghan capital of Kabul, are increasing. The Karzai regime is faltering, weary of the fight. And, across the border in Pakistan, both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are stronger, consolidating their grip on the border regions in the wake of an election that further challenges the grip of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Just this morning, comes a new attack in Pakistan, the bombing murder of the country's Army Surgeon General, and seven others in the capital of Rawalpindi, not far from where Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are believed hiding somewhere in Pakistan, as they have ever since 2001. So far, we haven't found them.

Pakistan is, of course, a nuclear-armed state. Intervention by the U.S., India, Israel and the European countries would be necessary -- possibly even before the U.S. election -- if Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were to move toward seizing control of the country's nukes.

The Rubin article in the New York Times magazine demonstrates, sadly, in what jeopardy the present stalemate in that part of the world has put U.S. soldiers. Many, according to this article, are near the breaking point. One man she writes about is on his sixth tour of duty in the war zones. In seeking to avoid inflicting civilian casualties, they are granting advantages to the insurgents, who are in real control of virtually all the villages.

On a broader basis, the question of what to do with Islamic fundamentalists certainly arises. If they are truly threatening to the U.S. and the West, as I believe they are, the rules of engagement are going to have to be changed.

It may be necessary to do what Roman caesars once were said to have done: They created a desert and called it peace.

But this is going to be rough on a new U.S. president, particularly if he or she is a Democrat. McCain might be up to it, but not easily Obama or Clinton and a Democratic majority in Congress.

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Time magazine's Mark Halperin, whose "Page" is one of the best sources of up-to-the-minute information about the presidential campaign, leads this morning with word that the Clinton forces are circulating copies of a Drudge Report photo of Obama dressed up in a Somali costume. One wonders if the photo is authentic how Obama could ever have been so reckless as to have dressed in that way. But it also shows the Clinton campaign once again, as in South Carolina, trying to play the race card against Obama. Late reports say the Clinton campaign provided Drudge with the photo. Also, it's pointed out today that both Bill and Hillary Clinton dressed in local costumes while on foreign trips. This is apparently what Obama did while visiting Kenya in 2006.

Whoever said Hillary and Bill Clinton are honorable? They are as sleazy as they come. As Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said today, circulation of the photo constitutes "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election year."

In a shameless defense of the race-baiting, the new Clinton campaign manager, Maggie Williams, who is black herself, says it was perfectly all right to circulate the photo. If this kind of thing continues and Hillary wins the Democratic nomination as a result, many African-Americans will justifiably cross over and vote for McCain.

Al-Qaeda, Taliban Assassins Striking Widely

Yesterday's attack at the five-star Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, was another instance of a spreading assassination campaign by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Afghan security authorities have now identified the Pakistani-based terrorist, Siraj Haggani, as the instigator of this attack, which resulted in eight deaths at the hotel, including at least one American. The apparent target of the attack, the visiting Norwegian foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, was elsewhere in the hotel and escaped unhurt.

Just as in a celebrated past assassination, that of anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Massoud, just before 9-11, by two terrorists disguised as journalists, the attackers used a disguise, with at least one dressed in the uniform of an Afghan police officer. At least one attacker gained entrance to the hotel lobby and started firing on guests.

The Benazir Bhutto assassination in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Dec. 27 was, most likely, the act of Al-Qaeda or elements of the Pakistani government affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Also, there were bombings that killed at least 31 persons in Algiers, many of them United Nations employees, the recent murder of four French citizens vacationing in Mauritania, and there was an assassination attempt just today involving an American Embassy vehicle traveling north of Beirut, that killed at least 3 Lebanese citizens, including one employed by the Embassy, the first direct attack against U.S. diplomatic interests in Lebanon since the 1980s.

And, of course, this doesn't count the assassinations of innocents taking place virtually every day in Iraq -- in markets, hotels, Baghdad and Mosul neighborhoods and elsewhere. These have been repressed 60% by American military action, but continue to some extent.

Assassination is a characteristic operation of the Al-Qaeda and Taliban vipers, and it explains why there has to be such tight security when President Bush travels abroad, as he is to the Middle East this week, and even here at home of the presidential candidates. We cannot by any means presume that the terrorists would be above such possible attacks, as a means to interfere in the American election. They threaten assassinations of Westerners in numerous tapes and videos distributed throughout the world on Islamic Web sites, and even through such television networks as Al-Jazeera. In the wake of the new Kabul attack, the Taliban said today it will target restaurants in the Afghan capital frequented by Westerners.

It has become clear, meanwhile, that the Pakistani border areas adjacent to Afghanistan have become the new heartland of the terrorists. The weakened regime of dictator Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan has proved incapable of preventing the consolidation of this bastion, and, despite some intervention from time to time of American special forces, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their allies continue to spread their power into populated areas of that country. Just today, in its lead story, the New York Times reports that Pakistan's intelligence agency has lost control of certain networks of extremists which it once had nurtured.

Recently, in a New Hampshire debate of Democratic presidential candidates, all three major contenders, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, declared that if they were informed of the precise whereabouts of Osama bin Laden they would send in American forces to get him. This generated yet another statement by Musharraf warning against American incursions into the Pakistani borderlands.

It is clear, however, that the Democratic candidates have it right: If we locate bin Laden, we simply cannot afford to allow him to escape once again. American security trumps Pakistani security, especially considering the danger that Pakistani nuclear weapons could fall into terrorist hands should the Musharraf regime collapse.

This week, also, there has been confirmation of reports that a force of 3,200 U.S. Marines will be sent to Afghanistan to buttress allied forces there. This movement comes amid resistance by NATO allies against U.S. entreaties for reinforcing the number of Europeans fighting in Afghanistan.

Altogether, the center of the War on Terror has moved east from Iraq into Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there are, as well, new Al-Qaeda attacks in North Africa.

To a certain extent, the American election campaign has moved toward more economic concerns and less controversy over U.S. participation in military campaigns in the Middle East. But, make no mistake, this crisis-ridden region remains a fulcrum of world power politics, and doing in the assassins is integral to U.S. national security.

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The Los Angeles Times continues to do an admirable job of covering stories outside the main flow of the news. Two stories just yesterday come to mind. In one, in the Business section, Jessica Guynn wrote most entertainingly of the free meals the Google Corp. feeds to its employees at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. In a second, on Page 1, Jeffrey Fleishman wrote about the difficult lives of American women who have married Saudi Arabian men, converted to Islam and moved to Saudi Arabia. This is a little like voluntarily walking into Dante's Circles of Hell.

Even when the Times is picking up articles from other newspapers, it is frequently choosing well. Another article yesterday told the inspiring story of John Muir Laws, who has been photographing insect and other life in the Sierra, honoring the great naturalist whom he was named after. This article came from the Washington Post.

I'm glad also to see that sports editor Randy Harvey has sent tennis writer Lisa Dillman to Melbourne to cover the Australian Open, after a one-year hiatus of covering that splendid event.

Terror Attacks Strike Four Countries In 24 Hours

Written from Palm Springs, Calif.--

Lest we have felt any temptation in recent weeks to think that the necessity of the War on Terror is lessening, the last 24 hours should be enough to disabuse us of the notion.

Just since the beginning of yesterday, Dec. 11 (a number with particular fascination to the Al Qaeda death cult), there have been major terrorist attacks in four countries. In all four cases, the forces of fundamentalist Islam have proven their determination to strike at moderate Muslim and Western interests. As the White House said yesterday, these attacks are directed by "enemies of humanity." The only option we really have is to fight them. They are not susceptible to negotiations or sweet reason.

The first attack came in Algeria, and one of two bombs that exploded in Algiers was at the United Nations headquarters in that city. According to UN sources, 11 UN personnel were killed, in the worst attack against the international organization since the Baghdad bombing that killed the UN chief emissary to Iraq and many other UN workers in 2003. A second bomb exploded outside an Algerian government building. The overall death toll in this country, which has emerged as a leading moderate Muslim state, was at least 31, and responsibility for the outrage was claimed by the Al Qaeda organization in North Africa,. It was the latest of a series of Al Qaeda operations in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, all Muslim countries aligned more or less with the West. (The UN, then led by the weak and possibly corrupt Kofi Annan, quickly pulled all its personnel from Baghdad after the 2003 bombing. The new UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki-moon, is not such a weakling. He described the Algiers bombing as "base, indecent and unjustifiable by even the most barbarous of political standards," words that were precise and correct. He immediately made it plain the UN will not withdraw from Algeria).

Then, this morning, comes word of three other attacks -- in Lebanon, Iraq and Israel.

In Lebanon, we learn that Brig. Gen. Francois al-Hajj, chief operational commander of the Lebanese Army, has been assassinated. He directed the successful campaign earlier this year against the terrorist offshoot organization, Fatah al-Islam, in a Palestinian refugee camp outside the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. That group was virtually wiped out after weeks of fighting, but the situation in Lebanon as a whole remains foreboding with both Al Qaeda and the Hezbollah organization aligned with Syria and Iran continuing to seek the ouster of the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fuad Sinoira. The assassination today of al-Hajj in a car bombing in a Beirut suburb is only the latest of many which have become the subject of an ongoing UN investigation. Evidence so far developed in this inquiry points to Syrian responsibility for assassinations such as today's. Meanwhile, just two days ago, election of a new Lebanese president was delayed for the eighth time.

In the city of Amara, Iraq, where British forces have recently been withdrawn, clearing the way for more intra-Shite strife, bombs exploded today that killed 27 persons. It is another reminder that despite gains in Iraq resulting from the "surge" of U.S. forces and the turning of Sunni sheiks to the American side, Iraq continues to be threatened by both ethnic strife and Al Qaeda.

Also today, the Israelis report that a barrage of 20 Kassem rockets have been fired out of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip at the Israeli city of Sderot and points in the Western Negev. The mayor of Sderot resigned today in protest against the failure of the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert to respond with a large enough military operation in Gaza to stop the continuing firing of rockets against Israeli territory. Again today, in the Jerusalem Post, there are contradictory reports as to whether Olmert will direct the Israeli Army to undertake a major strike at Hamas, which is increasingly in league with both Iranian and Al Qaeda elements. The Israelis sent a few tanks into southern Gaza today, killing five persons, but this will not be enough to dissuade the killers from their aggression.

The new trouble in the Holy Land comes just after, in a recent conference in Annapolis, Md., the Bush Administration sought to encourage a new round of Arab-Israeli peace talks. But it does not seem to me that peace talks can proceed when Arab terrorists continue to attack peaceful Israeli civilians with barrages of rockets.

The events of just the past 24 hours demonstrate the determination of the terrorists. On our side, we need to continue to try to destroy them. What less will suffice?

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The Tribune Co. reports yet another revenue decline in the four weeks that ended Nov. 25. Publishing revenue is down against the same period a year ago 3.5%, from $428 million to $413 million, while advertising revenue is down 4.9%. Advertising revenues in some sectors, such as classified (a 26% decline) or real estate (39%) is literally collapsing.

We are still waiting for the final close of the deal under which Chicago real estate magnate and Malibu mansion owner Sam Zell is buying control of Tribune. But in the meantime, the inept CEO Dennis FitzSimons and his celebrity-loving L.A. Times publisher David Hiller, remain in commanding positions of responsibility. With all due regard to the subprime crisis and the changing newspaper business, new blood in these positions is necessary. Zell's work is cut out for him. He must realize that with failed corporate chieftains like FitzSimons and Hiller in charge, no corner can be turned.

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's comments on Mormonism, reported as scheduled to appear in an article in the New York Times magazine this coming weekend, constitute the worst example of religious hatred in the developing 2008 campaign. His suggestion that Mormons believe that "Jesus and the devil are brothers" is a vile attack, designed to derail the candidacy of former Gov. Mitt Romney, the apparent chief competitor of Huckabee in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. The fact that Huckabee later apologized does not excuse his hateful language and recklessness.

I have questioned Huckabee's qualifications to be president before. This statement in and of itself makes it clear he is unfit for the presidency.

Is There Hope In The Middle East? Perhaps Some

With Arab-Israeli talks, under the guidance of the United States, set for Annapolis this week, both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times carry columns today registering a hopeful feeling that it's not impossible that something constructive could happen in them.

Both Roger Cohen in the New York Times and former negotiator Aaron David Miller in the L.A. Times express a belief that weariness on both sides, plus the facts that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been holding extensive talks between themselves, and that President Bush feels the end of his term coming may help generate at least a beginning of a new attempt to resolve key issues. Mr. Bush now has fallen back on the old Carter and Clinton positions that it's worthwhile for the U.S. to exert a helpful push on both sides.

Also, a Syrian columnist close to the government of Bashar Assad writes today that the Syrian government is attending the Annapolis meeting because it does not feel it can afford to be left outside the tent in confidential discussions.

The danger of course is that the issues may once again prove intractable or that terrorists may strike, as they have in the past, to disrupt any constructive moves. There does, however, seem on both sides to be a willingness to discuss such issues as the future of Jerusalem, when there has not been before. Only Iran, at the moment, is sticking to a position of total intransigence.

Meanwhile, the New York Times ran two pieces Sunday on Iraq and Al-Qaeda that seemed highly worthwhile.

First and foremost was a long article in the New York Times magazine by the newspaper's recent Pulitzer Prize winner, Andrea Elliott, based on her courageous interviews in the Moroccan city of Tetouan with family and friends of several residents who joined the Jihadists, becoming involved either in the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, or the Al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq.

She traces at great length just what led to these youths becoming terrorists. But implicit in the whole long piece is that even in a radical bastion like this city, the actual number of people enticed into violence is small, and that many people in their families and in Tetouan in general have noticed that violent acts have succeeded in killing many more fellow-Muslims than Americans and other infidels. There seems, in these interviews, then, some rays of hope, some slight feeling that the terrorist movement has peaked, and that, like some kind of fever, it may diminish.

The Elliott piece, not at all polemical, an honest striving for the facts, cannot be too highly recommended. Everyone should read it. I don't think I'm reading a brighter edge to it than is justified.

Then, there is a column yesterday in the NYT by the somewhat changeable Thomas Friedman that holds there are somewhat encouraging signs that many Arabs are rethinking the cul de sac they have entered into of internecine strife. Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah still exist. But others are changing, and even Hamas and Hezbollah, while Iranian backed, sometimes seem a little less fanatic.

Not only does Friedman find signs of "illegal mingling" among Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, but he observes, "From Gaza to Lebanon to Pakistan to Iraq there is a huge struggle going on today, primarily between Muslim sects, over who can mingle with whom."

The columnist notes that David Ignatius, a Washington Post writer, has even found signs in a recent Osama bin Laden audio that bin Laden feels it has been a "mistake" for Al Qaeda to adopt some of the brutal sectarian tactics it has in Iraq.

As Winston Churchill once said, upon the invasion of North Africa in World War II in 1942, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But perhaps it is the end of the beginning." In short, there are signs of some movement, that something besides war and violence is rearing its head. The work that our soldiers. Marines and intelligence operatives did late last year and early this year in Anbar province (where my own son served with the SEALS as an officer), encouraging a rising of Sunnis against Al-Qaeda, has borne some fruit everywhere in Iraq and may bear some more.

That is why I think it constructive for the U.S. to go ahead with both its military effort in Iraq, which is gaining, and its effort to bring a settlement in the Holy Land. Withdrawing, as some impatient American doves want, is not a good option for us, at a time, at long last, when there are rays of light ahead. And now is not the time when others, such as the Australians or Poles, to pull out their small forces.

Wars, particularly counterinsurgency wars, often take a long time. We have to be patient. It could be that things are beginning to move our way. Certainly, some seasoned Middle East correspondents, including the L.A. Times' Kim Murphy, have expressed the opinion that if the Arab-Israeli dispute could be settled, the hot air would go out of the terrorist movement.

Australia, Poland Opt Out Of Fighting Terrorists

In a depressing demonstration that Islamic fanatics may win after all, the electorates of both Australia and Poland have in recent days voted to bring in governments that are sworn to withdraw these countries' pitifully small contingents of armed forces in Iraq.

The new Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, says he will remove the 550 Australian combat troops in Iraq, and the new Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, says he will have the 1,200 Polish troops out by next year.

It will probably be unpopular to say so, but these countries are following many others that want the United States to do all the fighting and spend all the money to prevent Middle Eastern terrorists from taking over that region. They think they can live safely, while opting out of the common effort. It is a failure of collective security that has occurred before.

I believe they are wrong, and that the Polish prime minister is ready to follow even more disastrous policies when, forgetting Polish history, he questions details of the alliance with the U.S. and its plans to put defensive missiles on Polish soil. If Poland moves away from its alliance with America, it may well again find the Russian wolf coming through its door, and its long struggle to wrest Polish government from Russian domination will have gone for nought.

Strangely enough, these timorous voters and weak-minded leaders are acting at a time when, at least in Iraq, there are encouraging signs of progress. They are like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times editorial writers who think freedom is free, and that it need not be fought for, that we can just get out and all will be well. It sounds like the fatally weak, uninvolved American policy toward Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that did so much to allow tyrants to follow through on their aggressive designs. It took finally the loss of millions of lives to stop them.

It is too bad too that these avowals of pacifism come just before, after major efforts, the Bush Administration has been able to convene a peace conference in Annapolis, with both Arab and Israeli participation, on the issues in the Holy Land. This conference faces many obstacles, but the obstacles will be even greater when the participants see the electorates and governments of Australia and Poland following the socialist government in Spain in trying to escape their responsibilities in the region.

Just in recent weeks, as oil prices have soared toward the $100 mark, there have been reports that many of the foreign fighters coming into Iraq to fight on the side of the terrorists have been coming from Saudi Arabia, the country that was the origin of many of the hijackers of 9-11. And, at the same time, that country has been demonstrating once again just how primitive it is, with its plan to beat a young rape victim within an inch of her life and imprison her for having met with a man who was a male friend who was not her husband, prior to both being assaulted. Her lawyer is now threatened with disbarment for making a public case of it. The whole world is protesting, but the corrupt Saudi monarchy refuses to intervene.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, serious if sporadic attacks by the terrorists continue, despite a falloff in numbers.

In Pakistan, terrorist attacks are increasing, and, just today, an enemy of the U.S., Nawaz Sharif, has returned from exile to foment more trouble for the regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The question posed here is whether the needs of U.S. security should trump our general backing for democracy. I agree with Sens. Dodd and Clinton that security must take priority when terrorism is involved.

To Rudd, Tusk, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and other doves around the world, a clear message must be delivered: Their efforts, while perhaps well meaning, are abetting the barbarians. Like ancient Romans against the Huns, they think the world can stop fighting the extremists and nothing will happen. This, I believe, is totally wrong.

That people in many countries are tired of violence is readily understandable. But the consequences of quitting the battle at this stage could be a new dark age, and not only in the Middle East.

Freedom Of Speech Not Enhanced At Columbia

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times fell back editorially today on the ridiculous proposition that the appearance of the terrorist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University yesterday was in accord with what the L.A. Times called "such core American principles as academic freedom and freedom of speech."

Does that mean, however, that Columbia and its sensation-seeking president, Lee Bollinger, should now feel compelled to invite Charles Manson, or O.J. Simpson to speak at the campus?

I don't think so. I don't think "freedom of speech" is enhanced by inviting every scoundrel to waste time peddling dangerous, crazy and unsavory ideas, simply for the titillation of his audience. There has to be some honestly-held principle at stake, some good to be obtained by the frank expression of even far-out views. By the standards evoked in the two wimpy and irresolute newspapers, Columbia might as well invite the head of the military junta which has been enslaving the Burmese people to speak as the leader of the Buddhist monks protesting against him in a courageous battle for freedom.

Or, to put it another way, those who award the Novel Peace Prize shouldn't have been satisfied by just making one mistake. No, awarding the prize to Yasser Arafat was not mistake enough. In the interest of worldwide understanding, they should also have awarded it to Stalin, Hitler and "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

A classic example of the liberal, "Let's Love The Enemy" crowd is Maureen Dowd's commentary on the Admadinejad visit in the New York Times. I suggest that Ms. Dowd go to Iran herself and see how she likes the way women are treated there.

I agree with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who said, "I'm all for freedom of expression, but what happened at Columbia University gave a platform to the greatest lies in the world."

To the credit of Dana Milbank, the reporter who covered another appearance by Admadinejad yesterday, in a videoconference before the National Press Club, for the Washington Post, he put the emphasis in his lead, on how ridiculous and untruthful some of Ahmadinejad's statements were.

"For hundreds of years, we've lived in friendship and brotherhood with the people of Iraq," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the National Press Club, yesterday," Milbank began.

"That's true," he went on, "as long as you don't count the little unpleasantness of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when a million people died, some by poison gas. And you'd have to overlook 500 years of fighting during the Ottoman Empire.

"But never mind that. Ahmadinejad was on a roll.

"Our people are the freest people in the world," said the man whose government executes dissidents, jails academics and stones people to death.

"The freest women in the world are women in Iran," he continued, neglecting to mention that Iranian law treats a woman as half of a man.

"In our country," judged the man who shuts down newspapers and imprisons journalists, "freedom is flowing at its highest level."

"And if you believe that," wrote Milbank, "he has a peaceful civilian nuclear program he wants to sell you."

This was a better, more valid, approach than that used by the namby-pamby Helene Cooper, the New York Times correspondent covering Ahmadinejad's Columbia appearance, who called his statements there that there were no homosexuals in Iran or that the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust was not fact, but theory, an airing of "bewildering thoughts."

Erika Hayasaki was better in the L.A. Times when she, defensibly, put her accent in the lead on the confrontational aspects of the appearance at Columbia.

But neither could match Milbank, who realized that the best way to handle tyrants and guttersnipes is through ridicule.

I persist in my feeling, expressed yesterday, that Ahmadinejad played both his audiences yesterday for fools. At least at Columbia, the students did laugh and hoot when he made his statement about homosexuals, although some applauded him at other points. But at the National Press Club, as Milbank reported, he got only a mild reception.

"The reception was rather friendlier at the press club, where the sole questioner was moderator Jerry Zremsky of the Buffalo News," Milbank wrote. "He introduced Ahmadinejad as "one of the most newsworthy heads of state in the world," and chose written questions submitted by the audience such as "Do you plan on running for reelection in two years?"

Now, that's the Washington press corps that I knew as a political writer. They are always ready to besmirch the reputation of a President of the United States, but they turn into Caspar Milquetoasts when it comes to confronting a foreign tyrant.

I just wonder how this Zremsky would have introduced Stalin at the National Press Club, the man, who, while killing millions of his own people and imprisoning millions of others, proclaimed in 1936 that the Soviet Union was the greatest democracy on the face of the Earth.

Reporters often turn into shrinking violets at the wrong times. Now, when the Chicago toady, L.A. Times publisher David Hiller appears tomorrow as a speaker before the Times retired employees' association, the Old Farts, I wonder whether everyone will treat him as if he were actually respectable. This in a week in which in Monday's paper he had several wrap-around ads that had to be tossed away before you could read the paper, and a front-page ad on Page 1.

Freedom of speech as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes once said, doesn't mean that you have "freedom to yell fire in a crowded theatre." And it doesn't mean either that institutions like Columbia University must live up to it by inviting in professional liars and knaves.

Columbia U., L.A. Times Bow To Ahmadinejad

Columbia University won't let ROTC on its campus, despite a student vote in 2003 for doing so. Yet it served as a forum today for the Iranian hate monger, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to spew forth distortions, prejudices and lies, while failing to answer most of the questions asked him.

The L.A. Times, meanwhile, completely passed up reporting today on the epic demonstrations for freedom and democracy in the streets of Rangoon and other cities of Burma. But it did give copious space to a story beginning on the front page about how popular Ahmadinejad is among the Arabs of the Middle East. The story, by one of the Times' least able foreign correspondents, Jeffrey Fleishman, had a jaunty tone, describing the Iranian as "a flinty populist in a zip-up jacket whose scathing rhetoric and defiance of Washington are often caricatured in the Western media."

Caricatured is defined in Webster's New World Dictionary as "a picture or imitation of a person in which certain features or mannerisms are exaggerated for satirical effect," or "a likeness or imitation that is so distorted or inferior as to seem ludicrous." By this definition, Ahmadinejad has not been caricatured at all, but caught dead to rights.

No, Ahmadinejad's basic positions have not been distorted. Denying the Nazi Holocaust and calling for the extermination of both Israel and the United States, Ahmadinejad is quoted directly in an ad in the New York Times today by the Freedomwatchdog group as saying on CNN March 27, 2005, "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism."

Ahmadinejad was not drunk when he said that, and he has repeated it on numerous occasions. It is all just not bluff, either. Ahmadinejad's Iranian government is providing missiles and improvised explosive devices which are killing American soldiers in Iraq and, it is suggested, Afghanistan, and it supplied the missiles last summer to Hezbollah which were used to attack Haifa and other Israeli cities. At home, Ahmadinejad's police seize women and young people on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities and fine them for wearing normal clothing or playing Western music.

To some extent, Ahmadinejad was on his best behavior today. He toned down his rhetoric on eliminating Israel. He made the ridiculous assertion there are no homosexuals in his country. And he claimed to be a man of peace. It sounded just like Hitler at Munich, promising, "I will have no further territorial demands in Europe." For Ahmadinejad the equivalent was his statement he is not planning to build an atomic bomb.

Let me say a possibly unpopular thing: Both Columbia students and the readers of the L.A. Times were made fools of today by giving this fanatic a platform. Yes, the president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, asked hard questions of the Iranian president, almost to the point of filibustering him. But, of course, he got few if any real answers. There was no good or useful point to today's dramatics, and it was hard to escape the impression the Columbia president felt he had to somehow satisfy all the critics of the Ahmadinejad invitation by being nasty to the Iranian.

A Columbia official, an acting dean, was quoted as saying that that university would have given Adolf Hitler a forum had he come to New York. But the same university recently denied the Minutemen, an American anti-immigration group, an opportunity to send a representative to speak on its campus.

Also, despite statements that the students would be free to question Ahmadinejad, it turned out today that no questions were taken directly from the floor, but were screened by officials out of written submissions. Had the Columbia president not taken so long making his advance accusatory speech, there may have been more time for lively student questions.

It is a highly selective policy, which is willing to give Nazis and Islamic fascists a forum, but denies it to both politically incorrect organizations in America, and our military recruiters. I could understand later why some Columbia graduates interviewed on TV said they will make no more contributions to Columbia. Why give the money to a place with such a muddleheaded president?

As for Fleishman's article, it is an example of what I might call "taxi cab" journalism. A certain kind of unimaginative journalist believes he can find out what's happening by asking taxi cab drivers what they think and then passing it on to their readers as fundamental wisdom.

Quite simply, the Fleishman article is a serious misapprehension. Iran is terribly distrusted among the Sunni Muslims who make up most of the Arab world. In Lebanon, a courageous government has been shedding its soldiers' blood to prevent Iranian proxies in Hezbollah from taking over the state. In Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, there is bitter resistance to the idea of Iranian dominance in the Middle East, and fear of the possibility that Iran will build an atomic bomb.

The Fleishman article and the Columbia invitation to Ahmadinejad follow in line with what MoveOn.org and other organizations ashamed of being Americans seem often to be trying to do, which is to get America to fall to its knees before the terrorists, quit the battlefield and cede the Middle East to them.

Thank God, that's not going to happen. These people are in a minority, according to the polls, of about one fourth , of the American people who believe in an abject withdrawal not only from Iraq but the entire Middle East, and would stand by, like the British pacifists of the 1930s, while the Hitlers, Mussolinis and Ahmadinejad's take control of vast parts of the world.

What this would mean in the present day would not only be $100-a-barrel oil, but an end to our economic power and our freedoms. It cannot, and will not, be allowed to happen.

Meanwhile, perhaps Fleishman and the president of Columbia University, should fly to Rangoon. Then they could see a courageous people marching for its freedom, and maybe the L.A. Times, like the New York Times and London Times today, would be covering that consequential story on Page 1. By contrast with what is happening in Burma, Ahmadinejad at Columbia University was just hot air.

Al Qaeda Vipers Seized In Germany And Denmark

With the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington close at hand, anti-terror police in Germany and Denmark have seized several operatives believed affiliated with Al Qaeda and charged them with having obtained chemical explosives for attacks on Americans and others.

The largest disrupted plot was in Germany, where two converts to Islam, and a member of Germany's Turkish community were arrested in possession of 1,500 pounds of explosives that allegedly would have been used "imminently" for attacks on the big American Ramstein air base, the Frankfurt Airport and other sites, such as restaurants and discotecques frequented by Americans. This morning, the New York Times is reporting that 10 other suspects are also being sought in this plot. One policeman was shot in the hand by one of the suspects during the arrests on Wednesday.

German police reportedly had been tracing the suspects for months, even having released one from an earlier arrest so that he could be tailed. It is also reported that the German authorities were able to substitute a less harmful chemical for the hydrogen peroxide the terrorists were planning to use to construct bombs.

The day before 600 German police conducted raids at 41 locations in that country, Danish police arrested an Afghan and a Pakistani alleged to have gathered chemical explosives for attacks in Denmark. This plot too was said to involve imminent action and affiliates of Al Qaeda.

Some of those arrested in the two countries were said to have traveled to Pakistan for training by Al Qaeda in a compound it operates in that country. This would be consistent with what happened in the London subway and bus bombings of 2005 that killed 52 persons and wounded hundreds of others.

German authorities said that had the plot there been consummated, the death toll could have exceeded those in London and in the 2004 attacks on trains in Madrid, which killed 191.

Analyzes in both the New York Times and L.A. Times today say that Al Qaeda recruitment in the Muslim communities of Western Europe has reached alarming proportions and that anti-terror units throughout Europe are on high alert. Other reported terrorist plots have recently been disrupted in Britain, the Czech Republic and Italy.

Al Qaeda has repeated threatened in video statements by its leaders to commit attacks against Americans in a number of countries in Europe and elsewhere.

But the proximity of the Sept. 11 anniversary is a particularly worry some time, because other attacks, such as the one in Spain, have occurred on the 11th of other months.

It may be the case that Al Qaeda, which is under strain from the U.S. military "surge" in Iraq, and is under some army pressure in the Pakistani borderlands where it and its allies in the Taliban are for the moment dominant, believes this would be a good juncture to extend the war into Western Europe, as it has also tried to do in North Africa. Many European countries have joined NATO forces in Afghanistan that are helping U.S. and indigenous Afghan forces to try to contain terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, including Germany, France, Britain, and the Netherlands. (Canadian units also are fighting, and, like the others, have taken casualties in Afghanistan).

Danish armed forces, in small numbers, have been operating in support of the Americans and British fighting in Iraq.

The training of terrorist operatives from Western Europe in the Pakistani borderlands demonstrates how important it is that everything be done to facilitate efforts to fight the terrorists in Pakistan, where the regime of dictator Pervez Musharraf seems to be faltering.

So far, except for a few forays, such as an alleged attempt by two Egyptians to carry out attacks recently in South Carolina, and alleged plots to bomb Fort Dix, N.J. and the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, there have not, thankfully, been terror attacks in the U.S. that would follow up on 9-11. But these too could occur.

This is a time, particularly this week, where a high degree of vigilance is in order on both sides of the Atlantic, and the big newspapers and networks are giving the would-be German and Danish plots heavy attention, as they should.

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The L.A. Times has been giving good coverage this week to persistent power outages in Southern California due to a heat wave that has now faded. Nonethelsss, thousands of customers (but less than one-half of 1% of the total) have been without power for three days, due largely to obsolete transformers unable to carry the power load.

Steve Lopez, the Times columnist, was one of those whose home and family suffered such a failure, and he wrote with his usual eloquence yesterday of just how miserable it was. Adding to the frustration of victims was the customary poor information provided by officials of the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, and Edison.

This is yet another infrastructure problem parallel to what we have seen with highways and bridges of late.

U.S. Must Focus On Larger Purposes in Mideast

Communists and other leftists in India are trying to scuttle the recent nuclear agreement between India and the United States on grounds that its restriction on Indian nuclear testing constitutes an infringement on Indian sovereignty. Both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have articles on this today, the one in the Post somewhat more pointed.

The agreement between the two countries is vital to both. It is important on the one hand that we show that we are willing to support peaceful nuclear power development in a fast-growing third world economy like that of India. And it is vital too from the standpoint of the war against Islamic extremism that the U.S. and India continue to stand together.

The Indians have possibly an even greater interest than we do in preventing Osama bin Laden and his ilk from dominating South Asia and the Middle East. It has long been evident that the integrity of the Indian state is dependent on retention of Kashmir and a continuation of more or less moderate, even if dictatorial, government in Pakistan. To the extent that the terrorists prevail in either place, India's security is threatened, and India, just as much as the U.S., is endangered directly by terrorist attacks.

We see yesterday in Hyderabad, where bombs believed planted by Islamic extremists blew up in two parts of the city, killing more than 40 innocents, that the terrorists continue to have India as one of their prime targets. A few months ago, hundreds were killed in Bombay in similar attacks.

In the long run, the U.S. must make common cause too with Russia and China against Islamic fascism. Just last week, killings by Islamic rebels resumed near Chechnya of Russian military personnel, and recent developments in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have endangered Chinese and other Asians working or visiting in those countries. China is confronting Islamic sedition in its own northwest provinces.

These relations with major states involve our larger purposes in the Middle East and South Asia, and we cannot afford to be distracted by lesser interests. But neither can the Indians. The leftwing argument now that India has somehow sold its soul to the U.S. in the nuclear agreement doesn't hold much water, since the U.S. has agreed to share much nuclear technology, while not insisting on the safeguards it has in agreements with others.

Meanwhile, the U.S., as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman points out in a column today, is entirely too shy in waging the propaganda war against bin Laden and his supporters. Contrary to what they and their sympathizers say, it is not us who are responsible for the mayhem in the region. And we are becoming desensitized to the carnage around us. (Yesterday's attacks in India rated only short articles today, buried in the other foreign coverage of both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times).

Friedman remarks, "Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won't take 30 seconds before the words 'Abu Ghraib' and 'Guantanamo Bay' are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared to what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

"Consider what happened on Aug. 14. Four jihadist suicide-bombers blew themselves up in two Iraqi villages, killing more than 500 Kurdish civilians -- men, women and children -- who belonged to a tiny pre-Islamic sect known as the Yazidis.

"And what was the Bush team's response to this outrage? Virtual silence. After much Googling, the best I could find was: 'We're looking at Al Qaeda as the prime suspect,' said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman. Wow.

"Excuse me, but what exactly are we fighting for in Iraq, or in this wider war against Islamic extremism, if the murder of 500 civilians can be shrugged off? Even if we don't know the exact perpetrators, we know who is inspiring this sort of genocide -- Al Qaeda and bin Laden -- and we need to say that every day."

Amen! At least, there's no doubt which side Friedman is on. He is quite a bit tougher than other parts of the New York Times editorial pages.

On every side, we see American interests assaulted by people whose bad will toward us is manifest.

It is clear when leftwingers in India try to keep India from associating with the U.S. in nuclear affairs, and it is clear when, as today, the Iranian-lining prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, accuses U.S. troops of murdering Shiite civilians in the war in Iraq.

Maliki, as a number of American visitors to Iraq have said in recent days, is no friend of the U.S. and needs to be removed from power. Over many months, he has done everything he could to abet Shiite-inspired ethnic cleansing in Iraq, which our military perforce must resist.

Today, also, Maliki attacked Sens. Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin, saying, "There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses."

But Maliki is wrong. Thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq to bring about a government there more satisfactory to American interests. Hundreds of billions of American dollars have been spent. We have far too much at stake in the outcome of the war to allow a sectarian like the Shiite Maliki to dictate our policies. And when Maliki assails American officials in the opposition who are seeking a successful way to resolve this mess, he is attacking the democratic system in this country, which is far more important to the world than anything that happens in the political squabbling and sectarian strife in Baghdad.

We must keep our eyes on the ball -- our larger interests. We cannot be distracted.

Yazidi Killings Show Demonic Muslim Fundamentalism

A grey-bearded old man living in Northern Iraq named Abu Saeed, who is quoted in a Reuters story this morning, understands more clearly what is going on in the terror bombings of poor Yazidi villagers than do the editorial writers of the L.A. Times.

Of the bombers who killed between 175 and 500 Yazidis this week (estimates vary), Saeed declares, "Their aim is to annihilate us, to create trouble and kill all the Yazidis because we are not Muslims."

This is an accurate characterization of the Islamic fundamentalists who against one group after another, have been extending their depredations through the Middle East. (The Islamic state of Iraq, an Al Qaeda front, distributed warning leaflets a week before the bombings declaring the Yazidis deserved it because they were "anti-Islamic)".

Contrast the old man's succinct and accurate view of what happened with the muddled lack of comprehension and unwillingness to assign responsibility where it belongs that we see in the lead L.A. Times editorial this morning.

"Identifying the killers by sect or affiliation does not help us comprehend the incomprehensible: What kind of nihilistic monsters see a benefit to murdering and maiming hundreds of innocent men, women?," the editorial asks. "No historic wrong, no ideological right, no religious calling could ever justify such crimes. Yet they do serve one purpose: to shatter trust and faith in human decency and so make reconciliation almost impossible.

"After nearly five years of war, we cannot accurately count the Iraqi dead...We do not know how many were killed by fellow Iraqis, by U.S. forces or by Al Qaeda zealots. Nor can we apportion responsibility for the deaths caused by the havoc unleashed by the U.S-led invasion."

Shame on the L.A. Times! Shame on it, if it is unwilling to identify the bombers this week as fundamentalist Muslims, and shame on it for being so confused that it does not know who is responsible for the carnage in Iraq - us or the enemy.

It is indeed shameful that these moral nihilists who write the Times editorials and all too many reports in American newspapers throughout the country are unwilling to confront the Nazi successors who for many years now have been engaged in terror attacks in the Middle East. Their weakness invites a further spread of the terror.

And one thing more is clear: The forces that bomb Yazidi villages, that kill innocent Kurds, that murder Roman Catholic priests in Turkey, that attack Christians in Gaza and Lebanon, that avow their intention to destroy the state of Israel, will not hesitate, if they ever obtain nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, from using them against American and other populations who live in the great cities of the West.

How dare the Los Angeles Times lump our gallant soldiers fighting in Iraq and other fronts of the War on Terror with the terrorists! No contempt is too great for these editorial writers who cannot distinguish good from evil.

It is not only the L.A. Times this very morning which falls into this moral abyss. There is a remarkably muddle-headed New York Times editorial on U.S.-Iranian relations which criticizes moves by the United States toward identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards for what they are -- terrorists.

This editorial begins, "The dangers posed by Iran are serious, and America needs to respond with serious policies, noit more theatrics. Labeling Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization -- as the State Department now proposes -- is another distraction when what the Bush Administration needs to be doing is opening comprehensive negotiations with Tehran, backed by increasing international economic pressure."

The fathers and grandfathers of the New York Times editorial writers did not propose negotiating with Hitler or Tojo. The present-day editorial writers though have continually proposed that we go to Iran hat-in-hand to beg them to stop attacking us, at a time when Iranian-made bombs are killing our soldiers in Iraq and when Iranian nuclear development threatens the whole world.

What we might recall are the words of Duff Cooper in the 1938 debate in the British House of Commons, on the Munich agreement: "The prime minister (Neville Chamberlain) has believed in addressing Herr Hitler through the language of sweet reasonableness. I have believed that he was more open to the language of the mailed fist."

The New York Times stands with Chamberlain, believing that we can temporize with present evil and use "the language of sweet reasonableness" with the enemy.

Thank God, at least for now, we have an Administration headed by President George W. Bush which is willing to defend America, even if sometimes he makes mistakes.

No wonder the confidence so many have had in our newspapers is vanishing, day by day. These newspapers are not worthy of the American people. They can, and must, do better.

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I am, however, glad to see the L.A. Times' editorial critique this morning of the service mess at Los Angeles International Airport. The accurate subtitle of this editorial says, "Systems failure at the airport are symptoms of a dangerous pattern of neglect." Better late than never.

Signs of Bhutto-Musharraf Compromise In Pakistan

Written from Redwood City, Calif.--

The former and exiled Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was on CNN this morning talking rather freely about a possible compromise that could fortify Pakistan as an ally of the U.S. in the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It could be a ray of light in what has been an intensifying atmosphere of crisis.

Bhutto, 54, who recently reportedly met with Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf in the Gulf states, indicated she is willing to return to Pakistan and assume the role of Prime Minister, with Musharraf as President, but she said that, first, Musharraf should agree to step down as chief of the Army, because, she said, his holding both the presidency and army command "blurs" a necessary distinction in a more democratic state.

Of course, as we all know, in the U.S., the President is also commander in chief of the Armed Forces.

But that notwithstanding, the return of Bhutto could well fortify both the Pakistani government and the war against Al Qaeda and Taliban inroads not only in border regions but throughout the country.

Wolf Blitzer, the CNN interviewer, asked Bhutto whether she would acceed to a U.S. strike on Al Qaeda forces within Pakistan. She said, as other Pakistanis have, that this would be a breach of Pakistani sovereignty. But she added that she would support an alliance of Pakistan, Afghanistan, NATO and the U.S. to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the entire region.

This has elements of promise. The Musharraf dictatorship, to say the least, has been fraying at the edges, and doubt has grown that it can last in its present form. A Bhutto return, if contingent on a continued alliance with the U.S. and the West, could be an improvement in the situation. Bhutto served as both the 12th and 16th prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-89 and 1993-96, the first Muslim woman to head a post-colonial state. She was deposed and exiled on charges of corruption, which she denied.

Coincident, the Washington Post reports this morning, in an article by Karen de Young and Joby Warrick, that the Bush Administration has in recent months developed a more demanding attitude toward Musharraf, not satisfied that he has fulfilled pledges to fight the terrorists in the Waziristan province which have been crossing over into Afghanistan to subvert the regime of Hamid Karzai.

This increasingly is a vital theatre of the War on Terror. Also, there are signs in Washington that the Democrats are more willing to fight the war in the Pakistan-Afghanistan theatre than in Iraq. That it is possible to make progress is manifest in a story in the New York Times this morning about British successes in pacifying an Afghan province west of Kandahar, although at the cost of 64 British lives this year.

Just this past week, no less a dove on Iraq than Sen. Barack Obama, indicated he would favor trying to destroy the terrorists in the Pakistan border regions.

War is often a series of complicatred readjustments. This may be one in the offing, and, if so, should be welcomed.

Negotiations with Russia, China Most Worthwhile

Written from Klamath, Calif.--

Although Sen. Barack Obama fell into trouble by suggesting negotiations with such thugs as Syria's Bashir Assad and Venezuela's dictator, Hugo Chavez, there are certainly negotiations the U.S. is not adequately pursuing today that could well be advantageous.

I'm thinking particularly of Russia and China. Both countries have had their own troubles with Muslim fundamentalism. In the long run, both could be as threatened by it as much as we are. So there is a potential common interest here, and bringing a coalition of the willing together to confront the fundamentalists almost certainly would desirably include them.

In the present gathering crisis in Pakistan, for example, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, have directly attacked Chinese workers who have often been active in Pakistan development. China has complained about the attacks officially to the regime of Pervez Musharraf, and he has promised to try to counter them. In a bombing near Karachi last week, the Pakistani police and army intervened to protect Chinese workers.

China has cracked down hard against Muslim separatists in Sinkiang in northwestern China.

Russia, too, in the Caucasus mountains of Chechnya and other provinces has had to confront Muslim rebels. Russian leader Vladimir Putin fought a war in Chechnya, which the West showed little sympathy for. But Russia now has prevailed and terrorism in Russia has dropped off.

The Russians thus far have not been very helpful in terms of squelching Iran's nuclear aspirations. In fact, it is Russia who has helped build an Iranian nuclear plant.

But Putin recently suggested to the U.S. that missiles the Bush Administration wants to place in Poland to counter Iranian missiles be placed in Azerbaijan, which is closer to Iran, instead.

It would seem therefore that building on common interests we might get further with negotiations with the Russians and Chinese on Middle Eastern issues than by negotiating with terrorist sympathizers there. Russia is already part of the quartet of powers which has been making suggestions in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Talking with Assad and Mahmound Ahmadinejad is likely to get us nothing. Democrats who wish to advise the Bush Administration might suggest China and Russia instead.

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I'm staying at the ReQua Inn, a couple of miles off the Redwood Highway, overlooking the Klamath River. Built in 1914, the inn has been owned for the last six years by Barb and Dave Gross. They served eight of the guests dinner last night, and it was delicious. This is yet another place that can be recommended along California's north coast.

Common Sense And The Situation We Face

Written from Ashland, Ore.--

Sen. Barack Obama has many admirable traits. but he is lacking in experience and his statement in this week's Democratic presidential candidates' debate that he would meet with the leaders of Syria, Cuba and Venezuela as a means of fashioning a new U.S. foreign policy approach is a very strong indication he is not ready to become President.

It reminds me of when I was covering Eugene McCarthy's campaign for President for the L.A. Times back in 1968. When McCarthy refused to criticize the Soviet Union for its invasion of Czechoslovakia, crushing the reformist "Prague spring," in August of that year, it was proof positive that it would be dangerous to elect McCarthy to the presidency.

Anyone who thinks now that making an approach to Fidel Castro or his brother, Raul, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Syria's Bashar Assad is going to do any good is displaying dangerous naivete, and Hillary Clinton, who never shows that kind of foolishness, was correct when she assailed Obama for doing so. Her reaction was not Bush-Cheney lite, as Obama said so glibly. It was just common sense.

We are living in an exceedingly dangerous time, and it is almost unnerving to hear so many people say there is a cheap and easy way to get out of it.

The most serious part of the present crisis is the threat that nuclear weapons may fall into Muslim fundamentalist hands and the fact that if they did, they would be most likely to use them. We and our allies, including Britain, France, the rest of NATO, India and Israel, and even hopefully, Russia and China, must be willing to take any action necessary to prevent this from happening, lest we wake up one day and find that an American or British city. Moscow or Peking for that matter, has been atom bombed, or subject to a dirty bomb. Los Angeles, with all its nightclubs and the movie industry, so anathema to the Muslim crazies, could be the target.

Unfortunately, playing up to Chavez, the Castros or Assad affords us no means whatsoever to protect ourselves. In Assad's case, this year House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assorted other emissaries "reached out" to him, as they say, but the only result was a stepup in assassinations and other terrorist activity in Lebanon.

At the moment, the overall nuclear prospects are why the unrest in Pakistan is of such critical importance. Just this morning comes word that, somehow, the Muslim crazies have been permitted to come back to the Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, and are again clashing with regular Pakistani law enforcement authorities there. This, just two weeks after more than 100 lives were lost when the Pakistan army removed them and supposedly shut the pesthole down.

It is clear, as Time magazine said in last week's edition, that the regime of Pervez Musharraf "possibly" could collapse. But, as usual, the appeasers at Time did not draw the proper conclusions that follow from this. They failed in their article to examine what we might do to assure that whoever succeeded Musharraf in that event would keep the country's estimated 40 nuclear weapons out of Osama bin Laden's hands. It might take action by American special forces in the last extreme to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and put it fully in our control.

When I was in College, I spent long hours in Dartmouth's Baker Library stacks reading the New York Times and Time magazine's issues for 1940 when the Nazis conquered France and were theatening to invade Britain. These publications had a different spirit then than they do today. They were firm in their support of the hardline Churchill government, determined to stop the Nazis, and the moves of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to help Britain do this.

Today, these same publications, and the Los Angeles Times as well, fall all over each other to figure out how we can withdraw our forces from Iraq, an act which I believe would lead in short order, to a terrorist takeover in the Middle East.

The weakness in the media reflects the inability of a large part of the Democratic party to come to grips with the situation that faces us.

Obviously, we want our system of demoractic freedoms to last and prosper in the world. That is going to have to entail an effective waging of the war we are currently engaged in. It cannot mean running to see Chavez, the Castros and Assad, as Obama suggested this week.

In Waziristan And Lebanon, Crushing The Vipers

In the Pakistani regions bordering Afghanistan, known as North and South Waziristan, the smashing of the Muslim fanatics occupying the Red Mosque in the Pakistan capital of Islamabad last week has been followed by suicide bombings that have killed almost 100 Pakistani soldiers and security personnel.

It may be the end of the illusory truce that the regime of Pervez Musharraf entered into 10 months ago with Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces, under which they pledged that in exchange for being let alone by the Pakistan Army, they would desist from using Pakistani territory to attack across the border against Allied troops in Afghanistan. Like virtually all assurances given by the terrorists, these turned out not to be worth the paper they were printed on. Once Musharraf showed the weakness of seeking peace, the terrorists were only encouraged to step up their attacks, and violence in Afghanistan has reached the highest level since 2001.

Now, Musharraf seems more determined to fight extremism in the border regions as well as the rest of his country. His action against the Red Mosque, the slaying of its leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, and the ending of the Mosque's harassment against Islamabad civilians, at a cost exceeding 100 lives, seems to have marked a new departure for him, a realization that temporizing with the Muslim fundamentalists is not a workable policy.

But in a week that also saw the U.S. Senate vote 87-1 to raise the reward for the capture or death of Osama bin Laden to $50 million, it is clear that crushing the terrorists in North and South Waziristan will not be child's play. One has to wonder whether the Pakistani army will prove equal to the task.

The stakes are great. Should the terrorists prevail in Pakistan, they could acquire control over that nation's nuclear weapons, confronting the U.S., Europe and India with a terrible crisis, one dwarfing the Iraq war.

The New York Times carries a report in Monday's paper that the U.S. is planning a $750 million economic aid project for the border areas. But it also quotes concerns that the money might only fall into the hands of the terrorists. This would seem to go without saying. Economic aid, without decisive military action first, would seem to make no sense. This is not a matter of "hearts and minds." The enemy must be crushed.

We see, meanwhile, in Lebanon, how what were at first estimated to be just 200 terrorists fighting under the aegis of an Al-Qaeda-lining group known as Fatah al-Islam, in the Nahr-el-Rashid Palestinian refugee camp, has turned out to be a festering rebellion that continues to stymie all attempts of the Lebanese Army and police to stamp out. Talks sponsored by the French government among various Lebanese factions, including Hezbollah, do not include Fatah al-Islam.

For weeks now, the Lebanese authorities have claimed to have, for all intents and purposes, rubbed out Fatah Al-Islam, only to see, during this weekend, the terrorist group fire rounds of Katyusha rockets at nearby villages. The Lebanese Army continues to fire artillery into the refugee camp, but the battle goes on, and the suspicion grows that Syria may be behind and resupplying Fatah Al-Islam, which maybe started out with far more than 200 fighters.

Stamping out all these vipers is no small task. We know how resilient have been the Al Qaeda-dominated insurgents in Iraq. Attempts to bring about peace in Somalia, following the perceived defeat of the Islamic Courts movement there, has been accompanied by continuing incidents, such as today's, when the Islamists fired mortars into a peace conference in an attempt to assassinate the Somalian leadership that is allied with Ethiopia.

Looking around the Middle East and South Asia, from southern Thailand, through the Pakistan border regions, to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, and even into North Africa, we see a gathering nexus of terrorism that poses a direct danger to Europe and the United States. We have little choice to stomp on the terrorists, wherever they raise their ugly heads. But it is not easy.

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The figures are mind-boggling. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $660 million to 508 victims of child abuse, about $1.3 million per victim, after years of stonewalling by Cardinal Roger Mahony. Now it is high time that Mahony resigns, just as Cardinal Bernard Law did in Boston.

Mahony cannot make any reasonable excuse. Through his inaction, his failure to rein in miscreant priests, he bears direct responsibility for what has happened. He owes everyone an abject apology, and a resignation to allow new blood to take over the nation's largest archdiocese.