Rekindling the Code of Hammurabi

WOW.

A quick excerpt so you can't escape:

But goodness is, in my view and that of almost all ethicists, essentially bound up with freedom. We cannot praise a coerced virtue, nor blame an enforced crime. The very core of morality, enjoined by God himself in almost all religions, is the spontaneous assent to divine grace. Paradoxically, to enforce the law of good is to destroy it. Paradoxically, the freedom to do evil -- as long as it does not violate the right -- is required for the freedom to do good. The law of right is at its center the law of freedom, and is thus, paradoxically again, the only thing for which one can rightly resort to coercion and war. All of this is not to say that the law of good must bottle itself up within the individual and the closed community, and render itself impotent. Instead it means that the law of good must win the world the hard way, by the noncoercive means of persuasion, gifts, and the marketplace -- must win the population one by one by one. And it can only do so under the wing of the law of right.

Just WOW. If you don't read anything for the rest of the year then this needs to be the last thing you do... AND IT JUST GOT ADDED THE THE CLASSICS LINKS -- FITTINGLY, RIGHT NEXT TO THE "CHURCH OF THE LEFT"...

Needless to say, this will draw more analysis later...

The Big Hmmmm...

And luckily for the Fascifists there is once again absolutely no evidence that this will make us any safer or that it was linked in any way to the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam. Not other than the fact the negotiations started as Iraq was invaded and the agreement came just after Saddam was captured. Move along now, nothing to see here...

And some self-indulgent writing -- on writing ;) Nice Keith, nice...

Time to link to a good fisking. Thanks Michael, I needed that...

The Task of Doing Nothing

Wretchard has some concise perspective to color your holiday contemplations:

But of the fate of the United Nations, little has been said. In hindsight, the UN succeeded admirably at the task of doing nothing. The Security Council, the functional core of the UN, was designed to create a permanent state of deadlock. This kept the Great Powers from conflict by freezing everything in place. But the avoidance of world war was purchased at the price of accepting a permanent state of misery and regional conflict. In the succeeding years, nearly 60 wars would come to the attention of the Security Council for resolution. It would act in only two: Korea 1950 and Kuwait 1991, the first by accidental Soviet absence, the second, after the multipolar system had already collapsed by the accession of the United States to global dominance. Ultimately the price proved too high. Under the shadow of the Cold War, itself a consequence of the stasis designed into the peace of 1945, petty tyrants multiplied, millions were oppressed, and the most backward ideologies flourished. The aircraft that destroyed the two World Trade Center towers figuratively started their flight in Yalta, flown by men born literally not very far from where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin pored over their maps. [Emphasis added.]

And he has a very smooth punchline so I won't give it away since the piece is a quick read -- AND A RTWT.

Agrily Biking -- Without Harley

Steyn is unbeatable today. It's really almost impossible to pick the best snippet but here's a shot:

Howard Dean catapulted himself from Vermont obscurity to national fame very ingeniously. His campaign was tonally brilliant. He was an angry peacenik, an aggressive defeatist, he got in-your-face about getting out of Iraq. The problem with pacifism as a political position is that it's too easy to seem wimpy, wussy, nancy-boyish, pantywaisty, milksopping, etc. In that sense, his fellow Democrat, Dennis Kucinich, has a pacifist mien: I'm not saying he's a pantywaist or milksop, but he comes over as a goofy nebbish, as the Zionist neocons would say. The main impact he's made on the Granite State electorate seems to be his lack of a girlfriend, which has prompted a New Hampshire Web site to try and find a date for him. Somehow one is not surprised to hear this. By contrast, when Howard Dean, shortish and stocky, comes out in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, he looks like Bruce Banner just before he turns into the Incredible Hulk, as if his head's about to explode out of his shirt collar. Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus, but Dr. Dean is Venusian in a very Martian way. He's full of anger.

But only for peripheral issues. Ask him serious questions about the president's key responsibilities--national security and foreign policy--and the passion drains away as it did with Chris Matthews. David Brooks, visiting Burlington in 1997 in search of what eventually became his thesis "Bobos in Paradise," concluded that the quintessential latté burg was "relatively apolitical." He's a smart guy but he was wrong. All the stuff he took as evidence of the lack of politics--pedestrianization, independent bookstores--is the politics. Because all the big ideas failed, culminating in 1989 in Eastern Europe with the comprehensive failure of the biggest idea of all, the left retreated to all the small ideas: in a phrase, bike paths. That's what Bill Clinton meant when he said the era of big government was over; instead, he'd be ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government that, when you tote 'em up, works out even more expensive than the era of big government. That's what Howard Dean represents--the passion of the Bike-Path Left. [Emphasis added.]

And I even left out the analysis of Dean not caring where Osama gets tried! RTWT. Period.

Russia, China and France: Open and Say Ahhhhhh...

Bill Hobbs hits one out of the park on the left's latest pygmy-brained retort to Saddam's capture:

It's one of the common refrains of the anti-war crowd, the claim that the United States "created" Saddam Hussein by providing him weaponry for the Iran-Iraq war. It's a lie. The three biggest sellers of arms to the Hussein regime from 1973 through 2002 were ... drumroll.... Russia, China and France, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Those three countries combined sold Saddam 82 percent of his weapons during that period. The United States sold him 1 percent. Chart here.

Remind me again - which members of the U.N. Security Council promised to veto any resolution authorizing the use of military force against Saddam Hussein? Oh, that's right. Russia. China. And France.

Thanks to Saddam's regime, Iraq owes billions to France, Germany and Russia. For what? For weapons and for components needed to develop weapons of mass destruction. A public trial may well allow the world see the real reason France, Germany and Russia actively opposed efforts to remove Saddam from power.

For that reason, I have a hunch France might try to derail a trial, perhaps by proposing Saddam be sent into exile to live out his days incommunicado under armed guard, in exchange for providing the world with information as to the whereabouts of the weapons of mass destruction, and a full accounting of the regime's trail of mass murder. France will argue that the information is more valuable than revenge via execution, and Russia and China will nod and agree with the proposal - but it will really be all about covering up their complicity in arming and propping up one of the worst mass-murdering tyrants in world history.

Come on now, open wide and say ahhhhhh...ggggggrrrrrrr. And don't choke on your foul-smelling spittle...

And Don't Forget al-Husseini

Found on Healing Iraq:

Adolf Eichmann was not a doctor (that was Josef Mengele). He was the SS officer who rounded up Jews from all over Europe and transported them to the death camps. Hitler decided on genocide after the urgings of Mohammed Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and organizer of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup d'etat in Iraq.

When the government of Israel -- on behalf of hundreds of thousands of its citizens who lost relatives to Eichmann's thugs or were themselves enslaved -- put Eichmann on trial after abducting him in Argentina, the international elite (the New York Times, the unanimous UN Security Council) howled in protest. Sound familiar? [Emphasis added.]

Don't forget "The Previous Jaw Dropper"...

Nice, Then, To See Him Found Like A Rat In A Hole

Hitch weighs in on Saddam's ignominious end:

HE had all his visitors body-searched and all his food tasted in advance. He was obsessed with hygiene and stray infections.

He wore a different uniform every day and built himself a vulgar palace in every city of his miserable country. Nice, then, to see him found like a rat in a hole, covered with grime, sprouting a dirty grey mane, and being shaven and combed for lice.

"He was in our minds at all times - and that was power, of a kind." These words, from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, convey a faint sense of the symbolic and practical importance of the fact that, today, we enter the post-Saddam epoch.

Try to imagine seeing his face on your front page every day for three decades, and hearing that voice and seeing that face every time you turned on the radio or TV.

Try to imagine being unable to escape from it when you went to the opera, the cinema, the theatre, or the football. For millions of Iraqis under 35, this indoctrination started at infant school, where lesson one was that Big Daddy was supreme, and could do what he liked to your or your family.

Kanan Makiya's brilliant profile of Ba'ath Party rule, The Republic of Fear, had a title that was, if anything, understated. In Baghdad in the old days, I knew people who said you could smell the fear. Others said no, you could taste it. The one who came closest said you could actually eat it.

Just the mention of the name was enough to bring a look into the eyes of almost any Iraqi: the look of a broken dog that is once again shown the whip. This is why I can't stand those who refer with a sneer to the courageous Iraqi opposition as "exiles".

THE risk of uttering the mildest criticism of Saddam entailed savage torture followed by brutal execution, with the same being visited upon your family.

Those thousands who fled Iraq had no guarantee they would not be followed by assassins and murdered overseas. Many were.

Those who remained were used as cannon fodder in crazy and destructive wars, or shovelled into mass graves.

He's not done yet -- so click through and RTWT. (Hat tip Totten.)

Consistency ...

... the hobgoblin of little minds:

QUOTE OF THE DAY I: "The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy," - Howard Dean, 1998, arguing against exactly the kind of foreign policy he is now advocating.

And don't miss "YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" while you're there.

Where to Find Real Stupidity

And why it loses:

As we wait for the details behind Saddam's capture, want to know why we got Uday and Qusay? The reward was tempting. But the deciding factor for their unhappy host was more visceral: Saddam's boys smacked around his wife. At that point, our money and the promise of relocation abroad became irresistible. Uday and Qusay signed their own death warrants with a temper tantrum.

Hate and unquenchably bad manners. There are folks in this country that behave like that too -- and it's not surprising they wanted Saddam to remain in power...

Why not us too?

Wretchard dices...

Nothing new under the sun...

And Whittle Can Still Zing

Zzzzinngggg:

On September 12, 2001, we woke to a new world, a world where the chattering classes of the intellectual elites made a prediction: a prediction framing the upcoming fight, and the nature of the two opposing camps:

One of them was soft, decadent, a nation of braggarts and bullies, without the guts for a real fight, capable of dishing out pain but bound to cut and run like cowards when they were finally hit hard enough.

The other force was hard as nails, dedicated, unstoppable, unrelenting. Their belief in their ideology made them impervious to casualties, and they would bear any hardship and endure any pain and never, ever surrender until they had achieved total victory, for their revenge on the crimes done against them.

They could never be defeated, these people: never. Not with the cause they believed in. They would die, seemingly to the last man, to defend their ideology.

You know what? Turns out those preditions were completely, totally, astonishingly correct.

Merde!

I haven't been paying enough attention to Merde In France:

UPDATE: In an incredible display of hubris and French 'sophistication' (no, rather the lack thereof) a somber looking Dominique Villepin™ (he's a guy) just gave a point-by-point statement (live on LCI) of what must be done in Iraq now that Saddam is out of the picture. Aside from supplying port-a-potties, I have no idea how the French could help out in Iraq. Villepin, I don't want to see your face unless you are in a restaurant serving me grilled frogs legs with plenty of Tabasco sauce. Now scoot!

But with any luck Saddam might figure a way to drag Chirac into the crossfire during his interminable war crimes trials! Can you say "enemy"? I can now -- you'll admit it later ;)

Where To Begin?

The following beautiful little zinger from Christopher S. Johnson (Hat tip Glenn):

Dear Lord, where to begin? I find it savagely ironic that (1) people who claimed that Saddam Hussein was no threat to any other countries now think other countries should have a part in his trial, (2) people who want Iraqis to run their own affairs right now don't want them to run this trial and, (3) people actually think that the UN should try him for the crimes it consistently refused to do anything about.

Can you say Purrrrrrfect? I thought you could...

That Sinking Feeling

OJ is on a roll. The following was found on DemocraticUnderground.com:

Erik Latranyi: "Well, tha capture of Sadaam takes the 'failure to capture' issue off the table. Now that the economy is picking up (mall was packed yesterday), Iraq is getting better, prescription drugs on the way, education spending at an all-time high, no further terrorist attacks--what is left? Oh, yes, the capture of Bin Laden. If that happens, we are completely sunk."

Better slap the tinfoil hat back on there son -- it's the only thing left when money for the drug habit runs out...

INTERLUDE: Lifted from OpinionJournal:

Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Rant

"Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq--will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging?"--former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 12

"The officials said Halliburton did not appear to have profited from overcharging for fuel, but had instead paid a subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place."--news story, New York Times, Dec. 12

MmmmHmmm. The all-knowing and pervasively evil Haliburton rules the earth and controls your subconscious. (Fade to noisy crinkling sounds...)

And Wretchard weighs in nicely...

Can You Say "Hypocrisy"?

Glenn has the real news angle on Saddam's surrender without a fight. Of course the truth is that none of this is about principle or even "oppression" by the West. It's about a power trip by tyrants who live in a 7th century world. Is Arafat wiring his kids to be suicide bombers? Horsepuckey pure and simple. They live in Paris than you very much...

And he also has a great email from Roger Simon that makes me smile from ear to ear:

I am here in Paris to research a new novel, celebrating the overthrow of Saddam with your one time Paris correspondent Nelson Ascher and journalist/novelist Nidra Poller and we would all like to say that atmosphere here tonight is that Chiraq is shaking in his boots and may be headed for Damascus to seek political asylum.

Those who think this laughable aren't paying attention. I do seem to recall a quote or some intel tidbit where Saddam was reputed to say something about tattling on those who didn't support him enough ;)

We're far from out of the woods yet but now the pall of fear has lifted maybe the intel will get strong enough to actually take on the Al Qaeda in Iraq. But I still think it will take years since I'm sure Osama commands a similar level of fear to to Saddam...

UPDATE: Darren Kaplan points out Strategy Pages prescient take on Task Force 121.