BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THE WAR . . .
Republican gains in popularity since September 11 seem to have driven Democrats into paranoia and despair. At the Florida Democratic convention on April 14, the party's presidential candidates patted themselves on the back for defying threats and pressure, and for actually criticizing Republicans.
Think about it: Democrats willing to zing the other party. Unheard of. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts insisted there are policy debates "we need to have in this country, but some would rather smother them." Unafraid, Kerry said it's time "to remind our Republican friends that the freedom they love to preach about also includes the freedom to disagree and the right to dissent."
Al Gore, too, was fearless--despite the jackboot of Republicans who "vilify honorable men and women who oppose their right-wing domestic agenda and blatantly dishonest budget" and "imply that those who stand up to them are somehow unpatriotic." Exactly which Republicans vilified those questioning the GOP's domestic ideas as unpatriotic? Democrats offered no names.
In truth, there are issues Democrats just don't want to talk much about. These happen to be the most critical and significant issues of the day: foreign policy, terrorism, and national security. Now, forget the fact these are important to the nation's future. Democrats regard them as "Republican issues," and thus their goal is to say as little as possible about them, while quickly changing the subject to domestic issues on which Democrats poll well.
"The strategy all along," a Democratic adviser told Roll Call, "has
been that if you can take the war and taxes off the table, we can have a debate on the issues where we are strongest." Ah, yes, if, if, if. And if The Scrapbook had some ham we'd be enjoying a ham and cheese sandwich, if we had some cheese.
Howard Wolfson, the director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says House candidates should concentrate on the supposed $243 million tax cut for Enron, which doesn't actually exist, and Social Security, a perennial scare-the-old-folks issue for Democrats.
Oh, yes, there is one foreign policy issue Democrats have talked up, the Middle East. But rather than support Israel's right of self-defense in pursuing terrorists in the West Bank, Democratic leaders accused President Bush of being "disengaged." A curious accusation. If anyone gets punished by voters for being "disengaged," it seems likelier to be the party that wants to take the war "off the table."
THE LIFE EXPECTANCY OF ANTI-ARAFAT PALESTINIANS
We're told ad nauseam, especially by the State Department, that Yasser Arafat is the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people. Given the thugocracy that is the Palestinian Authority, we're sure that Arafat likes to think that he is. The fact that the U.S. government feels obliged to agree with him has always struck us as one of the most morally dismaying parts of the "peace process." Especially given the role of lynchings in enforcing political loyalty within the Palestinian territory.
These lynchings are not widely reported, and are even less frequently photographed. But according to the Jerusalem Post, there have been "dozens" since the beginning of the current intifada. The Palestinian man pictured here was killed by his fellow Palestinians on April 23 in Hebron, on suspicion of being an informer of Israel.
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