The Inquiring Manatee

Israel's Watery Screw-up

    Who is running Israel's security policy -- Lucy Ricardo?

    Sending commandos rappelling down from helicopters to the lead ship of the let's-help-Hamas flotilla sounds like one of Lucy's harebrained schemes -- or, as Ricky would pronounce it, one of her "hare-brenned skims."

    The "raid" was unnecessary, in the first place. The pro-Palestinian activists, mostly Turks, fully expected to be intercepted at sea by Israeli naval vessels, arrested and taken ashore. Their actions were provocative and insulting, but not an act of war. It was civil disobedience. They were met by an over-the-top military response. Sending out the navy ships would have been enough.

    Over the top, but at the same time underprepared. The Israeli story is that the soldiers were armed only with paintball guns. If this is even true, it's absurd. They should have expected at least some troublemakers among the activists to have the fighting implements and knives that allegedly greeted the soldiers.    

    To have this amateur-hour exercise descend into mayhem and homicide was foreseeable and should have been foreseen. Heads should roll in the Israeli Defense Forces over this one.

    Israel has the worst international PR this side of North Korea, and she keeps going far to lose the few international friends she has. It's time for the Zionist nation to wake up and install a peace party in power. 

    But let's not give the screaming Turkish government a free pass in all this. The Erdogan government is a bunch of Islamists, awaiting every opportunity to turn Turkey from a free, secular and modern republic into the next Saudi Arabia. Ankara went out of its way to back the flotilla, and, like Israel, should not have been surprised when things went wrong.

How to Get Back at North Korea

     An international investigation has found conclusively that a North Korean submarine torpedoed the South Korean naval patrol boat Cheonan in March, killing 46 sailors. Seoul has been wringing its hands over what to do about it, not wanting to get into a war with the truculent, nuclear-armed north -- which denies any involvement -- but deeply angry and eager to demonstrate that the south won't take such outrages lying down.

     More sanctions against the already isolated North Koreans and haling Pyongyang before the UN Security Council are the steps taken so far. But nothing truly punitive is likely to get past China. So what to do?   

     The solution is: a ship for a ship, then a lie for a lie. I don't know whether Seoul has any killer submarines, but the U.S. does. A killer sub from South Korea or the U.S. could silently track and sink one of North Korea's four or so submarines. When the sub goes missing and North Korea screams about it, everyone would just emulate North Korea, look innocent and deny having anything to do with it.

   Nasty for the North Korean submariners, to be sure, but they or their buddies engaged in an act of war -- a violation of the 1953 armistice agreement between the UN and Pyongyang that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. An act of war is what they would get in return, but on the terms set by North Korea -- a sneak attack, then a mendacious denial.
     What could the North Koreans say about it?

     

Britain's Got Balls

   I'm rooting for British Education Secretary Ed Balls to succeed the soon-departing Gordon Brown as prime minister and leader of the election-battered Labour (sic) Party.

   Balls is the best candidate because his accession will give the lie to those who think Britons have no Balls. In particular, a recent book badmouths the valor of British soldiers during World Wars I and II.

   Also, I can't wait to see the years of inadvertent smirking on the faces of female TV news anchors who have to read Balls' name every night on the air.

Oh, Shut Up, Pat Robertson

      Televangelist Pat Robertson, who came damn close (profanity intended) to being the Republican presidential nominee in 1988, has put his well-polished loafer in his mouth again.

     This time, Wednesday on his Christian Broadcasting Network show popular in every double-wide trailer park in the U.S., he attributed the suffering of millions of Haitians in this terrible earthquake to a "pact with the devil" supposedly made in 1791 by Haitian revolutionaries desperate to escape from "under the heel of the French."

   "They got together and swore a pact to the devil," Robertson said. "They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' True story. And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

    Oh, Pat. You jerk.

    First of all, you show as much compassion for the bereaved, injured and homeless Haitians as George W. Bush showed for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Some preacher of God you are. To the extent that you appear to be smugly enjoying the suffering in Haiti, a nation of black people, you run the risk of being characterized as a racist.

    Second, it's doubtful that anybody heard the devil say, "OK, it's a deal."

    Third, way before 1791, Haiti was a cursed, miserable place. The French planters were incredibly cruel to their imported African slaves, used as labor after the native Indians were worked to death. It was God who put Haiti's location smack in the way of hurricanes. Port-au-Prince, the capital, sits right on an earthquake-prone fault. The island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, has few natural resources. Overpopulation has resulted in burning of the forests for fuel. Haiti, with its record of dictators and military coups, has nothing going for it except the saintly forbearance and resilience of its people -- people whom Robertson dismisses out of hand because of some superstitious nonsense about 1791.

    All right, let's just say that a few downtrodden slaves in the 18th Century thought they were making a pact with the devil. It still took the devil more than 12 years and the deaths of thousands of Haitians and French to get rid of the colonials and achieve Haitian independence. And as for whether any curse continues today, Robertson ignores the power of the Bible, which preaches: "Let not the sins of the fathers be visited upon the children."

George W. Bush Presidential Library to Feature the Wrong Shoes

     Couldn't help noticing this morning a newspaper photo of a potential exhibit at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which will open in Dallas in 2013. The picture showed a proud librarian displaying some monogrammed gift cowboy boots that an admirer had sent to Bush.
    Wrong shoes.

    The shoes that have enshrined Bush's place in world history are the loafers that 29-year-old Iraqi reporter Muntather al-Zaidi heaved at Bush's head during a news conference in Baghdad in December 2008. "This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" Al-Zaidi shouted before security guards dragged him off and beat him.The shoes made Al-Zaidi a hero throughout the Arab world, even though Bush was agile enough to dodge the missiles. And not a few Americans endorsed the Arab reporter's sentiments, though perhaps clucking at the unprofessionalism of it all.

    Where are those scuffed shoes now? Who knows? They were probably held as evidence for Al-Zaidi's trial, which lasted all of 90 minutes. (Sentenced to a 3-year prison term for assaulting a foreign head of state, he served nine months and was released in September.) I doubt he's gotten the loafers back. If he has, he ought to donate them to the Bush Library. If he hasn't, the library should pull every string Bush still has in Iraq to obtain the shoes for generations of future visitors.

     Why should Iraqis have all the pleasure of seeing the shoes? Americans paid a high price for the right to gawk at them. And Lord knows we could all use a good laugh these days.

Iran News: Obama May Yet Earn His Nobel Prize

   If Iran's leaders OK the draft international deal announced today, the Persians seemingly will put a crimp in their nuclear weapons program by shipping 75% of their enriched uranium to Russia to be returned to Iran as relatively harmless fuel rods for a civilian reactor in Teheran.

    This seems all too good to be true -- and it may yet turn out that way -- but as of now the deal represents a triumph for hardliners in the U.S., France and Germany who have been pressuring Teheran for months.
    President Obama should be congratulated for his role in this development. A few more successes like this and he could actually deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a good start.    Of course, there are skeptics, and I'm afraid I am one of them. Do you trust the Iranian mullahs and Ahmedinejad? They are a congenitally mendacious bunch.

    But let's all stay tuned.

John Kerry Gets to Be President

    As a journalist who traveled extensively with Sen. John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign, it's gratifying to me -- and probably much more so to him -- to see him playing such a prominent role in the Afghanistan voting process.

   Here is Kerry in Kabul as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helping the White House twist President Hamid Karzai's arm until he agrees to a runoff election Nov. 7 against Abdullah Abdullah. (Election monitors should include Boutros Boutros Ghali and Pedro Gonzales Gonzales.) Kerry was on scene as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were elsewhere. The Massachusetts senator was showing the U.S. flag in a viceregal way.

    He should have been elected in 2004. He wasn't. At least he's getting a consolation prize, finally. He gets to look like a president.

Bill Clinton's Good Deed in Pyongyang

   

The rigidly moralistic Clinton-haters who look at the former president and think nothing but "Monica, Monica, Monica" will be hard put to find anything nasty to say about Bill Clinton today.
     Like Bill Richardson before him in North Korea, the 42nd president has performed a profoundly important humanitarian service to his country, to journalism and to two unfortunate women in working with dictator Kim Jong-il to obtain freedom for Lee and Ling and fly them to the U.S. in rich friend Steve Bing's private jet today.
      The surprise story brightens up a summer of continuing recession, bombs worldwide and bickering over health care reform in Washington. And it illuminates the humanitarian work that Clinton has been doing all along, eclipsed by Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
      Clinton is a great American asset. The administration should make more use of him on selected and appropriate occasions such as this. He may have his faults (I observed him closely as a member of the White House press corps all through his first term), but he is on his way to joining Jimmy Carter as one of the nation's best former presidents in history.

Not Looking Good in Iran

   

It now looks as if the brutes and killers will have their way in Iran. Annulment of the rigged election and the achievement of real democracy in that historic old country was always a long shot.
    In any country, and especially in a traditional society such as Iran's, there are always a lot more stupid and uneducated people, and more thugs, than there are educated, intelligent and decent people.
     In Iran, as in Burma, the oppressed people have lost out to unprincipled power.

Mama Took Our Kodachrome Away

     Digital photography, one of the greatest inventions ever, has done in Kodak's famous old Kodachrome slide color film. It's been years since I used that vibrant film, but I still treasure some of the old slides, long since scanned into my computers and enhanced with one of the excellent programs that can turn any amateur photographer into a virtual Ansel Adams.
     Progress has its painful casualties, but progress marches on.

God May be Great, but Khamenei is a Jerk

    

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, graybeard Supreme Leader of Iran and officially God's representative on earth, has sided threateningly with that sloppy dresser Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and with those who blatantly rigged the June 12 presidential election. Let us hope that no violence ensues but that democracy and the intelligent, progressive, educated elements of the Iranian nation triumph in the end.
     These are dangerous times. And they point up the undemocratic nature of Iran's constitution, which in effect make Khamenei the new shah. Persia has always been comfortable with a king, the best of the lot being old Darius and Cyrus (even though the Athenians defeated Darius II at Marathon). Khamenei spoke like an imperious king on Friday when he pronounced the election legitimate and called for an end to street protests, issuing not-so-veiled threats against Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the brave students who are organizing them in the face of technological jamming from the entrenched forces of the Iranian Unenlightenment.
     In the happiest outcome, a new revolution -- a bloodless one, I hope -- will bring true republican democracy to unhappy Iran and will sweep away all this theocratic nonsense in the governmental structure. Back to the mosque, Khamenei.