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J'ACCUSE
National Review Online ^ | 3/12/2003 | David Frum

Posted on 03/12/2003 8:32:08 AM PST by hchutch

“J’Accuse” is the title of one of the most famous polemics of the century – Emile Zola’s 1898 open letter accusing the leaders of the French Army of deliberately framing Col. Alfred Dreyfus. Zola's letter takes its title from the ringing paragraphs at the finale:

“I accuse Lt. Col. du Paty de Clam ... I accuse General Mercier ... I accuse General Billot ... etc.”

Dreyfus was of course Jewish, and the battle between the Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards quickly transformed itself into a grand argument over the place of Jews in France. The anti-Dreyfusards regarded Jews as inherently alien and disloyal by definition. Facts never mattered much to them: When it was finally proven that one of the documents that condemned Dreyfus had in fact been falsified by the Army, a leading anti-Dreyfusard named Charles Maurras hailed the “heroic forgery.”

As little as they liked Dreyfus, however, the anti-Dreyfusards liked Emile Zola if possible even less. They charged him with libel, prosecuted, and convicted him – many of them threatened to murder him; they succeeded instead in driving him into exile. He died in 1902 under suspicious circumstances; some believe he was murdered in retaliation for his defense of Dreyfus. So it is really rather a perverse triumph for the author of “J’Accuse” that the anti-Dreyfusards of our day now seek to borrow Zola’s words.

Yet there they are in the current issue of The American Conservative under the byline of Pat Buchanan.

“We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.”

Buchanan’s authority to decide which wars are in America’s interest and which are not is rather badly tarnished by his own opposition to the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and the opposition of many of his neo-isolationist pals to the campaign against the Taliban. Even more bizarre is this sudden concern for "friends and allies" from a man who has spent the past decade and a half denying that America needed either.

More on all that for another day. In the meantime, here is a rewriting of “J’Accuse” that is perhaps more in keeping with the ideals and principles of its original author, who – though a lifelong man of the Left – was always a patriot.

“We charge that a cabal of writers who misuse the title of ‘conservatives’ are rallying to defend an Iraqi dictator who has waged war on American allies, attempted to assassinate an American president, fired on American aircraft, and who is now arming to threaten Americans with mass murder.

“We charge them with making common cause with left-wing radicals and radical Islamists, former communists and other people who hate the United States – all in order to prematurely halt the war on terror and preserve the Iraqi dictator’s rule.

“We charge them with forgetting George Washington’s warning in his Farewell Address against ‘habitual hatred’ for any nation – and instead allowing their unreasoning loathing of the Jewish state to lead them into what Washington condemned as a ‘passionate attachment’ to Baathist Iraq.

“We charge them with disregarding their wartime duty to lay aside their prejudices and resentments for the sake of the common good. We charge them with attempting to undermine a conservative Republican president in a moment of national emergency. We charge them with acting as excuse-makers for America’s enemies. We charge them with failing to put America first.”


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: buchanan; frum; jaccuse
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To: xzins
Fortunately, Nixon was a Rino (read: liberal who imposed price controls) and no conservative.

Then he was a CINO.  Face it, the purpose of Republicans is to get into office and wield the levers of power.  That's all you can expect.  We have a big-government, deficit spending, Tenth Amendment trashing Republican administration right now.  Not RINO by any stretch. CINO to the core.
41 posted on 03/12/2003 12:22:28 PM PST by gcruse (When choosing between two evils, pick the one you haven't tried yet.)
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To: Poohbah
The United States was doing business with Iraq even after the Kuwait invasion. Prior to that, James Baker and Rummy had signed off on the Saddam regime. They had no problem 'changing' sides, so I am not sure how powerful the argument is that leftwing French-German governments are protecting business interests.

42 posted on 03/12/2003 12:30:42 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: JohnGalt; hchutch
The United States was doing business with Iraq even after the Kuwait invasion.

Irrelevant claim. The US trade with Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait was very limited and did not include WMD materials. The stuff that the French and the Germans were selling is related to the production of WMDs, and it specifically violates UN Security Council resolutions that they voted for after the invasion of Kuwait, and that they have continued to support since then.

Prior to that, James Baker and Rummy had signed off on the Saddam regime.

Irrelevant.

They had no problem 'changing' sides, so I am not sure how powerful the argument is that leftwing French-German governments are protecting business interests.

They are. Since the deals involved proscribed technologies, it boils down to the French and the Germans hoping to avoid US trade sanctions--which would probably crater their economies once and for all. The only way to do that is to not get caught.

43 posted on 03/12/2003 12:41:10 PM PST by Poohbah (Beware the fury of a patient man -- John Dryden)
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To: Poohbah
You're right, the French are just being cowards and the investigation into Iraqgate will wind down any day now.


Whatever Happened to Iraqgate?
Kenneth Timmerman, The American Spectator
http://www.gulfweb.org/doc_show.cfm?ID=527
44 posted on 03/12/2003 12:47:01 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: JohnGalt; hchutch
Ah.

We should give the French and the Germans a pass because Hillary Clinton was involved. Great argument.
45 posted on 03/12/2003 12:51:37 PM PST by Poohbah (Beware the fury of a patient man -- John Dryden)
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To: Poohbah
I have offered an explanation for their behavior, not a prescription for policy. I simply find your explanation, while a little more mature than the French are cowards theory, incomplete.


46 posted on 03/12/2003 1:00:35 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: hchutch
This is from Bob Novack's review of Frums book. You'll note the mocking tone Frum has for Bush as well as his belief in man made climate change. Do you read any Conservatives or just leftists?

For much of this book, Frum seems disengaged from Bush’s policies. He refers to the president’s “energy plan fiasco,” calling it “an incoherent mess” and a “pseudoscandal.” He contends Bush “could never quite bring himself to deny that climate change was very likely real and man-made.” He says of Bush’s faith-based initiative, “instead of drawing new people to the Republican Party, it had repelled them.” Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, writes Frum,

"I began avoiding parties where I expected the questions [of Bush’s capacity for the presidency] to be posed too persistently by conservative friends, for I was not sure I would know how to answer."

47 posted on 03/12/2003 1:17:04 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: JohnGalt
All non-sequitors to this debate.
48 posted on 03/12/2003 1:24:02 PM PST by hchutch ("Last suckers crossed, Syndicate shot'em up" - Ice-T, "I'm Your Pusher")
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To: hchutch
You posted the rantings of a leftist Canadian, not me.
49 posted on 03/12/2003 1:31:03 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: Poohbah
"Go back and reread Post #19--ALL of it. You missed the humor."
-poo-

Sick 'humor'. Implying Buchanan is a nazi is a sick type of political hate, imo.
I don't like the man, but he is not a fascist.
50 posted on 03/12/2003 1:33:26 PM PST by tpaine
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To: hchutch
You are assuming the fuze functions properly.

Setback and spin?

51 posted on 03/12/2003 1:39:05 PM PST by sauropod (If the women can't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy...)
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To: JohnGalt
You're the one backing the agenda of the leftist out on the streets, not me.
52 posted on 03/12/2003 2:03:21 PM PST by hchutch ("Last suckers crossed, Syndicate shot'em up" - Ice-T, "I'm Your Pusher")
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To: hchutch
What agenda is that? Return to the gold standard? A well-armed citizenry? I doubt it.

53 posted on 03/12/2003 2:07:27 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: JohnGalt
Actually, I was thinking about those ANSWER goons out there. You know, the ones running the protests AGAINST the current policy towards Iraq? Buchanan and the "conservatives" backing him on that have lined up alongside them.
54 posted on 03/12/2003 2:14:37 PM PST by hchutch ("Last suckers crossed, Syndicate shot'em up" - Ice-T, "I'm Your Pusher")
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To: tpaine
Sick 'humor'. Implying Buchanan is a nazi is a sick type of political hate, imo. I don't like the man, but he is not a fascist.

He's on record as saying General Franco is one of his heroes. When he excoriates Wall Street, he always manages to only mention those trading firms or individuals with Jewish-sounding names. Doing ANYTHING that might have a side effect of benefiting Israel gets a rise out of him.

If he isn't a fascist, he's doing a passing imitation of one...

55 posted on 03/12/2003 3:05:34 PM PST by Poohbah (Beware the fury of a patient man -- John Dryden)
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To: hchutch
That is as lame an attempt at an argument since the Clinton linked the OKC bombers to the Republican desires for smaller government.

Sad what Clintonianism does the minds of the young...
56 posted on 03/12/2003 3:21:04 PM PST by JohnGalt
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To: Poohbah
Sick 'humor'. Implying Buchanan is a nazi is a sick type of political hate, imo. I don't like the man, but he is not a fascist.

He's on record as saying General Franco is one of his heroes.

Context is all, poo. Franco fought the commies in Spain. - Strange bedfellow for Pat? - You tell me.

When he excoriates Wall Street, he always manages to only mention those trading firms or individuals with Jewish-sounding names.

So he's a religious bigot. I see plenty here at FR. Doesn't make him a nazi, does it?

Doing ANYTHING that might have a side effect of benefiting Israel gets a rise out of him. If he isn't a fascist, he's doing a passing imitation of one...

Sure thing poo, just as you're 'imitating' having an irrational hatefilled reaction to his politics.

57 posted on 03/12/2003 4:39:39 PM PST by tpaine
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To: Poohbah
Thanks for the nomination! };^D )
58 posted on 03/12/2003 4:55:27 PM PST by RJayneJ
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To: hchutch
Thanks for the nomination! };^D )
59 posted on 03/12/2003 4:56:47 PM PST by RJayneJ
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To: hchutch
Actually, I was thinking about those ANSWER goons out there. You know, the ones running the protests AGAINST the current policy towards Iraq? Buchanan and the "conservatives" backing him on that have lined up alongside them.

Why are you making common cause with with left-wing radicals and radical Islamists, former communists and other people who hate the United States – all in order to prematurely halt the war on terror and preserve the Iraqi dictator’s rule?

Why are you attempting to undermine a conservative Republican president in a moment of national emergency?

Why are you acting as an excuse-maker for America’s enemies?

I'm looking at your statements above, from a couple of posts on this thread (28 and 54), and I'm wondering what you think about some of the Wahabbist orgs, like CAIR and the AMC? Are you aware that they've joined the ANSWER coalition to make common cause with our enemies and lobby tirelessly to thwart the war on terror and preserve the Iraqi dictator’s rule?

The convergence of the radical Left and radical Islam continues. Former icons of social tolerance and sexual liberation are making common cause with the most intolerant and sexist social forces on earth. Left-wing American defenders of Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for his ethnic cleansing campaign to exterminate Muslims from the former Yugoslavia, now welcome U.S. Muslim groups as building blocks in their coalitions. Trendy supporters of revolutionary cop-killers like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal link their heroes’ murderous causes (while proclaiming Peltier and Mumia’s innocence) to those of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the various Islamic Jihad terrorist groups.

On February 15 and 16, they joined forces in the streets of hundreds of cities and towns around the world  – literally from Boston to Baghdad – in coordinated protests unseen in size and scope since the Soviet Union ran the nuclear freeze movement two decades ago.  Remnants of the old Communist Party USA like Leslie Cagan coordinated protests on one end through her United for Peace and Justice entity; the fanatically pro-North Korean Workers World Party (WWP), via its International Action Center (IAC) and International ANSWER front groups, organized on the other, pausing to wish a happy birthday to Kim Jong-il, who turned 61 over the weekend. Kim’s party paper, Rodong Sinmun, exhorted followers to “burn with hatred and hostility in their hearts” toward the United States.

Some of the nation’s most prominent Muslim groups, or more correctly, a collection of small but vocal groups that claim to speak for American Muslims, joined the protests.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), at the state level, endorsed the U.S.-out-of-Iraq demonstrations coast to coast. In Chicago, CAIR endorsed the protests, calling itself “one of the initial endorsers and organizers” for the event. CAIR formally joined the ANSWER coalition in Los Angeles.

Nationally, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) joined the ANSWER coalition, urging the “community” to take to the streets against President Bush’s efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein and liberate the Iraqi people. In a weird February 11 statement, it asked “Americans” to “defend White House employees” – a reference to a low-ranking White House staffer whom critics say has a pattern of clearing pro-terrorist Muslim American activists into meetings with President Bush and other senior officials.

The American Muslim Council (AMC) didn’t make a public show over the February 15 weekend, but it did join the ANSWER coalition’s January 18 protests that marked the 12th anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, or what AMC referred to as the “war against the people of Iraq.” While the AMC joined others, particularly semi-official voices in the Saudi press, calling on Saddam Hussein to resign, it also embraced ANSWER. On January 15 it circulated an ANSWER flyer on its listserv, exhorting followers via e-mail to march on the White House. AMC national board treasurer Ali Khan led a caravan of Indiana and Chicago activists to the demonstration in Washington.

AMC, like other U.S. Muslim groups that have long coveted legitimacy in official Washington, likes to play things both ways. Click to its website, www.amconline.org, and a ghostly image of Malcolm X flashes for a fraction of a second before a very mainstream-looking, red, white and blue homepage appears. That’s just a symptom of how the AMC operates. Since September 11, 2001, AMC has demanded – and received – the highest-level acceptance in the U.S. government. FBI Director Robert Mueller even spoke at the AMC’s national convention last June 28, with an FBI spokesman calling the AMC “the most mainstream Muslim group in the country.”

The FBI media unit, when pressed, could produce nothing to substantiate the claim, but a visibly uncomfortable Mueller addressed the conference anyway. That appearance, with the FBI publicity unit’s imprimatur, gave the AMC more credibility than ever – even though that very month the organization was haranguing the Bureau for its investigation of domestic Muslim groups.

The AMC calls itself an “active member” of the National Committee to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), a William Kunstlerite group founded in the 1960s to provide legal support to terrorists and those who raise money and provide material support for them. Its causes have ranged from members of the Weather Underground to the Maoist Shining Path of Peru, to Abdul Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheik” responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. NCPPF’s executive director is Kit Gage works full-time as head of the old Stalinist National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Its president is Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who reportedly was a founding leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

AMC founder Abdurahman Alamoudi is by his own admission an enthusiastic supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah – the latter being responsible for the 1980s killing of 241 U.S. Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing, and for the car bombing of the American Embassy in Lebanon. Alamoudi recruited young and attractive Muslim political activists and helped them set up spinoff groups to influence mainstream political parties. He provided seed money for one of those groups, the Islamic Institute, which is chaired by his former protégé, Khaled Saffuri.

The AMC likes to say now that the controversial Alamoudi is no longer with the organization and that it condemns all forms of terrorism. But Alamoudi isn’t alone. AMC’s former executive board president, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, was twice on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Under his old name in the 1960s as H. Rap. Brown, he threatened to assassinate Lady Bird Johnson when she was First Lady of the U.S. He’s now a lifer in a Georgia prison for the 2000 murder of Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Kinchen.

AMC’s new leadership is no less extreme. In the week before the FBI director’s speech to the organization, various television talk show hosts including Alan Keyes, then of MSNBC, and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, tried to get the AMC executive director, Eric Ervan Vickers, to denounce Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda by name. While denouncing acts of terrorism, Vickers avoided denouncing the terrorist groups themselves.

On June 19, 2002, Linda Vester of Fox News asked Vickers, “Do you condemn al Qaeda by name and condemn Hamas by name?” According to the transcript, Vickers would not. Fox News anchor Brit Hume commented, “All right, so, there you go. And she pressed him further, but that’s as far as she ever got with that.”

Journalist Fred Barnes, on a panel with Hume, illustrated the hypocrisy: “These groups are outraged about what the victims are doing here in the United States. Their big effort is to oppose reasonable steps to protect the United States from further attacks. That's where they aim their fire, not at these terrorists who are doing this in the name of their very own religion.”

The night before Mueller addressed the AMC, guest host Mike Barnicle on CNBC's Hardball asked Vickers to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Vickers would not. Barnicle followed, "How about al-Qaeda?" According to the transcript, Vickers' only response was, "They are involved in a resistance movement."

Morton Kondracke commented on Fox, “If that guy truly reflects American Muslims -- and he is the executive director of this large organization -- then God help us. We've got -- that guy sounds like the fifth column, frankly.”

It certainly sounds that way. Across the board, the AMC and other leading Muslim advocacy groups are “against us” in the war on terrorism. Responding to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Speech on January 29, 2003, Vickers stated, “in invoking God to be with American soldiers in our apparently imminent war with Iraq, what the president did not say is that he is calling on God to kill innocent Iraqi children.”

The next day he called on the “U.N. to conduct an inquiry into the “political repression of Muslim and Arab and Asian Americans by the United States government,” and led a protest against a new FBI policy to count mosques. In a note to imams across the country, Vickers wrote, “AMC calls upon you to demonstrate mass criticism and activism against the new FBI policy, which directs FBI field offices nationwide to conduct an inventory of mosques and Muslims as part of their charge to develop demographic profiles of their regions to combat possible terrorism.”

Meanwhile, the AMC and others, by virtue of their shrillness and persistence, continue to enjoy protected status from the federal government. One of the reasons, senior officials say, is that no truly mainstream national Muslim political group exists for the administration to engage. Until such an organization is created and supported, the vocal and well-funded jihadists will maintain their chokehold on the voice of American Muslims, in concert with the most extreme leadership of the “anti-war” Left – and with Uncle Sam’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. This, just when President Bush needs American Muslims to support him openly in the war against terrorism.

J. Michael Waller is vice president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.
Unholy Alliance
By J. Michael Waller
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 20, 2003

What do you think of the folks who invited the likes of terrorist sympathizer Eric Vickers to White House in January of 2003?

What do you think of those who recieve awards from the NCPPF for opposing the type of evidence gathering legislation that led to the arrest of Sami Al Arian, when Al Arian was President of the NCPPF?

It's not like the pro-terrorst of these groups and orgs just surfaced...

In October 1995 Ramadan Abdullah Shallah took over as head of the Islamic Jihad, based in Damascus, Syria. From 1991 through early 1995, Mr. Shallah was a professor at Tampa's University of South Florida and director of the World Islamic Studies Enterprise, ostensibly an academic research center.

After the ex-professor assumed his Islamic Jihad post, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service raided his former campus office, as well as the offices and home of his USF colleague Sami Al-Arian, the founder of WISE and an affiliated "religious charity" called the Islamic Committee for Palestine. Federal investigators uncovered overwhelming evidence that both organizations were arms of Islamic Jihad. Under the cover of legitimacy its university affiliation provided, WISE actually brought terrorists into the U.S. and raised funds for Islamic Jihad. Mr. Al-Arian, now under federal investigation, organized a series of conferences for "Islamic leaders and thinkers" in Chicago and St. Louis between 1988 and 1992, which featured a number of the world's top, terrorist leaders. The evidence found in his home and office constitute one of the largest collections of raw terrorist material ever seized in the U.S.

According to federal sources, documents and testimony connected with the Florida investigation, the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa had extensive financial and political ties with many Islamic extremist groups world-wide.They collaborated with Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman and others involved in the World Trade Center bombing. They also laundered millions of dollars, worked with Hamas leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere, and helped oversee terrorist cells in the Middle East. The spiritual head of Islamic Jihad, Abdul Aziz Odeh, who visited Tampa and stayed with Mr. Al-Arian several times, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing.

< -snip- >

At the same time, the Clinton administration has established close ties with groups like the American Muslim Council, which has supported Hamas and other radical groups. Hillary Clinton has worked particularly closely with the head of the AMC, Abdulrahman Al-Amoudi, who has openly collected funds for the legal defense of Mr Marzuk, the Hamas chieftain arrested at JFK Airport, and for Mr. Abdul-Rahman, who organized the World Trade Center bombing. Raising money for a criminal defense fund is perfectly legal, of course. But would Mrs. Clinton meet with the head of the defense committee for Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh? Earlier this year Mrs. Clinton met at the White House with Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR, based in Washington, was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, the former public relations director of the Texas-based Islamic Association of Palestine, which Oliver Revell, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism and now a security consultant, calls a Hamas front. Both CAIR and IAP have disseminated Hamas communiqu‚s and championed the policies of other radical Islamic groups. A recent CAIR report listed as a "hate crimes against Muslims" the conviction of Mr. Abdul-Rahman and the arrest of Mr. Marzuk. CAIR's Board of Advisors includes a number of radicals known for their virulent anti-Semitism and support of the World Trade Center defendants.
Stop Aid and Comfort for Patrons of Terror
Wall Street Journal - August 5th, 1996
By Steven Emerson

About the only good thing left to say about Buchanan is that no one takes his anti-semitic rants very seriously anymore, certainly no one in the Bush Administration.

That's small consolation, though, in addressing the question of who's been gaining access to the White House and President Bush for ANSWER-affiliated, anti-semitic terrorist sympathizers.

What's your assessment of people who do that?



60 posted on 03/12/2003 5:39:58 PM PST by Sabertooth
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