Mark Steyn: Clarke Apologizes, But Not for Everything

The Chicago Sun-Times ^ | April 18, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[quidnunc]

How about that Richard Clarke! Hard to beat that dramatic apology to the American people for the administration's failure to prevent 9/11: ''Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you.''

Thanks for that, big guy. But, if you want an example of a president doing nothing to prevent not thousands but the best part of a million deaths, how about the Rwandan genocide? Remember that? It was exactly a decade ago, and the media commemorations so far are, to say the least, low-key. The editors of the Economist wonder, ''How many people can name any of the perpetrators?'' I'd say it's more basic than that. How many could tell you whether it was the Hutu killing the Tutsi or the Tutsi killing the Hutu? Come on, take a guess, without looking it up.

If there's a point to the U.N., which some of us doubt, it should surely be for the likes of Rwanda. An irrelevant basket case state (even by African standards) will never be a legitimate national interest for any great power. To America, Britain, France, Russia and China, it makes no great difference who's running Rwanda, or even whether there is a Rwanda: If those Hutu and Tutsi mutually hacked each other into extinction, it's their problem. But the U.N. is supposed to represent a global will, a moral purpose beyond crude hard-power calculations. Instead, born in the wake of one genocide, it sat by and idly watched another unfold, so serenely complacent it couldn't even rouse itself to jam the state radio station, through which the ruling thugs urged their teenage hackers on in public service messages pointing out ''the graves are not yet full.'' So the killing continued, until some 800,000 were dead.

-snip-

[Cyber Liberty]

If the Admin Moderator or the WaPo-LAT settlement doesn't require it, why would you excerpt?

Because the list is growing.

[quidnunc]

litany_of_lies wrote: Y'know, this excerpting cr*p is for the birds. If the Admin Moderator or the WaPo-LAT settlement doesn't require it, why would you excerpt?

Because federal copyright law requires it, regardless of FR's posting policies.

Here, for the benefit of those who know what "fair use" means…

Fair use doesn't mean that you get to post copyrighted material in toto.

Here's what Stanford University has to say about fair use:

"The less you take, the more likely that your copying will be excused as a fair use. However, even if you take a small portion of a work, your copying will not be a fair use if the portion taken is the "heart" of the work. In other words, you are more likely to run into problems if you take the most memorable aspect of a work. For example, it would not probably not be a fair use to copy the opening guitar riff and the words "I can't get no satisfaction" from the song, "Satisfaction.""

[rj45mis]

What an indictment of the media's complicity in the deaths of countless innocents. Thanks for your response.

[Deb]

Just amazing. It was a truly sad day when the French (who finally moved in to stop the slaughter) looked heroic compared to the USA. The Clinton legacy is nothing but death, treason and betrayal.

[Deb]

FYI

[White Eagle]

I wonder if Gorelick wrote that policy as well.

[quidnunc]

Deb wrote: Just amazing. It was a truly sad day when the French (who finally moved in to stop the slaughter) looked heroic compared to the USA. The Clinton legacy is nothing but death, treason and betrayal.

Like Slick said, his legacy is going to be that he rogered a lot of really ugly women.

[hoyaloya]

Can someone help me out here --

I've been trying to figure out who Richard Clarke's wife is, but can't seem to find the information anywhere. Can someone provide any info? A name? Is he unmarried? Etc.

Thanks.

[Deb]

On the plus side, Clinton exposed the true agenda and anti-American fiber of the Democrat party. For anyone willing to see, there is no doubt the Democrats are the party of America's Destruction.

They will defend any criminal (Clinton & Co.), applaud and comfort any Marxist leader and let nothing stop their delivery of this country to her enemies.

With the retirement of Zell Miller, there is no such thing as a conservative or even moderate Democrat Senator.

[quidnunc]

Deb wrote: On the plus side, Clinton exposed the true agenda and anti-American fiber of the Democrat party. For anyone willing to see, there is no doubt the Democrats are the party of America's Destruction. They will defend any criminal (Clinton & Co.), applaud and comfort any Marxist leader and let nothing stop their delivery of this country to her enemies. With the retirement of Zell Miller, there is no such thing as a conservative or even moderate Democrat Senator.

I'm old enough to remember the 1968 election when the Illinois delegation under Richard Daley walked out of the Democratic convention because Abraham Ribicoff referred to police gestapo tactics in one of the nominating speeches.

This year is even nuttier becasue the looniness goes quite a bit higher up the food chain in the Democratic Party.

[quidnunc]

hoyaloya wrote: Can someone help me out here -- I've been trying to figure out who Richard Clarke's wife is, but can't seem to find the information anywhere. Can someone provide any info? A name? Is he unmarried? Etc.

I don't think I have ever heard mention of Clarke's wife, or even if he's married.

[Deb]

The unraveling of Al Gore, exposing the left-wing lunatic beneath the robot, has almost been worth the hassle.

[SquirrelKing]

nincompoopery

My new word of the day!

[litany_of_lies]

Geez, I didn't know.

I STILL think a fair-use defense would ultimately survive at the Supreme Court level. Obviously I don't have the put-up-or-shut-up money to help JimRob see it through to that level.

As we move more towards digital news and away from paper-based news, the argument that the preparers of "the historcal record" shouldn't be the ones with the sole right to maintain and monitor the maintenance of the historical record would IMHO be enough to sway the courts. It's too easy for them to purge what they didn't like.

As an offset, I might be willing to acquiesce to excerpts only IF the Supremes determined that charging archiving fees to access the historical record is unreasonable, and allowing for penalties and sanctions if it is ever found that the historical record has been altered.

[litany_of_lies]

Sorry, that issue was never fully litigated. JimRob settled for sanity's sake. The odds of his winning IF the Supremes would have been willing to hear the arguments were IMHO 50-50 or greater.

In the meantime, I will keep up-to-date with who is demanding excerpts-only and honor those demands on FR.

As to my own computer's hard drive, though, I'll save any d**n thing I want, because being and staying informed constitutes fair use, as long as I don't attempt to profit in any way from said saving. If I seem defiant, it's simply because I don't trust the press to maintain the historical record without the inherent oversight of people like FR (and to a small extent me). The "memory hole" temptation is just too great for them to resist.

[quidnunc]

Many colleges and universities explain copyright on their Web sites in order to keep their students writing papers and doing research out of copyright trouble.

Stanford has one of the best here:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/index.html

[Carolinamom]

Richard Clarke is not married.

I did not know until this article that Clarke, like his look-alike John Wayne Gacey, had so much blood on his hands. Anybody heard him apologize in print or otherwise for this one?

[litany_of_lies]

Thanks for the link. Good stufff.

[Tennessean4Bush]

This guy is an amazing writer. Wow.

[finnigan2]

It has occurred to me that Clarke's "care -less" attitude toward a bunch of nobody's in far away Africa and his apparent dislike of Condi could reveal a side of his character we haven't noticed up to now. You don't suppose our principled hero has a bigotry problem do you?