National Review articles from November 2002

National Review archives from November 2002

Letters.
November 11, 2002... --You might at least have warned us Gentle Readers. Imagine my alarm upupon extracting from my mailbox the New York Times (which I use to line my guinea pig's cage) and NR, and seeing the horrible florence king / a farewell bit on the cover....

The Week.
November 11, 2002... -- Australians and Americans fought together in all of the 20th cecentury's wars-not just the popular crusades of the world wars (in each of which Australia fought longer than we did), but in the grim Cold War struggles of Korea and Vietnam....

NORTH KOREA: Proliferation.(nuclear wepons in North Korea)
November 11, 2002... To the surprise of no one but the veterans of the Clinton administration, North Korea turns out to have a nuclear-weapons program. In 1994, Clinton, with an assist from Nobel Prize-winner Jimmy Carter, struck a deal in which Pyongyang was to...

The TERROR VISAS: Waving Them Through.(investigation of visas issued to 9/11 terrorists)
November 11, 2002... For more than a year, the CIA and FBI have suffered much criticism for the intelligence breakdowns leading up to September 11, and specifically for their failure to "connect the dots." Surely these agencies have much to answer for. So does the...

The NOBEL PRIZE: Carter's Disgrace.(former president Jimmy Carter )
November 11, 2002... Former president Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize came with a booby prize for President George W. Bush. The official citation contrasted Carter with "a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power." Gunnar Berge, the chairman of...

Notes & Asides.(Letter to the Editor)
November 11, 2002... -- Dear Bill: It seems to me that politics has become much too solemn anand journalism too self-satisfied. So I am hoping that you will find relief in two pieces of verse. I confess to authorship of the first. The second was written...

They're All Bushies Now?: In a lot of states, Daschle Democrats are thin on the ground.
November 11, 2002... The politician appearing most frequently in campaign ads this election season won't be appearing on any ballots. Candidate A features President Bush at a signing ceremony in a TV spot that takes credit for "working with President Bush to pass...

The Liberalest Senator: Can the GOP send Paul Wellstone back to the faculty lounge?
November 11, 2002... 'Taxes were raised on just about everybody in order to get this country going again." That's Democratic senator Paul Wellstone explaining the causes of the late prosperity. Specifically, he says, it was his brave support of Bill Clinton's 1993...

How's the Granny Card Playing?: The evolving politics of Social Security.
November 11, 2002... The charges and counter-charges being made about Social Security are getting awfully confusing. The Democrats say Republicans want to "privatize" the program, but the Republicans deny it. A few Republicans even say it's the Democrats who really...

The Zeal Against Jeb: For Florida Democrats, it's payback time.(Jeb Bush)
November 11, 2002... Watching President Bush's brother Jeb struggle to win re-election against a little-known trial lawyer, it's hard not to suspect that Democrats are trying extra-hard to exact revenge for Florida 2000-that the barrage of attacks against Jeb is...

Bullets and Bunkum: The futility of 'ballistic fingerprinting'.
November 11, 2002... In the wake of the Washington, D.C., sniper attacks, many are viewing ballistic fingerprinting as a magic crime-solving tool. According to the pro-gun-control Brady Campaign, such a system "would have solved [the sniper case] after the first...

Carter in Ethiopia: Revisiting one of the Nobelist's missed chances.(former president Jimmy Carter )
November 11, 2002... The award of the Nobel peace prize to former president Jimmy Carter is a manifestation of selective memory. What follows is a story about how the precepts of the Carter administration's human-rights policy-and that president's aversion to the...

Court Dismissed: The ICC is a snare and a monstrosity-with no standing.(international criminal court)
November 11, 2002... 'They have learned nothing," remarked a disgusted Talleyrand when the Bourbons returned to France, "and they have forgotten nothing." His words might be applied with equal justice to Europe's current governing class. Indeed, today's...

'Gutter' Politics: Playing the name game.(English pronunciation of foreign words)
November 11, 2002... I'm not going to say "gutter." That's what they want us to say now, instead of Qatar (and you know who I mean by "they"). From time immemorial-defined as the duration of my life-we've said "Qa-TAHR." Every red- blooded American says "Qa-TAHR."...

The Latest Paris Fashion . . .: . . . and also an old one: Anti- Americanism in the land of Tocqueville.(France)
November 11, 2002... France and Germany are in poor shape. No idea how to deal with recession and high unemployment; unable to resort-without violating EU rules-to the old trick of budget deficits to buy time; caught between mass immigration, fear of terrorism, and...

Perils of 'The German Way': What do these recent outbursts mean?
November 11, 2002... The problem with the recent German criticism of President Bush was not Chancellor Schroeder's willingness to voice unease with the purported American "adventure" in Iraq. Germany is a sovereign nation and can and must do as it sees fit. It has...

New Myths for Old: The case of The Four Feathers.(Movie Review)
November 11, 2002... As the old showbiz joke goes, The Four Feathers is a story so good not even a gifted director could ruin it. The 1902 novel by the English writer A. E. W. Mason has been filmed no fewer than six times; the 1939 Zoltan Korda version has...

The Long View.(political satire)
November 11, 2002... --Transcript from Larry King Live, November 12th, 2003: larry king: Wilmington, Delaware! You're on with former North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il. caller: Oh, hi. kim jong il: Hello, caller. I recently visited the Barnes & Noble...

What Is a Man?(The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature)(Book Review)
November 11, 2002... The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker (Viking, 528 pp., $27.95) Patients often ask me why they do the things they do. Naturally, they inquire only after their bad habits and actions, such as drinking too much...

A Witness.(The Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness to the Twentieth Century)(Book Review)
November 11, 2002... The Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness to the Twentieth Century, by Raymond Aron (Basic, 544 pp., $35) Jean-Paul Sartre's apologias for Stalin and Mao; Michel Foucault's praise for Iran's Islamic revolutionaries; the...

Blame Dodger.(The Age of Sacred Terror)(Book Review)
November 11, 2002... The Age of Sacred Terror, by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon (Random House, 490 pp., $25.95) 'There are few more durable illusions in American life than the omnipotent presidency," write Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, two former...

The Prince's Architect.(John Simpson: The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, and Other Works)(Book Review)
November 11, 2002... John Simpson: The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, and Other Works, by Richard John and David Watkin (Andreas Papadakis, 135 pp., $40) Remember the Prince of Wales's campaign for traditional architecture? Vaguely, perhaps. After all, it...

Shelf Life.(Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism; Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian; Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11; other books on politics)(Book Review)(Brief Article)
November 11, 2002... Like the famous hedgehog popuarized by Isaiah Berlin, Ronald Reagan was a man of one big idea: freedom. In Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism (Doubleday, 339 pp., $26), Peter Schweizer tells...

On the Right.(Bush's economic policy; paradoxical current events; campaign fund ethics)(Column)
November 11, 2002... Is Bush's Economic Policy Enough? NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8 The complaints we hear that the president hasn't given attention to domestic economic problems recall the wisdom of our ancestors. It is that most economic problems are best met...

And Another Thing...(hospital stay narrative)
November 11, 2002... The late Sir Kingsley Amis wrote a spoof on Shakespeare's "Fear no more the heat o' the sun," beginning: "Look thy last on all things shitty, / While thou'rt at it . . . " The body of the poem goes on to list aspects of the modern world that...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
November 25, 2002... --We were disappointed by Bernadette Malone's wildly inaccurate depiction of the Florida Education Association ("The Zeal Against Jeb," Nov. 11). Ms. Malone contends that our association took out a mortgage on one of our buildings and used...

The Week.(US politics)
November 25, 2002... -- Minority leader Tom Daschle. Ranking minority member Jim Jeffords. Senator Jim Talent. Judge Miguel Estrada. . . . We could go on, but that would be gloating. -- So now Arkansas voters start caring about marital fidelity in their...

CAMPAIGN 2002: Bush Triumphant.
November 25, 2002... There have been three national elections in the modern era in which conservatives made massive gains. In 1980, a conservative won the presidency. In 1994, conservatives became a majority of the party that controlled Congress. The 2002 election...

OBITUARY: Richard Helms, R.I.P.(Obituary)
November 25, 2002... Some time after my first novel (Saving the Queen) was published, I had a handwritten note from Richard Helms. He had read the book, he said, and enjoyed it. I replied and, subsequently, we had one or two visits at lunch. I was especially...

CULTURE WATCH: The Funeral-Rally.(Paul Wellstone's funeral)
November 25, 2002... Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone, who died in the homestretch of his re-election campaign in a plane crash that also killed his wife, his daughter, three aides, and two pilots, was a conviction politician. He called himself a "proud...

Notes & Asides.(Letter to the Editor)
November 25, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: In his letter to you (Sept. 30), Rob Lisch writes that he "has read that a single letter combined with another word to form one object (e.g., T-shirt) should always be capitalized." In your reply you compliment Mr....

A Rendezvous with Reality: Are immigrants needed to fill our jobs and make us grow?
November 25, 2002... 'Reality," as Oscar Wilde should have said, "is the name we give to our mistakes." It is at any rate the name that politicians, journalists, and intellectuals give to their mistakes. In the last 20 years we have been repeatedly assured by all...

So You Wanna Sue the Saudis?: Expect a fight from Foggy Bottom.(State Department seeks dismissal of lawsuit filed abainst Saudi Arabia by families of 9/11 victims )
November 25, 2002... 'It would be an obstruction of justice for us to get involved." That was State Department spokesman Gregory Sullivan last summer, discussing the $1 trillion lawsuit filed by the families of 9/11 victims against the Saudi royal family. What a...

Let Ashcroft Do It: Trying to recover abducted kids.(proposal to give Department of Justice responsibility for US children abducted abroad)
November 25, 2002... 'Austria?" President Bush asked when Tom Sylvester requested his help for "our American stolen children" -- including his only child, Carina, who was abducted to Austria by her mother in 1995 when she was a year old. After expressing his...

Steady On, George: The costs of going wobbly.(support for war against Iraq)
November 25, 2002... 'We're taking him out." That's what President Bush said last winter about Saddam Hussein to a group of senators in the White House. On subsequent occasions, notably to the West Point graduates in June, he committed himself to the same end in...

Death and Taxes: The political fortunes of the estate tax.
November 25, 2002... No policy of the Bush administration has drawn more withering scorn than its drive to eliminate the estate tax. In opposing the tax, Bush "kowtow[s] to plutocrats" and displays "willful obtuseness." That's the verdict of Andrew Sullivan -- and...

In a Box: The case of the ossuary and the rules of archeology.
November 25, 2002... The final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark shows workers boxing the Ark of the Covenant and wheeling it into the middle of an impossibly huge warehouse -- an object of incomprehensible significance is lost forever. It's a bit of ironic humor at...

The Color of Killing: PC and the snipers.
November 25, 2002... If you plug the phrase "angry white male" into Google, you get about 247,000 results, which isn't really all that many when you consider how many white males get their phone service from Verizon. The assorted profilers and pundits who so...

Bomb Canada: The case for war.
November 25, 2002... It's quite possible that the greatest favor the United States could do for Canada is to declare war on it. No, this isn't a tribute to South Park, the TV cartoon that popularized a song -- "Blame Canada" -- calling for an outright invasion of...

Headache upon Headache: Questions of Iraq, nukes, and occupation.
November 25, 2002... The problem with the Iraq debate is that as soon as one tough question appears to be settled, another even harder one rises to take its place. For example, suppose one concludes -- as I have -- that the narrowly defined security risks of going...

Counter-Counterterrorism: The debacle pre-9/11.
November 25, 2002... Fighting back tears, an agent from the FBI's New York office told Congress how his Washington bosses had ordered him not to track suspected terrorist Khalid al-Midhar. Precisely because the CIA had told the FBI that Midhar was an al-Qaeda...

The Long View.(political humor)
November 25, 2002... From the FBI Profiler The Bill Simon Voter: The Bill Simon Voter is a quiet, unassuming person. He will usually live in a "gated" community, and will be described by neighbors and associates as "friendly" and "dependable." Often...

Bitter Sage.(The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken)(Book Review)
November 25, 2002... The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout (HarperCollins, 432 pp., $29.95) In a hotel in upstate New York that I love, dating from the century before last, there is a hallway hung with photographs of the famous guests of the...

Lost -- and Found?(Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel)(Book Review)
November 25, 2002... Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel, by Hillel Halkin (Houghton Mifflin, 394 pp., $28) Call it the romance of lost objects. A young woman's purse was stolen one day in the 1940s and turned up earlier this year,...

Cook's Tours.(Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before)(Book Review)
November 25, 2002... Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt, 496 pp., $26) Horwitz, a former writer for the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, has been a fearless practitioner of "participatory...

The Wolf in the Door.(Militant Islam Reaches America)(Book Review)
November 25, 2002... Militant Islam Reaches America, by Daniel Pipes (Norton, 256 pp., $25.95) On September 13, 2002, southern Florida was closed down after a Shoney's customer told police she suspected that three of her fellow diners were Islamist terrorists....

Doing It Their Way.(Sound Recording Review)
November 25, 2002... It's a big issue in the opera world: Renee Fleming's singing of bel canto. Fleming, of course, is just about the most sumptuous soprano around, prized particularly for her singing of Strauss (meaning Richard, not Johann, although she's no...

On the Right.(Henry Kissinger; Mexican threat to vote against US policies on Iraq;medical marijuana)(Column)
November 25, 2002... The War on Kissinger NEW YORK, OCTOBER 18 The desire to do something about Henry Kissinger is, for many, a popular pursuit; for some, an obsession. He is the enemy, for reasons many of them find obvious: He is a Harvard intellectual...

What's Right.(pubication of leaks of government secrets)
November 25, 2002... Secrets Out On the evening of December 3 last year, the Bush administration learned of an alarming leak. At midnight, the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas, would be formally listed...