Speaking of not being impressed, Dean Barnett isn’t with James Baker and what is rumored to be his upcoming surrender plan. Me, neither.

There’s so much that James Baker doesn

Victor Davis Hanson writes that the West faces a crisis of confidence:

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today’s Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats–and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in “liberal” Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge–although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

…Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship of our supposedly liberal age: the fear of radical Islam and its gruesome methods of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive de-vices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-shaking mobs, as the seventh century is compressed into the twenty-first.

In contrast, almost daily in Europe, “brave” artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. And we know what explains the radical difference in attitudes to such freewheeling and “candid” expression–indeed, that hypocrisy of false bravado, of silence before fascists and slander before liberals is both the truth we are silent about, and the lie we promulgate.

There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.

[Evening update]

Eric Raymond had a post last February that’s quite relevant.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Boy, I’ll be that Iran and Syria are quaking in their collective boots by threats from the “realists.”

Democracy in Iraq? Who cares? Not James Baker, or the New York Times, obviously.

Boy, I’ll be that Iran and Syria are quaking in their collective boots by threats from the “realists.”

Democracy in Iraq? Who cares? Not James Baker, or the New York Times, obviously.

Boy, I’ll be that Iran and Syria are quaking in their collective boots by threats from the “realists.”

Democracy in Iraq? Who cares? Not James Baker, or the New York Times, obviously.

France and Italy have been funding terrorists in Iraq:

Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to

Victor Davis Hanson says that we’re still in the “phony war” stage:

…why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by

Victor Davis Hanson says that we’re still in the “phony war” stage:

…why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by

Victor Davis Hanson says that we’re still in the “phony war” stage:

…why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by