Author: Jonathan Schwarz

I was sure I had something worth saying about yesterday. But every time I tried I became so sad and angry I couldn’t get anywhere.

So today I’m going to use a gambit I call “looking on the bright side,” and make a list of all the positive things I can remember about fall, 2001.

• By noon on September 11, there was a line a block long outside the hospital near my apartment of people wanting to give blood. Eventually most hospitals in Manhattan started turning everyone away because they had all the blood they could conceivably need. (And this was at a time when they believed they’d have thousands of people wounded, rather than the handful there turned out to be.)

• By 3 p.m. I had email from two friends who’d begun organizing groups of New York non-Muslims to reach out to frightened local Muslims. This turned out to be less necessary than they anticipated, because New Yorkers generally were at the highest level of behavior I’ve ever witnessed in human beings. Still, there were lots of Muslim women who wore hijabs and were scared to go out unaccompanied, and it was useful to find people who could escort them to the grocery store, etc.

I’ve never loved a place more than I loved New York that month. There were lots of people in the rest of the U.S. baying for blood, but I never heard that expressed by a single New Yorker.

• For several days it felt like we must never laugh again. Fortunately that soon dissipated. The first joke I made was when I told Chadd Gindin that the World Trade Center should be rebuilt to look like a giant hand giving Osama bin Laden the finger. This clearly was on the minds of lots of people, as within a week someone had photoshopped this:

• On September 13th, Jerry Falwell learnedly explained:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians…the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.”

I’m not kidding when I say I seriously considered driving to Lynchburg, Virginia and smashing Falwell in the face with a crowbar. Thankfully Mike Gerber and I were able to transmute any anger into one of my favorite pieces we’ve ever written, “What Falwell Really Meant”. It also got the most galvanic audience reaction we’ve ever received.

• Soon afterward Rob Weisberg came up with the idea of a pamphlet from the New York City tourism board, directed to terrorists, describing the many appealing vulnerabilities of America’s other cities. Mike and I wrote this and sent it to friends, who were so horrified it’s never seen the light of day. Still, I’ve rarely laughed harder than when we were working on it.

• Several months later, there were actual ads encouraging tourists to come back, starring various New York celebrities.

This allowed me to, for the only time in my life, feel affection for Henry Kissinger. I believe the Buddha would have approved.

I’ve been wondering: how did Dennis Perrin’s debate in Tarrytown last week on the mideast go? Well…

The complexities, manias, and sorrows of the Middle East have driven many people insane, and in the years of debating and discussing this issue, I’ve encountered my share (though some would say that I, too, am nuts, and sometimes I feel that’s true). But last Wednesday night, I hit the lunatic jackpot.

For instance:

…it was [Sidney] Zion’s turn, and I focused more on his tone rather than his exact words. Zion was loud, belligerent, and appeared to have a seething hatred of Arabs. He then dismissed Nada [Khader]’s “bullshit,” and called her a stupid “little girl.” Much of the audience booed him on this point, and Zion yelled right back at them…

It was then I noticed that Zion had a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch stashed under the table. In the moments when he wasn’t bellowing, he poured himself drink after drink, getting more hammered as the night wore on. And of course the more hammered he got, the more abusive he became…

That’s just the warm up. There is more, and much worse, here.

BONUS: Here’s the description of Sidney Zion from his lecture agent’s website:

You won’t find a style that can match Sidney Zion’s for wit, savvy, clarity, fearlessness and vision. So unique is his voice that aficionados don’t need a byline to know who they’re reading…

Saddam Hussein is now on trial for his genocidal Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds during the eighties. The U.S. media has covered it intensely, while almost uniformly failing to mention that the Reagan and Bush I administrations knew what was happening, helped cover it up, and continued their support for Saddam:

Google News results for “saddam kurds” in U.S. publications within past seven days: 1430

Google News results for “reagan kurds” in U.S. publications within past seven days: 4

However, there’s one significant exception to this—Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post, who deserves credit for writing this column today:

Change is news, and the important news from the second trial of Saddam Hussein is this: The U.S. government is helping expose the ex-dictator’s genocidal assault on Kurdish tribesmen instead of helping hide it.

Welcome the change. But do not rush past the original malfeasance: U.S. officials were directly involved two decades ago in covering up and minimizing the horrifying details that were finally spread on the legal record in a Baghdad courtroom last week. In a long history of U.S. involvement in Iraq stained by official mistakes, betrayals and misunderstandings, the initial coverup of Hussein’s Anfal campaign is among its darkest moments.

I visited Baghdad in May 1987, a month after Iraqi troops began using poison gas and burning Kurdish villages in a systematic program of ethnic slaughter and cleansing. The U.S. Embassy quickly learned of the devastation through a trip to northern Iraq by an assistant military attache. But he denied to me what I had learned elsewhere: that he had reported to Washington the beginning of the operation code-named Anfal. His report was promptly stamped secret…

The Reagan-Bush administration remained silent as it helped the Iraqis fight the Iranians; Washington even made sure Iraq was invited to a prestigious international conference on chemical weapons in 1988.

The important national moral obligation to Iraqis that such American actions have created must not be shoved aside in the debates over strategy and politics that proliferate as U.S. midterm elections approach.

Last night Christopher Hitchens told the audience on Bill Maher’s show they were “frivolous.” Then he gave them the finger and told them “fuck you”:

HITCHENS: [Ahmadinejad] says the Messiah is about to come back. Who’s looking for a war here?

MAHER: So does George Bush, by the way. [Audience applauds] That’s not facetious.

HITCHENS: That’s not facetious. Your audience, which will clap at apparently anything, is frivolous. [Audience groans, Hitchens gives them the finger] Fuck you, fuck you.

This prompted Instapundit to explain:

Should things go badly with the war, Maher’s audience — and, for that matter, Maher himself — will be cited by historians as evidence of the American opposition’s unseriousness.

Oh, if only it were possible for people like ourselves to be deeply, deeply serious like Christopher Hitchens and Glenn Reynolds. Sadly, that can never happen, for we are empty-headed ninnies.

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1. I want to write something about people who made bets that Iraq had or did not have WMD. I myself bet $1000 they didn’t have anything, and I know someone who bet a dinner. But this really isn’t enough by itself. If you know anyone who made such a bet—in either direction—I’d really appreciate hearing about it.

2. As mentioned previously, Dennis Perrin of Red State Son will be appearing in a debate on the mideast this coming Wednesday the 30th in Tarrytown, New York, just north of Yonkers. Further information and ticket information is available here. Like I said before, if you go be sure to ask Dennis during the Q&A why he loves terrorism. I’ve never understood it.

3. DO NOT MISS these pictures by Bob of his seven favorite places on earth (mentioned in this Los Angeles Times piece he wrote, itself drawn from Prisoner of Trebekistan).