Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and a COMMENTARY contributor, has written a noteworthy piece on his optimism on the new Arab revolt.

“One has the sense that the past century’s extremism — tied to such figures as Amin al-Husseini, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ruhollah Khomeini, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein — has run its course, that populations seek something more mundane and consumable than rhetoric, rejectionism, and backwardness,” according to Pipes. While admitting that he is known for “doom-and-gloom,” Pipes goes on to say this:

But, with due hesitation, I see changes that could augur a new era, one in which infantilized Arabic speakers mature into adults. One rubs one’s eyes at this transformation, awaiting its reversal. So far, however, it has held.

Perhaps the most genial symbol of this maturation is the pattern of street demonstrators cleaning up after themselves. No longer are they wards of the state dependent on it for services; of a sudden, they are citizens with a sense of civic responsibility.

While I caution against premising foreign policies on this abrupt improvement, it would also be a mistake to discount it. The rebel movements need an opportunity to find themselves and to act as adults. Time has come to discard the soft bigotry of low expectations; speaking Arabic or Persian does not make one incapable of building democratic means to attain free ends.

Like many others, I remain quite uncertain about how these various Arab revolutions, each with its own shape and texture, will end up. (Bret Stephens has written a cautious and intelligent column on this.) But more and more people are conceding that what we’re seeing in Cairo, Benghazi, and other cities across the Arab world is amazing and encouraging. You can now count among them the eminent Daniel Pipes.

Attorney General Eric Holder is the latest Obama-administration official to indicate that the president has no intention of closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center anytime soon. At a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee today, Holder told lawmakers that he had no clue when the prison would be shut down:

US Attorney Gen. Eric Holder told members of the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday “I don’t know” when asked if the detention center at Guantanamo Bay will close by the end of the president’s first term.

He was not the first high ranking member of the Obama administration to admit things weren’t going well in efforts to find an alternative to Gitmo for dealing with top terrorists.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted last month that the United States has no contingency plans for detaining and trying Osama bin Laden if he were captured, saying, “the honest answer to that is, we don’t know.”

If Osama bin Laden is captured, Holder said that a committee would decide where he would be held and tried.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay immediately upon taking office. But with his 2012 re-election campaign right around the corner, he still hasn’t made good on his vow.

Recall that the president has often framed the need to close Guantanamo Bay as a national-security issue, calling the detention center a terrorist-recruitment tool. “It is a rallying cry for terrorist recruitment and harmful to our national security, so closing it is important for our national security,” Obama said in 2009.

But for something that’s supposedly so detrimental to our national security, Obama seems to be in no hurry to get rid of it.

This morning, William Bennett conducted a fascinating interview with Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. During their conversation, Ajami spoke about the various Arab uprisings. He was also asked about President Obama and whether the president was being criticized too harshly for his weak stance during the Libyan revolution. Professor Ajami would have none of it.

“I would personally escalate the criticism of President Obama,” Ajami said. The president has become the “quiet American,” standing behind the British, the French, and even the Italians in condemning Qaddafi. There are options (like recognizing a new provisional government) that Obama could, but so far won’t, exercise. The president “doesn’t want his fingerprints on this story.” He has “outsourced his statements” to others. And this is not only a moral failure; it is a geopolitical one as well.

“Wouldn’t we want the moral credit and the gratitude of the Libyans in the future?” Ajami asks.

Standing with the Libyan people in their hour of need would benefit America’s standing in that nation and in the wider world. But we have as our commander in chief, Ajami speculates, a man who loves the adoration of the crowd but is unable to make the “strategic and moral choices on behalf of this great American republic.” And what we have gotten is not a leader but “almost like the shrinking president.”

The interview is quite insightful and, at least as it relates to our president, quite dispiriting.

This Sunday, the New York Times Magazine will debut its redesign, and Michael Calderone at Yahoo News has a preview. The cover looks very much like the magazine’s cover looked 40 years ago, which is fine. But look beyond the visual and see if you can discern the subject of the cover story and the originator of its quote: “I Was Much Freer in Jail.”

Who is this Solzhenitsyn, this Sharansky, this prisoner of conscience? None other than Lori Berenson.

And who is Lori Berenson? Only the Manhattan-born red-diaper baby who moved to Peru in the early 1990s and became a member of the Tupac Amaru guerrillas, one of the monstrous terrorist organizations that plunged Peru into hellish chaos and killed an estimated 70,000 people (the evil done by these groups is a subject of some of the great fiction and journalism of this year’s Nobelist, Mario Vargas Llosa). Peru’s terrorist monsters were so brutal, it was necessary for the judges who heard cases involving them to be hooded so that they could not be identified — to spare both them and their families from personal retaliation following multiple assassinations.

Berenson housed Tupac Amaru members, let them use her apartment as an ammo dump, and attained press credentials so she could scout the Peruvian parliament to help design its planned takeover by the group. When she was in court, she famously screamed at the judges in Spanish: “There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.” Even now she denies it, telling Newsweek: “I don’t consider myself a terrorist. I think saying someone is a criminal is enough. It’s not helpful to look for ways of qualifying our enemies in drastic terms instead of trying to figure out exactly what we’re faced with. … I’m not ashamed of what I did.”

On another occasion or two she said she regretted having lost her temper in the courtroom, but it sure didn’t look like she was sorry, or that she didn’t mean it, or that she wasn’t in fact saying (as she was) that the group was in fact exactly what it was accused of being. (Meryl Yourish has a good roundup of Berenson’s history.)

I haven’t read the magazine piece, by the often brilliant novelist Jennifer Egan, so it may be brutally honest about all this. But no matter what the text says, the cover image is consciously designed to make Berenson look like the Madonna with child — the child to whom she gave birth in prison in 2008. His father is also a convicted member of the Tupac Amaru group.

The Times has a repugnant history of this sort of thing; many people remember its glowing story about Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground domestic terrorist, which appeared, to the paper’s eternal shame, on September 11, 2001. It’s almost 10 years later. Evidently, the statute of limitations on journalistic embarrassments ran out, and it was time for the Times to snag another one.

Embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has devoted his life to exposing government secrets, but apparently he’s not able to handle his own private information being leaked to the public. After his personal e-mails were published by some newspapers, Assange reportedly had a major meltdown during a phone call with the editor of the magazine Private Eye. The WikiLeaks founder alleged that the editor was part of a “conspiracy” of “Jewish writers” who were trying to take him down:

The editor of Private Eye magazine says Assange told him that an Eye article about WikiLeaks’ Russian associate, alleged Holocaust denier and antisemite Israel Shamir, was “an obvious attempt to deprive him and his organisation of Jewish support and donations”.

In the same interview Mr Assange added that the magazine was “part of a conspiracy” led by “Jewish” writers.

Mr Assange accused the Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger of being part of the conspiracy, despite the fact he is not Jewish.

According to Private Eye, when informed of this “Assange insisted that he was “sort of Jewish” because he was related to [Guardian journalist] David Leigh.

Apparently Assange’s wig-out was related to allegations that he had knowingly hired Holocaust-denier Israel Shamir. While journalists have questioned Assange’s ties to Shamir for a while now, newly leaked e-mails reportedly show that the WikiLeaks leader personally approved Shamir’s employment.

It’s also not much of a surprise that Assange blamed his predicament on the Jews. His philosophies — the anti-imperialism and anti-government paranoia — do tend to blend easily with anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

News Real Blog’s Walter Hudson interviewed Rep. Ron Paul about his views on America’s Israel policy, and the congressman’s apathy toward the Jewish state was even more obvious than usual:

Paul: First off, [the Israelis are] under threat because we’re there. We’re a greater threat to them, and our polices, because they have assumed that we’ll [intervene] if they don’t do the right things for themselves.

I don’t know of anybody who can militarily threaten them. They have 300 nuclear weapons. Nobody’s gonna touch them. This notion that we have to support them over the Palestinians – we shouldn’t favor one over the other. It’s a very different problem over there. If you’re a Palestinian-American, you might not like [America's position on Israel]. I’m not saying you should support the Palestinian side or the Israeli side. I’m saying let them work it out.

The congressman’s comments throughout the entire interview seemed glaringly naïve. At one point, he told Hudson that he believed “we should treat all other countries alike, and that we should be friends.” So we should treat North Korea the same way we treat Canada and just hope things work out? That’s certainly a nice fantasy, but have fun trying to convince voters that it’s a plausible foreign-policy doctrine.

And as for the Israel issue, an overwhelming majority of Americans disagree with Paul. A Gallup poll released yesterday showed that U.S. adults are four times more likely to side with the Israelis over the Palestinians. Conservatives are even more likely to support Israel, which doesn’t do much to bolster Paul’s already-slim political chances for the 2012 Republican primary.

A coalition of liberal Christian leaders — including Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, Ron Sider, Joel C. Hunter, and Tony Campolo — took out a full-page ad that asks “What would Jesus cut?” in Monday’s edition of Politico (see the news story here).

Now most of the ad is non-offensive. It argues that Christianity tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats the poor. It insists that our budget should not be balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable. And it defends programs fighting pandemic diseases. On some of these matters I happen to agree with the signatories; on others I don’t. But where the ad crosses the line is with the campaign slogan itself: “What Would Jesus Cut?”

One is tempted to say Planned Parenthood, but set that aside for the moment. What these “progressive” Christian leaders are doing is committing the same error that some on the so-called Religious Right did, which is to pretend that Scripture can be reduced to a governing blueprint. (In this instance, we’re asked to imagine Jesus as a liberal, big-spending director of the Office of Management and Budget.) The temptation of politically active people of faith is to simplistically connect dots, insisting that certain biblical principles self-evidently translate into particular public policies.

Jim Wallis made this mistake on welfare reform. He was a ferocious critic of it in the name of caring for the poor and the vulnerable. Never mind that welfare reform ranks among the most humane social reforms of the last half-century and that Wallis’s predictions were ludicrously off-target. In the mid-1990s, however, we were not spared the sermon of how Jesus, in expressing solidarity with the poor, would oppose welfare reform. Read More

The New Israel Fund — which has come under fire in the past for funding questionable groups — is now reportedly funneling money to the controversial Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement:

In contrast to its recent moral guidelines, the New Israel Fund (NIF) is involved in the funding of a group that calls for the “liquidation or fundamental change of organizations that contribute to the dispossession of Arabs, including the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and the Israel Lands Authority.” NIF currently channels funds to the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, which has embraced this radical agenda, notes Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.

A recent SJSM pamphlet asks U.S. donors to “make a tax-exempt donation via the New Israel Fund.” In addition to the group’s comments about the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, it has also accused Israel of fascism, apartheid, and ethnic discrimination.

“NIF has made an important and positive contribution to Israeli society,” said NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg in a press release today. “But this does not excuse funding for radical political advocacy groups involved in demonization. NIF must choose between ending this relationship with the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, and repudiating the group’s offensive rhetoric, or ending the pretense of promoting a pro-Israel and pro-Zionist agenda.”

While the SJSM may not support boycott, divestment, and sanctions outright, it still works to delegitimize Israel in other ways. New Israel Fund should put its support elsewhere.

Benjamin Netanyahu told Likud members yesterday that the “American veto in the Security Council was only achieved with great effort,” and he rejected any new settlement-construction plans. Last week, he issued a statement endorsing “the Palestinians’ legitimate aspiration for statehood,” which the Jerusalem Post characterized as the “initial repayment to the US” for the veto. Yesterday’s statement, combined with the forcible demolition of a settlement outpost and announcement of more demolitions to come, appear to be further installment payments.

The U.S. has thus — in exchange for a veto with a statement rejecting “in the strongest terms” the “legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” which allegedly “corroded hopes for peace for more than four decades” (although not multiple offers of a contiguous state on substantially all the West Bank and Gaza) — obtained (1) a new construction freeze to replace the expired moratorium; (2) the  dismantlement of settlement outposts without reciprocal Palestinian steps; and (3) a public endorsement of the “legitimate aspiration” of the statehood the Palestinians refuse to negotiate.

The Palestinians will presumably pay a significant price for their (1) repeated refusal to come to the negotiating table in response to U.S. requests; (2) rejection of a direct presidential request to withdraw their polarizing UN resolution; and (3) public criticism of the U.S. and its president in the harshest possible terms. But perhaps not — since they have yet to pay any price for their hope-corroding response to the removal of every settler and soldier from Gaza.

As Michael Rubin pointed out Sunday, Syrian engagement has been a near-total failure. Damascus spent February 2010 responding to Obama’s outreach by openly mocking the White House’s efforts and threatening to saturation-bomb Israeli civilians, so the failure’s been predictable for at least a year.

So why did the White House continue to pursue engagement, up through recess-appointing Robert Ford as ambassador to Syria at the risk of souring executive-congressional relations? Hard to answer. What did Syria do in the meantime, while the administration continued to bumble through its naive policy? Here is a straightforward answer:

Commercial satellite photos have revealed a new Syrian nuclear enrichment facility near Damascus. There are two other facilities apparently related to nuclear research, but the Damascus site is apparently being equipped for enriching uranium for a reactor, or nuclear weapons. The grounds around this site are being paved, so that it’s more difficult to detect radioactive material… Syria originally had a nuclear reactor under construction at al Kibar, which was bombed by Israel in September, 2007.

Even this tactic was thoroughly predictable years ago, when Damascus responded to Israel’s bombing of al-Kibar by following the Iranian model and building multiple, redundant nuclear facilities. In other words, we’ve known about this exact plan since before Obama took office, yet the administration still pursued engagement. Now the Russians have gotten around to closing on their sale of anti-ship cruise missiles to Damascus, because if Obama can engage in his way, why can’t the Russians engage in their own way? Again, the clock keeps ticking as the White House keeps failing.

The critical question, as always, is not just about the decision but also about the decision-making process. What were the now-undeniably untenable assumptions that the White House used to game out the costs and benefits of engagement? Now that reality has pushed back forcefully, have those assumptions been abandoned? Were the assumptions originally brought to bear on decision-making as a matter of politics, or did some in the administration actually think they represented the most likely model for Middle East international relations? Have those people been fired?

Or more pointedly, who told Obama — mistakenly — that Syria could be peeled away from Iran? On what basis did they come to those conclusions? Are they still laboring under those delusions? I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to sketch assessments or pen policy prescriptions anymore. I just think they should have to write their assessments out in crayon, as a kind of very appropriate warning to the rest of us.

The New York Times published a poll in today’s paper with the headline “Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector Unions.” The Times thought the story so significant that it put it on page 1, above the fold, and even sent out a news alert last night via e-mail. According to the Times:

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, …

“Asked how they would choose to reduce their state’s deficits,” the Times adds, ”those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one.”

How do you square these figures with the results of last November’s elections, in which anti-tax, anti-deficit, anti-public-union forces swept to historic victories in federal and state elections across the country? Well, you can’t, of course. The Times doesn’t even ask this blindingly obvious question, let alone try to answer it.

But if you read down to the seventh paragraph of the story, which is on page 17, not page 1, an answer emerges:

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Feb. 24-27 with 984 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all adults. Of those surveyed, 20 percent said there was a union member in their household, and 25 percent said there was a public employee in their household.

Although less than 12 percent of the workforce is unionized today, 20 percent of the households in the survey had a union member. Although government workers are 17 percent of the workforce, 25 percent of the households surveyed had one living there. In other words, the sample was wildly skewed toward the very people most likely to give the answers the Times was hoping to hear.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that an experienced Libyan radio team, once subject to Qaddafi’s control, has set up the “Voice of Free Libya” and is now broadcasting from Benghazi. Enterprising volunteers have also started a four-page newspaper in the opposition-held port city.

With Qaddafi jamming the Nilesat satellite broadcast, on which Libyan civilians are dependent for news and foreign Internet service, the people in Benghazi have had little access to news. The Voice of Free Libya could be a remarkable source for foreign governments in the coming days; but to the Libyan opposition, it is likely to be something much more: not just a source of news but also a source of connection and shared hope.

The new radio broadcast is a reminder that good outcomes cannot be shaped solely by punishing the bad guys. That has been Obama’s focus with Libya, but it is equally important to encourage and reinforce positive activities. Maybe this broadcast is worth our support — and perhaps there are other things we can do to get alternative media back into Libya past Qaddafi’s signal-jamming. In fostering the Libyan people’s own energy and courage, America would be at its best.

The New York Times published a story that points out that (a) citizens of Arab nations have toppled dictators who al-Qaeda (AQ) leaders loathed — and these citizens have done so without the help of AQ; and (b) the opposition movements in the Arab Middle East have “shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers.”

For many specialists on terrorism and the Middle East, “the past few weeks have the makings of an epochal disaster for Al Qaeda, making the jihadists look like ineffectual bystanders to history while offering young Muslims an appealing alternative to terrorism.”

AQ is ruthless and resourceful; its leaders will try to adjust and take advantage of new conditions on the ground. So it’s far too early to count AQ out (and the Times story rightly does not). Still, it is satisfying to hear even fierce critics of the Bush administration admit, as one does in the story, that “[d]emocracy is bad news for terrorists. The more peaceful channels people have to express grievances and pursue their goals, the less likely they are to turn to violence.” Read More

Ezra Klein, whistling bravely past the graveyard, has a piece in the Daily Beast today in which he argues that the fight over public unions in Wisconsin is

the best thing to happen to the union movement in recent memory. Give the man some credit: In seven days, Walker did what unions have been trying and failing to do for decades. He united the famously fractious movement, reknit its emotional connection with allies ranging from students to national Democratic leaders, and brought the decline of organized labor to the forefront of the national agenda. The question is: Will it matter?

The answer, I’m confident, is no. As Klein points out, union membership as a percentage of the workforce has been declining steadily for decades (it peaked about 1953). As manufacturing jobs continue to decline, thanks to globalization, automation, and other forces more profound than the union movement ever was, it will continue to decline until it is essentially one with the Greenback Party and the Wobblies. And for the same reason: they were an answer to yesterday’s problems, not today’s.

Klein’s arguments are remarkably out-of-date, but then, of course, so is liberalism. Read More

Three years after J Street’s formation, it’s still politically toxic for members of Congress to support J Street’s policies, said Rep. Keith Ellison during a panel discussion at the liberal lobbying group’s conference.

Ellison, who co-chairs the House Progressive Caucus, said that fellow caucus members who took positions that aren’t traditionally pro-Israel “found themselves primaried from the right on the issue of Israel.”

“There are prices to pay,” he added. “These folks who have impeccable pro Israel credentials found themselves in pretty tough primary races, and not just in one part of the country.”

He also stressed that J Street needed to be more effective at protecting these members of Congress from attacks from groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel.

“J Street needs to continue to strengthen its muscles … so that a politician can take a position that is pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-Palestinian … and not have to worry about [election-cycle attacks],” said Ellison.

During the 2010 midterm elections, J Street’s critics argued that it’s become politically harmful for members of Congress to align themselves with the lobbying group. J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami seemed to reject this notion during a meeting with reporters today, saying that the group has made it much easier for politicians to take controversial positions on Israel. “The change in Congress is notable,” he said. “The sense of openness on Capitol Hill is greater than three years ago.”

But according to Ellison, the pressure to be pro-Israel is so intense that the House Progressive Caucus often avoids taking positions on Israel because its members are so concerned about being attacked by pro-Israel organizations. “We don’t take them on because we can’t come to a clear consensus on the question,” said the congressman.

J Street was formed as an alternative lobby to AIPAC. But three years later, it’s noteworthy that the group is still unable to influence many of the most progressive politicians on Capitol Hill.

According to a story in Sunday’s Washington Post, as President Obama and his advisers measured their response to the mass killing in Libya, they were mindful of the fact that diplomats in Tripoli had told them, in the words of one official, that “certain kinds of messaging from the American government could endanger the security of American citizens.”

“Overruling that kind of advice would be a very difficult and dangerous thing to do,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “That was the debate, and frankly we erred on the side of caution, for certain, and at the cost of some criticism,” he continued. “But when you’re sitting in government and you’re told that ignoring that advice could endanger American citizens, that’s a line you don’t feel very comfortable crossing.”

The Obama administration’s position assumes that Muammar Qaddafi needs a pretext to kill Americans. He actually doesn’t. He has done so in the past, and he could just as easily do so now, regardless of what kind of “messaging” emerges from our government.

Beyond that, as Christopher Hitchens points out, the leaders of nations far less powerful than the United States, many with large expatriate populations in Libya, took much more forceful (and much earlier) stances against Qaddafi than did Obama. The president was the last major Western leader to speak up on Libya.

On a more fundamental level, what the Obama administration did was create quite a dangerous precedent. It has now signaled to the most malevolent regimes in the world that the way to delay (or perhaps even avoid) American condemnation, let alone American action, is to threaten the lives of American citizens. The message sent to, and surely the message received by, despots around the world is this: If you want to neuter America, threaten to harm its citizens. Mr. Obama will bend like red-hot steel pulled from a furnace.

There were, of course, other options available to the president, including informing Mr. Qaddafi through the appropriate channels that a terrible fate would await him and his pack of jackals if a single American was harmed (see here). The president did very nearly the opposite. He showed weakness, irresolution, fear. I wonder if people have focused on just how troubling this action, and the mindset it manifests, really is.

Sidney Hook once said that those who make survival the supreme value are declaring that there is nothing they will not betray. Professor Hook’s statement could be amended and updated: American presidents who declare that they will bow to the demands of dictators who threaten American citizens are declaring that there is nothing they will not betray. For those who were disturbed by President Obama’s diffidence in the face of Qaddafi’s wickedness, it’s worse than you think. The ramifications of Mr. Obama’s actions will outlive whatever happens in Tripoli.

The UN Human Rights Council, which just voted to suspend Libya as a member due to the country’s bloody crackdown on protesters, apparently doesn’t find it contradictory to release a report praising the Qaddafi regime’s human-rights record. From UN Watch:

Despite having just voted to suspend Libya from its ranks (to be finalized by the UNGA tomorrow), the UN Human Rights Council, according to the agenda of its current session, is planning to “consider and adopt the final outcome of the review of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.” According to the council’s timetable, the lengthy report hailing Libya’s human rights record will be presented on March 18, and then adopted by the council at the end of the month. The report, which the UN has published on the council website, is the outcome of a recent session that was meant to review Libya’s human rights record.

“Protection of human rights was guaranteed in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya; this included not only political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights,” reads the report. The countries lauding Libya’s human-rights record include Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.

UN Watch has called on the UN Human Rights Council to rescind the report. “The report is a fraud, an insult to Libya’s victims, and should be withdrawn immediately,” said Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, in a statement on the group’s website.

After this, do we really need any more evidence of how useless the Human Rights Council is? It’s a wonder that the U.S. taxpayers are still forced to support this sort of nonsense.

Rick’s characterization of the Obama posture on the Middle East is regrettably apt. American news media are dutifully reporting on the UN sanctions against Qaddafi and Hillary Clinton’s trip to Geneva, which we now hear has produced a promise of EU sanctions as well. But sanctions have never yet dislodged a brutal dictator, and they are not particularly meaningful to the problem at hand in Libya. As long as Qaddafi remains in the country, he will continue killing civilians in whatever quantities necessary to restore his control. A disorderly transfer of power could be equally sanguinary.

The nations of the EU are starting to take action. France is reportedly dispatching a humanitarian airlift to bring medical and other aid to the opposition group in Benghazi. Britain’s David Cameron, speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, referred to the possibility of arming the Libyan opposition as well as enforcing a no-fly zone. Italy has suspended its friendship treaty with Libya, paving the way for supporting no-fly zone enforcement from Italian territory.

Perhaps we should read into these events the galvanizing effect of President Obama’s phone call with Angela Merkel on Saturday. Meanwhile, the news Monday morning is that the USS Enterprise is being moved from the Red Sea back into the Mediterranean in case it is needed to assist in a response to the Libyan crisis. About this, too, the administration is somewhere between cryptic and behindhand: the Defense Department spokesman explained that U.S. forces might provide humanitarian relief, but nothing has been decided yet, and the State Department “has not yet made a request to the military.” Read More

President Obama today said, “I don’t think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon.”

I wonder if the president, who loves to portray himself as the high-minded arbiter of what is and what is not appropriate in American political discourse, might say something — anything — about the denigration and vilification of the governor of Wisconsin, who has been compared to Mubarak, Mussolini, bin Laden, and Hitler. There is nothing comparable being said about public employees.

If Obama were genuine in his concern about putting an end to (in his words, on the night of his election) “the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for too long,” he would have spoken out long ago on the slandering of Governor Walker. But he has not.

With each passing week, the president provides more and more evidence of his hypocrisy and cynicism. One cannot help but wonder if he even realizes it or whether his ideology has blinded him to it all. Whatever the case, it isn’t a good thing for him or for the country.