The White House might be trying to recapture the Arab League’s support for military action in Libya, after the organization condemned the intervention today.

According to The Hill, Vice President Joe Biden placed calls to Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad of Kuwait today, in an attempt to gin up endorsements for the ongoing air strikes.

The White House said that Biden “discussed with both the prime minister and the emir their mutual support for the full implementation of the resolution and the need to protect the Libyan people.”

After the Arab League’s about-face on the no-fly zone, it’s not necessary for the White House to pander to it in this way. The Obama administration has maintained for weeks that a no-fly zone would inevitably entail an attack on Libya’s air force. The UN Security Council measure, which was supported by the Arab League, clearly spelled out that “all necessary measures” – including air and sea attacks – would be used against the Libyan military.

The Arab League wants it both ways. By calling on the UN to take action, it was able to finally compel the Obama administration to support military intervention in Libya. And now that Western forces have intervened, the organization can sit back and bemoan that it was clueless about what a no-fly zone actually entailed. By continuing to seek the Arab League’s approval, the White House is rewarding disloyalty and giving the organization more weight than it deserves.

Liberal supporters of Barack Obama’s war in Libya argue that this is all vastly different from President Bush’s war in Iraq, because the former has been more successful in winning international sanction. (See, for instance, these articles by Peter Bergen and David Corn.) Unfortunately, as Abe has already pointed out, there are limits to how far our new-found supporters are willing to go–witness the weasely Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, who is already starting to disassociate himself from actions taken in the Arab League’s name. (No doubt turning on the West will be good fodder for his campaign for Egypt’s presidency.)

The broader point is that international support at the beginning of an operation is less important than support at the end–and that depends not on how many UN resolutions you can win (we had quite a few in the case of Iraq, it is worth recalling) but how successful you are in achieving your war aims on the ground. Case in point: the war in Afghanistan which had as much international support as possible when it started in 2001 but has been fast declining in popularity, with allies pulling their forces out or about to, because it has dragged on so long and so indecisively. When it comes to Iraq, my firm belief is that if the war had gone as well as the Bush administration had expected–if our forces had found WMD stockpiles and if they had managed to quickly stabilize the situation and avoid a protracted insurgency–then there would have been widespread support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein including across the Muslim world. The war became intensely unpopular, and a rallying point for jihadist forces, not because it lacked sufficient UN authorization (something that Abu Musab al Zarqawi and Muqtada al Sadr couldn’t have cared less about), but because it was incompetently conducted and led to a vacuum of authority that radicals could fill.

In Libya, what this means is that the Obama administration should tone down its boasting–which so far has proven false, anyway–about how other countries are taking the lead. Rather than rushing to put the U.S. in the background, they should be worrying about the endgame: how are we going to get Qaddafi out of power and what comes next? There is a real danger of a protracted stalemate followed by a precipitous collapse of the regime leading to a vacuum of authority which could be filled by tribal fighters and jihadists. To avert such an outcome we should be training the rebel armed forces and making plans to send in an international peacekeeping force to assist in the transition if and when Qaddafi is finally pushed out of power.

This may come as a surprise to you if you’ve ever read the Guardian’s coverage of Israel, but there are apparently very strict rules that prohibit the British media from publishing racist or discriminatory articles. While that hasn’t seemed to curb the borderline anti-Semitism at the Guardian, a Muslim advocacy group has filed a police complaint against the Spectator for publishing an allegedly “offensive” column by Melanie Phillips:

A Melanie Phillips blog post on the Spectator website which referred to the “moral depravity” of Arab “savages” is being investigated by the Press Complaints Commission.

The online comment piece, headlined “Armchair barbarism”, focused on media coverage of the murder of five members of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar by Palestinian militants earlier this month.

While the Guardian and the Independent both claimed that there was an investigation against the publication, the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson writes that this is untrue. While two Muslim advocacy groups have filed complaints with the PCC and the Bedfordshire Police, the case hasn’t gone further than that.

Of course, the case doesn’t have to go further than that. The advocacy groups have already succeeded at portraying a fairly unobjectionable Spectator column as Islamophobic, thanks to the compliance of the British media. As Nelson points out, the scheme went something like this:

1) Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, gets angry about what he reads on Melanie’s blog.
2) Complains to the PCC.
3) Complains to the police.
4) Phones up The Guardian and says “The PCC are investigating The Spectator!! Story!! Police too!!
5) The Guardian duly writes it all up, on its website.
6) The Independent follows up The Guardian.
7) An inverted pyramid of piffle is thus constructed.

A foolproof plan. And, as of now, there’s still no correction on the Guardian’s website.

The Arab League wanted our help. Until they got it.

The head of the Arab League has criticized international strikes on Libya, saying they caused civilian deaths.

The Arab League’s support for a no-fly zone last week helped overcome reluctance in the West for action in Libya. The U.N. authorized not only a no-fly zone but also “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.

Amr Moussa says the military operations have gone beyond what the Arab League backed.

Sure, and he’d like that with one and a half Splendas, hazelnut soy, cinnamon, no nutmeg, and a sprinkling of criticism toward Israel.  Which is why the U.S. should act on its own initiative. The no-fly zone and its attendant operations are worthwhile and morally sound all on their own. They didn’t become any more so because non-democratic governments gave them a temporary thumbs-up.

I made the same point on Twitter but it’s worth asking again to a broader audience. On one side you have Israel taking a partial step in approving the construction of Jewish homes in the capital of the Jewish State. On the other side you have Palestinian Authority officials celebrating Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist who led the murder of 37 Israelis including 13 children.

Compare…

Clinton rebuked… Netanyahu… demanding that Israel take immediate steps to show it is interested in renewing efforts to achieve a Middle East peace agreement… Clinton called Netanyahu “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship… [and that] this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”… Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction.

… and contrast:

The State Department called “disturbing” reports that Palestinian Authority officials attended the renaming of a square after a terrorist, saying it condemned such commemorations. “We are very disturbed by these reports and are seeking clarification from the Palestinian Authority,” a State Department official told JTA. “We condemn any commemoration of acts of terrorism and underscore that all parties have an obligation to end incitement.”

Assuming that State gets clarification from the Palestinians that they did indeed do what they did – a nicety our Israeli allies were not offered – will Abbas face the same fury from the White House? Will it be publicly announced that he is harming American interests? Will cuts in U.S. assistance get dangled in front of his face? Above all else, will he be instructed to make specific concessions to the Israelis lest President Obama escalate the diplomatic row into a full-blown breakdown?

The Israelis were not violating specific agreements with the United States when they got that treatment, while the Palestinian Authority is obligated to end incitement. So it would seem that what Abbas’s subordinates did was worse than what Netanyahu’s subordinates did. There are very few explanations short of personal antipathy for why the White House would be harsher with a stable democratic ally than with a terrorist-celebrating quasi-government. Certainly “objectively promoting American interests” doesn’t seem to be on the list.

Also that line about how “all parties have an obligation to end incitement,” as if the Israelis were also naming squares after terrorist child-murderers – kind of obnoxious.

Lewis Carroll had nothing on the National Jurist, a magazine for law students. The cover story of the current issue is “How Rankings Are Destroying Law Schools.” But another article in the very same issue . . . (wait for it!) ranks law schools. This time it’s according to their student body ”diversity. “

And what makes a law school “diverse”? It’s strictly according to what percentage of the student body is black, Hispanic, or Asian-American, with a boost for exceeding the percentage of those groups in the general population of the state in which the law school is located. The result is an absurdity.

Traditionally black schools, such as Howard University (No. 3), and schools in areas with very high minority populations, such as the University of Hawaii (No. 11), automatically rank very high, although their student bodies, in fact, are very un-diverse.

If there were a law school whose student body consisted entirely of left-handed gay black Baptist male stamp collectors from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, it would be the most diverse law school in the country under this formula.

As Tweedledee says in Through the Looking Glass, “Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

(H/T instapundit)

This is reaching the level of self-caricature. No sooner does Iran get a seat on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women than it uses it with tragicomic predictability:

[The] U.N. policy-making body dedicated to “gender equality and the advancement of women” adopted a resolution accusing Israel of holding back the advancement of Palestinian women, but it took no action on the emergency in Libya or the legally enshrined discrimination faced by women in Iran. The only country-specific resolution passed by the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at its recent session in New York was one condemning Israel over the Palestinian issue.

Iranian prison guards rape female dissidents before executing them, lest their victims go to heaven as virgins. Iranian men get to avail themselves of temporary marriages, de facto legalizing the institutionalized slavery and rape of prepubescent girls. Iranian women are consigned to the backs of buses, have to shroud their bodies from head to toe, and can’t wear anything bright or shiny.

That’s just what’s happening in a single CSW member state.

The greater hypocrisy is what was ignored globally so that the Commission could spend time demonizing Israel. It’s not necessary to belabor the second-class status that women are consigned to throughout the Muslim world, except maybe to note two things that diverge from the quotidian misery.

First, it’s worth noting what’s happening to women in ostensibly egalitarian Turkey, and for that Michael Rubin’s recent post is mandatory reading. Second, not calling out what’s happening to women in Egypt right now is simply unconscionable. A body charged with promoting women’s freedom can’t ignore when freedom in general comes at the expense of women’s physical security, even if horrific gender apartheid has been woven into Egyptian society for centuries. Nina Burleigh is instructive on that last part.

Turkey and Egypt have horrific records on women’s rights. Iran, a CSW member state, is worse than both of them. And yet again Israel got singled out for condemnation, because it’s the UN so why not?

Another year of dithering and fumbling has somewhat tarnished The One’s halo:

The list of countries where approval of U.S. leadership dropped substantially in 2010 is nearly four times longer than the list of countries with sizable gains. It also represents every major global region and includes major nations. Notably, U.S. leadership lost significant ground in three Arab countries — United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Algeria — but the relatively low approval ratings are still higher in Egypt and Algeria than during the Bush administration.

Every write-up I saw was careful to note that last caveat, where Gallup emphasized that Obama’s America is still more popular than the second half of the second term of Bush’s America. AFP, for example, put it in the lede and then repeated it so many times that Bush’s name appeared more in the article than Obama’s name.

The punchline, of course, is that even this argument is a red herring. Popularity is a component of global influence but it’s not the definition. Exerting our power is a tradeoff between doing what we need to do when it’s unpopular and following the international consensus when it’s popular.

Bush’s America was feeling the fallout from mobilizing mostly Western allies to invade mostly Muslim countries – the price of leading coalitions of the willing while most of the world remained unwilling. Obama doesn’t have that excuse.

What Obama has is the promise of buying global popularity with American deference. The president – along with Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and their media and academic enablers – insisted that subordinating ourselves to the Lilliputians at the United Nations would create robust alliances. Listening to the Arab Street was supposed to quiet its clamor. Resetting relations with rivals, as in banana republics where each new regime repudiates and apologizes for the last, was supposed to create long-lasting dialogues.

Instead we have a situation where we’re ceding the global stage without the promised payoff of even a pat on the back. Maybe another Cairo Speech will fix things.

Warren Christopher came from the humblest of beginnings. Born in 1925 in North Dakota, in a small prairie town settled by European immigrants around 1900, he watched his father and mother struggle there during the Depression. In Chances of a Lifetime, he wrote that he learned “the look and sound of dignity and stoicism in the face of adversity,” and the “human scenes I witnessed in the flat, dry North Dakota plains while at my father’s side may account more than anything else for the tilt of my social and political concerns in the direction of the unfortunate.”

His intelligence was intimidating. He graduated at age 19 from USC magna cum laude, served in World War II, and went to Stanford Law School, where he became the first president of the Stanford Law Review. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, joined the premier Los Angeles law firm, and eventually became its managing partner. He periodically left for public service: deputy attorney general under Johnson; deputy secretary of state under Carter; secretary of state under Clinton. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. Read More

Nothing’s better than when the UN shoehorns “new security and human rights norms” into Chapter VII resolutions:

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also said on Thursday that the justification for the use of force was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P), “a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

R2P isn’t really a new idea, and it’s not even particularly new to the United Nations. It just hasn’t been used this way before. In the past it’s been applied mainly to African contexts, as an argument for why humanitarian concerns justified intervention. It was more or less formalized by the UN in a 2006 resolution, and then Ban pushed it again in a 2009 report called Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. In 2009, we also saw the creation of the International Coalition For The Responsibility To Protect, a group of NGO’s brought together to extend and institutionalize R2P.

Some might be suspicious of the ICRtoP because its funding comes from organizations that provide backing for Israel-demonizing NGO’s. The coalition’s government donors include the governments of Sweden and Britain (NGO Monitor writeups here and here) and it gets part of its foundation money from the Oak Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (NGO Monitor shoutouts here and here). But that would be mere guilt by donor association. Here is a less ambiguous sample of ICRtoP thinking from 2009, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza:

The recent escalation of violence in Gaza has raised serious questions about the use of the Responsibility to Protect to urge international action to protect civilians in the conflict. The Responsibility to Protect has been referred to, notably by Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also others who claim that crimes committed in Gaza by Israeli forces have reached the threshold of R2P crimes.

This is part and parcel of the statements that the ICRtoP has been publishing since it was established in the immediate aftermath of Cast Lead. They published a petition absurdly insisting that “the rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not… amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence.” They passed along Richard Falk’s “Israelis could be charged with war crimes” lawfare spin on the Goldstone Report. They reprinted other articles accusing Israelis of war crimes here and here and here and here and here. All of this was under the umbrella of “evaluating” whether R2P should be brought to bear against Israel’s self-defense campaigns.

The Responsibility To Protect, in other words, is an international norm that has been incubated with eyes on Israel at least since Cast Lead. Now it’s being used as the basis for UN resolutions backed by French warplanes and American Tomahawks. How did that get in there?

In today’s Wall Street Journal, James Freeman interviews Paul Singer, who runs the hedge fund called Elliott Management and also serves on COMMENTARY’s board of directors. The interview is well worth your time, but it may disrupt your sleep, because it offers an all-too-believable scenario for the next financial disaster. This time, according to Singer, it might happen due to legislation and regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 meltdown that will bring troubled financial institutions too close to government. In the bailout process, government agencies will have the right to choose which creditors get paid and which don’t—and the uncertainty of that will cause all of them to flee the firm once a bailout is even thinkable. This is the ultimate “unanticipated consequence.”

I can attest to Paul Singer’s prognosticative powers. I first met him in June 2007, and I asked him at the time about the subprime mortgage market, whose problems had begun to make the front page. “The worst recession of our lifetimes is now baked in the cake,” he said, 15 months before the meltdown of 2008.

So he’s worth a listen.

“Our mission now is to shape the battle space,” said the Pentagon spokesman in describing the military task underway in Libya, “and let other nations take the lead.” So, as the world watches, the United States is taking the lead in Libya, even as the administration continues to argue that, in fact, the U.S. is just playing a supporting role. Odd. Of course, if the end result is the quick toppling of Qaddafi, the argument will not matter, because the president will happily and properly take the credit, especially since it will poll well.

I have been critical in recent days of President Obama for lack of leadership on Libya but I part company with some of my colleagues on this blog in that I sense this is changing. True, he waited for the UN Security Council to come together before acting in Libya, thereby losing vital time. But the legitimacy the UN confers should not be underestimated—much as it may pain me (and other critics of the UN) to admit it. Having the Arab League on board is also a plus. There is even talk that Qatar, UAE, and Jordan may participate in a military campaign against Qaddafi—good news if true, although, as autocracies (if relatively benign ones), they are hardly shining exemplars of the “new Middle East.” Most important of all, France and Britain appear prepared to take on a major part of the military burden.

All in all, I give Obama credit for assembling an impressive coalition, and avoiding a Russian or Chinese veto at the Security Council. The question is what he does with the authority of Resolution 1973.

In his public statement today Obama sounded resolute—but he also set out fairly narrow goals and did not reiterate his previous call for Qaddafi’s ouster. Qaddafi has said he is imposing a ceasefire. What if his forces pull back from eastern Libya? Does that mean we won’t impose a no-fly zone or mount air strikes? If so that would leave Qaddafi in control of a substantial part of the country where he could continue the human rights abuses that are rightly condemned by the United Nations—and could force the U.S. to undertake a lengthy and costly military involvement to make sure that Qaddafi stands by his promises not to march into Benghazi. Much simpler and surer to do everything possible, short of dispatching ground troops, to topple Qaddafi. I have previously noted that such steps would include a no-fly zone combined with air strikes on Qaddafi’s ground forces and also training and arms for the rebel forces.

That represents a substantial commitment on our part, and comes with attendant risks. No doubt there is still a faction in the administration hoping that a few symbolic moves will be enough to get Qaddafi to cease and desist. But our goal should not be simply a temporary cessation of the violence. A lasting solution requires Gaddafi to be gone, and that won’t be easy to achieve. We may have a real fight on our hands. I only hope that the administration is ready for that.

Senator John Kerry has been enjoying his post as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee so much that many in Washington are speculating that he is auditioning to replace Hillary Clinton as President Obama’s next secretary of state. Whether that ambition pans out remains to be seen but there’s little doubt that he is trying to stake out ground as one of the Democrats’ leaders on foreign policy. To that end, he has been speaking out, to his credit, urging action on Libya. Indeed, he went much further than that earlier this week in a Washington speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, urging a complete reassessment of American policy in the Middle East and an end to our sometimes all too cozy relations with Arab dictators. “We can no longer view the Middle East solely through the lens of Sept. 11,” said Kerry. “Now, we must view it through the lens of 2011.”

Though he seemed to be framing his stand as one that would wrongly seek to downplay security threats from Islamist terrorism, there was certainly a good deal of truth in his belief that America cannot base its relations with the Arab and Islamic worlds solely on a policy of supporting dictators, authoritarians, and despotic monarchs. However, it appears that Kerry’s pursuit of another of his foreign policy obsessions contradicts the good advice he’s been giving about not getting into bed with Arab tyrants. Though he has spent the past few months urging the United States to rethink the “realist” policy that led to close alliances with authoritarian governments in the region, Kerry seems to think there ought to be an exception to this rule: Syria.

Even as he urged us to think about “2011,” Kerry is using the bully pulpit that his committee provides to engage in free-lance diplomacy with Syrian leader Bashar Assad, the head of one of the most repressive and unrepresentative regimes in the world. Just last month, Kerry was in Syria seeking to revive a deal whereby Israel would surrender the strategic Golan Heights to Assad in return for a promise of peace. Kerry’s coziness with Assad (replacing Arlen Specter as the Syrians’ contact in the Senate) is no secret and he has been using his influence with Obama to push for more pressure on Israel to engage with Syria in spite of the fact that this initiative has virtually no chance of success.

As most serious observers of Syria have long pointed out, the last thing a dictator like Assad (and his father before him), who is from an unpopular minority group and who continues to use the most vicious forms of oppression to keep his people in line, needs is the removal of a convenient external enemy in the form of Israel. Peace with the Jewish state would certainly be in Syria’s best interests but it would also be a profound threat to the Assad police state. Moreover, the likelihood of Assad ditching his Iranian allies in order to embrace America and Israel at a time when Arab moderates are reeling is practically non-existent. In the meantime, as Amir Taheri reports today in the New York Post, the repression of dissent going on Syria rivals anything happening elsewhere in the region.

The point here is not just that Kerry’s Syrian peace gambit is a pathetic waste of time, though it certainly is that. It is that engaging in this futile endeavor while playing footsy with one of the worst and bloodiest Arab autocrats and simultaneously posing as an advocate of new thinking about the Middle East exposes Kerry as a world-class hypocrite and liar. There is no doubt that this initiative will fail, as all previous attempts at appeasing the Assad gangster clan have failed in the past. But it is outrageous that the Washington press corps has allowed Kerry’s new foreign policy posturing to go unchallenged. What this proves is that while new thinking is sometimes welcomed by the capital’s foreign policy and media establishment, old patent nostrums like Kerry’s engagement with Syria get recycled regularly simply because they involve something the chattering classes always approve of: pressure on Israel to make concessions to violent Arab foes.

Listening to the president’s statement on U.S. interest in the no-fly zone over Libya, I am principally struck by how well Abe’s assessment (and mine) holds up: Obama has declined a leadership role.

Obama’s language was descriptive, not active or leaderly. He applauded our NATO allies and the Arab League for their leadership and endorsed the points in the UN resolution, but declined to state a U.S. determination to secure any positive objective.

The line quoted above — “The United States did not seek this outcome” — is not a statesman’s comment. It’s whining. Regrettably, with his statement this morning, the president has not clarified or strengthened the U.S. position on executing this military task.

It will be a great learning opportunity to observe what happens in the next few days. This week marks the first time a no-fly zone has been authorized without explicit U.S. leadership and a U.S.-led plan for implementation. When earlier no-fly zones were imposed in the Balkans and Iraq, the U.S. was already in the lead: the UN and the enforcement coalitions moved forward with the strategic vision of the U.S. as the common proposition.

That is not the case for Libya. I agree with Max Boot that there are effective ways to employ military force in Libya, but the emerging conditions are not favorable. For one thing, the basic situation has changed overnight. As satisfying as it is to see the threat of a no-fly zone force a strategic adjustment on Qaddafi, his cease-fire declaration may serve to spike Britain’s and France’s guns. The next move for the coalition forming against him is not what it seemed to be 12 hours ago.

It is not clear which direction the coalition will go. Britain is reportedly interested in coming out of this with regime change; other partners regard that as overreach. Hillary Clinton said this morning that the U.S. “will not be impressed by words” from Qaddafi and “must see action on the ground” — but it’s not obvious that Qaddafi has been informed of what action would be satisfactory, or even what the threat is if he fails to take it. Read More

The New York Times reports on a controversy that’s recently erupted over one of the essay prompts on the latest SAT. Some test-takers have grumbled that the question, which asks students to weigh in on the “authenticity” of reality TV shows, rewards high schoolers who watch the shows and leaves more studious high schoolers at a disadvantage:

On the online forum College Confidential, a debate over the essay “stretched across nearly 40 pages,” as of Wednesday, reported the Times.

Here’s the SAT prompt in full:

Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular. These shows depict ordinary people competing in everything from singing and dancing to losing weight, or just living their everyday lives. Most people believe that the reality these shows portray is authentic, but they are being misled. How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then editors alter filmed scenes?

The test goes on to ask students whether “people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.”

The question may be vapid, but then again, so are a lot of SAT essay prompts. The point of the section is to test for writing organization, coherency, logic, and proper use of grammar and spelling. The prompt is pretty much there to make sure students didn’t formulate and memorize an essay beforehand.

And it’s not necessary for test-takers to have detailed knowledge about reality shows in order to write a cultural critique of them. The question doesn’t ask for a synopsis of Jersey Shore; it asks whether “such forms of entertainment [are] harmful.” The students complaining that they were too busy focusing on academics to waste time on junk TV might have been better off making that argument in their SAT essay, rather than on message boards.

The 3 a.m. phone call finally came, and who was there to pick it up, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? The answer: Nicolas Sarkozy. A headline in today’s New York Times says it all: “Libya Calls Cease-Fire After Britain and France Vow Action ‘Soon.’” Well, almost all. The teaser gives some important color: “America’s role was unclear.”

Libyans rang up Washington mid-slaughter to find call-forwarding had been activated. In Paris, President Sarkozy took the lead with courage and purpose. He became the first international head of state to recognize the legitimacy of the Libyan opposition. Then he rallied international support for military intervention in hopes of halting a dictator who had turned his war apparatus against his human property.

The U.S. response to this noble effort? In Sec. Clinton’s words, “There are difficulties.” Exactly which administration doctrine does that brave and thoughtful declaration represent? Smart Power? Winning the Future? I know — it must be Restoring America’s Standing in the World. The G8 foreign ministers who heard it left the meeting in Paris this week “completely puzzled” about American intentions and priorities. Read More

The world was understandably obsessed this week with the disaster in Japan and the civil war in Libya. That’s part of the reason why two other news stories in the Middle East were largely ignored. One was the bloody massacre of five members of a Jewish family in a West Bank settlement. The other was Israel’s capture of a ship with a cargo of Iranian arms intended for the Hamas terrorists who govern Gaza. While the world’s attention is currently diverted from Israel and its dispute with the Palestinians, no matter what happens elsewhere, we know that sooner or later the narrative that depicts the Jewish state as being unwilling to make peace will return to the top of the international media’s agenda. And when it does, we will again be treated to more distorted stories about heartless Jews and Palestinian victims that will reinforce the false impression that the lack of peace is due to Israeli and not Arab intransigence. When that happens, observers would do well to recall the slaughtered Jewish family and the Iranian arms shipment.

Yet the juxtaposition of these two events with the holiday that Jews celebrate this weekend is a coincidence worth noting. The Jewish calendar is littered with dates that mourn tragedy and celebrate triumph. But Purim, which begins at sundown on Saturday night, is special in that it highlights the perils of weakness in the face of hate and the importance of taking timely action to head off mass murder. Indeed, the symbolism of this festival is such that, earlier this year, the Iranian government, which is led by men who seek to emulate Haman — the ancient Persian villain whose failed attempt to slaughter the Jews is chronicled in the Book of Esther — announced plans to turn the site in that country that is traditionally known as the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai into a museum commemorating those killed by Jews defending themselves against Haman’s attempted genocide.

The willingness of Palestinians to descend to the bestiality required to slit the throat of a sleeping Jewish infant (a feat reportedly commemorated in Gaza by the distribution of sweets) and the determination of Iran to pursue its own genocidal plans for the Jews by both sending arms to Hamas terrorists and proceeding with their nuclear project illustrates the horrific nature of the ongoing siege of Israel. Though Israel’s critics, as well as some in the Obama administration, sometimes speak as if all that was needed to end this conflict were but a few more concessions from Prime Minister Netanyahu, this week’s buried stories demonstrate the intractable nature of this conflict and the necessity of Israeli strength and military daring in the face of such threats.

The message of Purim is that if you really want to stop genocide, you need to do two things: speak up and then act decisively. That’s what Esther and Mordechai did, and what Israel and its friends must continue to do to head off the desire of latter-day Hamans to wipe out the Jewish people. That is a lesson that applies to more than threats to the Jews, an important point to remember when cynics urge inaction rather than intervention to topple tyrants and to forestall mass murder around the globe.