Good and Evil
Items on the problem of evil and responses to evil
Lebanon on the Brink
Thu 15 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman
The international community is proving feckless in restraining the influence of Hezbollah and thus Iran in Lebanon.
Has Lebanon, one of the few states in the Arab world with a free press, free elections, and a broadly pro-Western orientation, finally plunged into the abyss of an Islamofascist dictatorship? It looked very like that last week as Hezbollah gunmen, well-armed and well-trained, poured into the streets of Beirut and for a while controlled the city and much of the country. Lebanon appeared about to resume the civil war that ravaged it between 1975 and 1990. More than fifty people died in clashes between rival militias.
A Tale of Temptation for Our Times
Mon 28 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Joseph Loconte
Thoughts on ‘The Screwtape Letters’
Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte looks at the themes behind C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters—both the original book and the current stage play, suggesting that the bond between faith and reason points to the deepest mystery of human existence.
Firm Foundations?
Sun 27 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Pete Peterson
Is there a difference between earthquake-proofing and terrorist-proofing our buildings?
The next steps in the eventual building of One World Trade Center were taken last month in a desolate patch of the New Mexico desert about ninety miles south of Albuquerque with little media fanfare, but a large bang. There, the building’s architects from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill witnessed the explosion of a three-story replica of the structure’s aluminum and glass casing. The test was a success as only few of the glass panels were smashed in the blast.
In a post–9/11 world, that’s how we must design and build the skyscrapers of the future: capable of withstanding acts of God and man. Here in California, earthquake-testing our tall buildings has been a mandated practice for decades, and in other regions of the country, formalized tests for withstanding high wind and rain are not only well-known, but are a required part of architectural education.
Political Democracy at Its Most Interesting
Thu 14 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Can anyone recall a presidential election in the U.S. more interesting than the current one? I can’t. In the more than four decades since I moved to the U.S. (initially not being qualified to vote), I’ve encountered everything from apathy to zealotry, with cynicism and despair in good measure in between. But I never can recall the degree of excitement that has been elicited among voters, especially by Barack Obama.
When I was in graduate school in the late 1960s, I was taken aback by the dismay of most college undergraduates in 1968 that Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, was running against Richard Nixon. Nixon? Many young people in the 1960s would rather gag than pronounce that word. American intellectuals since that time have developed a cottage industry of running down the quality of American politicians. But they have no case to make in 2008.
The Rise of Political Hatred
Mon 04 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
An article in the Wall Street Journal last November by Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, had a disturbing observation. After he had carefully explained to a group of politically liberal academics whom he was hosting for dinner that he was dismayed by the vitriolic hatred expressed in attacks upon President Bush, he was harangued by several of the guests. According to Berkowitz, one guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, “What’s irrational about hating George W. Bush?”
‘Christian America, this is YOUR Columbine’
Fri 21 Dec 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Isn’t this a hate crime?
There is something very perplexing in the mainstream media response to the shootings at a Youth With A Mission center in Arvada, Colorado, and New Life Church in Colorado Springs, seventy miles away. The shooter, Matthew Murray, 24, initially murdered two staffers at the Youth With A Mission training base in Arvada, Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, shortly after midnight on December 10. Several hours later, he drove seventy miles to the large Colorado Springs church and murdered two more victims, young sisters, Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, before being shot at by a female security guard, falling to the ground, and then shooting himself.
Turkey and the Armenian Genocide
Mon 15 Oct 2007 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman
“This is a choice between condemning genocide and endangering our soldiers in Iraq,” was how Tom Lantos, Democratic chairman of the House committee and himself a Jewish Holocaust survivor, summed up the dilemma. Should the House Foreign Affairs committee approve a resolution designating a barbarous mass killing by the Turkish government in 1915 “genocide”? If the full House votes within a few weeks to pass the resolution, which is non-binding on the administration, the White House warned that vital transportation and communication links with U.S. forces in Iraq might be endangered. Turkey could slow down or even halt the passage of U.S. military goods and personnel through the Incirlik airbase in eastern Turkey. To underscore the threat, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week in a phone call with President Bush specifically threatened a Turkish retaliation against the resolution. The day after the Congressional Committee vote, Turkey recalled its ambassador to the U.S.
Burma: Monks vs. Generals
Fri 28 Sep 2007 by David Aikman
Is it possible that one of the most repressive regimes in the entire world, the reactionary and superstitious rule of the generals in Burma, is about to fall? It would be foolish to predict an imminent change of regime in a country where the ruling military clique has successfully resisted virtually all change for nearly half a century. But it is certainly possible. For the fifth straight day, up to 1,300 young Buddhist monks splashed through the monsoon-soaked streets of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the capital of Myanmar (formerly Burma) in outright, but silent, protest against that country’s military regime. The generals, who rule the country, declared the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks, were an “enemy of the people.” The monks would not desist from protesting, they said, until they had “wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma.”
Petraeus and Crocker: The Best of Their Generation
Thu 20 Sep 2007 by David Aikman
The performances of four-star General David Petraeus and Career Ambassador Ryan Crocker before Congress recently were startling for a number of reasons. First, Petraeus, the administration point man for the conduct of the war in Iraq, explicitly denied that his remarks had been even reviewed in advance by anyone above him in the military and civilian chain of command, much less cleared, before he presented them to the U.S. Congress. The White House, in effect, was not in the loop in his Congressional testimony. Second, neither Petraeus nor Crocker “promised” the American people victory in Iraq or suggested that it was even probable; the most they offered was that it was “attainable.” Third, after four and a half years of a war that has become increasingly unpopular in the U.S., here was a fighting general from that war on Capitol Hill being almost mobbed by Senators and Members of Congress who were climbing over each other to shake his hand. Fourth, after four and a half years in which the entire Iraq War has become intensely political, the key figures speaking about it to the American people were not politicians at all, but career professionals: one in the military, one in the Foreign Service.
Iran: The Regime Tightens the Screws
Thu 16 Aug 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Internal factors may yet destabilize the government of Iran, but don’t bet your foreign policy on it.
The photographs were deeply unsettling: seven bodies swung in the breeze from public gallows in the city of Mashad, Iran’s second-largest city. “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) shouted the crowd assembled to watch the public executions. In case the grim message was being overlooked, local TV carried a live broadcast.
This is Iran, early in August 2007, and apparently in the grip of the most intensive crackdown on dissent and political opposition since a purge of the country’s universities in 1984. According to some people, the crackdown on real and suspected opponents of the regime may be as murderous as the Ayatollah Khomeini’s execution of regime opponents in the year 1980, within months of his taking power.
