Spinning the story

Nidal Malik Hasan

Let’s turn the Fort Hood attack perpetrator into a poor victim.

You thought MSNBC’s Chris “leg tingle” Matthews was an expert at spinning stories, including that of Nidal Malik Hasan, the lone gunman who killed thirteen and wounded many more on Thursday? Expect a lot better from the Dutch media, reliable accomplices to the multiculturalist establishment in the Netherlands.

Readers of De Volkskrant must especially feel sorry for the poor guy. On Thursday, it reported: “According to his family and colleagues, Hasan had lots of problems in the army. Fellow soldiers questioned his loyalty because of his religion and descent.” The readers are then referred to an article in the Guardian, obviously the most reliable and authoritative source imaginable when it comes to such matters. This British newspaper “predicts that the bloodbath will cause tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in the U.S. army to increase.”

But lest we get worried that Mr. Hasan, who after all shouted “Allahu Akbar” before commencing his massacre, might perhaps be an Islamic terrorist, De Volkskrant assures us there is “no evidence” to suppose he is.

Dutch public television station NOS is pulling the same trick it pulled when Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was slaughtered on the street by an Islamic extremist: the real victims are the Muslims, who are now harassed by angry white people wherever they go. So it reports that “Muslims are worried about the consequences of the attack… . They are afraid of acts of revenge; countless threats have reportedly been received.”

The report then refers to “Islamic congressman [André] Carson from Indiana”, whom I’m sure not a single NOS employee had ever heard of previously. “According to Carson, the attack says just as little about Islam as the attack by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma says about Christianity.”   (Which is funny, because I recall McVeigh specifically invoking the Lord Jesus Christ when explaining his motives afterwards.)  And echoing Chris Matthews and De Volkskrant, the report concludes: “Up until now one can only speculate about the shooter’s motives.”

When American media were already digging up spicy background facts about Mr. Hasan and airing eyewitness reports, the Dutch were still being fed this nonsense. Even today, De Volkskrant, while at least acknowledging the possibility of an extremist motive, still makes it sound as if, in this case, there were only victims, no agressors: “Hasan’s aunt said her nephew was nagged because he was a Muslim.” Indeed, according to his imam in Washington, he was even “a pious Muslim”, for what that’s worth. But who wouldn’t snap after treating “numerous veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq with amputations and war traumas”?

Famous Dutch author Godfried Bomans once said: “Concealing something constantly is a form of indoctrination.” Indeed it is. I have stopped buying Dutch newspapers a long time ago. Judging from their reports on this subject these last few days, that has been a correct decision.

Update: Those (Dutch) readers interested in learning more about Mr. Hasan’s troubling background, should read this Hot Air posting.

Another day, another hit piece

Geert Wilders

Research conducted by three scholars and authorized by the Dutch government attempts to demonstrate that Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party belong to the “extreme right”.

Do the Dutch liberals actually want to be decimated in the next elections? Last weekend, we found Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders scoring political points once more by ridiculing the findings of three Dutch academic researchers.  Hans Moors, Jaap van Donselaar and Bob de Graaff, it was revealed, have just finished research on radicalization within Dutch society, based on which they concluded — after long deliberation and the delicate weighing of arguments, needless to say — that Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party is an extreme-right party which mobilizes Islamophobia and “systemic hatred” against the government. Indeed, the three argue in their as of yet unpublished report, Mr. Wilders “undermines democracy” itself.

These findings apparently demonstrate, in the words of Dutch daily De Volkskrant, what “various government agencies and departments” dare not say out loud out of fear Mr. Wilders “will score political points by claiming the authorities are attempting to silence him”. In fact, they are “fed up with Wilders”.

Well, their horror scenario seems to have come true anyway. But at least the sophisticated elites occupying our government bureaucracies will be able to shift the blame to these three researchers. Except for the fact that the latter were paid for their ground-breaking research by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior. According to De Volkskrant, the ministry is now distancing itself from their findings, given the “political sensitivity”.  (Interior minister Ms. Guusje ter Horst of course denies this.)

Too late. This genie is out of the bottle. Mr. Wilders reacted instantly by calling the researchers “lunatic”. Claiming his means and motives are fully democratic, he added: “If something’s undermining democracy it’s this liberal elite (these fake researchers among them) and Islamization.” A labour party minister and liberal democrat opposition leader, who claimed the report confirmed their long-held suspicions, were on Monday qualified by Mr. Wilders as “accomplices to Mohammed Bouyeri” (the Islamic extremist who killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, accidentally five years ago last Monday).

Edwin Bakker, another terrorism expert of the Clingendael institute — to which I devoted a previous post recently –, added fuel to the fire by stating, in the same Volkskrant article, that Geert Wilders indeed “undermines state security” by slandering Islam and so unleashing violent forces against Dutch interests (mostly) abroad. On television on Monday night, Mr. Bakker added that the “systemic hatred” argument holds true as well, since Wilders keeps bashing those politicians, journalists and judges in the “system” day after day.

Well, Mr. Bakker, if we decide to collectively adjust our tone to the delicate ears of radicals in the Middle East, we can be sure our level of freedom will accordingly decrease to the level common over there. Better be careful what you wish for. Perhaps you care less for democracy than for international “stability”, but others — including myself — might disagree. As for Mr. Wilders attacking the Dutch political system, he tends to go nuclear on the liberals occupying it rather than on the system as such. Regardless of his sometimes repulsive methods, one can hardly blame him for doing so.

This nuance demonstrates perfectly why the report is ultimately a mere vulgar hit job. For it is now turned into a helpful tool in silencing Mr. Wilders’ dissent from the political mainstream. Jaap van Donselaar, one of its three writers and a self-proclaimed expert on the “extreme right”, has inflated that term so as to include politicians that emphasize “the self”, take a tough stance on crime, and want to curb immigration. As one Dutch journalist noted, by this standard more or less all political parties in the Netherlands would belong to the extreme right (as would the Republican Party in the U.S.).

In the end, the ascent of politicians such as Mr. Wilders is a direct result of the failure of the liberal establishment, which, after all, has caused great and irreversible damage to this country, and has often done so in a quite undemocratic fashion. Mass immigration is but one striking example.

Recently, a former Labour advisor casually conceded that one strong motive for mass immigration into Britain throughout the past decade has been to render that country truly multicultural, and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. This motive, however, has always been kept hidden from the public, which has heard nothing but economic arguments for Labour’s immigration policy.

Closer to home, I heard René Danen, the founder of an organization that promotes multiculturalism and fights the extreme and not so extreme right on every occasion imaginable, cheer the three researchers’ findings on television the other day. After all, this new report may just boost the Dutch public prosecutor’s attempts to have Mr. Wilders convicted for “hate-mongering” and “discrimination” (a lawsuit is currently being prepared). That, consequently, would signal to the Dutch that Dutch politics leaves no room for extremists, Mr. Danen said, causing people to turn their backs on Mr. Wilders’ Freedom Party.

Needless to say, these are the forces that “undermine democracy”, not Mr. Wilders. I will readily concede to Evelien Tonkens that some of Mr. Wilders’ proposals are, in fact, “smelly”. But the foul stench I’m smelling this autumn most decidedly originates on the left.

Dutch IR institute scholar: Nobel Prize was warranted

Nobel Peace Prize

Let’s just “recognize Barack Obama’s truly inspired leadership for what it is.” (What’s that supposed to mean anyway?)

The hitherto unknown Nils de Mooij, a research fellow at Dutch Institute of International Relations Clingendael, appears to disagree with my previous post, arguing instead that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama was fully justified: “The Peace Prize isn’t a life-time achievement award, and it can be an incentive to further positive action as much as an acknowledgement of concrete results.”

De Mooij’s resumé on Clingendael’s website reveals he and I completed more or less the same university programs. He’s also served as president of the Utrecht chapter of the Dutch United Nations Student Association, known among International Relations incrowd as SIB Utrecht. Now, in my college days I twice attended a lecture organized by SIB, one featuring Dutch anti-Israeli activist Gretta Duisenberg and the other a Tibet liberation activist. After that, I decided SIB wasn’t the thing for me.

In 2007, de Mooij accepted his current postion at Clingendael. Although a respectable think tank, it was the only of its kind in the Netherlands at that point (we now have two). Heavily subsized by the Dutch government, it conveniently serves — and holds intimate connections to — the Dutch foreign policy elites. Its policy positions waver from a descriptive foreign policy “realism” (mainly in order to explain away hostility by enemies of the West) to a prescriptive “liberal internationalism” (when urging the West to abide by the U.N. charter by any means).

So the Nobel Peace Prize, de Mooij argues, can serve as a mere “incentive” as much as being an award for “concrete results”. That being said, “there are four good reasons why granting [President Obama] the award, even this early in his presidency, was warranted” in any case: firstly, “setting the world’s most powerful nation back on the path to moral respectability”; secondly, recommitting “the United States more broadly to multilateral cooperation and respect for international law”; thirdly, President Obama’s “essentially realist insight that international cooperation cannot be fixed along moral lines”; and finally, his “high-profile efforts to curb the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.”

De Mooij’s “path to moral respectability” is, needless to say, a path away from extraordinary renditions, Guantánamo Bay, and “torture”: “One cannot lead if” not even “America’s friends and allies” are “willing to follow.” Amen to that. Except that “America’s friends and allies” have never in history been too eager to follow, except when international circumstances (i.c. World War II and the Cold War) forced them to allow the Americans to come to the rescue — once more. Even after repeated Jihadist attacks on its very own territory, Western Europe will not wake up from its current holiday from history.

Now President Obama has (foolishly) called for the closing of Guantánamo, moreover, European countries are hardly in a rush to help him out by adopting its detainees. Of course, pointing at the excruciating horrors inside Gitmo was politically convenient when the guy they loved to hate — President Bush — was in charge. None of the European leaders, however, will risk their already fragile careers by flying in bad guys who will prove impossible to prosecute and might return to the world-wide Jihad against the West right after being released from prison. Cheering for Obama was fun as long as it didn’t entail tough political choices. (This is not even to mention that enhanced interrogation in fact helped preventing terrorists from conducting new attacks against the United States.)

As for President Obama’s multilateralist foreign policy approach, the only pieces of evidence de Mooij comes up with are American recognition “that many nations besides the U.S. are ‘indispensable’”, President Obama’s shaking hands with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez at the OAS summit, and his extending a “hand of friendship” to Iran. And de Mooij sees some results already: “[The OAS'] agreement to lift the 47-year old ban on Cuban membership greatly improved the chances for meaningful cooperation in Latin America. Tone and style do make a difference. Perceptions matter. And never more so in a world [sic] that is as interconnected as that of the 21st century.”

Well, if extending a hand of friendship to Iran entails remaining silent on the sidelines while the Mullahs in Tehran were having Iranian protesters murdered on the streets, de Mooij is completely right, but perhaps his memory failed him on this one. The supposedly necessary “thaw in relations with Iran” he calls for will not occur, however. The Iranian regime has since 1979 defined itself by its anti-Americanism, mostly for domestic purposes. Its only goal is creating its much-desired nuclear weapon, which will provide it with full-fledged security against an Israeli and/or American military attack, and thus likely guarantee its long-lasting survival. This is the way tyrannical regimes work.

Finally, de Mooij praises President Obama’s efforts at engaging with Russia. It has already resulted in Obama’s canceling the U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe, which, de Mooij argues, would have led to Russian retaliation “by placing new tactical nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad.” In fact, a system featuring ten defensive missiles was never a match for Russia’s nuclear arsenal, which the Kremlin of course knew. The real reasons for Russian intransigence were its renewed geopolitical ambitions and the humiliation of having to watch NATO military equipment being shipped to former Warschau Pact territory. While the Kremlin has succeeded in blackmailing the White House out of this, it has given nothing in return, since it still resists imposing further U.N. sanctions on Iran. In short, appeasing Russia has yielded zero results, while a powerful trump card was squandered in the process and loyal allies were snubbed.

De Mooij’s gratuitous opinionating demonstrates his eagerness to see “international cooperation” and abiding by “international law” as ends in themselves rather than means towards greater and more sustainable security for the United States and the West. With Obama having nothing to show for his Nobel Prize, de Mooij’s comments are perfect evidence for my original contention that, to liberals, “intentions matter more than actual results.”

In the meanwhile, neither the U.S. nor Europe has become the slightest bit safer, peace in the Middle East is no less a pipe dream than a year ago, and Iran hasn’t yet been stopped from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Until these facts — especially the latter — change, I say: sorry, no deal. As for Nils de Mooij, his comments would be insignificant if Clingendael weren’t so influential within the Dutch foreign policy establishment. Which makes his commentary all the more harmful.

Nobel intentions

President Obama

Awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize fits conveniently into the liberal paradigm saying intentions matter more than actual results.

In the October 5 issue of National Review, it is recalled how a journalist asked then-Vice President Johnson whether he thought South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem was the next Winston Churchill.  Johnson’s answer: ”S***, man, he’s the only boy we got out there.”

As it turned out, Ngo Dinh Diem wouldn’t be remembered as the next Churchill.  But in retrospect, he needn’t have worried.  For at the outset of the twenty-first century, great achievements are no longer a requirement to be awarded honor by both elites and masses in one’s country or around the world.  This shift explains the otherwise rather inexplicable world-wide adoration for U.S. President Barack Obama.

Yesterday, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Since the president, who has been in office for nine months now, has achieved literally nothing in his efforts — which efforts? — to promote peace anywhere on Earth, the Norwegian Nobel committee had to spin its choice thus: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

So it’s come to this: in 2009, the prospect of “hope” has, to the lefties in the Nobel committee, become the leading criterium for picking a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.  Because for all of President Obama’s ground-breaking diplomacy based on wonderful cosmopolitan Kumbaya “values and attitudes”, neither Iran nor North Korea has budged an inch, the Middle East may be more explosive now than it was a year ago, and, perhaps most importantly, the U.S. hasn’t won the hearts and minds in Moscow and Beijng, which might be the sine qua non for achieving these things through diplomacy.

The world’s apparently stunned.  Shortly after the announcement, President Obama himself stated he was surprised by the Nobel committee’s decision, and saw it as a “call to action” rather than an award for achieved results (so he does have some sense of judgment).  The media are a bit sceptical, and even the New York Times is confused.

However, a critical examination of the mysterious ways of the world-wide liberal establishment teaches us that we needn’t have wondered about the move.  After all, the left has always cared more about good intentions on the part of politicians than it has about concrete achievements.  If liberals had been held accountable for the consequences of their economic and social policies, which after all dominated much of twentieth-century public opinion, liberalism would have been as dead as communism.

Of course, the liberal ideology rests on mythical assumptions, not on common sense.  And since its intentions are deemed noble, its adherents are deemed intrinsically superior to their conservative counterparts, to whom the words “compassion” and “justice” have entirely different meanings.

The difference between these two political world views is that conservatism lacks a belief in redemption by politics.  By contrast, liberals all over the world found some sort of  redemption in Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States.  Hence the enormous cheering masses on election night in Chicago and all over the world, who all felt that, with their guy’s win, Change for the good had already come upon this world.  The same goes for the ignorant fools here in the Netherlands, who never hesitate to mention that President Reagan “ruined the U.S. economy” (in always these exact words), but look at me as if they saw E.T. giving them a lap dance whenever I say the same about President Obama.

Surely the Nobel committee, still caught up in the election night party mood, sought to extend this moment of Hope and Joy yet a few more months, having already gone through a horrible eight-year period of darkness under President Bush.  Its members no doubt fit right in with the overall political establishment in their country, which, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, chunked up as much as 43 percent of GDP in 2008, the majority of it wasted on lavish welfare programs.  (Also, as a percentage of GDP, Norway spends more on development aid than probably any other country in the world: 0.87 percent, compared to 0.2 percent by the U.S.)

No wonder, then, that these Nobel committee members got carried away a little, and elected the new cosmopolitan, post-partisan, postmodern saviour of nations and peoples to be the recipient of their long-degraded Peace Prize.  It’s all about the feel-good moment, not about President Obama’s non-existent achievements.

Dutch professor: U.S. to blame for Holocaust

Evelien Tonkens

The looney left in the Netherlands rears its ugly head.

Meet Ms. Evelien Tonkens: sociologist,  University of Amsterdam professor of “active citizenship”, and columnist for left-wing daily De Volkskrant.  Ms. Tonkens has for weeks used her precious space in said newspaper to bash Dutch right-wing parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who in an unprecedented move demanded that the Dutch government make a comprehensive calculation of the total costs and gains of mass immigration into the Netherlands (and the so far failed integration of immigrants into Dutch society).

One can already hear the liberals howl at such a horrific display of racism.  In a hit piece titled “Wilders’ smelly question”, Ms. Tonkens complained that “You don’t talk about integrating compatriots that way. …  Humans are no instruments of policy.”  Then, after referring to slavery, human trafficking and Nazi Germany, she went on: “This move of Wilders is fascist, in a way he has never shown before.”

One column on our national enemy of the sophisticated not being enough, Ms. Tonkens wondered in another last week: “What if the gains of immigration are higher than its costs, should we be happy?”  The answer: “No, we should be ashamed [if that were the case].  For it means that we don’t care that much for the well-being of the rest of the world.  There are billions of people who have a right to seek refuge, because they don’t have a life in their own country.”

This line of argument being somewhat odd already, the catch doesn’t come until later.  For Ms. Tonkens observes a parallel with a decisive event in history: while the U.S. at first generously opened up its borders to the Jews fleeing from the Eastern European pogroms, it imposed restrictions in 1924, “scared by the great numbers”.  ”Countless of Jews who barely had enough money to flee, did make a months-long journey to the U.S., but were sent back, only to fall into the hands of the Nazis anyway. The U.S. could, and of course should, have adopted those six million people. It’s that clear in retrospect, knowing about the Holocaust, which they didn’t back in 1924.”

I will not even engage upon the absurd notion that somehow all those unfortunate enough to die in the Nazi concentration camps could have made it to America (or in fact had made it, if one interprets Ms. Tonkens’ assertion a bit freely).  Nor will I touch upon her despicably nihilist “Blame America First” attitude.  I do have a different moral statement to make, however: Dutch parliamentarians are elected by the Dutch people, and accordingly represent the interest of — wait for it — the Dutch people.

Ms. Tonkens goes on to say that “Immigration is strongly connected to development aid.  The less we are prepared to support poor countries in their development, the more people have legitimate reasons to knock on our door.”  So now the Dutch have some moral obligation to relieve the entire world of hunger and pain, either by immigration or financial aid?

Interestingly, one report critical of development aid after another is being released, most of them claiming that much of the public money spent on aid for decades has fallen into the hands of corrupt dictators or NGO bureaucracies.  Moreover, with half the populations of the largest Dutch cities now being of foreign descent, their various countries of origin have improved little, while many of the immigrants live in ghettos and contribute little, if anything, to public life.  So much for the world-wide socialist Utopia.  It’s sort of a Paul Krugman argument — government “stimulus” will not work unless we spend more, more! — to assume all will be well as long as we just keep our borders open to all those in need of help.

On the one hand, it is wonderful to see people like Ms. Tonkens flounder like that.  For moral appeals like hers are ultimately brought forth by fear of Mr. Wilders, who doesn’t hesitate a second to smash the liberal dogmas concerning immigration to the Netherlands. On the other hand, one can only despair about the poor college freshmen, hundreds of whom are indoctrinated with these radical ideas each year.