Month: February 2007

Bush To Musharraf: Try Harder

Pervez Musharraf insisted that the peace deal he signed with tribal chiefs would not interfere with the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. No one really bought it, but the Bush administration put the best face on it in order to keep Musharraf in the fold. Now that seems to have ended, and the White House has decided on a different, tougher approach to the Pakistani president:

President Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda, senior administration officials say.
The decision came after the White House concluded that General Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he made to Mr. Bush during a visit here in September. General Musharraf insisted then, both in private and public, that a peace deal he struck with tribal leaders in one of the country’s most lawless border areas would not diminish the hunt for the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban or their training camps.
Now, American intelligence officials have concluded that the terrorist infrastructure is being rebuilt, and that while Pakistan has attacked some camps, its overall effort has flagged.
“He’s made a number of assurances over the past few months, but the bottom line is that what they are doing now is not working,” one senior administration official who deals often with South Asian issues said late last week. “The message we’re sending to him now is that the only thing that matters is results.”

Democrats have started pressuring the White House to push Musharraf harder, and it seems to have had an effect. Of course, the Bush administration has made more of an effort of late to call in markers. First, they told Nouri al-Maliki in no uncertain terms that he had to quit protecting the militias. Now they have made it clear to Musharraf that our aid won’t go to someone who allows AQ to build bases in his country.
The Bush administration still rules out direct attacks on training camps inside Pakistan, but someone will have to attack those camps. Bush will probably give Musharraf the same kind of talk he gave to Maliki about that, too. If an American attack on those bases will destabilize Musharraf — and they probably will — then Musharraf had best start doing it himself. We can’t wait forever while al-Qaeda re-establishes themselves as a fully operational terrorist group.
Make no mistake, though — a destabilized Musharraf could be a very big problem. Pakistan has a full-blown nuclear-weapons program, and if Musharraf gets ousted by a popular Islamist revolt, then the Islamists will have their hands on an arsenal that they could aim almost anywhere in south Asia. They could transfer the weapons to al-Qaeda in order to use them as proxies, too.
Pakistan has always been a tightrope, and our coordination with them will become even more of a high-wire act over the next few weeks. The status quo is obviously not acceptable, and the only two options are to press forward or go back, and both are equally dangerous.

Appeasement Doesn’t Work, Part 37B

Thailand has struggled with a Muslim insurgency for the past several years, with radical Islamists pushing for the upper hand in a nation more associated with Buddhists. After recent political turmoil, the government decided to appease the terrorists and attempt conciliation. Big mistake:

Some are already calling it war, a brutal Muslim separatist insurgency in southern Thailand that has taken as many as 2,000 lives in three years with almost daily bombings, drive-by shootings, arson and beheadings.
It is a conflict the government admits it is losing. A harsh crackdown and martial law in recent years seem only to have fueled the insurgency by generating fear and anger and undermining moderate Muslim voices.
A new policy of conciliation in the past four months has been met by increased violence, including a barrage of 28 coordinated bombings in the south that killed or wounded about 60 people on Feb. 18. …
Now the insurgents seem to be taking their war to a new stage, pitting local Buddhists against Muslims by attacking symbols of Buddhism with flamboyant brutality.
The two religions had coexisted through the years here, often in separate villages. That mutual tolerance is breaking down now, and there are fears of a sectarian conflict that could flare out of control.
“Buddhist monks, temples, novices,” said Sunai Phasuk, a political analyst with the monitoring group Human Rights Watch. “Buddhist monks have been hacked to death, clubbed to death, bombed and burned to death. This has never happened before. This is a new aspect of violence in the south.”

The effort to find conciliation and bolster the influence of moderate Muslims in Thailand’s south has han an unintended effect. It has created tension within the Muslim community to the point where half of all Islamist violence targets Muslims, especially those who cooperate with the government. The Thai effort to find a rational middle has doomed those who qualify.
Thailand’s new government, on top after conducting a coup against the democratically-elected but corrupt government that preceded it, decided shortly after taking power to engage with the Islamists. For these kind of results, they could have skipped the coup. While the previous government didn’t effectively fight the Islamists, at least they never surrendered to them. All the new government has done is to unleash the terrorists.
We say over and over again that appeasing terrorists only sets up incentives for more terrorism. Thailand merely provides the latest practical example of this axiom. They need to learn to enforce order more effectively, rather than cede control and initiative to lunatic bomb-throwers.

A Quiet Night With Oscar

Originally, I planned to attend the Oscar festivities with Michael Medved and AM 1280 The Patriot this evening at the beautiful Saint Paul, one of the classiest hotels in the world. However, I had to clear my driveway twice today after the big snowstorms that hit the Twin Cities this weekend. I tweaked my back a little, just enough to convince me that resting it tonight makes the most sense. I apologize to my friends and listeners here who I’d hoped to see, but I’ll be sure to make it to the next event.
However, I still plan on live-blogging the Oscars, so keep checking back on this post. We’ll have lots of fun with the pomp and pompousness that comes with the Academy Awards, and by the time the evening’s over, we’ll all feel like giving 30-second acceptance speeches in which we thank everyone we ever met in our lives.
7:31 – The show’s beginning with an interesting montage of oddball interviews with various Oscar nominees. Peter O’Toole looks so old. Helen Mirren still looks pretty good, though …
7:36 – I’m looking forward to Ellen DeGeneres as Oscar MC. I think she’s got the proper kind of low-key humor for this kind of event.
7:38 – “The most international Oscars ever.” Yeah, whatever. I suppose that’s exciting.
7:42 – Al Gore, laughing goofily at Ellen’s dig at 2000. I think this sets an Oscar record for the longest running gag ever.
7:44 – “Say Hallelu”? Excuse me? For Oscar nominees? Oooooo-kay!
7:46 – Not a bad opening. They avoided a Oprah-Uma embarrassment, anyway. However, they didn’t lead off with a major award, deciding to announce the award for Art Direction. It took 16 minutes give away the first one, though.
7:55 – Oh, Lord. Jack Black and John C Reilly may recover from this embarrassing musical number. For Will Farrell, it’s an improvement. This is the kind of thing that the attendees might find amusing, but the rest of us find tiresome and way too self-referential.
7:58 – Pan’s Labyrinth has already won two Oscars. The only two Oscars awarded after 30 minutes of the show. Hope you want to stay up late.
8:02 – Okay, the two kids were terribly cute, and so far the most entertaining and honest part of the entire show. Will Smith thought so too. I guess they can do two with no problem — maybe they should have done them all?
8:04 – “West Bank Story”?? I have to see that one!
8:07 – Off topic: Weird political story of the year … Strom Thurmond’s ancestors owned Al Sharpton’s ancestors. I’m not kidding. How strange is that?
8:12 – Are we going to have Judi Dench plastic surgery jokes all night long? Because if we are, perhaps they can make a few of them funny.
8:14 – The Foley choir was actually pretty cool — very inventive and well done.
8:16 – I won the JAT Award for the longest running live-blog! Well, this is the fourth year in a row, I believe …
8:19 – Eddie Murphy looks bored. As well he should.
8:22 – Why are they giving away Best Supporting Actor in the middle of the show? If they’re not going to do a major at the beginning, why not build up to the end? Alan Arkin — good to see him win one.
8:25 – Ellen’s not doing a bad job, but the stroll down the aisle left something to be desired. It finished nicely with Martin Scorscese accepting a screenplay from Ellen, but the Mark Wahlberg part was painful.
8:26 – Can we skip the silhouette dancers?
8:32 – Randy Newman at the ivories and Sweet Baby James on the vocals? They should have saved this for last. Excellent stuff…
8:34 – The only thing making this Melissa Etheridge segment tolerable — besides her voice, which I enjoy — is the fact that the camerawork is skipping most of the climate-scare scolding we’re supposed to be getting from the screen behind her. “When you pray, move your feet”???
8:37 – The climate crisis? Yeah, that must have been the global warming I was shoveling today that tweaked my back.
8:38 – That was a pretty funny joke with Al Gore. Come on, admit it, you laughed. (If you missed it, Leonardo DiCaprio kept after Gore to make a major announcement, and Gore started to unfold a speech — but the orchestra cut him off as he got started in a spoof of their speech-limiting policies.)
8:50 – I’ll bet Children of Men wins.
8:52 – I lose! The Departed wins for Best Adapted Screenplay. This is usually considered a good sign for the Best Picture category.
8:55 – Holy cow, what the hell was that with the guy toting up the awards and running into Tom Hanks and Helen Mirren? Hanks seemed to be caught off guard as well.
9:02 – “Mary Antoinette”? The costumes were literally “eye candy”?
9:04 – The winning costume designer HAS to have been the inspiration for “Edna” in The Incredibles!!
9:08 – Tom Cruise did a nice job of presenting the humanitarian award for Sherry Lansing, but without him jumping up and down on couches, I just didn’t believe he meant it.
9:13 – Hey, this hasn’t updated — sorry, I thought it had. If Children of Men should win anything, it should be cinematography.
9:16 – Come on, the silhouette dancers are so pretentious, only the Academy would use them to identify their Best Picture nominees. Ugh. And Pan’s Labyrinth looks like it has a lot of fans tonight.
9:21 – Robert Downey, Jr delivers a great line about his drug use, throwing Naomi Watts for a moment.
9:24 – Catherine Deneuve looks pretty good — still …
9:32 – Pan’s Labyrinth didn’t win for Foreign Language film? That’s a shocker!
9:34 – Goodness, George Clooney’s looking uglier every year, isn’t he? He’s not? Ah, hell …
9:36 – Jennifer Hudson looked pretty shocked to win, didn’t she? And the Japanese actress looked shocked, too, but in a different way.
9:43 – We’re getting to the Best Documentary – Feature Length award. Be prepared to crown Al Gore. I doubt the orchestra will cut him off if he rambles.
9:46 – Jerry Seinfeld presenting for Best Documentary – Feature? Okay … why? He’s giving a good monologue to start it off, but that has nothing to do with documentaries, either.
9:48 – So we have two documentaries about Iraq, two about Christians, and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. Now that’s a tough choice for Hollywood.
9:48 – Not that tough. No big surprise, Truth wins. I told you that the orchestra wouldn’t cut him off.
9:51 – Don’t hire Clint Eastwood to deliver any speeches …
9:55 – After all of these unforgettable scores, how is it possible that Ennio Morricone never won an Oscar?
10:00 – Italian is a beautiful language, and Morricone’s more coherent than Clint. Just kidding, Clint. Don’t kill me.
10:10 – Okay, I give. What’s up with Jack Nicholson’s hairdo … or scalp-do?
10:15 – I guess Mathew Arndt doesn’t need to kiss Matthew Broderick’s tucchus any more, eh?
10:17 – CQ natives are getting restless. They’re attacking Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst for being dull. Did y’all miss Al Gore earlier tonight?
10:20 – Jennifer Lopez, the “excellent reason for high-definition television”? Perhaps. She’s the most overexposed celebrity this side of Anna Nicole Smith.
10:21 – It’s almost three hours now, and we still haven’t seen the Best Original Song award given out yet? This will be a long one. Jennifer Hudson appears to have recovered from the shock of winning nicely, though.
10:28 – Ellen’s been a non-entity most of the night, hasn’t she?
10:30 – Inconvenient Truth won for Best Original Song — after that showstopping performance of the Dreamgirls songs? What a joke. I like Melissa Etheridge, but that song hardly compares to what we just heard. Any self-aware artist would have been embarrassed to be in Etheridge’s position.
10:40 – Jeez, are these montages more self-indulgent than the silhouette dancers, or the other way around?
10:42 – I was hoping that United 93 would win for Film Editing. Of course, I was rather hoping this would have wrapped up by now, too.
10:50 – Does anyone notice that the commercials are more interesting than the show?
10:53 – Leading ladies. I’m hoping for Meryl Streep, who was delicious in The Devil Wears Prada.
10:55 – But Helen Mirren was my second choice. Nice salute to Elizabeth II.
11:01 – Reese Witherspoon needs better eye makeup. I’m hoping O’Toole wins, but I think it will be Will Smith.
11:04 – Wow — they forgave Forest Whittaker for Battlefield Earth?
11:07 – Okay, I predict that Martin Scorcese wins tonight. Funny bit with George Lucas about not having won one. I’m shocked that he didn’t win for Phantom Menace.
11:09 – Yep. About damned time, too. I haven’t seen The Departed yet, but he should have won for Goodfellas and Raging Bull.
11:12 – I’m on a roll. I’m going to predict that The Queen wins Best Picture.
11:14 – I’m off the roll. I should have stuck with the hint from Scorsese’s Oscar. I’m looking forward to seeing this movie at some point. I wanted to catch it in the theater, but never made it.
FINAL ANALYSIS: Dull and odd. Ellen Degeneres didn’t do a terrible job, but she didn’t do much at all. The politics of the evening almost all revolved around Al Gore, and fortunately didn’t bleed into other categories. The choices seemed OK, especially Scorsese’s award, but they produced so few memorable moments, if any at all. One might expect a little more from 3 hours and 40 minutes.
Thanks to all the CQ readers that stuck it out with me!

‘Commanders’ Will Quit If We Attack Iran?

The Times of London set the blogosphere abuzz this morning, reporting that six senior commanders at the Pentagon will quit if the US attacks Iran. The Pentagon, claims their source, has no stomach for a war with the Islamic Republic:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.
Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.
“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”
A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

First, as McQ at QandO points out, commanders serve in the field, and staff officers serve in the Pentagon. If in fact there exists a coterie of staff officers who will resign rather than follow orders, they are not commanders in the military sense, at least not now. Troops will not be left leaderless. Secondly, there are hundreds if not thousands of staff officers at the Pentagon. The resignation of six will be noteworthy but hardly representative of the morale at the Pentagon, as the Times claims in this piece.
However, those who resign under those circumstances will have taken the honorable route, if they truly do not believe in the mission. Jules Crittenden intimates that this will amount to a de facto desertion, but senior staff officers have no duty to remain in their commissions if they object to the course of action taken by any administration. They have undoubtedly met their commitments to the service in terms of time, and they can disconnect from the Pentagon as they see fit. It’s not the only honorable route, and it may well be more honorable to stay and try to convince the political leadership to change course, but staff officer resignations are not desertions and have never been considered as such.
In fact, that was one of the bases of trying Nazi staff officers and military commanders at Nuremberg and elswhere. When they claimed that they had to follow the Fuehrer’s orders, the answer was that they had the option — and in this case, the duty — to resign rather than commit the crimes they did.
All of which is secondary to the underlying premise that we are about to attack Iran. I find that hard to buy, especially since the Bush administration has taken every opportunity to argue against it. Dick Cheney says the option remains on the table, which it must to maintain a credible deterrent to the Iranian nuclear program, but otherwise the administration has done nothing to build political support for such a move. That lack of preparation clearly indicates that the White House has not embarked on that course, not even preliminarily. All we hear are leaks from various sources that the US has “plans” for an attack on Iran — which means nothing except that we’ve gamed the scenario for the sake of being prepared. We probably have ‘plans” to invade Russia and China as well.
We cannot attack Iran without gathering many more resources than we did for Iraq. Iran is three times the size of Iraq, and its terrain presents a much higher degree of difficulty than the relatively flat Iraq. Their military, while underresourced, is not in the same dreadful state of readiness that we saw in Iraq. Military strikes on Iran could not wipe out their defenses at the onset of action, and the war would result in a conflagration that would halt oil supplies to the entire world. That’s a last-gasp option, and everyone knows it.
Israel might attack Iran, however. Supposedly, they want to get overflight permission from the US to transit Iraqi airspace for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Even that is at the preliminary planning stages, in case the Iranians refuse to back away from their nuclear program. The leak is intended as brinksmanship from the Israelis after Ahmadinejad’s reckless rhetoric about wiping them off the map. I have no doubt the Israelis would carry out the attack if they deem it necessary, with our without our cooperation, but again, this is just working out the details of plans that have to be made in order to ensure preparedness.
If the US decides to attack Iran, we need to be sure we have people in charge who believe in the mission. Right now, I don’t think it’s a good idea, and I’m not surprised to find out that some senior staff officers at the Pentagon agree with that.

Kurds Support Oil Revenue Sharing Plan

The Kurds have signed off on a plan to share oil revenues that will address many of the Sunni economic concerns that have driven some to extremism. The political breakthrough may help de-escalate the internal conflict in Iraq and allow the Sunnis to feel that they can participate in the representative government without losing everything:

Leaders of Iraq’s oil-rich Kurdish region have apparently approved a draft oil law that will be presented to Iraqi lawmakers in coming weeks, an eagerly awaited breakthrough that is expected to professionalize and expand drilling in the country.
The agreement was announced Saturday by Massoud Barzani, president of the regional government in Kurdish-populated northern Iraq, during a news conference in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah attended by Iraq’s president and the U.S. ambassador, the Associated Press reported. …
Iraqi officials in recent weeks have been struggling to reach an agreement on legislation that would govern the exploitation of the country’s vast oil reserves and who should control the revenue.
Among the contentious issues are to what extent oil exploration will be controlled by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad; how proceeds will be distributed among oil-rich and oil-poor areas; and to what extent foreign companies will be allowed to drill for oil.

The draft has not been released to the public yet, so the details are murky. However, in the past these plans have attempted to pool some percentage of the revenues from both the Kurdish north and the Shi’ite south in order to give the Sunnis a substantial taste. The Sunnis need to accept the security of those revenues over the long term, and so the plans have complex formulations that create opportunities for dissent and failure.
It appears, at least from the Kurdish side, that this new structure will meet their requirements. Nouri al-Maliki already supports it; he’s been trying since late last year to get it ratified. The Sunnis have not publicly commented on the draft yet, but it had been thought that the Kurds presented the last obstacle.
If this gets passed and implemented quickly, it has the potential to take the wind out of the Sunni insurgencies, especially if the US/Iraqi “surge” succeeds in dialing down the violence in Baghdad. It could add to the breathing room needed for the Iraqi government to take control over the capital and the Sunni areas of its nation. Let’s hope the Iraqi National Assembly senses the urgency and immediately move this proposal into law.

The Full Bill

One of the motivations behind the Hillary Clinton campaign’s reaction to David Geffen’s barbs this week was to mark the boundaries for the debate in the primaries and general election. Hillary has a better reason for that than most; she wants to avoid any debate or discussion of her husband’s impeachment. Other Democrats, however, wonder how she can justify that while trotting Bill onto the hustings:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband.
With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband’s impeachment in 1998 — or, more accurately, the embarrassing personal behavior that led to it — taboo, putting her rivals on notice and all but daring other Democrats to mention the ordeal again. …
Although she has spent the past seven years establishing her own identity as a public servant, Clinton has been embracing the more popular aspects of her husband’s presidency more widely as she mounts her own campaign, with frequent references to their time together in the White House and their joint legacy.
And as she has invoked the good Bill Clinton, she has risked invoking the bad, several Democratic strategists said.
“She’s using him in this campaign, so why can’t somebody else use him?” asked a veteran of Democratic presidential politics who is not currently aligned with a candidate but who, like numerous other Democrats, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the Clintons. “She’s just made him fair game. He’s part of her strategy, so why can’t he be part of one of her opponents’?”

I’m of two minds on this subject. If Hillary distanced herself from her husband and refrained from having him politick on her behalf, a case could be made that the impeachment isn’t germane to her own candidacy. After all, we rarely allow attacks on candidates’ spouses to pass without scolding the attacker for aiming below the belt, as it were. We criticize the content of their activities within the boundaries of the campaigns — for instance, Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s “Asses Of Evil” buttons called into question her general temperament and judgment — but we don’t usually debate their personal peccadilloes of the past.
However, in this case, that really doesn’t apply. First, Hillary simply can’t avoid sending Bill into campaign mode; he remains her greatest political asset. She will also argue — in fact, she has already argued — that the country will benefit from a return to the years and policies of the previous Clinton administration. If she wants to use that argument, then those years and that administration becomes fair game for debate.
She can’t have it both ways. In fact, demanding a “thou shalt not” commandment is the height of arrogance, a quality for which she has already won reknown. Reagan issued a “commandment” too, but it wasn’t for his own personal benefit — and Hillary Clinton is no Ronald Reagan.
I’m somewhat surprised to see the Democrats push back against this effort. One might have expected them to shy away from the impeachment for their own purposes; who wants to remind people what happened the last time the Democrats held the White House? However, they probably (and rightly) fear that the Republicans would use it against Hillary in a general election and want to see if it will have any traction before they nominate her for the Presidency. (I’m not so sure the GOP will use it against her, however, as it might just backfire against them. Recall what happened in the midterms following impeachment?)
The point is clear. If Hillary wants Bill, she’s going to get the full Bill, and she will have to deal with it.

France: We Can Work With Terrorists

The unanimity of the global community that demanded that the Palestinian government recognize Israel before restoring aid has sported its first cracks, and to no one’s great surprise, those cracks have come from France. Foreign minister Phillipe Douste-Blazy, who once called Iran a stabilizing force in the Middle East, pledged cooperation with the Hamas-Fatah government that refuses to meet the demands of the Quartet:

France has pledged to cooperate with a coalition Palestinian government that would include Hamas, in a key boost for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. But Abbas’s European tour failed to make headway on resuming aid for his struggling people.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy’s promise Saturday to work with a government including Hamas and Fatah was the bright spot in Abbas’s four-country swing through Europe this week. Other European leaders were more cautious, preferring to wait until the government is formed before making any commitments.
“I encouraged Mr. Abbas to persevere in his efforts to quickly form a national unity government,” Douste-Blazy told reporters Saturday evening as Abbas wrapped up his trip.
If the government is formed according to the power-sharing deal worked out in Mecca last month, Douste-Blazy said, “France will be ready to cooperate with it. And our country will plead on its behalf within the European Union and with other partners in the international community.”

French pleas will fall on deaf ears. This isn’t brain surgery to anyone but Douste-Blazy and the Chirac government. When the Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence and terrorism as well as ratify the previous agreements made with the PA, then aid will flow back into the territories and the process towards statehood can start again. Until then, the West should not — and hopefully will not — underwrite terrorist organizations, regardless of how much unity they display amongst themselves.
Unfortunately, Douste-Blazy isn’t the only one slow on the uptake in this process. Kinf Abdullah II of Jordan urged the West to recognize this historic opportunity for peace, even though Hamas has explicitly rejected peace. He said that the situation had reached a crossroads, and the opportunity to integrate Israel into the “neighborhood” and achieve a two-state solution was slipping away. However, Abdullah didn’t tell that to the right people. Israel already has committed themselves to the two-state solution; it’s Hamas that has thrown out all of the PA’s treaties and refuses to support anything short of the annihilation of Israel.
For some reason, people see the union of Hamas and Fatah as some sort of breakthrough in the peace process, but a unity government for the Palestinians only addresses their internal tensions, not their relationship to Israel. Actually, that’s not quite true — it makes the relationship to Israel worse than before. Why some nations want to leap to their checkbooks to reward the Islamist integration into the PA is a question only Douste-Blazy could answer, if he could even comprehend the question.

Movie Review: Amazing Grace

We’re in the middle of the biggest snowstorm of the year, perhaps of the last few years, but I wanted to make sure I saw the film Amazing Grace as soon as it opened in our area. I had heard almost nothing about the movie before its opening last night, except that it purported to tell the true story of hymn that I love. I had some familiarity with the story of how the song came to be written and thought it would make a grand story for the screen.
However, I was wrong — about the plot of the film. The genesis of the song is mostly ignored for the more gripping story of the man who fought slavery in Great Britain over the long course of his life, and if anything, this seems more fitting than my original notion. The film succeeds in combining faith, history, politics, and biography into a compelling narrative that surpassed my expectations.
William Wilberforce fought slavery as a Member of Parliament for most of his public life. He and his friend, the young William Pitt, tried to stop the slave trade as a means to choking off the entire institution. Called seditionists and worse, the entrenched interests of the slavers fought Wilberforce for years, but could not quell his desire to put an end to the trade. It took more than twenty years for Wilberforce to finally beat the slavers, and he died 28 years later as Parliament finally emancipated the slaves of the British empire.
Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce with the earnestness that he brought to the Horatio Hornblower series. In some respects, Gruffudd overacts just a bit, but the part requires his energy to keep viewers engaged. His passion ignites the screen, and one can overlook the few times he seems to be trying a little too hard. Others in the cast give impressive performances, especially Benedict Cumberbatch as Pitt. Cumberbatch has only a four-year filmography, but plays Pitt in his younger and older incarnations brilliantly. Michael Gambon takes a break from his Harry Potter duties to play Lord Charles Fox as a daunting and somewhat mischievous politician, whose support makes the difference over the long haul. Toby Jones and Ciaran Hinds distinguish themselves as supporters of the slave trade who gradually lose to the determination and tenacity of Wilberforce and the inevitable shame that slavery brings upon the British.
But by far the most moving and unforgettable performance is given by the amazing Albert Finney as John Newton, the man who wrote the song. Soul-sick over his participation in the slave trade, Newton turned to God and became a minister after writing perhaps the most well-known hymn in history. The movie catches Newton in his later years, as old age gradually turned him blind and his passion for the abolitionist cause came to the fore. Finney makes the most of the part, expressing a self-loathing and a burden of guilt so tangible, viewers can almost hold it in their hands. His anger and frustration matches Wilberforce’s, but Finney projects it onto both characters with such force that it wrenches the heart.
And the heart is where this film lives. The ghastly subject pulls us into late 18th century politics, where the revolutions in America and France has poisoned the atmosphere for dissent, and also awakened the truth that Africans are just as human as Europeans. Amazing Grace as a hymn tells about how one man went from blindness to sight, and Amazing Grace as a film tells how the British made the same journey. It will inspire audiences with this journey, and people of faith will understand how Wilberforce could have persevered for so long against interests so entrenched that they relied on the crown for their support.
Without a doubt, go see this movie. Albert Finney’s performance alone is worth the price of the ticket, but there is much, much more to Amazing Grace than just the lyricist.
Addendum: I was struck after the film at how the British managed to end slavery without falling into a civil war, although the film hints at such an outcome along the way. Unfortunately, we did not follow the same path as the British, to our shame and to our detriment, and the effects have lasted for more than half the life of this nation.

… And Brigham Young’s Great-Great-Great-Grandson Won A Super Bowl

Are the media really this desperate to find some dirt on Mitt Romney? I guess they must be:

While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate’s great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.
Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.
Romney’s great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Uh, okay. So? What exactly does that have to do with Mitt Romney and the race for the presidency? According to the Nosey Parkers at Cal State Fullerton — my alma mater, natch — it shows that it was an essential part of the Romney family experience:

B. Carmon Hardy, a polygamy expert and retired history professor at California State University-Fullerton, said polygamy was “a very important part of Miles Park Romney’s family.”
Hardy added: “Now, very gradually, as you moved farther away from it, it became less a part of it. But during the time of Miles Park Romney, it was an essential principle of the Romney family life.”

Oh, sweet Lord. Yeah, if you move farther away from it, it becomes less important, as in not at all. The last polygamist in Romney’s ancestors was three generations earlier. My paternal great-grandfather was a drunkard; does that disqualify me from driving, too?
I guess we have the layers of editors and checks at the Asinine Press to thank for this story, as well as chief political busybodies Jennifer Dobner and Glen Johnson. Unless Mitt’s running on the “legalize polygamy” platform, what in the hell does this have to do with anything?
UPDATE: I decided to wander over to Memeorandum to see who else might be writing about this low blow from the AP, and found good posts by Outside the Beltway and Iowa Voice. (Actually, Brian at Iowa Voice did the same thing.) And Kevin Hayden has, er, succinct advice to the media from the left.

Who’s The Dumb One?

This YouTube and assorted photos from the shot have been whipping around the Internet, which purports to show the supposed idiocy of Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz. He’s so stupid, he can’t even tell when he has caps on his binoculars!

I have no idea if Peretz is an idiot or not, but I’m pretty sure he can tell when the binoculars have their lens caps still affixed. It appears to me that these aren’t caps at all, but filters to keep sunlight from reflecting off the lenses.
Flashes off of binoculars gives one’s position away to the enemy, and filters would keep that from happening, as well as reducing glare in very sunny conditions. If you look closely at the video, those “caps” appear to be some type of fabric, not plastic.
I could be wrong, but I think Peretz can still tell sunlight from dark, and that this incident isn’t at all what people think it is.
UPDATE: If this looks familiar, it might be because it happened to Bill Clinton. Read this Snopes entry. (h/t: McGehee)