Taranto gets results

If you want to know what everyone is going to be talking about, read James Taranto over at opinionjournal.com.

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This is Taranto yesterday:

One advantage of appointing a minority, of course, is that it underscores the racism at the heart of contemporary American liberalism. (Example: An editorial in yesterday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suggests that black people should all think alike: "The court with Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America.")

Rocky Mountain News columnist Vincent Carroll today:

White supremacist publications include titles such as Racial Loyalty and references to "traitors" to the Caucasian race. Throughout history, similar calls for racial solidarity have often been issued for equally repulsive motives. Sane people today stay away from any hint of them.

Hence the shock to read Tuesday's editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and encounter this loathsome paragraph: "In losing a woman, the court with (Sam) Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America."

A black man is not quite a black man because he is too independent for the Journal Sentinel's taste?

Taranto, Tuesday of last week:

The Washington Post reports on a New Yorker interview with Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the Ford and Bush père White Houses:

Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace."

Now let's see. Between 1953 and 2003, here are the Mideast wars we can think of off the top of our head: the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the two Palestinian intifadas against Israel, the Algerian Civil War, the Yemen Civil War and two Sudanese civil wars. That doesn't even count acts of terror against non-Mideastern countries, from the Iranian invasion of the U.S. Embassy to the attacks of 9/11.

What do you call someone who describes this as "50 years of peace"? A "realist."

San Antonio Express-News columnist Jonathan Gurwitz today:

Scowcroft recounts a discussion he had with Rice in which she argued against five decades of U.S. policy that supported autocratic regimes in the Middle East. "But we've had 50 years of peace," Scowcroft gloatingly and erroneously noted.

Were it not so tragic, it would be humorous. Opponents of the effort to fundamentally change the dynamics of the Middle East like to promote the idea that the land from Morocco to the Hindu Kush would be an idyllic wonderland if not for the meddling of imperialist powers. Let's briefly recount the harmonious deportment of the region during this period.

There were, of course, the Arab-Israeli wars during these 50 years of "peace" in 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982 and the ongoing war against the Jewish state by terrorist groups.

But to oblige the apologists of tyranny who maintain Israel is an artificial and illegitimate creation of colonial powers, we'll discount these conflicts and — by a similar measure — the Algerian and Afghan civil wars.

Polipundit also quotes Taranto today. Give the guy his due.