October 21, 2002 9:00 a.m.

I have a correspondent who works for UBS, in Europe. UBS is the largest Swiss bank, owning Paine Webber and other companies. They’ve just opened a new office in Bahrain, and an interesting invoice surfaced, from a German furniture company. I am in possession of a copy of that invoice. Stamped on it are the following words:

“We herewith confirm that [the] above-mentioned goods are not of Israeli origin, nor do they contain to any degree Israeli components, nor have they been imported from Israel.” [Bastards! I must find out what all companies they own so they don't get any of my money.] Lovely. My correspondent says, “To sum it up: Fifty-seven years after Auschwitz, a Germany company (no less) issues a paper certifying that its products are Judenrein. Shouldn’t there be some outrage? Or at least some concern?”

Yes, but not in Bahrain — where they like — no, where they demand that their furniture be Jew-free.

Readers may recall that, almost a year ago now, I did a piece on Donald Rumsfeld, detailing and trying to understand the phenomenon of him. I wrote that he was a throwback, standing for an older, glorious America. He used words like “dickens,” which went with his “Vitalis-friendly hair.”

Several days ago, the New York Times ran a piece called “My Excellent Brylcreem Adventure” — about hair-care products. The article included the line, “Many of these brands evoke blank stares from anyone younger than Donald Rumsfeld, who was mocked in a National Review article for his ‘Vitalis-friendly hair.’”

Look, it’s no big deal, but the man — the writer of the article — couldn’t possibly have read my piece. It probably came up in a Nexis search of “Vitalis” — the writer, or a researcher, failed to note the context. Far from mocking Rumsfeld, the piece glorified him. It makes you wonder about other things in the Times — in any newspaper — that you don’t know so well.

I heard from someone recently who works for a think tank in Washington. He said he stopped reading the Times because it got so many things wrong, on the subjects he knows very well. “So how could I trust the rest?” he asked. An interesting question.

Shortly after the 2000 election, I was abroad — in Egypt — and was asked repeatedly, “How come Bush can’t win easily in Florida? I mean, his brother is governor there!” These people were incredulous that the Bush family couldn’t fix the election, just like that. (Of course, some Americans are incredulous too; they are sadly ignorant, misled, probably, by their teachers.)

I thought of this when I read the following headline on Friday: “Noelle Bush Handcuffed, Sentenced to 10 Days in Jail.” Noelle Bush is Gov. Jeb Bush’s daughter.

America, folks, is a great, great country — so unlike most of the other countries in the world. That’s why many foreign peoples don’t understand us. They miss the point of us, entirely.

I want to urge on you the October issue of The New Criterion. Its lead essay is an astounding, powerful thing by Keith Windschuttle, an Australian scholar. It’s about Clifford Geertz, one of the shapers of intellectual life in the last half-century. I grew up with Geertz — was weaned on Geertz — and I have never understood him so well, after Windschuttle’s dissection of him. Windschuttle lets us know how “multiculturalism” took hold and what it has done. The essay, again, is a tour de force, one of the best I have read in many a moon.

I wish I had had it back in college, when I was being force-fed Geertz.

Included in the pieces available on the magazine’s website — though you should really subscribe — are Roger Kimball on Victorian nudity (yes), our own David Pryce-Jones on Albert Speer (hiss — no, not Alger), Anthony Daniels (who often writes under the name Theodore Dalrymple) on book-browsing in Dubai and Havana (yes), a nifty piece by Martin Greenberg, brother of the late art critic Clement Greenberg, and a very odd piece on a very odd subject by a guy with an odd last name.

I received a ton of mail about Congressman Charlie Rangel — and all others who oppose war with Iraq on the specious and obnoxious grounds that too many “black and brown” people serve in the military. Most of the mail came from members of the armed forces. One soldier wrote,

“I can’t tell you how angry Charlie Rangel’s comments make me. I can tell you that, in the Army, there’s no black, no white, no yellow, no red . . . WE ARE ALL GREEN. They drilled that into our heads from Day One at basic training. My senior Drill Sergeant was black; I am a pasty-white Nebraskan; and I’d follow him anywhere.

“Comments like Rangel’s merely illuminate how little people such as he actually know about the military. It is, in fact, the LEAST racist environment I have ever experienced. It’s really about the only place where I have truly been judged solely on my actions and my merits.”

Well, that should make us proud to be American.

What we should be less proud of, however, is how our government has dealt with the Iraqi opposition, including dissidents and informants who have risked their lives for us (and for themselves — and for their country). Last week, USA Today had an extraordinary op-ed piece by Khidhir Hamza, author of Saddam’s Bombmaker. Hamza mentioned Hussein Kamel, one of Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law, who defected in 1995. What Kamel had to say was vitally important: but, writes Hamza, “after discovering that the Americans were not ready to provide him with a safe haven, Kamel stopped cooperating altogether.”

Not very smart — of us Yanks.

Hamza continues, “It’s absolutely essential that interviews with scientists occur on neutral ground. Like other scientists, I was watched all the time in Iraq. . . . I was able to talk freely only after my escape, first to a safe haven in Iraq’s north in 1994 and then to Europe in 1995, and after assurances from the U.S. government that my family would be safe (they were later smuggled out of Iraq with U.S. government help)” — so score one for our guys.

Iraqi scientists will certainly not talk freely to U.N. inspectors; to do so would be suicidal — and has, in fact, proven so.

More from Hamza: “Saddam, I believe, is intent on the destruction of Iraq through his adventurism. If he achieves his goal of acquiring nuclear weapons, he will be [even] more of a menace to the region and Iraq. Many of the Iraqi scientists I knew shared this opinion and would be glad to cooperate if given a second lease on life by being allowed to leave.”

I hope we’re doing our best in this department — but I fear we’re not. (Of course, if we invade, and “liberate” — I don’t know why I put that word between quotation marks — all of this may be moot.) For years, the CIA and State Department have been perversely hostile to Ahmad Chalabi, the otherwise respected head of the Iraqi National Congress. Only the Defense Department has been properly receptive.

So, as the first President Bush used to say, stay tuned.

The story of the new Miss America continues to amaze. I thought of something odd while reading about her. Erika Harold is part-black and part-Indian (as in Geronimo, not Gandhi). She didn’t think she had a chance of winning, because of her political views: She’s an anti-abortion Republican activist. How you like them apples?

But it could well be that the racial cards she brought to the table canceled out the offensive political and social views. Jurors might have said, “Yes, she’s a Falwellian monster — but, hell, she’s black and Indian!”

I was reminded of something interesting: Back in the 1980s, there was some talk — never too serious — that Bob Strauss would run for president. He is the Democratic Wise Man who has been in Washington for many years. Was Jimmy Carter’s campaign manager, for example, and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and a million other things.

Talking about a possible run, he once said (roughly), “You know, some people say I have no chance because I’m a Texan. Other people say I have no chance because I’m Jewish. But I sort of figure that the one may cancel out the other, and I’d be all right.”

I always loved that remark — I can see the smile on his face when he said it.

Mark Steyn, writing about Saddam Hussein’s nail-biter of a campaign, mentioned the dictator’s campaign song (no joke) — “I Will Always Love You,” from Whitney Houston — and his campaign slogan: “Yes, Yes, to Our Beloved Leader.” Mark also suggested some additional slogans: “Four More Decades!,” “I’m Pro-Saddam and I Vote,” “Guns Don’t Kill People. Saddam Kills People,” “It’s Mourning Again in Iraq,” “Ask Yourself: Are You Better Off than You Were Four Centuries Ago?,” and, “It’s the Dictatorship, Stupid!”

By the way: Does it not suggest something interesting about the Arab world’s relationship to American culture that the Iraqi monster’s campaign song should be Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”? Not some wailing Middle Eastern ditty?

Let’s have a little mail, which will also give us a little language: “Earlier this week, I was watching an MSNBC reporter interviewing ‘common’ Americans about the Iraq situation. He talked with a Vietnam veteran and kept referring to him as a ‘former Vietnam veteran.’ Even the identifier on the screen read ‘Former Vietnam Veteran.’ I am a Vietnam veteran and I have no idea how one becomes a former Vietnam veteran.”

Quite right: One is a former something; one was a serviceman in ’nam. On a related note, I use “maiden name” in the present, as in, “Mrs. Jones’s maiden name is Smith” — although one could make the case for “was,” too.

Finally, I thought of Arsenio Hall the other day. Say what? Yes. I was reading a story from Britain, and the writer noted that “Cholmondeley” was pronounced “CHUM-ley.” The Brits are always doing that to you. [Teehee, yup, and St. John in a name is pronounced "SIN-jun," "Mousehole" (in Cornwall) is pronounced "Muzzle." There're lots more but I don't want to digress, lol!]

So, Arsenio Hall? In his monologue once, he said, “Where does Sade [the singer] get off spelling her name like that, but pronouncing it like she does? It’s like saying, ‘My name is B-o-b, but I pronounce it ‘linoleum.’”

I always loved him for that.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002