Most Pathetic Hunger Strike Ever
When the news crossed the wires last week that Saddam Hussein would be going on a hunger strike, The Scrapbook paid special attention. The deposed Iraqi dictator wanted to call attention to the June 21 abduction and murder in Baghdad of one of his dozens of lawyers, Khamis al-Obeidi. The Saddam entourage blames the murder on government death squads. A State Department spokesman responded that "every form of protection and assistance" has been made available to the attorneys on both sides of the Saddam prosecution but that "unfortunately, in the case of this individual, he refused" the U.S. offer.
But this back-and-forth wasn't what most interested us. Instead, we wondered: Just how serious a hunger-striker would Saddam turn out to be? Longtime readers of this page know that we have a history on this subject. So indulge us, while we return to an item from our December 8, 1997, edition, for the edification of more recent subscribers:
"Gandhi turned himself into a ribcage in a loincloth. The IRA's Bobby Sands starved himself for 66 days until he died in a Belfast prison. But hunger-striking, like other demanding disciplines, isn't what it used to be.
"Last week, The Hill reported that Kathryn Cameron Porter, wife of Rep. John Porter of Illinois, was embarking on a three-week hunger strike to protest Turkish oppression of the Kurds. There was, however, a wee, little qualifier: Porter 'has been eating one meal a day because she has diabetes.'
"Never mind that this is akin to a celibate monk's escaping to the local bordello once a month for relaxation. For today's hunger-strikers, it's the thought that counts. And Mrs. Porter is well within the bounds of recent practice. Jesse Jackson, who's been known to call hunger strikes one day and show up at banquets the next, invented tag-team striking a few years back. After refusing solids on behalf of Haitian immigrants or California grape workers, Jackson then allows somebody else--somebody as hungry for publicity as Jackson is for food--to take over his fast. Jackson calls this 'passing the cross' down 'the chain of suffering.'"
You get the idea. In fact, to continue in Jackson's theological vein, you might say that our attention to the watered-down hunger strike is a close cousin to the Christian concern with "cheap grace."
Despite The Scrapbook's crusade to put the hunger back in hunger striking, the decline has continued. As we reported on this page in March 2003, former University of South Florida professor Sami al-Arian's idea of a hunger strike, when he was confined to a cell in Tampa's Hillsborough County Jail pursuant to a 50-count federal terrorism-conspiracy indictment, was to down "Carnation Instant Breakfast three times a day." Col. David M. Parrish, commander of the Hillsborough facility, told the Tampa Tribune that it was "not like any [hunger strike] I've ever seen before." Would that we could say the same, Colonel.
Given this history, it will come as no surprise that we didn't have to wait long for the results of Saddam Hussein's "hunger strike." The day after it purportedly started, Reuters reported: "Saddam Hussein ended a brief hunger strike after missing just one meal in his U.S.-run prison, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday. The former Iraqi leader had refused lunch on Thursday in protest at the killing of one of his lawyers by gunmen, but the spokesman said he ate his evening meal."
We'll let the blogger known as Captain Ed have the last word: "When we pulled the dictator out of a spider hole pleading for his life, we knew that like most dictators, he had no honor or courage. Now we know he has no stomach, either."
Plus ça change . . .
It's hard to match the breathtaking simplicity of the conspiracy theories rife in the Middle East (the CIA masterminded 9/11!), yet in the end you have to hand it to the anti-Semites. For sheer, audacious scope of paranoia, they remain unmatched.
Consider this choice item, currently on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington: the cover of a 2005 edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--the notorious, century-old forgery purporting to record the machinations of Jewish conspirators plotting to take over the world--published in Mexico City.
As the image would have it, we can blame the Jews not only for capitalism, communism, popery, and free-masonry, but Nazism, too.
Incidentally, the museum's exhibition on the Protocols contains not only historic editions in many languages, but also a depressing abundance of recent paper and online versions from all over the world. The show is on view at least through May 2007.
Jack, Meet Osama
"When we went to Beirut, I said to President Reagan, 'Get out.' Now, the other day we were doing a debate, and they said, 'Well, Beirut was a different situation. We cut and run.' We didn't cut and run. President Reagan made the decision to change direction because he knew he couldn't win it. Even in Somalia, President Clinton made the decision, 'We have to, we have to change direction.' . . . We need to change direction. We can't win a war like this. . . . At some point you got to reassess it like Reagan did in Beirut, like Clinton did in Somalia. You just have to say, 'Okay, it's time to change direction.'"
--Representative John Murtha,-urging a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Meet the Press , June 18, 2006
"We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weaknesses of the American solider, who is ready to wage cold wars and unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia. . . . After a few blows, [the Americans] ran in defeat. . . . They forgot about being the world leader and the leader of the new world order. [They] left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."
--Osama bin Laden,
ABC News interview, May 28, 1998
Your Tuition Dollars at Work
Conspiracy theories are not just a specialty of the Middle East. The Chronicle of Higher Education's John Gravois reports on the latest trend in academe: "scholars" who believe the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy orchestrated by the U.S. government. You may or may not be surprised to learn (it is a big country, after all) that there is now "a group called the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which includes about 50 professors--more in the humanities than in the sciences--from institutions like Clemson University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin."
Interested alumni of these and other institutions of higher learning will enjoy perusing the website at www.scholarsfor911truth.org to find out how many bozos their alma mater can boast. Our guess is there will be some lively conversations with the "development" folks on this topic during the upcoming capital campaigns.
Lede of the Week
From a June 23 New York Post report by Philip Messing and Jeremy Olshan, on an undercover police sting operation: "Subway gropers beware: Next time you cop a feel, you might be feeling a cop."