New York Times
Millions of Iranians marched with unusual vigor and anti-American defiance yesterday to mark the 23rd anniversary of their Islamic revolution. Staged rallies on official anniversaries are not an accurate measure of the mood of a country, but in this case the turnout partly reflects a genuine popular backlash against President Bush's description of Iran as a member of the "axis of evil." His comment has clearly strengthened the hand of the hard-liners and forced reformers to prove their patriotism by denouncing the United States.
The American goal for rogue states like Iran, where leaders with no public accountability meddle abroad, ship arms to terrorists and thwart internal democratic change, should be that such rulers will be peacefully driven from power by internal domestic forces. This remains a distant hope for Iraq, Syria and North Korea, among others. In Iran, by contrast, the process of internal change, increasingly evident since the 1997 election of President Mohammad Khatami, had been moving forward. We need to be on the right side of this struggle. ...
For the most part, Mr. Khatami and his allies have been intimidated or outmaneuvered by the conservative clerics who still control Iran's military and internal security forces. In recent weeks, Iran has been meddling in western Afghanistan through shipments that may include arms. It has harbored al Qaeda operatives fleeing across its border from Afghanistan. It sent 50 tons of arms to the Palestinian Authority and continues to finance the murderous Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It may also be rearming Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The United States and its allies must do all they can to stop such activities, including serious diplomatic warnings. Nevertheless, it makes little sense to lose what leverage we may have in Tehran. Iranian cooperation remains important in stabilizing Afghanistan. Iran can also be helpful in America's effort to isolate and weaken Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. Over the long term, improved relations with Iran would be a force for peace in the Middle East. There is a growing political force within Iran whose equivalent we would welcome in many other countries. In Iran, it already exists, and we must nurture it.
Washington Post
Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan arrives in Washington today for what likely will be, at least in part, a celebration of his readiness to join the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. Any political boost he reaps from his scheduled White House meeting with President Bush will be largely justified; Mr. Musharraf's cooperation has been instrumental to the military campaign in Afghanistan, and his strong public initiative to arrest and reverse the mounting influence of Islamic extremists in Pakistan may prove even more important over time. But the general's visit needs to be more than a love fest. For all he has done in the past five months to advance the counterterrorist cause, the Pakistani leader has much more to do; and the Bush administration should match the political and economic rewards it offers him with concerted pressure to move ahead. ...
Mr. Musharraf's forthright public condemnations of Islamic extremism, which began well before Sept. 11, leave little doubt that he genuinely would like to fashion a moderate Muslim state that would resemble Turkey rather than Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. But the general faces strong opposition to his project, some of it within his own military; and where the extremists' cause intersects with that of Kashmir, a focus of Pakistani nationalism since the country's foundation, Mr. Musharraf may feel tempted to pull his punches. That is where the Bush administration should intervene: It should make clear to the Pakistani leader that he must decisively break with the terrorists on this front as on others. Mr. Musharraf wants U.S. help in persuading India to begin negotiations on Kashmir, and the Bush administration should weigh whether it can help galvanize a peace process without compromising its longstanding neutrality in that conflict. But it must be clear, too, that continued collaboration between Islamabad and Washington depends on Mr. Musharraf's campaign against Islamic extremism proving aggressive and unambiguous in deeds, as well as in words.
Salt Lake Deseret News
With all of the Olympic-related talk about "lighting the fire within," how appropriate to have Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Salt Lake City to address that very subject.
Tutu spoke last Thursday at Salt Lake's Capitol Theatre to pay tribute to four female champions of human rights, a subject that dominates his life. It was Tutu's nonviolent efforts to end apartheid in South Africa that resulted in his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
The key to security in today's unstable world, Tutu noted, is spirituality. The example he used of the importance and power of the inner self in today's world of materialism was a powerful one: Aung San Suu Kyi.
A Burmese opposition democracy leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest in Myanmar (formerly Burma) since before she won the Peace Prize.
"There you have these big military men armed to the teeth, and who are they scared of? A beautiful little woman. She has no guns. All she has is integrity and character."
Again and again Tutu emphasized the power and majesty of the human spirit. As he told the Deseret News, what brought peace to South Africa wasn't "the barrel of a gun" but "forgiveness and reconciliation." ...
Because of the Olympics, Salt Lake City and Utah have become focal points for much that is good. Tutu. The Declaration of Independence exhibit courtesy of Norman Lear. The inspiring stories and performances of numerous athletes from numerous countries.
Salt Lake City and Utah are richer for it.
New York Newsday
History is the most important witness today as an international war-crimes tribunal at The Hague opens the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on charges of crimes against humanity. It's the most important war-crimes trial in Europe since the Nuremberg judgment of Nazi criminals and could take two years to play out. It's also the first time a head of state anywhere has faced such charges.
The fairness with which the tribunal will conduct the trial, the evidence it will review and the eventual judgment it will render should serve as vindication for the tens of thousands of victims of four wars in the Balkans that closed Europe's bloodiest century. As important, this trial represents the refusal of the civilized world to allow genocidal massacres and other crimes against entire peoples to go unpunished. ...
Milosevic, 60, who ruled Serbia and what remained of the former Yugoslavia for 13 years, until his ouster in October 2000, faces life imprisonment on a mind-boggling array of charges. ... Milosevic's legendary brutality earned him the nickname of the Butcher of the Balkans.
His arrogance has led him to deny the legitimacy of the tribunal judging him, to refuse to have a lawyer appointed to defend him and to argue that the trial is a sham devised by NATO to cover up the alliance's own war crimes against the Serbs. It's grimly apt that he is reported to be listening to Frank Sinatra's "My Way" over and over in his jail cell.
But Milosevic won't have it his way, no matter what he argues. Throughout the Balkans, almost every day brings forth new bodies from mass graves that Milosevic's henchmen filled. Those ghosts demand justice. They will have it.
Los Angeles Times
For a quarter of a century Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been a lonely voice in Egypt, promoting democratic ideas and religious freedom while incurring the wrath of officials. Two years ago authorities arrested him and charged him with receiving illegal funds from the European Commission to monitor elections and with defaming Egypt in human rights reports. His real "crime" was criticizing the government.
After a six-month trial that included thousands of pages of evidence, a high court judge took little more than an hour to pronounce Ibrahim guilty and sentence him to seven years at hard labor. Last week a Cairo appeals court overturned the conviction. Diplomats from the United States and several European countries attended the appeals court hearing, signaling clearly that their nations expect Egypt to live up to its rhetoric about moving toward democracy. Egypt too often equates legitimate dissent with potential violence and clamps down when it should offer more opportunities for peaceful opposition. ...
The appeals panel gave no reason for its decision and ordered Ibrahim, who holds Egyptian and American citizenship, freed to await further proceedings. The government should call off its vendetta and drop the charges. Western nations provide Egypt with billions of dollars a year in aid and count on it to participate in the Middle East peace process. The government should respond by recognizing that dissent is not treason and that as a society becomes more open it becomes stronger.
Houston Chronicle
Today the world makes history in the Hague, Netherlands, as the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic gets under way.
Milosevic, accused of masterminding ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s, goes before the biggest European war crimes trial since Adolf Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg after World War II.
The trial is expected to be complex and lengthy. It will cover a number of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity spanning a decade and will involve hundreds of witnesses. Milosevic refuses to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the tribunal and plans to represent himself, although the court named three prominent international lawyers as "amici curiae," or "friends of the court," to look after his rights.
The challenge of ensuring a fair trial will be immense. The charges are immense, too. More than one million people were imprisoned or forced from their homes, and many thousands were killed, maimed and wounded throughout the bloody conflicts.
But as monstrous as this trial is, Human Rights Watch and others have pointed out, many of Milosevic's co-conspirators and leaders of other groups involved in the internecine warfare remain at large. There is relatively little being done to bring them to similar justice. Responses from various leaders and governments range from inaction to outright defiance of the process.
The Balkan region has a long and bloody history. Even if Milosevic is convicted of the serious crimes with which he has been charged, there is still a very long way to go before a full accounting of the brutality on all sides is examined so the region can move past its recent history.
Daily Oklahoman
There's gall -- and then there's former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic.
His trial is scheduled to begin today in The Hague. He'll be the first head of state ever tried for war crimes, basically accused of leading a genocidal operation designed to cleanse Croats, Muslims and Albanians from lands he believed should be devoted only to ethnic Serbs.
Skeletons and other human remains continue to be disgorged by the earth. The missing number in the tens of thousands. More than 200,000 people are believed to have died in wars that have accompanied the dissolution of greater Yugoslavia.
Yet last month Milosevic declared his innocence, claiming the proceedings against him a "malicious, utterly hostile process aimed at justifying the crime against my country, using this court as a weapon against my country and my people."
The frightening thing is a number of people think Milosevic might beat the rap. Ironically, with corpses everywhere a direct link between Milosevic and the killings is no sure thing. The trial could take two years or more.
We pray justice will be done. That Milosevic headed a murderous regime whose actions were a disgrace to humanity isn't in doubt -- only whether he can be made to bear personal responsibility.
History is dotted with examples of bloodthirsty villains who nonetheless managed to escape judgment. Slobodan Milosevic should not be one of them
Columbus Dispatch
In case anyone has forgotten, Osama bin Laden is still at large.
One would never guess, however, from all the hype over last week's federal indictment of a nobody named John Walker Lindh that the world's most dangerous terrorist is still unaccounted for.
The story of Lindh, the 20-year-old "American Taliban'' who grew up in Marin County, Calif., and turned to fundamentalist Islam, is a sideshow. He no doubt deserved to be indicted on 10 counts involving conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization. And if found guilty, he deserves to go to prison.
But Lindh doesn't deserve all the media coverage his case has received, and he certainly doesn't deserve the personal attention of the attorney general of the United States.
Lindh is at most a curiosity, the kind that would make people say: "Guess what? I was in Mazar-e-Sharif last November, and I ran into a guy from San Francisco. Small world.''
Well, maybe Lindh is a little more unusual than that, considering that probably no other Americans ran off to join the Taliban. But America's punditocracy -- and to some extent the government -- has toiled mightily to inflate Lindh into being more than he is. They've been trying to make him into a symbol of What Went Wrong.
Actually, Lindh's life to date is symbolic of nothing.
He is portrayed as an All-American boy who went over to the dark side. But the All- American label is meaningless. Was he more American than other boys? Probably not. All-American just sounds nicely ironic in conjunction with Taliban.
Benedict Arnold: Now, there was a traitor. John Walker Lindh is just a self-deluded guy who ended up in Mazar-e-Sharif. But he probably wasn't brainwashed, and he's too old to be a wayward youth. He was a self- deluded adult and, if convicted, he'll pay for his errors.
That's about it.
Now, where is Osama bin Laden?
Chicago Tribune
The most shameless trait of Slobodan Milosevic, the notorious architect of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, may be that the former Yugoslav dictator has no shame. He still thinks--or at least claims--that he is the victim.
That would be humorous if it weren't obscene. More than 200,000 people were killed in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and millions more were displaced in wars Milosevic started and lost in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Milosevic finally goes on trial Tuesday in The Hague, accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity--the first former head of state to stand trial on those charges before an international court.
This case is the most important war crimes trial in Europe since Nuremberg. That's because the criminals involved committed the worst carnage in Europe since the Third Reich. The trial will be a signal to despots and would-be despots that national borders will not protect those who would commit such carnage.
Milosevic's public justice is all the more important, given the United Nations' decision Friday to end its quest to try former leaders of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge on charges of genocide. The U.S. denounced the decision. ...
The Hague tribunal should not be deterred by Milosevic's tantrums nor by an obstructionist Yugoslav government still withholding some crucial military records. Milosevic is finally going to face his accusers. He will have an opportunity never afforded to his victims, the opportunity to defend himself.
Charlotte Observer
Pound sand, oil sheiks. Hands off that Arctic wilderness, oil companies. Turns out the solution to a nagging problem -- U.S. dependence on air-polluting fossil fuels -- may have been right under our noses. Fried chicken. Fried bacon. Steaks. That's right, maybe we can deep-fry our way to energy independence.
What's going on is that, in an experiment, the University of Georgia in Athens has been heating water and campus buildings by using fat as fuel. That's right, chicken fat, pork fat, beef tallow and other greases. They say it's cheap, it doesn't pollute the air as much as other fuels, and -- in case you were worried -- it doesn't smell.
The possibilities are exciting. America produces copious amounts of fat (and not just around our waistlines), and disposing of grease so it doesn't clog sewage systems is a continuing problem for restaurants and industries. The scientists involved in the Georgia experiment are going to test animal fat in other uses, such as truck and auto engines. "We've only scratched the surface," says Bob Synk, a consulting engineer.
So maybe by 2020 we'll be powering our cars with lard. Well, we've heard stranger ideas. After all, who in 1960 would ever have predicted microwave popcorn? Stay tuned for further developments.
(Compiled by United Press International)
