Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Bad Choices

Friday, December 14, 2001

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All right. I am now officially sick-and-tired of the growing hand-wringing, and moral temporizing over the fate of that traitor, John Walker who is, at this writing, sitting in a shipping container under the watchful eyes of US Marine Corps at Camp Rhino in Ahf-gahn-ee-stahn.

I am officially sick-and-tired of hearing the "a young man who made bad choices" discussion - on both sides.

And, I am officially sick-and-tired of suggesting there is any question about what to do with him. Do the words "last cigarette" and "blindfold" fit here?

Oh, yes. I know: He's someone's son. His parents are acting like Chandra Levy's mother and father. They've taken to sending out baby pictures of the little tyke. We await the standard "first bath in the kitchen sink" photo.

Then they released his "Dear mama and papa" letter. Just a young man who made some bad choices.

Bad choices. Here's a guy who grew up in those two hotbeds of modern Conservative thought, Suburban Washington, DC and suburban San Francisco; went to Yemen, then Pakistan, then Afghanistan only to end up with shrapnel in his leg, looking like Charles Manson in a burnoose.

Puh-leeze.

Here are two reasons some of us never got into much of a lather over America's dues being in arrears to the United Nations.

First: After any Israeli defensive action, the UN Security Council cannot snarl East Side traffic quickly enough as it gathers at its headquarters in Manhattan to propose a resolution condemning Israel.

Following this week's horror during which Arab terrorists bombed a civilian bus in Israel then gunned down injured passengers as they tried to escape, you might have expected the UN Security Council to condemn - or at a minimum, criticize - that sort of thing.

Nah.

Here's an AP report from yesterday afternoon filed by Edith Lederer: "Arab nations called on Thursday for an immediate open meeting of the UN Security Council and adoption of a resolution demanding an end to Israeli violence against Palestinians." [Emphasis mine.]

Huh? Even for a region where documents are read from right to left, that seems a bit backwards.

Second: Egypt's most popular television commentator is a guy named Hamdi Qandil. He is fanatically anti-American. Qandil recently told his viewers that America was only dropping food to Afghans to "fatten them up before they slaughter them."

Here's the part that rankles: According to a report by the AP's Nadia Abou El-Magd:

Qandil, an avowed leftist, spent most of the last 25 years in Europe working for the United Nations and gaining expertise in Western media operations, particularly satellite broadcasting, and perfecting his English and French.

Excellent. UN funds went to help to train this guy. Would any of you who has been wailing about those back dues care to explain why our tax money should be used for this kind of thing?

Can we have UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan show us his brand new Nobel Peace Prize again?

Another bad choice.

One final rant, then you can have the weekend off.

As promised, I got a chair, put my name on it, attached a Starbucks coffee cup, a bag from the Sutton Place Gourmet, and an umbrella (with the help of about four pounds of duct tape) and set up shop in front of the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia for the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. I was the first one there.

You can see a picture of it on the Secret Decoder Ring page.

It turns out, I will be the ONLY one there.

The trial will take place not at the courthouse in the historic Old Town section of Alexandria, but at the new one in the industrial section of Alexandria off Eisenhower Avenue.

I had my choice between two courthouses and �

This is true: I got a wag-a-finger-under-one's-nose note from a member of a Junior League somewhere taking me to task for poking fun at that organization the other day. The e-mail started with the words: Oh, piffle!

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