Another Step Towards 72 Virgins

Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein's most feared deputies, will be the first Baathist leader tried for war crimes . The defendant is better known as "Chemical Ali" after he used chemical weapons on the Kurds in the town of Halabja:

On March 16, following conventional artillery bombardments, the Iraqi air force dropped canisters of mustard gas and a range of nerve agents, probably sarin, tabun and VX. This became the largest chemical weapons attack on civilians in history. Some 5,000 men, women and children died a horrible and agonizing death on that infamous day. Another 10,000 were wounded.

After some wavering, the Iraqi interim government empowered the tribunals to impose the death penalty. Which will provoke protests from Europe and the UN--the same bunch that didn't stop recent genocide in Rwanda/Burundi, the Congo, Kosovo and Bosnia.

(via California Yankee)

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Turns out the U.N. is helping in Nigeria. Sort of.

Still More:

Jonah Goldberg has Europe "ranged":

European survival, not hegemony, is a more reasonable goal. A few countries, most notably the Netherlands, are beginning to realize their problems. But on the whole the Europeans are determined to believe that America — and all it allegedly represents — is the only thing between it and its rightful place as world leader. . .

But, then, the Europeans can't even greet good news without blaming the United States. For a perfect example, consider the European — and particularly the European Left's — reaction to the events in Ukraine. A pro-EU leader triumphs (at least so far) in his bid to thwart Russian authoritarianism in the EU's backyard — riding one of the most exhilarating demonstrations of peaceful democratic courage and conviction since Tiananmen Square — and the European leftist press bleats its disapproval at the whole spectacle because it imagines that the United States might have something to do with the whole thing. Indeed, conspiracy theories that the Orange Revolution is little more than a CIA plot, and therefore not all that good, are commonplace among European sophisticates.

Meanwhile, Europe has real problems much closer to home, which cannot be pinned on George W. Bush — unless he's the cause of continent-wide European impotence or some other mood-killing phenomenon that's preventing Europeans from making babies.

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Mathias Döpfner in Die Welt:

"Europe -- your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true. . .

Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush. . .

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians and directed against our free, open Western societies. It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than the great military conflicts of the last century -- a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation but only spurred on by such gestures, which will be mistaken for signs of weakness.

(link and translation via JunkYardBlog)