Steven Den Beste takes apart an Arab News editorial republished in the International Herald-Tribune (incidentally, I hadn't realized that the Washington Post sold out its 50% share of the IHT to the New York Times, apparently sometime in 2003).

One of the lines in the editorial is:

The rising death toll among U.S. servicemen in Iraq no longer matters as much....

How could the death toll do anything other than rise? It certainly can't fall. (Though that would be some headline: US Troops Resurrected, Continue War in Iraq) It would be an act of reality-denial to believe that there will be no more deaths at all. Death tolls always rise.

More relevant than the death toll is the death rate, which has dropped from the November high (81 US troops killed) to 40 in December and 18 so far in January, which projects out to 47 by the end of the month. This is still more than the summer lull (August: 35, September 31) but less than during and immediately after the end of major combat operations (March: 65, April: 73).

But what's actually important is neither the death toll or the death rate, but rather whether these deaths are worth while. Do the American people think that our involvement in Iraq is a necessary act of national defense? If, in ten years, Iraq is viewed as another Vietnam, then these deaths will be viewed as tragic and pointless. On the other hand, if Iraq is peaceful and reasonably prosperous -- and I would settle for an Iraq in 2013 that is as peaceful and prosperous as Israel was in 1958 -- then these deaths, though tragic, will have been to a good purpose.

The war of public opinion is where this question will be decided. And in that war, I'm fighting on the opposite side from the Arab News.

(Pedantic note: the wording of part of this post has been edited.)

I was not aware that Yasser Arafat probably organized the murder of American diplomats. It's something that came up while I was reading David Frum's book The Right Man.

Now, ignorance is in general no excuse. But what then can be said about George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, who encouraged and hosted the peace talks between Israel and Arafat in 1993?

It's no wonder bin Laden thought we would roll over and die after 9/11. After all, we had welcomed Arafat with open arms.

(The stronger claim that Arafat personally ordered the murders is not verifiable without the release of the tapes.)

When we were living in Oakland we lived about three blocks away from the main Your Black Muslim Bakery. But I never heard about any of this stuff. Murder and molestation among the fish sandwiches, apparently. Link via Daniel Pipes