Two seemingly-interesting terrorism conferences tomorrow:
``Doctors Against Terrorism,'' conference; Coney Island Hospital, Kane Memorial Auditorium, 2601 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn.

Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya College in Israel sponsors summit on global terrorism with experts including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former FBI Head Louis Freeh; Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Park Avenue between 49th and 50th streets.

Al Jazeera reports on the waves of evangelical Christians ready to stage their own invasion of Iraq as the war ends to provide aid and preach the Gospel. As a mere acolyte, I am left to wonder if the Elders are finalizing their own post-war-capitalization plans.

Making of a Godol in PDF format. You heard it here first.
By the way, the site-owner will probably be facing more downloads than expected, and might need some people to put up mirrors. Let them know if you can help them out.

Reader Meredith provides tips on how to be a trophy wife... but I think readers of this site are primarily looking for how to score the trophy wife without all of the petty money-making.

Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) has proposed that Peter Arnett be arrested and tried for treason should he ever return to American territory.

"I think Mr. Arnett should be met at the border and arrested should he come back to America," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. "We all firmly believe in the First Amendment which protects the freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. However, no U.S. citizen should be allowed to provide aid, and comfort, through false information, to the enemy during wartime..."
"...I think he should be brought back and tried as a traitor to the United States of America," Bunning said. "If this was 200 years ago, I'm pretty sure Peter Arnett would be hanging in the village square."

UPDATE Actually Arnett is a full citizen despite being born in New Zealand, according to the first WND article I linked to.

Look at it this way: We're all very happy that Bush put our money where his mouth is while Afghanistan was still the hot issue. The fact that once he had a new hot issue he was prepared to walk away from a job half done - and even that's a stretch - until Congress caught him speaks volumes. Remember also that Bush promised more than money - he promised to help Afghanistan blossom into a free, functional, democratic country. I (and I assume Edler Pinky as well) was just noting that his not really seeming all that interested in that promise anymore doesn't exactly boost his credibility when he makes the same promises and announces the same goals in the Iraq war.

You're both disingenuous bastards. See Josh Claybourn on aid to Afghanistan, in which he notes that, according to USAID, "Since October 1, 2001, the U.S. has committed $840 million in humanitarian and reconstruction aid to help the people of Afghanistan with the U.S. fulfilling 95 percent of the $297 million pledged at the Tokyo Conference in January 2002."
If one is going to argue that Bush is doing/did a crappy job with Afghanistan, one has to be completely honest in noting that he's fulfilled the commitments that he made, and that it is our fault for not pushing for more commitments if we have a problem with the result.
(old link via Instapundit)

...and here I was, mistakenly thinking that the omission of foreign aid to Afghanistan in the Bush Adminstration's 2003 budget was a mere oversight. I should have known that it was actually strategery at its finest.

Unpatriotic Liberals and the Left-Wing Conspiracy

You know Avraham, your participation in the vast left-wing conspiracy intent on bringing down all things good in this world is evident again in your most recent posts. The war in Afghanistan was the first battle in the War on Terror. Its purpose was to root out the evildoers from their land and to exact revenge on a terrible regime that awoke the sleeping giant. These tyrants murdered 3000 of this great nation’s finest citizens and patriots.

Of the terrorists, we smoked them out. We were victorious. We acted nobly. And I am proud of the job our men and women in uniform did in liberating the Afghan people from a corrupt and repressive regime. But, the threat still exists. The threat is very real. We did not start this war, but we must finish it, on our terms, in our time. History has called upon us and we must answer. We will not rest. We will not wane. We will not falter. We will bring justice, American Justice to their torture chambers and lairs of evil and villainy.

Stopping our assault on the patrons of terror to rebuild Afghanistan would have taken our vast and precious resources away from the war on terror. The Afghan terrorists lived in caves, their money came from outside their territory. Their financing came from richer, more prosperous nations. We want to liberate that wealth. Free it from the hands of terror. We want the Iraqi people and not the Afghan terrorists to benefit from these riches. Saddam has used Iraq’s incredible wealth to finance al-Queda-like terror organizations and we cannot permit that. We cannot permit a corrupt and brutal regime to terrorize the world; to bring danger to our skies; and to threaten our cities. One brutal dictator cannot control the many and one regime cannot oppress the free.

We are being tested and we will prevail.

We have freed the Afghan people and in time, they will build a free and prosperous nation. We will free the Iraqi people so that they too can build a free and prosperous nation.

But the oppressed Iraqi people will require assistance in undoing decades of oppression and terror. Liberating their financial institutions and natural resources will require expertise. Entering the free and democratic global market will require guidance and assistance. The Iraqi people and only the Iraqi people deserve to benefit from Iraqi wealth.

And on that bright day, when the flag of a free and democratic Iraq waves over Baghdad all free men, wherever they may live, will be citizens of Iraq, and, therefore, as a free man, I will take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Iraqi".

Economics and the War on Terror. People should note the fact that Starbucks just closed up shop in Israel. Alongside it, read Jon Fasman's discussion of anti-American boycotting in Arab countries. America is looking more and more like Israel -- is Israel's present the future that America faces?
ONE OTHER ASPECT of this recent trend is US soldiers finding themselves killing Iraqi civilians out of fear for their own lives. Golda Meir said of Israelis, "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children." I doubt even that degree of apology exists among most Americans (who is willing to forgive anybody for 9/11 or other American deaths?), but it is still a quote that is relevant in understanding how dreadful America's position as an enforcer against terrorism could get. Might we see an anti-Americanism become as fervent as anti-Israel sentiment already is? With anti-Semitism just as much a part of the pie, with the lashing out against a "Jewish-controlled" administration already common in anti-war groups?
(Thanks, Ephraim, for the Starbucks link)

Those Of Us Who Keep Track (don't make fun) noticed that Protocols is going to break the magical (mythical, almost) 5,000 hit mark. Think about it - if hits were strikeouts, we'd be breathing right down Nolan Ryan's back. Talk about mixing metaphors. Anyway, TOUWKT decided that we'd like to hear some input as to how to meaningfully mark the milestone once it is in fact reached.
[Reader Ephraim has this to say:

in response to your post about the 5k hits:
5000 dvided by
8 regular viewers times 4 hits a day times X days since inception
12 random viewings by lost strangers who ended there up by accident
1 person who did a goole search for avraham bronstein
+ the square root of Steven I. hitting reload 80 times when he's bored
= 5000 hits.

A Columbia University group blog, The Filibuster, has had extensive commentary on Nicholas De Genova's wish for "a million Mogadishus".
One point that is being consistently reiterated over there is that De Genova's career should not be affected by these comments, under principles of "free speech." But I think this is a false point -- even if professor Glenn Reynolds agrees -- because one of the primary ways that we evaluate professors is in regards to the way they instruct students. Certainly, such comments within a classroom context should be part of an evaluation of his instructional process and capability. And this event should be considered only slightly less than an actual class session, given that it was an event sanctioned by the university with the explicit and solitary purpose of having professors teach students. The same cannot be said of many other on-campus events, certainly, and most definitely cannot be said of nearly any other form of speech in which the professor might engage. He should be entitled to his comments, but only to the degree that such comments would be accepted as part of a class session on the topic.
But from a quick perusal of their blog, it doesn't seem like I should be expecting many a coherent argument related to understanding the details of a situation. They had two posts today (here and here) questioning why Bollinger was only quoted for statements made outside the courtroom -- wondering if he "wasn't in the courtroom at all." These posts almost led me to doubt my understanding that only parties' lawyers speak before the court -- but then I figured that it could be just more ignorance of Columbia students, which seems to be the case. And of course he was in the courtroom (if he cared at all), but made comments outside the courtroom because that is where the press assembles for comments from interested parties.
So far, Filibuster is 0-for-2.

In a somewhat related to Pinky vein, here's an article by Ralph Peters trying to explain the "Arab mentality". In part:

On one level, Arabs know that Saddam Hussein is a monster. They know he has killed more Arabs than Israel ever could do [sic]. Saddam has been the worst thing to happen to Mesopotamia since the Mongols razed Baghdad. But Arabs are so jealous and discouraged that they need to inflate even Saddam into a hero. They have no one else.
...
For all the shouting and hand-waving in the Arab world, the truth is that Arabs have a deep inferiority complex. They're afraid they really might not be able to build a successful modern state - to say nothing of a post-modern, information-based society.

One other thing:

If Iraq could do even a fair job of developing a prosperous Arab democracy that respected human rights, it could be an inspiration to the rest of the states in the region - and beyond.
The Arab world desperately needs a success story. Let us hope, for the sake of hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings in the Middle East, that Iraq provides that example.

I wonder what those smarter than I make of this, relative to the “battle of civilizations (religions)” and the teachings in our Yeshivot… Islamic Textbooks Scapegoat Jews

And just when you thought you heard everything: Israel is not the only place where soldiers use moral reasoning to refuse to fight. I wonder how Vietnam would have looked… See here.

Oh, and by the way, just to clarify, Steve's comments to Avraham's Post of March 24, are based on information he got from where? Ah yes, it came from the ever honest and completely altruistic US administration (or from those “embedded” media members who are given scripts to read from by their military supervisors, who are yet to report first hand knowledge of a single act of coalition impropriety…). The non-existent amount of skepticism which accompanied your statement is nothing short of astounding.
[Since you didn't provide a link to the post, it took me a moment to track it down. Given that advocacy of surrender is necessarily done through the channels of US government/military and the press, it would seem that their advocacy of surrender is proven rather easily, no skepticism required. One could say that it has not been done thoroughly enough, perhaps, but I think that such an argument is unfounded, since every public statement has been pretty on-message in this regard. -- SIW]

TheBrave, a listserv for Jews with families in the active military. (via Command Post)

A curious man’s question: War correspondents + embedded media + military analysts = around the clock coverage of War with Iraq. What =’ed coverage of war in Afghanistan and why? A cynic can answer, but I prefer to hear what others have to say.

Whatever your moral or political feelings about the war in Iraq are you cannot shy away from the reality that this made for TV battle (simply the latest installment of the War on Terror) is helping President Bush Jr. shield himself from his dismal domestic record. One of the largest pieces of his domestic agenda has imploded and left this earth not with bang, but a whimper. Please see.

The anti-Semitism just keeps on coming...Hoozajew (Thanks Miriam)

A Pakistani student wears a headband with the words 'kill jews,' during an anti-war rally at a university in Islamabad, March 26, 2003. The students of Quaid-i-Azam University gathered on Wednesday to protest against the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites). REUTERS/Mian Khursheed (via Instapundit via Clayton Cramer)