by Craig Bernthal<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n I<\/span>n Frankenmuth, Michigan, among a complex of little shops that sell junk to tourists, there is a T-shirt store called \u201cPeace Frog.\u201d On each T-shirt, there is a large squatting bright green frog, who sticks out a paw, huge in the foreground, making the sixties \u201cV\u201d sign for peace. The most nostalgic shirt is tie-dyed rainbow, with a big green peace frog, but if you want something more contemporary, you can get a pirate peace frog squatting in front of a dark ship, emblematized with \u201cPirates of the Amphibian.\u201d There weren\u2019t many people in the shop the afternoon I was there with my sister and my mother. My sister, who has a son who did two tours in Iraq and is more a dyed-in-the-wool Republican than a tie-dyed, Woodstock-generation Democrat, bought a shirt. It was for old time sake, worth a chuckle, and I suppose as long as there are baby boomers left who want to remember their youth, there will be a market for peace-frog T-shirts.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there is still plenty of peace frogism left in the national consciousness. It is exemplified by Ned Lamont\u2019s thumping primary defeat of Joe Lieberman, and it goes back to the assumptions of people who campaigned for George McGovern and Dr. Spock. The assumptions of peace frogs are that if we stay very still, in the middle of our own ponds and don\u2019t cause a ripple, that no one will bother us; that American foreign policy can be nothing but imperialistic and evil; and that when we are visited by events like 9\/11, it must be because we\u2019ve done something to deserve it.<\/p>\n Many of us, perhaps, are caught in a less virulent form of peace frogism: we\u2019d like to believe our situation is more stable and less dangerous than it is.<\/p>\n O<\/span>n the day I flew back to Michigan for my mother\u2019s 80th birthday celebration, the British made their arrests of the terrorists who had plotted to blow up several transatlantic flights from England to the U.S. I got wind that something was up when I checked into the Fresno Airport at 5 a.m. and saw lots of police, TV cameras, and long lines at security, where people were being relieved of all liquid carry-on items. The woman in front of me at the X-ray machine had a small tube of cold sore medicine confiscated. I got into the airport at Saginaw an hour and a half late, going through some chaos at O\u2019Hare \u2014 but then O\u2019Hare is always chaotic, and somehow, United Airlines had forgotten to supply a flight crew for our plane.<\/p>\n This set the tone for a strange week in Michigan, when the war on terror crept into the quiet rural area where I grew up, and sixties nostalgia left. First, Hezbollah scored big propaganda \u201cvictories\u201d in Lebanon and Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn has both the largest community of Shiite Moslems in the United States and the largest mosque. The Arab-American community of Dearborn is mainly from Lebanon and Iraq. When I was a kid, the Chaldean families of Dearborn were noted for being prosperous, law abiding citizens who owned a lot of liquor stores. Guy Raz, for National Public Radio reported, \u201cAlong Warren Avenue, the nexus of Arab Dearborn, Lebanese flags flutter everywhere. Nearly every sign is in English and Arabic.\u201d<\/p>\n During that week, the demonstrations in Dearborn in support of Hezbollah were large and regular. On at least one occasion, 10,000 people took part, carrying banners proclaiming, \u201cHezbollah Is Our Army,\u201d and displaying caricatures of the Israeli flag with a swastika over the Star of David. A woman carried a large sign displaying a picture of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Inside Dearborn\u2019s Islamic Center, people gathered to support Hezbollah. No peace-frogs here, apparently.<\/p>\n While all this was happening, on Friday, August 11, three Arab-American men from Texas, Maruan Awad Muhareb, Adham Abdelhamid Othman, and Louai Abdelhamied Othman walked in to the Wal-Mart store in Caro, Michigan, a small town in \u201cthe thumb\u201d of the Michigan mitten, and purchased 80 prepaid cell phones. A suspicious grave-yard cashier called 911 and the three were arrested. The police found 1,000 cell phones in the minivan the three were using. (This happened three days after two men from Dearborn, Ali Houssaiky and Osama Abulhassan, had bought 600 cell phones in various stores in Ohio, were charged in Ohio with money laundering in support of terrorism and soliciting or providing support for acts of terrorism.) The three men arrested in Caro said they were buying the cell phones for resale in Texas. The men charged in Ohio also said they were buying the phones to resell them. The Caro arrestees have since been released, after Federal and State officials found no connections between the men and terrorism, but not before papers in Michigan had picked up the speculation that the three men were in a plot targeting the Mackinac Bridge.<\/p>\n N<\/span>ow, there are many striking things about these events. One is the ease and rapidity at which many Americans have adapted to some aspects of the post 9\/11 world. In the airports I went through on August 10, no one seemed surprised by anything that was happening: The security man wants to confiscate my drinking water, my shampoo, my medicine, my make-up? Fine. Delayed flights? Big lines at security? Code orange? No big deal. That\u2019s the way things are now, and will be for a long time. And by the way, thank God for British intelligence.<\/p>\n Three Arab-Americans buy 80 cell phones in a town with the population of a Fresno high school and a graveyard shift cashier, who undoubtedly has heard plenty about using cell phones to detonate IEDs in Iraq, calls the police. (You have to wonder what was going through the minds of the people in the small towns across the northern tier who sold the other 1,000 cell phones, apparently without question.) That the United States is under attack has clearly penetrated the consciousness of at least one cashier.<\/p>\n What is more surprising, however, is how little the threat of jihadist terrorism has penetrated Dearborn, for instance, where behavior seems alternately sinister and na\u00efve as people by the thousands march in support of the most dangerous jihadist organization on the planet. Perhaps what is most astonishing is that there is little complaint about Dearborn and little news coverage. \u00a0In Michigan, you hear an occasional half-comic aside to \u201cDearbornistan.\u201d<\/p>\n Although we\u2019ve accommodated ourselves to the inconveniences of airport security, have we, as a nation, really gotten the picture? Hezbollah\u2019s \u201cvictory\u201d in Lebanon is a huge spiritual victory for Iran also and will only energize that country\u2019s will to power. Taking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his word, that he wants to destroy Israel, while Iran steams ahead with a nuclear program that could produce the means to do it, a military confrontation between the United States and Iran seems much more likely today than it did a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n Yet, we are still a shockingly calm country after 9\/11, a complacent country. We are still a land where silly sixties peace-frog T-shirts are emblematic of our mental landscape. We\u2019d like to accommodate the Dearborn demonstrations as if their demonstrations were consanguineous with civil rights marches or anti-war demonstrations of the sixties, but they aren\u2019t, and the day when we will be forced to recognize that fact draws near.\u00a0 The cashier in Caro had the right impulse, even if in this particular case, capitalism rather than terrorism was probably at work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Craig Bernthal Private Papers In Frankenmuth, Michigan, among a complex of little shops that sell junk to tourists, there is a T-shirt store called \u201cPeace Frog.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[199,771],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1rx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5520,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-symphony-unheard\/","url_meta":{"origin":5551,"position":0},"title":"A Symphony Unheard","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Go see\u00a0The Nativity Story by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Here is the plot and the theme: God creates the universe, not because he needs to, since he is complete in himself, but as an act of gratuitous love. Being omniscient as well as omnipotent, he knows before the initial instant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5368,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/paying-the-piper\/","url_meta":{"origin":5551,"position":1},"title":"Paying the Piper","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Temperance is not high in the current list of American virtues. We are the 9th most obese people on earth, according to the World Health Organization, with 74% of American\u2019s over 15 identified as overweight.On the expressway, hulking pickups and humvees blast by sports cars.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":380,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-abortion-question-vice-presidential-responses-fall-short\/","url_meta":{"origin":5551,"position":2},"title":"The Abortion Question: Vice Presidential Responses Fall Short","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Martha Raddatz: \u201cThis debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.\u201d A fair\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Women"","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5355,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/leaving-the-new-episcopal-church\/","url_meta":{"origin":5551,"position":3},"title":"Leaving the New Episcopal Church","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers Most Christians in America probably don\u2019t know much about what is happening in the Episcopal Church (TEC). It is very small in comparison with the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, or the new, \u201cnon-denominational\u201d neighborhood churches, whose campuses dwarf small towns; and TEC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Craig Bernthal"","block_context":{"text":"Craig Bernthal","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/craig-bernthal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":639,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-positive-role-of-negative-feedback\/","url_meta":{"origin":5551,"position":4},"title":"The Positive Role of “Negative Feedback”","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Craig Bernthal Private Papers \u201cYou can always count on Americans to do the right thing \u2014 after they\u2019ve tried everything else.\u201d\u00a0 Winston Churchill One of Victor Hanson\u2019s most persuasive arguments about why democracies have an advantage over despotisms in fighting wars is that democracies are much more likely to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11155,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-randa-jarrar-teaches\/","url_meta":{"origin":5551,"position":5},"title":"What Randa Jarrar Teaches","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The following piece is by my colleague,\u00a0Craig Bernthal. Since Randa Jarrar fired off her disgusting tweet about \u201cthe witch,\u201d Barbara Bush, being a racist, I, like other members of the Fresno State English Department, have received about a dozen emails asking, alternatively, how we could have participated in hiring her,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Randa Jarrar"","block_context":{"text":"Randa Jarrar","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/randa-jarrar\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5551"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5552,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5551\/revisions\/5552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}