The look on Dick Cheney’s face said it all: putting Barbara and Jenna Bush on stage was an extremely poor idea, especially coming on the heels of Schwarzenegger’s rock solid rhetoric. It was a gamble with only a small chance of success, the President himself and Laura Bush had to save the effort and in a way they succeeded. With Teresa Heinz Kerry getting a lot of press coverage the Republicans had few options but to juxtapose the lady of privilege with the down-to-earth librarian from Midland, Texas and with education, stem-cell research and Vaclav Havel, Laura hit the right notes. Still, bringing out the family in a political arena is an unproven strategy and I wonder if having the Bushies on stage tonight added anything to this convention day.

If it had been given a bit more depth I think Schwarzenegger’s speech would have been the nominee’s speech, extremely powerful and hitting the right notes from the fear of the “Soviet boot” to the rationale for going to war in Iraq, and mixing in immigrant values. Billing Richard Nixon as a small government conservative however was pushing it quite a bit, but the reintroduction of Dick on a GOP convention was probably in the same vein as the Democrats re-embracing Vietnam. There’s a lot you can achieve with rewriting history, reinterpretation of the past is an extremely valuable tool when used with discretion.

The impressive core of Arnold’s speech however was an incredibly passionate plea saying that you didn’t have to agree with everything that Bush stands for, but that you could still vote for him. While packaging all Republican core values in this speech Arnold set the door open for those who can only agree with a portion of it. That is a speech worthy of a presidential candidate.

I have long abandoned the practice to comment on individual terror attacks on these pages and instead relied on bloggers that are somewhat closer to the fire. Following today's attacks in Beersheba I checked out Dutchblog Israel where Bert provides us with some sane and succinct commentary, I especially liked this bit:

The timing of this attack - the day on which dates were made public for decisions related to a pullout from Gaza - suggests that, like the settlers and their supporters, Palestinian(-Islamist) terrorists would prefer Israel to continue its occupation. In the past, during every stage of negotiations or planning towards some Israeli pullout from occupied territory we witnessed a rise in terror attacks.

Discontinuation of the occupation would be a major setback for a group like Hamas as it would nullify it's raison-d'etre. Like any radical terrorist group its greatest fear is a transformation to normality, a phenomenon that has haunted the IRA for decades.

The plight of two French hostages in Iraq has focused the attention on the new French law to ban all religious apparel from public schools, notably the headscarf for Muslim girls which is driving the hostage-takers’ demands. France, thinking it was getting a free ride in after bailing out of the Iraqi Freedom project, is getting a pretty rude awakening it seems.

After the failed experiment with tolerant multi-culturalism which has resulted in un-integrated fringe societies, or parallel universes if you like, Europeans have started to introduce new measures to forcibly assimilate their Muslim communities. Under the banner of the separation of church and state the French have now gone from one extreme to the other and the outcome I fear will have the same effect as the soft-approach: the expatriate Muslim community will disconnect itself from mainstream society and it will be even harder for French public officials to get a grip on these underground communities. Anyone thinking that home schooling is an American phenomenon should try and take a look at ethnic and religious groups in Europe that can’t identify with anything that secular public education has on offer for them. And when the same institutions take on some of these groups’ more treasured cultural identities then it is fair to say that the proposed laws have some clear flaws, thoughts that must have crossed the minds of those two unfortunate journalists captured in Iraq.

Separation of church and state is a great concept but it strictly refers to the government applying religion in its day-to-day workings. A policeman who alters his uniform by wearing religious insignia blurs that distinction, a student that walks into a public school should within the bounds of what is reasonable be allowed to wear a headscarf or a turban. In that way at the very least a society opens up its doors to religious and ethnic minorities and a middle ground between multi-culturalism and drastic bans can be achieved. While France’s attempts to creatively experiment with integrating Muslims are laudable, current legislation is not helpful and if it will stand the test of time and terror it will have far reaching consequences for long-term cohesion in French society. With the abduction of two journalists and the threat to kill them if the ban on headscarves is not rescinded this week, the French have been given a stark reminder of the intransigence of Islamist hardliners and the inevitable part that France will have to play in the struggle between freedom and terror.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club confirms our suspicions that France is working frantically behind the scenes to broker some sort of deal with the hostage-takers and their backers to secure the release of the hostages.

Another medical mishap in the Dorsman household last night so I didn’t have time to see the McCain and Giuliani speeches. Check out PoliBlog and the RNC Convention bloggers for a good round up of reactions.

Kim Du Toit is in Amsterdam and I was keen to hear what the Texan gun enthusiast with South African roots had to say about my native grounds. Given Kim’s usual blunt rhetoric I found his observations remarkably mild but then almost everyone left, right, center, old, and young thinks the Dutch capital is an unusually cool place, even I get a kick out of the touristy canal trip. This bit however struck me as very interesting as it is hardly ever mentioned with regards to the Dutch:

Frankly, I don't know why the Dutch bother to speak their own language at all. Everyone speaks excellent English, most of the signs are in English, and it's pretty much the lingua franca of commerce.

True. Compare that to the fear infused zeal with which the French and especially the French-Canadians protect their language from English influences. The Dutch are certainly proud of their cultural heritage, but they are simply too pragmatic to bother to protect their language. Languages evolve over time and if the English language is ever going to get a foothold on the continent it will indeed be in Holland.

UPDATE: Du Toit has updated his post and it is much better and pretty accurate, especially the conclusion:

What I think I like most is that the Dutch are clearly a no-nonsense people in terms of commerce, but they're not obsessed with attitude about it. Of course, Holland is part of the filthy EU, but then again, it's not too suprising that they joined up: the Dutch go along to get along.

On the mark. Especially the "no-nonsense" part, it's one of my trademarks and I have used it with great success on three different continents.

In the ongoing litany of complaints about idealess campaigns and stale democracies I have in the recent past blasted both Europe and Canada but it isn’t hard to see that US politics are equally disappointing when it comes to finding an engaging debate about the future direction of the nation. During my convalescence I followed the news from a distance but all I could hear and see was Swift Boats, Mekong, Veterans and over-analyzing the military careers of Kerry and, to a lesser extent, Bush. A sad spectacle indeed and very reminiscent of the tedious and disappointing campaign of four years ago. You would have thought that events since the Bush-Gore match would at the very least have inspired some debate on the future course for America rather than endless attempts at character-assassination by both parties.

This week George W. Bush has the opportunity to end the abysmal campaign by doing what John Kerry has so far failed to do and that is - borrowing from the Reagan campaign library - define today’s problems and translate them in tomorrow’s potential. Elections are always about the future and there’s quite a bit for Bush to address on both the domestic and foreign policy side. Domestically he will have to lay out a very clear economic and fiscal plan and temper some of his social conservatism without alienating the Christian right. On the international scene he can rightly point to phenomenal achievements in Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror at large but there will have to be a clear cut agenda of where the Bush team is headed in the next four years. A medium term plan for Middle East troop deployments, how to engage Iran and North Korea, a comprehensive plan for restructuring the nation’s intelligence effort but also: building strong relationships with Russia and China. In short, Bush has the opportunity to present a coherent strategy, engage American voters and make it clear why his vision of the future is far more compelling than what Kerry has put on the table so far.

As discussed before, there aren’t that many undecided voters left, but the Republicans should ensure that their base turns out to vote while at the same time nail the few remaining swing voters. If Bush can pull this off this week in New York he should be able to cruise to November 2 without too many glitches, the numbers are already moving in his favor. It is Bush’s moment and I would almost dare to say: it’s his election to loose.

Chrenkoff has another edition of “Good News from Iraq” up, cross-posted at Winds and Opinion Journal. Have a look especially at the economic and reconstruction news, many are contributing to this colossal task, and even better news is that:

Bosnia-Herzegovina, also a scene of war not that long ago, is planning to send a mine clearing unit to Iraq. "Defense Minister Nikola Radovanovic said... the Balkan country has a moral obligation to help in Iraq after all the international assistance it received during the conflict of the 1990s in the Balkans."

This I would call the long-term dividend of peacemaking and nation building efforts. One day Iraq will contribute in a similar vein to the reconstruction of other fledgling democracies. Good news indeed.

Feminists and conservatives appear to have found each other as unlikely partners in the fight against sharia to be applied in settling certain civil disputes in Muslim communities in Canada. As I have argued a while ago, both parties are picking the wrong fight. As long as parties in a dispute subject themselves voluntarily to arbitration and if the consequent arbiters’ ruling does not violate the laws of the land then there is absolutely no reason for these groups to start hyperventilating over sharia, although I do understand that they may have some concerns. On Saturday I came across the following in the Vancouver Sun (subscriber link only) which highlights that in many other religions arbitration is common practice:

Since orthodox Jews in British Columbia take part in a Jewish court system called Beth Din, Vancouver Rabbi Levy Teitlebaum maintained a sharia system of adjudicating private disputes, as long as it followed Canadian law, would be an “appropriate method of community and ethnic involvement – because Muslim leaders are connected to their people and know their principles”

Here’s a rabbi defending the use of sharia, primarily on the grounds that he himself has had good experiences with this form of adjudication:

“We hear anything that is brought to us, whether it is a business deal gone sour or inheritance and domestic disputes between a husband and wife” said Teitlebaum, executive director of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council, which has spearheaded the Beth Din courts in Canada.

The article went on to say that:

In compliance with the Arbitration Act, which allows faith based arbitrators to settle private civil disputes, the Jewish parties who use the Beth Din system have to sign a document indicating their acceptance of the arbitration and the judgment. Neither however can be forced the rabbinical court route. Rulings can be appealed, reviewed and overturned.

That should alleviate feminist fears and allow the implementation of sharia within the confines of Canada’s Arbitration Act. And conservatives should please themselves with another positive aspect of this phenomenon: the privatization of certain parts of the congested justice system. Case closed.

First of all, thanks to all the well wishers. It was indeed a pretty miserable week but recovery is on the way and I plan to back early next week, just in time for the GOP convention in New York. So to compensate for the absence, and because I have never done it before, I will liveblog the Bush speech on Thursday.