This was Qaradawi the “progressive” Muslim intellectual, much loved by Georgetown University’s burgeoning Islamic-studies programs. Like Harvard, Georgetown has been purchased into submission by tens of millions of Saudi petrodollars. In its resulting ardor to put Americans at ease about Islam, the university somehow manages to look beyond Qaradawi’s fatwas calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq and for suicide bombings in Israel. Qaradawi, they tell us, is a “moderate.” In fact, as Robert Spencer quips, if you were to say Islam and secularism cannot co-exist, John Esposito, Georgetown’s apologist-in-chief, would call you an Islamophobe; but when Qaradawi says it, no problem — according to Esposito, he’s a “reformist.”

And he’s not just any reformist. Another Qaradawi fan, Feisal Rauf, the similarly “moderate” imam behind the Ground Zero mosque project, tells us Qaradawi is also “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.”

Rauf is undoubtedly right about that. So it is worth letting it sink in that this most influential of Islam’s voices, this promoter of the Islamic enclaves the Brotherhood is forging throughout the West, is convinced that Islamic societies can never accept secularism. After all, secularism is nothing less than the framework by which the West defends religious freedom but denies legal and political authority to religious creeds.

It is also worth understanding why Qaradawi says Islam and secularism cannot co-exist. The excerpt from his book continues:

As Islam is a comprehensive system of worship (Ibadah) and legislation (Shari’ah), the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Shari’ah, a denial of the divine guidance and a rejection of Allah’s injunctions. It is indeed a false claim that Shari’ah is not proper to the requirements of the present age. The acceptance of a legislation formulated by humans means a preference of the humans’ limited knowledge and experiences to the divine guidance: “Say! Do you know better than Allah?” (Qur’an, 2:140) For this reason, the call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Shari’ah is downright apostasy.

Apostasy is an explosive accusation. On another occasion, Sheikh Qaradawi explained that “Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished.” He further acknowledged that the consensus view of these jurists, including the principal schools of both Sunni and Shiite jurisprudence, is “that apostates must be executed.”

Qaradawi’s own view is more nuanced, as he explained to the Egyptian press in 2005. This, I suppose, is where his vaunted reformist streak comes in. For private apostasy, in which a Muslim makes a secret, personal decision to renounce tenets of Islam and quietly goes his separate way without causing a stir, the sheikh believes ostracism by the Islamic community is a sufficient penalty, with the understanding that Allah will condemn the apostate to eternal damnation at the time of his choosing. For public apostasy, however, Qaradawi stands with the overwhelming weight of Islamic authority: “The punishment . . . is execution.”

The sad fact, the fact no one wants to deal with but which the Ground Zero mosque debate has forced to the fore, is that Qaradawi is a moderate. So is Feisal Rauf, who endorses the Qaradawi position — the mainstream Islamic position — that sharia is a nonnegotiable requirement. Rauf wins the coveted “moderate” designation because he strains, at least when speaking for Western consumption, to paper over the incompatibility between sharia societies and Western societies.

Qaradawi and Rauf are “moderates” because we’ve abandoned reason. Our opinion elites are happy to paper over the gulf between “reformist” Islam and the “reformist” approval of mass-murder attacks. That’s why it matters not a whit to them that Imam Rauf refuses to renounce Hamas: If you’re going to give a pass to Qaradawi, the guy who actively promotes Hamas terrorists, how can you complain about a guy who merely refuses to condemn the terrorists?

When we are rational, we have confidence in our own frame of reference. We judge what is moderate based on a detached, commonsense understanding of what “moderate” means. We’re not rigging the outcome; we just want to know where we stand.

If we were in that objective frame of mind, we would easily see that a freedom culture requires separation of the spiritual from the secular. We would also see that sharia — with dictates that contradict liberty and equality while sanctioning cruel punishments and holy war — is not moderate. Consequently, no one who advocates sharia can be a moderate, no matter how well-meaning he may be, no matter how heartfelt may be his conviction that this is God’s will, and no matter how much higher on the food chain he may be than Osama bin Laden.

Instead, abandoning reason, we have deep-sixed our own frame of reference and substituted mainstream Islam’s. If that backward compass is to be our guide, then sure, Qaradawi and Rauf are moderates. But know this: When you capitulate to the authority and influence of Qaradawi and Rauf, you kill meaningful Islamic reform.

There is no moderate Islam in the mainstream of Muslim life, not in the doctrinal sense. There are millions of moderate Muslims who crave reform. Yet the fact that they seek real reform, rather than what Georgetown is content to call reform, means they are trying to invent something that does not currently exist.

Real reform can also be found in some Muslim sects. The Ahmadi, for example, hold some unorthodox views and reject violent jihad. Witness what happens: They are brutally persecuted by Muslims in Pakistan, as well as in Indonesia and other purported hubs of moderation.

Meanwhile, individual Muslim reformers are branded apostates, meaning not only that they are discredited, but that their lives are threatened as well. The signal to other Muslims is clear: Follow the reformers and experience the same fury. As Qaradawi put it in the 2005 interview, public apostates are “the gravest danger” to Islamic society; therefore, Muslims must snuff them out, lest their reforms “spread like wildfire in a field of thorns.”

Today, “moderate Islam” is an illusion. There is hardly a spark, much less a wildfire. Making moderation real will take more than wishing upon a star. It calls for a gut check, a willingness to face down not just al-Qaeda but the Qaradawis and their sharia campaign. It means saying: Not here.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244545/inventing-moderate-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy?page=1

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@desertinet.com. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Europe’s socialized health care was blighted by outrageous (and sometimes deadly) waiting lists and rationing, to name just one example. To name another: Timbro, a Swedish think tank, found in 2004 that Sweden was poorer than all but five U.S. states and Denmark poorer than all but nine. But in recent years, something has happened to complicate the Left’s fanciful picture even further: Western European voters’ widespread reaction against social democracy.

The shift has two principal, and related, causes. The more significant one is that over the last three decades, social-democratic Europe’s political, cultural, academic, and media elites have presided over, and vigorously defended, a vast wave of immigration from the Muslim world—the largest such influx in human history. According to Foreign Affairs, Muslims in Western Europe numbered between 15 and 20 million in 2005. One source estimates that Britain’s Muslim population rose from about 82,000 in 1961 to 553,000 in 1981 to 2 million in 2000—a demographic change roughly representative of Western Europe as a whole during that period. According to the London Times, the number of Muslims in the U.K. climbed by half a million between 2004 and 2008 alone—a rate of growth ten times that of the rest of that country’s population.

Yet instead of encouraging these immigrants to integrate and become part of their new societies, Western Europe’s governments have allowed them to form self-segregating parallel societies run more or less according to sharia. Many of the residents of these patriarchal enclaves subsist on government benefits, speak the language of their adopted country poorly or not at all, despise pluralistic democracy, look forward to Europe’s incorporation into the House of Islam, and support—at least in spirit—terrorism against the West. A 2006 Sunday Telegraph poll, for example, showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain, 14 percent approved of attacks on Danish embassies in retribution for the famous Mohammed cartoons, 13 percent supported violence against those who insulted Islam, and 20 percent sympathized with the July 2005 London bombers.

Too often, such attitudes find their way into practice. Ubiquitous youth gangs, contemptuous of infidels, have made European cities increasingly dangerous for non-Muslims—especially women, Jews, and gays. In 2001, 65 percent of rapes in Norway were committed by what the country’s police call “non-Western” men—a category consisting overwhelmingly of Muslims, who make up just 2 percent of that country’s population. In 2005, 82 percent of crimes in Copenhagen were committed by members of immigrant groups, the majority of them Muslims.

Non-Muslims aren’t the only targets of Muslim violence. A mountain of evidence suggests that the rates of domestic abuse in these enclaves are astronomical. In Germany, reports Der Spiegel, “a disproportionately high percentage of women who flee to women’s shelters are Muslim”; in 2006, 56 percent of the women at Norwegian shelters were of foreign origin; Deborah Scroggins wrote in The Nation in 2005 that “Muslims make up only 5.5 percent of the Dutch population, but they account for more than half the women in battered women’s shelters.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch advocate for democracy and women’s rights, would no doubt say far more than half: when she was working with women in Dutch shelters, she writes, “there were hardly any white women” in them, “only women from Morocco, from Turkey, from Afghanistan—Muslim countries—alongside some Hindu women from Surinam.” When she and filmmaker Theo van Gogh tried to highlight the mistreatment of women under Islam in the 2004 film Submission: Part I, he was killed by a young Muslim extremist.

More and more Western Europeans, recognizing the threat to their safety and way of life, have turned their backs on the establishment, which has done little or nothing to address these problems, and begun voting for parties—some relatively new, and all considered right-wing—that have dared to speak up about them. One measure of the dimensions of this shift: owing to the rise in gay-bashings by Muslim youths, Dutch gays—who ten years ago constituted a reliable left-wing voting bloc—now support conservative parties by a nearly two-to-one margin.

The other major reason for the turn against the Left is economic. Western Europeans have long paid sky-high taxes for a social safety net that seems increasingly not worth the price. These taxes have slowed economic growth. Timbro’s Johnny Munkhammar noted in 2005 that Sweden, for instance, which in the first half of the twentieth century had the world’s second-highest growth rate, had since fallen to number 14, owing to enormous tax hikes.

Government revenues in Western Europe go largely to support the unemployed, thus discouraging work. Over the last decade or so, the overall unemployment rate in the EU 15—that is, Western Europe—has hovered at about 2.5 to 3 points higher than in the United States. In France and Germany, it has ascended into the double digits (and that was before the global financial crisis that began in 2008). Western Europe’s rate of long-term unemployment has consistently been several times higher than America’s, denoting the presence of a sizable minority either permanently jobless or working off the books, often for family businesses, while collecting unemployment benefits.

These two factors—immigration and the economy—are intimately connected. For while some immigrant groups in Europe, such as Hindus and East Asians, enjoy relatively low unemployment rates and healthy incomes, the largest immigrant group, Muslims, has become such a burden that governments have made extensive cutbacks in public services in order to keep up with welfare payments—closing clinics and emergency rooms, reducing staff in hospitals, cutting police and military spending, eliminating course offerings at public universities, and so on. According to a report issued last year by the think tank Contribuables Associés, immigration reduces France’s economic growth by two-thirds. In 2002, economist Lars Jansson estimated that immigration cost Swedish taxpayers about $27 billion annually and that fully 74 percent of immigrant-group members in Sweden lived off the taxpayers. And in 2006, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise warned that Norway’s petroleum fund—which contains the massive profits from North Sea oil that have made the nation rich—could wind up drained to cover outlays to immigrants. (This in a country whose roads, as a report last year indicated, are in worse shape than Albania’s.)

The last few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. (emphasis added) Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it—criminalizing “incitement of racism, xenophobia, or hatred against a racial, ethnic, or religious group” in 2007, for example—and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites.

The November 2001 general election in Denmark is the most decisive—and successful—rejection so far of a Western European left-wing establishment. Alarmed by a widely publicized study showing that their country would have a Muslim majority within 60 years if immigration rates didn’t change, Danish voters sent the Social Democrats down to defeat for the first time since 1924. The new Liberal-Conservative governing coalition, which voters returned to power in 2005, has introduced the continent’s most sweeping immigration and integration reforms, including rules designed to thwart the near-universal practice in Europe’s Muslim communities of marrying one’s children off to cousins abroad so that they, too, may immigrate to the West. As a result, the flow of new Muslim arrivals has decreased significantly, allowing the government to focus resources on the immense challenge of trying to integrate Muslims already living in Denmark. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also defended free speech strongly during the 2006 Mohammed cartoon crisis, standing firm while Muslims around the world raged against Denmark and Western leaders begged him to back down.

The rightward shifts in Europe most widely reported in the U.S. have been those in Germany, where Angela Merkel became chancellor in 2005, and in France, where Nicolas Sarkozy took over the presidency in 2007. Those developments, as well as the third term that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi won in 2008, were grounded largely in public recognition of the need for economic liberalization. By French standards, Sarkozy’s campaign rhetoric was nothing less than stunning: arguing that “the revolution of 1968”—a sacred event for the left-wing French establishment—had not liberated France but “brought us into moral decline,” Sarkozy insisted that if the French wanted growth, they needed to spend less time in cafés and more on the job.

In brave little Denmark’s backyard, two more countries have moved to the right. In Norway, the Progress Party—which the political and media establishment has smeared for a generation as racist and fiscally unserious—now rivals the Labor Party, architect of the country’s welfare state, thanks to voter concerns about immigration and public services. Though the financial crisis had caused support for the Progress Party to slip a bit, recent Muslim riots and debates about hijab have sent poll numbers skyward again, and the party seems a good bet to come out on top in next September’s parliamentary elections—though it will be in trouble if, as appears likely, other right-of-center parties refuse to join a Progress Party–led coalition. And in Sweden, perhaps the ultimate symbol of social democracy, voters motivated largely by concerns over unemployment and other economic issues unseated the long-powerful Social Democratic Party in 2006. In its place they installed a center-right coalition led by Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderates, who promised to help businesses and lower taxes.

But demonstrating a distinctively European species of schizophrenia, many on both the right and the left, while acknowledging the need for welfare-state reorganization, have ultimately resisted it—as if the philosophical leap required were simply too great. In Western Europe, after all, even the mainstream Right tends to be statist. “The concept of the cradle-to-grave welfare state is so deeply embedded in the Danish psyche that even the conservatives don’t dare touch it,” noted NPR correspondent Sylvia Poggioli in 2006. Ivo H. Daalder made the same point in a 2007 Brookings Institution report, writing that “when one talks about the right in Europe, you are talking about a very state interventionist political class that still believes that the government has a fundamental role in guiding how the economy is supposed to be run.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Europe’s new leaders have made relatively modest economic changes. True, Sarkozy has raised state employees’ retirement age (precipitating a transport strike) and ended France’s 35-hour workweek. But from the start, Social Democrats in Germany, whom Merkel’s slim margin of victory forced her to accept as coalition partners, have limited her ability to implement serious economic reforms. In April 2008, Judy Dempsey noted in the International Herald Tribune not only that the coalition had “run its course” but that Merkel herself had been “forced to move leftward,” hiking pensions and “rolling back radical labor reforms, ironically introduced by her Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, which were designed to bring older people back to work by reducing social welfare payments.” And with the onset of the economic crisis, notes German author Henryk Broder, “there is even an ongoing discussion about Enteignung [expropriation] and Verstaatlichung [nationalization], which was unthinkable a year ago.”

As for Sweden, shortly after the 2006 victory, BusinessWeek writers Stanley Reed and Ariane Sains paraphrased Reinfeldt as saying that his “idea isn’t to dismantle the cherished Swedish welfare state. . . . That would be too controversial.” Reinfeldt’s one major innovation has been a “partially successful” effort “to force people off the welfare rolls and into the labor market,” University of Lund social thinker Jonathan Friedman tells me. Reinfeldt’s economic plan has also involved increased privatization, somewhat lower taxes, and encouragement of entrepreneurship—all policies, as Friedman notes, “that were started by the previous government.”

Meanwhile, with the notable exception of Denmark, the new nonsocialist governments have left their predecessors’ disastrous immigration and integration policies almost entirely intact. Sarkozy’s defiant campaign rhetoric about Muslim rioters in the suburbs raised hopes for major change. But though he announced last July that illegal immigration would be a major focus during France’s EU presidency, he has done little even about legal immigration, most of which, in Western Europe, involves the importation of new spouses in arranged, usually forced, marriages. Sarkozy seems to believe that job creation and other economic measures will resolve France’s colossal integration challenges.

Merkel, meanwhile, shone briefly when she insisted that the Deutsche Oper proceed with a 2006 production of Mozart’s Idomeneo that Muslim leaders condemned as offensive. But the heavily hyped “national integration plan” that she introduced the following year rested on such half-measures as an increase in the number of government-sponsored German classes, an effort to encourage immigrants to play sports, and (incredibly) a program that addressed wife-beating—permitted by the Koran and extremely common in Muslim communities—by offering advice on the Internet. Merkel actually described these pathetic gestures as a “milestone”; Broder, more accurately, calls them “make-believe action,” another way to avoid conflicts in her coalition.

In Sweden, says Friedman, Reinfeldt has pursued “a variant of politics as usual” on immigration and integration. Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, insists that Swedish efforts to encourage employment “will undoubtedly prove ineffective over the long haul” because “the fundamental problem is demographics. Sweden remains Europe’s main importer of Muslim immigrants who are unwilling to assimilate and whose imams order them to detest Swedish culture. So long as the current government is unwilling to tackle this basic problem, everything else will be for naught.”

Sarkozy has undertaken one high-profile initiative, which seems disastrously ill-conceived in a uniquely Gallic way: developing closer, more formal ties between France and the Arab countries from which it receives most of its immigrants. At one point, he even spoke of a “Mediterranean Union.” Haaretz writer Michalis Firillas summed up Sarkozy’s plan tidily in January 2008: “For some, his Mediterranean Union is a containment policy. For others it is neocolonial. But there is also a sense that Sarkozy is betting on French grandeur, that aura of greatness, to bridge the disparate Mediterranean with a new and serious political body. Unfortunately, he may find that there are others with similar visions of grandeur, from Ankara to Cairo, from Jerusalem to Tangiers, who have their own Mediterranean visions.” Indeed, Sarkozy’s scheme appears to be a continuation of his left-wing predecessors’ efforts to bring the Arab world under French influence—efforts that ended up subsidizing the colonization of French suburbs by Arabs who now consider them part of the House of Islam.

Not only has Europe’s move to the right not always had concrete results; it also hasn’t been an across-the-board phenomenon. In Britain, the Tories seem poised to resume power after Labour’s long, slow decline. Yet the ideological gap between the parties has narrowed so much in recent years, and the leadership vacuum is so pronounced, that it’s difficult to imagine a Tory takeover’s having an impact remotely comparable with that of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election. On the contrary, conservative columnist Peter Hitchens recently charged that nowadays “you cannot become the government unless you bow to the views of the ‘Centre-Left’ media elite, especially the broadcast media elite.” That elite, alas—as vividly demonstrated last year by the archbishop of Canterbury’s speech contemplating the legitimacy of sharia in parts of Britain—is bent on appeasing fundamentalist Islam.

And Spain, in a move widely seen as capitulating to Islamists, responded to the March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid by voting for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist Party, which had vowed to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately. Zapatero narrowly won reelection last year. As libertarian columnist Antonio Golmar explains, the centrist consensus established after King Juan Carlos’s introduction of democracy in the seventies has been shattered by Zapatero’s hard-left initiatives. These include the Historical Memory Law—which portrays leftist mass murderers during the Spanish civil war as heroic freedom fighters, while stigmatizing many of their innocent victims as fascists—and the introduction in all schools of “citizenship” classes that teach scorn for capitalism and representative democracy.

In response, some Spaniards have lurched rightward toward the national-Catholic, proto-fascist ideology of Franco’s time and become increasingly vocal within the conservative Partido Popular. Consequently, says Golmar, “moderates in Spain are trapped between a far-left administration and their cronies and the revival of the extreme right disguised in conservative and even libertarian clothing.” While America struggles to move beyond the antagonisms of the 1960s, then, Spain has entered an ideological battlefield reminiscent of the years preceding its civil war of the late thirties. There seems little room for those who loathe both the neo-Marxists and the neoreactionaries.

The situation in Spain is a reminder that not all “right turns” are created equal. If the Danes have affirmed individual liberty, human rights, sexual equality, the rule of law, and freedom of speech and religion, some Western Europeans have reacted to the mindless multiculturalism of their socialist leaders by embracing alternatives that seem uncomfortably close to fascism. Consider Austria’s recently deceased Jörg Haider, who belittled the Holocaust, honored Waffen-SS veterans, and found things to praise about Nazism. In 2000, his Freedom Party became part of a coalition government, leading the rest of the EU to isolate Austria diplomatically for a time, and last September, his new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, won 11 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections. Or take Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has called the Holocaust “a detail in the history of World War II” and advocated the forced quarantining of people who test HIV-positive—and whose far-right National Front came out on top in the first round of voting for the French presidency in 2002. The British National Party (BNP), which has a whites-only membership policy and has flatly denied the Holocaust, won more than 5 percent of the vote in London’s last mayoral election. Then there’s Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), formerly Vlaams Bloc, whose leaders have a regrettable tendency to be caught on film singing Nazi songs and buying Nazi books. In 2007, it won five out of 40 seats in the Belgian Senate.

For establishment politicians, journalists, and academics, these parties serve an exceedingly useful purpose: their existence makes it easy to tar any nonsocialist party with the fascist brush—labeling it racist and xenophobic, equating its leaders with the likes of Le Pen and Haider, and stigmatizing its supporters. No party in Europe has been subjected to more unfair attacks than Norway’s Progress Party, whose extraordinary electoral successes have outraged that country’s socialist elite. Like other parties on what we may call Europe’s respectable right, the Progress Party has expressly distanced itself from parties like the National Front and Vlaams Belang. Yet despite these disavowals, American media have routinely echoed the leftist establishment’s unjust calumnies.

A seminal example was a March 2002 New York Times article by Marlise Simons about Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who, according to the article’s headline, was proudly gay, and marching the dutch to the right. Though Simons acknowledged that Fortuyn criticized Islam because it offered “no equality for men and women and because . . . the imams here preach in offensive terms about gays,” she nonetheless echoed the Dutch establishment’s characterization of him as a menace to Dutch values, making sure to mention that he had been widely compared with Mussolini and Haider. A few weeks later, Fortuyn was murdered by an environmental fanatic taken in by similar claptrap.

The same kind of incendiary rhetoric that Dutch journalists used against Fortuyn can now be seen in American left-wing coverage of any nonsocialist European party or politician. Typical was Gary Younge’s 2007 piece in The Nation: in europe, it’s the old right that’s full of hate. According to Younge, “the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not ‘Islamofascism’ . . . but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities.” This was nonsense on a breathtaking scale: though the rise of parties like the BNP is indeed distressing, the truth remains that for every act of anti-Muslim violence in Europe, there are—to make an exceedingly conservative guess—100 acts of Muslim-on-infidel violence.

Who will win the war for the soul of Western Europe? The Islamofascists and their multiculturalist appeasers, many of whom seem to believe that their job is not to defend democracy but to help make the transition to sharia as smooth as possible? The nativist cryptofascists? Or Pim Fortuyn’s freedom-loving heirs? Interestingly, while Western Europeans have been heading in one direction, Americans have chosen to go the other way, replacing a president more loathed by the European elite than any in history with a man whom the same elite has celebrated to an unprecedented degree, often depicting his election as a mystical act of atonement for all of America’s past sins, real or imagined.

The final question, then, is whether the Western European Left’s condescension toward America, and the American Left’s habit of holding Western Europe up as a socialist paradise, can survive the combination of Europe’s right turn and the elevation of Barack Obama. Stir in the international financial crisis, which will almost certainly cause a socioeconomic upheaval of untold dimensions in both hemispheres, and it seems reasonable to expect that the old pattern may be broken for good. Meaning that American professors will have a far less stressful time of it at European cocktail parties—at least until sharia comes along and forbids cocktails entirely.

by Bruce Bawer

Bruce Bawer is the author of the upcoming Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom
He blogs at brucebawer.com.

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_pim-fortuyn.html

Hat tip: Craig J. Cantoni

Another result of AIG's nationalization is, if anything, even more worrisome."

It turns out that AIG has a subsidiary specializing in "takaful" - insurance products that are purportedly "Shariah-compliant." I say purportedly because - while they have been cynically deemed "pure" (halal) by Shariah advisers that AIG employed for the purpose of making such certifications - the Islamic code expressly prohibits business transactions that involve risk. Consequently, insurance products designed to hedge against risk are inherently "impure" or haram.

Whatever the status of AIG's "takaful" products under Islamic law, the U.S. government now has a vested interest in their financial success. Uncle Sam has become Uncle Shariah.

In so doing, Henry Paulson has acted in a manner that not only appears to smack of a conflict of interest and egregious disregard for the public's fiduciary interests. He also seems to have violated the Constitution.

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights has long been interpreted as prohibiting the establishment of any national religion or conferring upon one religion a preference over others. By taking a massive stake in a company that explicitly promotes Islam's Shariah law, the U.S. government is acting at odds with both of these revered principles.

Fortunately, an important legal initiative has just been launched aimed at blocking Mr. Paulson and the Federal Reserve Board from engaging in this sort of unconstitutional behavior via Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) and other commercial transactions. A lawsuit filed Dec. 15 in U.S. district court in Michigan by an Iraq war veteran named Kevin Murray contends that:

"The Shariah-based Islamic religious practices and activities that the government-owned AIG engages in - activities that are funded and financially supported by American taxpayers, including Plaintiff, who is forced to contribute to them - are antithetical to our Nation's values, customs, and traditions with regard to religious liberty, religious tolerance, and the proscriptions of the First Amendment. These government-funded activities not only convey a message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christians, Jews, and those who do not follow or abide by Islamic law based on the Quran or the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, but they also embody actual commercial practices which are pervasively sectarian and which disfavor Christians, Jews, and other 'infidels,' including Americans."

The litigation seeks relief in ways that would be far-reaching at a time when the U.S. government has bought not only most of AIG but owns some 20 other financial institutions - and seems intent on encouraging their embrace of Shariah-Compliant Finance. (Notably, in November, Mr. Paulson's fellow Goldman Sachs alumnus and point-man for the financial sector bailout, Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari, convened an "Islamic Finance 101" seminar where officials in the "policy community" were propagandized by Harvard University professors and other champions of the SCF industry.)

The court is being asked to rule that, among other things, the defendants' "policy and practice of approving, endorsing, promoting, funding, and supporting Shariah-compliant finance" and "the United States government's ownership interest in and use of taxpayer money to financially support AIG and its Takaful Insurance business, which is pervasively sectarian, violate the Establishment Clause."In addition, Murray v. Paulson seeks a permanent injunction against such practices both with respect to AIG and Shariah-Compliant Finance more generally.

Most Americans remain unaware of the menace posed by Shariah, let alone the extent to which it is being insinuated stealthily into our country. Happily, the latter is the subject of an excellent new book by the acclaimed scholar of Islam, Robert Spencer, entitled, "Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs."

Murray v. Paulson therefore provides not just an opportunity for an urgently needed constitutional ruling and injunctive relief with respect to the U.S. government's submission to Shariah. This lawsuit brought on Mr. Murray's behalf by one of the nation's preeminent public interest law firms, the Thomas More Law Center, and by the formidable litigator/Shariah expert David Yerushalmi, who also serves as the Center for Security Policy's general counsel, affords the American people a vital teaching moment:

Official promotion of Shariah law is unconstitutional and, given Shariah's inherently seditious nature (it explicitly requires the violent overthrow of all non-Islamic governments in favor of a global theocracy), acquiescence to its insinuation in this country constitutes a felony offense known as "misprision of treason."

We cannot tolerate and must not permit Uncle Sam's morphing into Uncle Shariah. Prompt action by the courts on Murray v. Paulson may spare us that monstrous transformation.

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney121608.php3

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Is Treasury complicit?

If "cash is king," then Middle East coffers are irresistibly enticing. During a recent tour of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt applauded the "growing role" of Arab banks in the U.S. economy. Treasury is seeking buyers for its newly acquired bailout assets because more than $1 trillion in cash is urgently needed to rescue the largest U.S. banks.

However, cash from the Arabian Gulf comes with a vital string attached: Islamic banking, erroneously viewed as an ancient practice. In fact, Islamic banking is a newly invented institution: "Neither classical nor medieval Islamic civilization featured banks in the modern sense, let alone 'Islamic' banks," notes Timur Kuran, professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California. According to the Dinar Standard, "assets managed by Islamic banks are in excess of $700 billion - predominantly concentrated in the Middle East." Islamic banking took off in the 1970s, but was first concocted by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna in the 1920s. The stated goal was to penetrate the Western finance system, corrupting it from within in hopes of creating a parallel system to re-establish a global Islamic empire governed by Islamic law (Shariah). Islamic rules of commerce (fiqh al-muamalat) forbid interest (riba) and investing in a prohibited (hara'am) enterprise. They also mandate tithes on wealth (zakat). However, the Koran fails to precisely define these concepts. Imams and ayatollahs differ, for example, on whether riba prohibits all interest or only usurious interest.

While the overhaul of American and Western banking regulations is urgent, Islamic banking cannot be the answer because Muslim clerics - not U.S. laws and regulators - make the rules. In 1969, the Saudis created the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which is now leading the charge for global expansion of Islamic banking and has established new regulatory, accounting and auditing organizations to govern such banks. Notably, the OIC's charter is to "liberate Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa [mosque] from Zionist occupation."

Not surprisingly, zakat from Islamic banks often funds terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood's Hamas. That organization's agenda was exposed during the Dallas trial of The Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas front group and an American Muslim charity just convicted of terrorism crimes. Evidence of the charity's true purpose included an 18-page "explanatory memorandum" outlining its "strategic goal … that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad (holy war) in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within."

Sharia financing forbids loans to entities labeled hara'am, such as industries that use alcohol, and to all Israeli businesses The Arab League Council established the boycott against Israel on December 2, 1945, (more than two years before creation of the Jewish state). The boycott prohibits all Arab states, companies and individuals from any financial or trade relations with Israel. Companies worldwide are blacklisted for doing business with Israel, as are companies doing business with boycotted firms. The OIC high commissioner for the boycott of Israel coordinates the efforts of its 57 member states from the Central Boycott Office in Damascus.

In response, the United States made it illegal for individuals or companies to cooperate with the Arab boycott. The law mandates reporting of boycott requests and imposes civil and criminal penalties against boycott participants. Arab boycott requests have risen sharply in tandem with the U.S. financial crisis and the rapid growth of Islamic banking. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security reported a 20 percent increase in Arab boycott requests overall from 2005 to 2006, and the Congressional Research Service reported 24 boycott requests to U.S. companies in fiscal 2007 from little Bahrain alone.

On April 5, 2006, Congress unanimously condemned Saudi Arabia for its continued enforcement of the boycott - which violated commitments the Saudis made to the World Trade Organization in 2005. Nonetheless, last August Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states threatened to boycott Nissan, which aired a commercial on Israeli television promoting a fuel-efficient car, and demanded the Japanese carmaker's apology. Not a word from Washington.

Instead, the Treasury Department, hungry for petrodollars, is holding seminars to promote Islamic banking and U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill. This practice must stop. Islamic banking corrupts our financial system, enables the illegal Arab economic boycott of Israel and entangles government with Islam in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

Rachel Ehrenfeld and Samuel A. Abady
The Washington Times
December 11, 2008

Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center for Democracy.
Samuel A. Abady is a civil rights lawyer.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/11/islamic-banking/

---------------------

Response from David R.:

This is not something for litigation. This is something for legislation. Somebody in congress or the Senate needs to propose a new banking law that prohibits US banks or financial institutions from engaging in "discriminatory and religiously biased investment plans". You shouldn't be able to do "white-christian, only lending/investment fund", so too FDIC regulated banks and investment agencies shouldn't be allowed to have "sharia friendly" investment/lending portfolios, that prohibit investments in companies that do business with Female owned, Israel, or Alcohol etc., stemming from a particular relgious racist, dogma. Turn their whole "political correctness" dogma around on them.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.

Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US. And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran — and anyone else who was listening — that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.

After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people — not just Israelis and Americans — but by all people who value human freedom.

PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national — rather than simply Republican — resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.

The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.

By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.

From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people. She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women. Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.

Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans — across the political spectrum — to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.

The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to be.

The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats — and Democrats in general — that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.

THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the message loud and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors — the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.

The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations. Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.

Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.

In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.

But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations' tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish community.

Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN and Iran's stated intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.

But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party's presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and G-d out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, G-d-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.

By Caroline B. Glick
September 23, 2008

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0908/glick092308.php3

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
-------------------------------------
Response from David R.:
Makes me sick. Literally, a little light-headed, and mildly nauseous. I keep expecting to be able to pinch myself and wake up.

When I describe the threat presented by radical Islam, I quote chapter and verse from the Koran and authoritative classical Islamic sources. When I describe the worldwide campaign of Islamist hate indoctrination against the West, and the mind-numbing mass violence committed and glorified by radical Islamists, I am relaying facts that have been published by print and electronic media outlets all over the world. Do some of the facts about Islamist supremacist manifest “hatefulness?” Certainly.

However, it’s not my fault that the truth about Islamist supremacist teachings and edicts is that they promote hate. I wish they didn’t. But wishing doesn’t make it so (contrary to the belief of the New York Times). The Koran explicitly tells Muslims to hate (terrorize, subdue, oppress, and slaughter) the unbeliever until Islam is supreme in the world: "Your Lord inspired the angels with the message: ‘I am with you. Give firmness to the Believers. I will terrorize the unbelievers. Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes.’" (Koran 8:12)

The Koran explicitly preaches that Christians and Jews are descended from monkeys and apes. In the more than 13 centuries since the emergence of Islam, this strict Islamic dogma has never been abrogated, amended or ameliorated. It is the Koran that is guilty of “hate speech.” I merely am the messenger exposing this hate.

This brings us to “Islamophobia” and “radical Islamophobes.” According to the dictionary, the suffix “-phobe” comes from the Latin phobos, which means “fearing.” Do I fear radical Islam? You bet. Do any of these locales ring a bell? London subways. Madrid train stations. Bali night clubs. Beslan elementary school. They are all locations of horrendous terrorist atrocities committed by radical Islamists, with scores of civilian fatalities and hundreds maimed. I can name hundreds of other locales, from all over the world. If fearing radical Islamist terror makes me an “Islamophobe,” then I am an “Islamophobe” in its healthiest manifestation. In light of recent history, I submit that it would be (at best) foolhardy to be otherwise.

Things get a little more complicated when we get to “Islamophobia.” The dictionary defines a “phobia” as “an exaggerated, usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation.” Anyone who thinks that my fear of radical Islam is “exaggerated,” “inexplicable” and/or “illogical” is invited to take the world terrorism tour referred to in the preceding paragraph, or read my two books, which I submit as evidence from a personal and factual level. If exaggeration or illogic are required elements in the definition, then my fear of radical Islam is NOT “Islamophobia.”

If that was not sufficiently complicated, when used as a suffix “-phobia” can include “intolerance or aversion for” the object of the phobia. Am I intolerant of mass murder, justified and glorified in the name of Allah? Yes, I am. Do I have an aversion to subway and train bombings? Yes, I do. According to that definition, my fear of radical Islam would be “Islamophobia.” However, if my intolerance of mass murder and my aversion to nightclub bombings makes me a “Islamophobe,” then I submit that my so-called “Islamophobia” is fully justified and logical and therefore not a phobia in the usual sense of the word.

The next question must be: what distinguishes a “radical” Islamophobe from a run-of-the-mill Islamophobe? Perhaps they should be distinguished by how their Islamphobia affects their behavior. My “Islamophobia” motivates me to stand up and speak out about the threat of radical Islam. My “Islamophobia” motivates me to tell-the-truth. This definitely makes me a “radical.” Examples of conventional Islamophobes abound. Their fear of Islam motivates them to censor themselves in the face of Muslim threats and intimidation.

The best-known example is the craven failure of the major American media to stand up for freedom of the press during the Muhammad cartoon controversy. Anyone who will read this will be familiar with the details. There was much hand wringing in the media about freedom of speech, but only three newspapers in the United States had the journalistic integrity to print the cartoons in solidarity with the Danish newspaper which originally printed them.[1] Only one newspaper in the United States actually had the integrity to admit that they were not printing the cartoons because of “fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do….”[2] The rest declined to do so, usually offering as their rationale that the cartoons were “offensive,” and they were being “respectful” of Muslim “sensitivity.” Approximately two dozen periodicals in 13 European countries ran the Muhammad cartoons, “insisting that they will not allow thugs to decide what a free press can publish.” [3]

The New York Times itself dutifully reported on various European newspapers printing the Muhammad cartoons in solidarity with and support of the Danish newspaper. [4] The Times could have taken the hint and printed the cartoons, but was apparently oblivious to the irony of being taught a lesson in freedom of the press by a bunch of Europeans. Instead, the Times’ fear of Islam, its Islamophobia, caused the great Grey Lady of the Fourth Estate, the most respected voice in American print media, to roll over and play dead. This is dangerous, craven Islamophobia.

And the Times is still playing dead. It has failed to report adequately on an even more egregious and harmful example of Islamophobia afflicting the American publishing industry. Random House has just cancelled the publication of a book about one of Muhammad’s wives explicitly because of fear of a violent Muslim reaction.[5] The major American media outlets, both print and electronic, have absorbed the lessons of the Muhammad cartoon riots, and the Salman Rushdie affair, and the slaughter of Theo Van Gogh, etc., etc. They are intimidated into silence by their Islamophobia. They’ve become like slaves, so accustomed to the feel of the lash that they flinch at the mere thought of their master raising his hand. No one rings the alarm at the Times when a major American publishing house cancels publication of a book because they fear Muslim rioting.

Am I afraid of those Muslims who do not use the Koran as justification for murder and terrorism? No. Do I fear radical Islam? I already admitted that I did. Maybe that makes me a “radical Islamophobe.” But am I cowed by my fear of radical Islamists? Absolutely not. I will continue to stand up and tell the truth. Will anyone on the staff of the New York Times admit that they fear radical Islam, and they are cowed by their fear? Almost certainly not. On the contrary, they would probably protest loudly that the opposite is true. But their actions, and their editorial policy, speak louder than their protestations. They are also Islamophobes, but of a different stripe.

If I were a New York Times Islamophobe instead of a Brigitte Gabriel Islamophobe, I could no longer say I come from the land of the free and the home of the brave.

By Brigitte Gabriel
FrontPageMagazine.com
9/26/2008

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63E81FA2-BB8A-466C-9BC4-7CF20C272431
-----------------------
NOTES:

1 These newspapers are the New York Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Austin American-Statesman. William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz, “A Failure of the Press”, Washington Post, Thursday, February 23, 2006, page A19, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/22/AR2006022202010.html

2 The Boston Phoenix, as reported by Jeff Jacoby, “When fear cows the media”, Boston Globe, February 19, 2006, http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/19/when_fear_cows_the_media/

3 Jacoby, Id.

4 Alan Cowell, “More European Papers Print Cartoons of Muhammad, Fueling Dispute With Muslims”, New York Times, February 2, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/international/europe/02danish.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

5 http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/medinaletter.html
________________________________________

Brigitte Gabriel is the author of Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America and the founder of American Congress for Truth.org. She is an expert on the Middle East and lectures nationally and internationally on the subject.

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Let us also not forget those politicians in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, past and present, who, with the United Nations, have never missed an opportunity to appease a potent enemy, whether the now defunct Soviet Union, or the latest incarnation of Islam (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas), or North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and soon Mexico.

It is remarkable how quickly politicians and media wannabes publicly criticize their own government, more often than not shifting blame to the current administration for Congress’ flawed decision making. Because of the media’s ignorance or ideology (redundant), Congress gets a “free pass.” Those who criticize the loudest are often the very people who are most unwilling to abide by the decision of the majority in a democracy, or live by existing laws. You can undoubtedly name several politicians who refuse to support the duly elected leadership, or at least acquiesce for a short period of time until the next election. Instead of carping and obstructing, they should be working industriously on various issues for the benefit of United States citizens. Instead these same politicians become obsessed with accumulating personal wealth while displaying self-righteous indignation about corruption in front of a camera at every opportunity – case in point, Senator John McCain.

What would it take for Congress to rededicate their productive efforts toward working for the best interests of the nation rather than self interest? Many have suggested that only a citizen insurrection (figuratively or literally) will restore excellence, initiative and integrity to Congress. The first reform step needed would be to deny elected public servants the opportunity to profit and accumulate personal wealth from campaign contributions at the expense of taxpayers while in office. Only then will we restore the representative republic that was once the United States of America. Only then will people undertake public service not solely motivated by becoming obscenely wealthy.

Until that day in another lifetime, unprincipled political opportunists unwilling to wait for the next opportunity to vote, will continue to undermine the will of the people and subvert their own fragile democracy in the pursuit of self interest. Without any semblance of shame, many Congressmen openly engage in undermining the domestic and foreign policies of those who occupy the highest political offices. This is no less a warfare tactic than that used by proponents of Islam. A close study of both would reveal how similar they are.

Unfortunately, lumpen are most frequently the victims of propaganda and slick political deceit. Lumpen uniformly fail to recognize that the majority of politicians really don’t care about winning any war – a mindset so callous that it winds up costing the lives of young men and women. Nor do liberals care about right or wrong or what is at stake. Theirs is an ideology. The word “team” should be an antonym of the word “liberal.” There is no “I” in the word “team.” Liberals, by their intellectual wiring, want desperately to be in charge, whether in a corporation, a small company, the homeowners association, the city government, the state government or Congress. Ballots are full of liberal candidates seeking control over the lives of others – the name of the political party is irrelevant. As an aside, conservatives typically don’t seek public office.

Liberals are uniformly confident in their belief that we would all be better off if we lived our lives and raised our children according to their standards. They are only too glad to impose rules on the rest of us – standards of egalitarian equality achieved by redistributing all income, education, medicine, transportation, and housing among the bottom 50% of wage earners who pay no taxes, plus lavish corporate benefactors with earmarks in return for campaign contributions. As for liberals, it is their pathological desire to be among the elite in a class-structured society. It is all about power, stupid – their power and our servitude! In fact, if I were to ask what best describes a conservative who works like a liberal; you would have to respond, “A lazy bastard.”

Democracy is so inconvenient to liberals who are sure, in spite of history and lack of fact-based education, that they are correct on all social issues. Just look at the courts and make a note who among our citizens advocates judicial activism. Try to appreciate how many decisions have been taken away from the American people – democracy denied – regarding religion, abortion, school choice, enforcement of immigration, voting rights, marriage, welfare, freedom of speech, private property, gun ownership, pledge of allegiance, competition for jobs or a college education, equal standards of performance by everyone in the same job regardless of race or gender, etc. None of these issues are within the jurisdiction of the courts and most of these issues are not the prerogative of the federal government. Even organizations such as the Education Department and FEMA are outside the scope of federal authority under the U.S. Constitution – as is Foreign Aid and corporate welfare. Now it has come to pass that the media, politicians and federal courts are dictating military strategy, tactics and morality to the Executive Branch – again interfering in matters outside their constitutional scope of authority.

We have watched numb in horror as the media glories in the deaths of American soldiers, displaying the numbers and changing the totals the way a gas station displays changes in prices. The media does it because they know it horrifies every real American. Congressmen engage in the same behavior, trumpeting the numbers from behind a microphone, ignoring the fact that it was Congress (not the President) who sent (authorized and funded) the U.S. Armed Forces intervention first in Viet Nam and now in the Middle East. This duplicity is an intentional liberal tactic of disunion and reveals how little value politicians place on the lives of American servicemen and women – which it turns out, is about the same as the value Hezbollah (Islam) places on the lives of civilians.

All of this carnage is intentionally “in your face.” It is cynically intended to create an alternate reality, to portray to you who should have been in charge of this over-sized homeowner’s association from the outset. It is also meant to show us that we were wrong to elect who we did. While supremely confident that everything would have been much different and much better if it wasn’t for your and my ignorant mistakes voting for the wrong people, liberals in general and the Democratic Party in particular, work diligently to undermine the current administration and democracy itself. If only there was a more eloquent word than “despicable” to convey the disdain all American’s should feel toward such people – the same people who refuse to secure our nation’s borders or protect American jobs.

Add to this inauspicious group of subversives a large number of uneducated and unelected members of the main-stream-media who live in a rabbit hole of reality, each born with various and sundry body parts but few with a brain or a spine. I am speaking specifically of the visual and print news media, and the sports and entertainment industries, whose representatives speak and behave as if they would like nothing more that to engineer an outcome in which America loses this conflict with Islam. Hollywood seems incapable of understanding that if our nation loses, we all lose, and those that have the most will lose the most. And Israel will lose it all – first. Never mind their disproportionate intellectual contributions to humanity. Unless we play to lose this event in history called “The Islamic Wars” by the rules of engagement of the Democratic Party, these wing nuts will defiantly disrupt yours and my fight for liberty, and deny our very survival. If you won’t agree to do it their way, to lose, they will see to it that you cannot win – not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in our economy, schools, and courts.

Do memories of Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Durbin, Pelosi, Rangel, Reid and Murtha come to mind – and on any given day, even John McCain? What about the Dixie Chicks, Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand, Danny Glover and George Soros?

In all fairness, there are a number of legitimate questions regarding policies and actions of the CIA, Defense and State Department leading up to the Islamic Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is also current disturbing evidence of their appalling political unwillingness to decisively win at any cost, and in doing so preserve the lives of young American soldiers.

Whether emanating from Congress or the Administration, hardly a day goes by that we don’t think something was a lame-brain decision. However, to disagree with the Islamic Wars or some aspect of United States foreign policy is one thing, but such disagreement should not make any American want to become a New York Times subversive or leak classified information out of the State Department or CIA. Most citizens (those that care) recognize that intentionally revealing vital intelligence, or limiting intelligence collection, will result in the deaths of even more American soldiers and civilians.

Those unfortunate human beings who proudly undermine the elected administration mistakenly claim to be Americans. They see themselves as defenders of democracy, when in fact their actions repudiate their own American birthright and disavow democracy. One thing is certain; these people represent the finest socialist traditions and constitute the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Some have the distinction of being a growing cancer in the Republican Party. Let history record that Congressmen don’t care a hoot about our sons or daughters. In fact, their unwillingness to abide by any democratic process and the will of the people for four short years arguably demonstrates they should not be entitled to call themselves Americans.

We seriously doubt that the concept of being an “American” is understood by the majority of the Democratic Party. We doubt that there is anything in life greater than “self” to a liberal – and we repeatedly hear that nothing associated with American culture or nationalism is worth defending. To their eternal shame, Democrats fail to see any difference between Islam and Christianity. Therein is the divide. We fail to see much difference today between Democrats and radical Muslims, either in ideology or tactics. Maybe there is none and the rest of us should respond accordingly.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Find a candidate who can get away with lying about their father being a 'freedom fighter' when he was actually part of the most corrupt and violent government in Kenya's history.

Find a candidate with close ties to The Nation of Islam and the violent Muslim overthrow in Africa, a candidate who is educated among white infidel Americans but hides his bitterness and anger behind a superficial toothy smile.

Find a candidate who changes his American name of Barry to the Muslim name of Barack Hussein Obama, and dares anyone to question his true ties under the banner of 'racism'. Nurture this candidate in an atmosphere of anti-white American teaching and surround him with Islamic teachers. Provide him with a bitter, racist, anti-white, anti-American wife, and supply him with Muslim Middle East connections and Islamic monies. Allow him to be clever enough to get away with his anti-white rhetoric and proclaim he will give $834 billion taxpayer dollars to the Muslim controlled United Nations for use in Africa.

Install your candidate in an atmosphere of deception, because questioning him on any issue involving Africa or Islam would be seen as 'bigoted racism'; two words too powerful to allow the citizenry to be informed of facts. Allow your candidate to employ several black racist Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan followers as members of his Illinois Senatorial and campaign staffs.

Where is the bloodhound American 'free press' who doggedly overturned every stone in the Watergate case? Where are our nation's reporters that have placed every Presidential candidate under the microscope of detailed scrutiny; the same press who pursue Bush's 'Skull and Bones' club or ran other candidates off with persistent detective and research work? Why haven't 'newsmen' pursued the 65 blatant lies told by this candidate during the Presidential primaries? Where are the stories about this candidate's cousin and the Muslim butchery in Africa? Since when did our national press corps become weak, timid, and silent? Why haven't they regaled us with the long list of socialists and communists who have surrounded this 'out of nowhere' Democrat candidate or the fact that his church re-printed the Hamas Manifesto in their bulletin, and that his 'close pastor friend and mentor' met with Middle East terrorist Muammar Qaddafi, (Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)? Why isn't the American press telling us this candidate is supported by every Muslim organization in the world?

As an ultimate slap in the face, be blatant in the fact your candidate has ZERO interest in traditional American values and has the most liberal voting record in U.S. Senate history. Why has the American mainstream media clammed up on any negative reporting on Barak Hussein Obama? Why will they print Hillary Rodham Clinton's name but never write his middle name? Is it not his name? Why, suddenly, is ANY information about this candidate not coming from mainstream media, but from the blogosphere by citizens seeking facts and the truth? Why isn't our media connecting the dots with Islam? Why do they focus on 'those bad American soldiers' while Islam slaughters non-Muslims daily in 44 countries around the globe? Why does our media refer to Darfur as 'ethnic cleansing' instead of what it really is: Muslims killing non-Muslims! There is enough strange, anti-American activity surrounding Barack Hussein Obama to pique the curiosity of any reporter. WHERE IS OUR INVESTIGATIVE MEDIA!?

A formal plan for targeting America was devised three years after the Iranian revolution in 1982. The plan was summarized in a 1991 memorandum by Mohammed Akram, an operative of the global Muslim Brotherhood. 'The process of settlement' of Muslims in America, Akram explained, 'is a civilization jihad process.' This means that members of the Brotherhood must understand that their work in 'America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions.'

There is terrorism we can see, smell and fear, but there is a new kind of terror invading The United States in the form of Sharia law and finance. Condoning it is civilization suicide. Middle East Muslims are coming to America in record numbers and building hate infidel mosques, buying our corporations, suing us for our traditions, but they and the whole subject of Islam is white noise leaving uninformed Americans about who and what is really peaceful. Where is our investigative press? Any criticism of Islam or their intentions, even though Islamic leaders state their intentions daily around the globe, brings forth a volley of 'racist' from the left-wing Democrat crowd.

Lies and deception behind a master plan - the ingredients for 'The Manchurian Candidate' or the placement of an anti-American President in our nation's White House? Is it mere coincidence that an anti-capitalist run for President at the same time Islamic Sharia finance and law is trying to make advancing strides into the United States? Is it mere coincidence this same candidate wants to disarm our nuclear capability at a time when terrorist Muslim nations are expanding their nuclear weapons capability? Is it mere coincidence this candidate wants to reduce our military at a time of global jihad from Muslim nations?

Change for America? What change? To become another 'Nation of Islam'?

By Rich Carroll 2008
crossedrifles@hotmail.com
http://www.2sistersfromtheright.com/writings/Rich_Carroll/jihadcandidate.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Mr. Obama may now attest to being a "Christian" and that certainly is his right. Many of us change religious affiliation over the course of our lives. We may be born to a Methodist family, but later choose to become Catholic, or Buddhist. We can convert to Judaism from Christianity or we may be born and raised as an orthodox Jew, only to suffer a crisis of faith in college, and become Atheist. We may choose to leave our faith when we marry, and join the faith of our spouse and their family. Some people change religious affiliation several times during their lives. Our right to change our beliefs and religious affiliations is a precious thing to Americans, enshrined in our Constitution and in our entire history as a people, many of whom came here for the very reason of escaping oppression so that they might have freedom to practice their religion of choice.

However, this kind of decision, to change faiths, is not one taken lightly, and is usually something that political figures are willing to discuss. It offers them an opportunity to humanize themselves to the public, on a topic that is considered fairly non-controversial. Questions of faith or religious changes are typically "soft ball" question for a political figure. Presidents such as Jimmy Carter, George Bush, and Ronald Reagan spoke easily about how their faith fluctuated in their lives, and how they felt those changes were a positive influence in their lives. When senator Leiberman was a vice-presidential candidate, he had no difficulty in discussing his Judaism, or how he felt it impacted his life, family, and world view. John F. Kennedy directly addressed his Catholic faith and how he perceived its role (or lack thereof) on his job as President.

Yet for some reason, Mr. Obama is not only permitted to answer questions of faith obliquely, or merely with a simple declarative that, "I'm Christian." Mr. Obama has said, "I've been a Christian for fifteen years." Ok, we accept that. That's fine Senator, but what were you 16 years ago? What was your faith when you were 21 years old and graduating from college? We do have a right to know, and we would like you to help us to know you better, by explaining your decision to make that change. Were you ever a Muslim? This simple, direct, basic question, remains unasked. Why should this be so? How can it be there is such reluctance to ask something so obvious?

Is Mr. Obama afraid to tell us that for most of his life he was a Muslim? If he became a Christian 15 years ago, by his statement, what was he before that? Athiest? Jewish? Zoroasterian? If he is afraid to tell us that, then is he being fully honest and forthright with us? If he won't be fully honest and forthright on something so basic, how can we possibly trust him with the office of the Presidency?

It is obvious from Mr. Obama's very name, that for some portion of his life he was a Muslim. "Barak" is the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew word "baruch" which means "blessed." Hussein is the name of the son in law of Mohammed, and the founder of the Shiite version of Islam. Obama is a known Islamic surname in his father's native country of Kenya. We know that Mr. Obama's stepfather was a Muslim as well, from Indonesia, so his mother at least had a warm regard for the teachings of Islam, since both her first and second husbands were both Muslims. So, why would Mr. Obama be so reluctant to share this basic fact of his life with the American public?

This is more than merely an academic question, and has even deeper implications than merely his personal degree of "openness." While Islam is open to conversion, and anyone of any faith may convert to Islam from another religion, converting to another religion from Islam is strictly forbidden. In fact, converting from Islam, to any other faith, is called "apostasy" and the Koran imposes a death penalty for it. This is not some obscure, unpracticed, "dead letter" of Sharia law. Earlier this year, Iranian Shiite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, proposed a law that would restore the death sentence for any Muslim who converts to another religion. Under the current laws as practiced in Iran, those charged with converting are prosecuted and face jail time for vague crimes like "blasphemy" and "insulting Islam", as a compromise from the death penalty mandated by Sharia law. "Egyptian Islamic Jihad", assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat with merely the unfounded allegation of apostasy. In many parts of the world, "honor killings" take place as Muslim family members kill their own children for marrying outside the faith. So, if Mr. Obama admits to having converted from Islam, or merely the fact that it is known that he did so, means that he is marked for death by all fully observant Muslims in the world. This is something the American public should be allowed to consider, in their decision as to whether they should choose to make him the President of the United States.

The deep importance of this question does not end there. While the Koran forbids apostasy, it does make specific mention of allowing Muslims to "pretend" to convert to other religions, for convenience, to protect their life, or to advance themselves in the parts of the world that remain "unconquered" by Islam. Could it be that Mr. Obama is following this prescription of his Islamic faith? Could it be that Mr. Obama is merely "pretending" to be Christian, to advance himself, while secretly still being a Muslim in his heart? It may be so, because he stated quite clearly in his book "Audacity of Hope" that, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." If he is merely feigning Christianity, that might explain how he can sit in the pews of Jeremiah Wrights Church for over a decade, and never pay any attention to what the man was saying up there. Once again this is something the voting public has a right to know about a man who wants to be president. Someone needs to be brave enough to press this question which must be asked.

We absolutely have the right to know if the man who wants to be president of the United States of America is either "marked for death," like Salmon Rushdie, or if he is furtively practicing a religion different from the one he claims. These aren't academic questions, these aren't salacious rumors, and these aren't intolerance or racism. These are fundamental questions as to his suitability for that office, which go to his truthfulness, his candor, and other personal baggage that he will carry into the oval office with him.

Americans are a tolerant people. We value our religious and ethnic diversity. We cherish our right to have personal religious beliefs, and to feel free to express those beliefs. Mr. Obama should not be so afraid to share with the public his personal religious and philosophical journey. However, his furtiveness in this regard should greatly inform us as to the dangers he may present, and be attempting to conceal. Putting limits on questions about his religious background, family, and even name, is a catastrophic failure by the press, in its primary duty to our democracy. Such blanket prohibitions about asking questions this vital, in this case, makes the "Fourth Estate" look more like a "Fifth Column."

By David Roth

David Roth is a Generation X, former political science professor, now practicing law in Phoenix.

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

It is instructive to reflect on just what is now deemed excessively "controversial" on American campuses. For instance, the Declaration Against Genocide condemns an Islamic hadith (a narration about the life of the prophet Mohammed) that calls on Muslims to kill Jews. It also condemns terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has declared that "the accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible" – an unmistakable expression of genocidal intent toward the countries that Islamic radicals consider to be the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" respectively. There is nothing, in short, that can be considered even remotely objectionable.

Yet, at George Washington and countless other schools across the country, groups ranging from the Muslim Students Association to the College Democrats – to even the College Republicans – have been unwilling to condemn these and other affirmations of hatred when they concern Islamic militants. George Washington's Gor found that out the hard way: In a week of trying to promote the Declaration Against Genocide, what Gor heard most often was not outrage at the atrocities of Islamic terrorist groups or revulsion at their murderous anti-Semitism. What he heard most often were excuses.

Thus, the Black Student Union refused to sign the declaration because it didn't specifically mention the slave trade. Meanwhile, the College Democrats refused to sign the declaration because it singled out the following hadith from the prophet Muhammad: "The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time [of judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" The College Democrats insisted that the quote was taken "out of context." They, too, would not sign.

Perhaps the most surprising rebuff came from the school's College Republicans chapter. Although some individual members expressed support for the declaration, the club as a whole would not support it. "It was a shock when the College Republicans said that [the declaration] was too 'controversial,'" Gor recalls. "They said they didn't want to offend anyone. But I thought, 'Who is going to be offended if you oppose genocide?'"

Less shocking, perhaps, is that Gor failed to garner the support of the Muslim Students Association. Founded by members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian forerunner of al-Qaeda, the group today has over 200 chapters on American college campuses and retains much of the political extremism of its parent organization. Some MSA chapters, for instance, have held an annual "Anti-Zionist Week" to denounce the state of Israel. When in 2005 a group called the Free Muslim Coalition Against terror held a rally in the nation's capital condemning terrorism and expressing support for Muslim democrats in the Middle East, the MSA conspicuously refused to take part. Considered against this background, it is not surprising that the group has refused to condemn Islamic terrorists and their ongoing war to destroy the Jewish state. On more than one occasion, it has been on their side.

Just as troubling as the MSA's silence is that no other student groups were willing to support the declaration at George Washington. Nor is this the first time that the school has shown itself to be intolerant of any and all debate about Islamic extremism. When the inaugural Islamo-Fascism Week was held last fall, radical students at the school plastered the campus with bigoted flyers – "Hate Muslims? So Do We!!!" the flyers proclaimed – to condemn the alleged bigotry of the campaign. The students later claimed that they put up the flyers in protest over "Islamophobic racism." Although it was never explained why it was "Islamophobic" to point out the demonstrable fact that Islamic terrorists justified their atrocities using the Muslim religion, let alone why doing so was "racist," the flyer incident acutely demonstrated the abject failure of many American universities to engage in a serious discussion about the threat of radical Islam. Terrorism fueled by religious extremism is a brutal reality in many parts of the world, but within the groves of American academia, a complicity of silence obtains.

Students like Sergio Gor despair at that reality. "On our campus the political correctness is at a new level," Gor observes. "Students are afraid to stand up for anything, and to offend anyone. We're just a few blocks from the White House, and these are groups that will protest the war [in Iraq] in a heartbeat. But when it comes to genocide, they won't take a stand."

FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, April 16, 2008
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=73CD9261-55C1-449A-8EB9-525D90D6DD46

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
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Response from Red State Patriot:

SO THEN, WHAT DO THESE NE'ER-DO-WELLS STAND FOR?
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Response from Mark:

After a decade or more of PC speak, more accurately known as censorship, we come to this point when a very simple letter opposing genocide is not supported by college campus groups for a number of different reasons, but for the cowardly Republicans it was to not to offend anyone.

I blame the ACLU largely for this. For they have been fighting battles in court to remove religion in all its form from anyplace other then the home, and law suits against organizations such as The Boy Scouts of America, and for supporting only groups that promote their secular progressive agenda like NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association)in MA. Because the mere threat of an ACLU lawsuit has curbed the desire and will of the majority citizens in this country on so many subjects, we are starting to think and behave as the citizens in Orwell's 1984 where free, independent, intellectual, thought and discourse are no longer tolerated, let alone spoken. You can see this in Ben Steins new documentary called Expelled where the majority of scientist are shouting down, and ridiculing any theory other than Evolution / Darwinism. Hey it's only a Theory! It has not been proven beyond scientific doubt using the scientific method. For that matter neither has Global Warming as a result of man's presence on the planet. The same tactics used to promote only Evolution and shout down, and ridiculed any other theory is currently being conducted by the fanatics on the side that man is the cause of Global Warming, when in most likelihood it is a part of the regular cycle that the planet has been under since the beginning of time due largely to the sun.

How does that axiom go? Usually the right answer is the simplest answer. Hereto, the Earth is getting hotter or colder due directly to the increase or relative decrease in the temperature of the Sun. According to the self anointed God on this topic, Al Gore, there is no debate. The answer to the global warming theory has already been determined, not by scientific method, but by the majority of scientist saying it is so. Good thing Columbus did not listen to them in his day for if he did, we may still think the planet is flat.
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Response from David R.:

I don't blame the ACLU at all. Their power to influence anything is miniscule. They are a very small voice, usually of caution (living in the court system as I do, I now know for a fact how little influence any public interest legal group has). The real villain of this piece, and purveyor of New Speak, is the monolithic media and education unions. When the public discourse came to be controlled by graduates of "Schools of Journlism" and "Schools of Education", and quite possibly the rise of the "Film School", those gaurdians of the zeitgeist (always known to be vital to the integrity of the state, and therefore tightly controlled by government even in places like Britain), wholey fell into the hands of groups committed to their hatred of Western Civilization, patriarchy, family, and the United States. I am not exagerating when I propose that the schools of "Education" were quickly dominated by a matriarchy heavily seasoned with lesbians. "Film Schools" and "Theater Departments" are nearly universally dominated by homosexuals, and the "Schools of Journalism" are dominated and controlled by 60's radicals, inspired by their hatred of Nixon and the Viet Nam war. With these groups controlling eight tenths of the input into the developing minds of the populace, is it any wonder the influence of "New Speak". Every angle attacks the normal nuclear family, attacks the intelligence/authority/wisdom of any white male seen in popular media, and rails against the evils of western civilization while lauding any other backwater "culture" regardless of how pernicious or retrograde.

Why? Because those previously named groups, who are now the gatekeepers, to the industries that shape the zeitgeist, have personal, deep seated, resentment against the country, culture, and civilization they have felt rejected by, for their entire adult lives. They readily scream racism, sexism, or homophobia, so loudly at every turn, when it is they who live to promulgate the hatred they seethe with.
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Response from Len S.:

Many of today's "students" (and I use that term loosely) have apparently totally lost the faculty of critical judgment. Perhaps this stems from the pervasive influence of multiculturalism which eschews judging others. Perhaps it stems from political correctness which strives to take pressure off individuals to avoid the ramifications of judging others which could lead to your scrutiny by others ("He's a racist for saying that."). This extends to campus life which has changed from inquiring discourse and freedom to expand your horizons, to strict speech codes and know-nothing college administrators who won't stand up for academic freedom.

How ironic that a supposedly liberal atmosphere promised by the college environment has been muzzled and perverted by a new intolerant liberalism that numbs the mind. Do you think that such a Declaration taken in most American universities following World War 2 would have been refused like this one was?

This jihad has access to biological, chemical, and possibly nuclear weapons. It actively threatens the regimes in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Turkey, and Egypt. Among its allies are non-Muslim states such as the Communist regimes in North Korea, Venezuela, and China. Its enablers include Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the vast political networks of the international Left. [1] Its pool of sympathizers and supporters can be counted in the hundreds of millions, and its political fronts are embedded in almost every nation and every continent, including Europe and the United States.

The warriors of the jihad are promised salvation for slaughtering innocents; their highest honor is to sacrifice themselves for Allah by murdering infidels; their goal is to restore an Islamic empire that once stretched into the heart of Europe, until it was defeated in the battle of Vienna on September 12, 1683. Three hundred years later, Osama bin Laden turned this date of humiliation into a day of vengeance—and revival. Striking America’s homeland on September 11, 2001, jihadists murdered thousands of unsuspecting civilians, and came within a terrorist attack or two of destabilizing the American economy and unleashing chaos.

As the victim of these unprovoked and savage attacks, and as the defender of democratic values in three world wars, America would seem a worthy cause. Instead, America is on the defensive, harshly criticized by its traditional allies and under political attack by significant elements of its own population.

In this epic conflict Americans appear more divided among themselves than they have been at any time in the century–and–a half since the Civil War. Never in those years was an American commander-in-chief the target of such extreme attacks by his own countrymen with his troops in harm’s way. Never in its history has America faced an external enemy with its own leaders so at odds with each other.

Even as American soldiers have fought a fanatical enemy on the battlefields of Iraq, their president has been condemned as a deceiver who led them to war through “lies;” [2] as a destroyer of American liberties; [3] as a desecrator of the Constitution; [4] as a usurper who stole his high office; [5] as the architect of an “unnecessary war;” [6] as a “fraud;” [7] as a leader who “betrayed us;” [8] and as a president who cynically sent the flower of American youth to die in foreign lands in order to enrich himself and his friends. [9]

These reckless, corrosive charges are made not by fringe elements of the political spectrum, but by national leaders of the Democratic Party, including a former president, a former vice president and presidential candidate, and three members of the United States Senate (among them a one-time presidential candidate). These attacks occurred not after years of fighting in Iraq, when some might regard the result as a “quagmire,” but during the first months of the conflict, when the fighting had barely begun. They were made not over a war that was forced on Americans, or surreptitiously launched without their consent, but a war authorized by both political parties. They were directed not merely at its conduct, but at the rationale of the war itself—in other words, at the very justice of the American cause.

Although they voted for the bill to authorize the war, leaders of the Democratic Party, such as Senator Hillary Clinton, turned around after it was in progress and claimed that it was “George Bush’s war,” not theirs. [10] They argued that Bush alone had decided to remove Saddam, when in fact it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who made regime change the policy of the United States. [11] They argued that the war was “unnecessary” because Iraq was “no threat.” [12] But who would have regarded Afghanistan as a threat before 9/11? They maintained that because the war in Iraq was a war of “choice,” it was therefore immoral. [13] But every war fought by America in the twentieth century, with the exception of World War II, was also a war of choice.

Above all, they claimed the president had manipulated intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and thus the premise of the war. But copies of the National Intelligence Estimate on which the president’s decision was based were provided to every Democratic senator who voted for or against it. The findings were confirmed by government intelligence agencies around the world, including those of France, Britain, Russia, and Jordan. [14] In other words, President Bush could not have manipulated the intelligence on which the vote was based and the war was actually authorized.

In attempting to make the war in Iraq a sinister plot of the Bush administration, Democrats claimed that it was a distraction from the war with the Islamic terrorists who had attacked America. “The issue is the war they got us into,” Nancy Pelosi told 60 Minutes just before she became Speaker of the House and the second elected official in line for the presidency. “If the president wants to say the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror, he’s not right.”

60 Minutes: Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?
Pelosi: No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan.
60 Minutes: But you don’t think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?
Pelosi: They have. The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean we stay there. They’ll stay there as long as we’re there.
60 Minutes: You mean if we leave Iraq, the terrorists will leave?
Pelosi: Yes. [15]

What nation can prevail in a war if half its population believes that the war is unnecessary and unjust, that its commander-in-chief is a liar, and that its own government is the aggressor? What president can mobilize his nation if his word is not trusted? And what soldier can prevail on the field of battle if half his countrymen are telling him that he shouldn’t be there in the first place?

It was July 2003, only four months after American forces entered Iraq, when the Democratic Party launched its first all-out attack on the president’s credibility and the morality of the war. The opening salvos were reported in a New York Times article: “Democratic presidential candidates offered a near-unified assault today on President Bush’s credibility in his handling of the Iraq War signaling a shift in the political winds by aggressively invoking arguments most had shunned since the fall of Baghdad.” [16]

While American forces battled al-Qaeda and Ba’athist insurgents in the Iraqi capital, the Democratic National Committee released a television ad that focused not on winning those battles, but on the very legitimacy of the war. The theme of the ad was “Read His Lips: President Bush Deceives the American People.” The alleged deception was sixteen words that had been included in the State of the Union address he delivered on the eve of the conflict. [17]

These words summarized a British intelligence report claiming that Iraq had attempted to acquire fissionable uranium in the African state of Niger, thus indicating Saddam’s (well-known) intentions to develop nuclear weapons. The report was subsequently confirmed by a bipartisan Senate committee and a British investigative commission, but not until many months had passed and the Democratic attacks had taken their toll. [18]

On the surface, the attacks were directed at the president’s credibility for repeating the British claim. But their clear implication was to question the decision to go to war—in other words, to cast doubt on the credibility of the American cause. If Saddam had not sought fissionable uranium in Niger, it was suggested, then the White House had lied in describing Saddam as a threat.

In the midst of a war, and in the face of a determined terrorist resistance in Iraq, Democrats had launched an attack on America’s presence on the field of battle. This separated their assault from the normal criticism of war policies. Senator John Edwards, then a candidate for the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nomination, had voted to authorize the war and was still claiming to support it. In an interview with the New York Times, he identified the significance of the Democrats’ attack: “The most important attribute that any president has is his credibility—his credibility with the American people, with its allies and with the world.” But even as Edwards said this, he joined the Democrats’ attack, publicly insinuating that the president was a liar who had deceived the American people on the gravest issue imaginable. “When the president’s own statements are called into question,” Edwards explained to the reporter, “it’s a very serious matter.” [19]

When the nation is at war, it is graver still. To destroy the credibility of the commander-in-chief while his troops are in battle is to cripple his ability to support them and to win the war they are fighting. For this reason, throughout the history of armed conflict, a united home front has been an indispensable element of victory. For the same reason, a principal aim of psychological-warfare operations has been to target the credibility of the enemy’s leaders and the morality of the enemy cause.

General Ion Mihai Pacepa was the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to defect from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. In a commentary about the attacks on President Bush during the war in Iraq, Pacepa recalled: “Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels.” [20] No president can marshal his nation’s resources if his people distrust him or don’t believe in their own cause. To attack a president’s credibility in the middle of a war, over a matter as ambiguous as a sixteen-word summary of an allied intelligence report, is an attempt to undermine the war itself.

During the Vietnam War, General Pacepa wrote, Soviet intelligence “spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan–style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but . . . as Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.” [21]

Nor did this Soviet campaign to discredit the United States stop with Vietnam. As Pacepa explains: “The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the United States from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the United States.” [22]

It is one of the ironies of the campaign against the war in Iraq that its opponents cite the political conflict over Vietnam as a precedent for their extraordinary attacks on a war in progress. In doing so, they misconstrue the past and misunderstand its lessons. During Vietnam, the nation’s political leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, were united in their support of the war effort for more than ten years. Their bipartisan unity came to an end only when both parties conceded that a victory was no longer politically possible. It was only in the presidential campaign of 1972, eleven years after the first American advisers were sent to Vietnam that Senator George McGovern ran against the war itself. By that time both parties were agreed on a policy of military withdrawal, and by that time truce negotiations with the Communists, initiated by a Republican administration, had already begun.

The conflict over war policy during the 1972 campaign was over the proper way to accomplish the withdrawal favored by both parties. It was over how to leave, not whether to leave. The McGovern Democrats favored a policy of immediate and unconditional retreat. Their campaign slogan was “Come Home, America.” The Nixon Republicans wanted to negotiate a truce whose terms would preserve the non-Communist regime in South Vietnam, and deny victory to the Communist aggressors. Their slogan was “Peace with Honor.”

The McGovernites did not believe American forces should have been in Vietnam in the first place. McGovern’s candidacy was astrategic campaign to block America’s Cold War policy of containing Communist expansion. Unlike the Democrats of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the McGovern Democrats believed America was the problematic imperial power, not the Soviet Union. This represented a sea change in the Democratic Party, whose leaders had actually launched the Cold War policy of containing Soviet Communism beginning with the Truman administration in 1947. It was the Democrats, led by John F. Kennedy, who had initiated America’s military presence in Vietnam. Until the McGovern candidacy, the Democratic leadership, including its presidential candidate in 1968, Hubert Humphrey, had supported the Vietnam War. It was the first time since the Civil War that an opposition party had conducted a national campaign to challenge the justice of America’s war aims.

The campaigns against the wars in Iraq and Vietnam may seek the same end—the defeat of American power—but the differences between them are revealing. In regard to Iraq, the Democrats’ attacks on the justice of the American cause came not after ten years of stalemate, but within three months of the swiftest, most successful campaign in military history. The attacks were conducted not by movement activists but by leaders of the Democratic Party, and they came in the first months of a war that both parties had until then supported, and that the previous Democratic administration had endorsed, and that both parties had voted to authorize. The attacks on this war have no precedent in the American past.

The effort to remove the Iraqi regime by force, which Democrats now maintain was provocative and unnecessary, originated with a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Four years before Bush ordered American troops into Iraq, Clinton asked Congress to pass an “Iraq Liberation Act,” which specifically called for regime change by force. To emphasize the seriousness with which he regarded the threat that Saddam posed, Clinton ordered the American military to fire more than four hundred cruise missiles into Iraq. [23] The Iraq Liberation Act authorized American aid for any insurgent group that was ready to overthrow the regime. It was ratified by both political parties—Democrats and Republicans—with barely a dissenting vote.

Four years later, when Bush asked Congress to authorize the use of force to accomplish the same goal, a Democratic majority in the Senate supported his request. When American forces entered Iraq on March 19, 2003, a large majority of the Democratic leadership, including the former president, his secretaries of state and defense, and his entire national security team, supported the invasion. When the Iraqi regime was overthrown three weeks later, the Democratic leadership joined in the celebration, although some dissenters, such as Representative Nancy Pelosi, were already complaining that it cost too much. [24]

Dissent is a cherished and justly protected right in a democracy. But it is also a privilege. The right to dissent exists only on condition that the government that guarantees it is able to defend itself against enemies who would destroy it. No bulwark has been more durable or more important to the stability and survival of America’s democratic order than the solidarity of its leaders in wartime. A president under relentless attack from the domestic opposition has less political space for flexible response. The more severe the attacks, the more limited his room for political maneuver. If the Bush administration has been slow to admit error in the present war, or to take corrective measures on the field of battle, the unrestrained attacks on its integrity and motives have undoubtedly been a significant factor.

Should more troops have been deployed to win the war, as General Eric Shinseki advised at the outset? What Democratic leader at the time proposed legislation to provide the funding which would have made such a remedy possible? What Republican legislator, faced with attacks that brand his president a liar who tricked the nation into a needless war, would join a chorus of Democrats in attacking their president’s policy on that war?

Another aspect of reckless criticism that opponents of the war are loathe to discuss is the impact of such attacks on enemy morale. If America’s enemies have been encouraged by these divisions at home, this consequence cannot be simply dismissed as though it did not exist. In time of war, criticism of war policy—particularly reckless and rejectionist attacks on the nation’s war aims and efforts—cannot be granted “no fault” status, as though no repercussions ensued. In a democracy, policy must always be subject to scrutiny, even in wartime, but so must criticism of that policy.

This book is about unprecedented attacks on an American president and a war in progress. It is about the impact of a divided national leadership on the prosecution of the war. It is an attempt to understand the defection of leaders from a war they supported and from a national purpose they presumably share. It is also an effort to understand the influence on the Democratic Party of a radical Left that has defected from this purpose and no longer regards itself as part of the nation. This Left sees itself instead as part of an abstract “humanity,” transcending national borders and patriotic allegiances, whose interests coincide with a worldwide radical cause.

Democrats have an explanation for their defection from a war they originally supported: the president is to blame. But this is a claim that will not stand up to even the most cursory inspection. Between the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which the Democrats supported, and their attacks on the legitimacy of the war, which began in June, three months later, no event transpired on the battlefield and no change took place in the administration’s war policy that would explain their defection. What changed was the internal politics of the Democratic Party, and this was a direct result of the antiwar campaign organized by the Left.

By coincidence, the buildup to the war took place during the early stages of a presidential-primary campaign, in the winter and spring of 2003. By June, the candidacy of an obscure Vermont governor named Howard Dean, a veteran of the anti-Vietnam Left, had gathered such momentum that he appeared to have become the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. [25] It was this political fact that precipitated an about-face on the war by more prominent Democrats, such as John Kerry and John Edwards, who eventually captured the party’s nominations. It was the antiwar radicals in the Dean campaign, not any events on the ground in Iraq, that produced the change in the position of leading Democrats and eventually of the Democratic Party as a whole. It was the political force of the antiwar movement, rather than any fact about the war, that explains the change.

Aware that their attacks on the home front would appear indefensible to many Americans, critics of the war have attempted to argue that it was Bush who had created the political schism. Four years into the war, New York Times columnist Robert Wright wrote a typical broadside titled, “An Easter Sermon,” which drew an invidious comparison between Bush and Jesus Christ, and blamed the president for dividing the nation. The column focused on a statement Bush made in an address to Congress nine days after 9/11. In it he said: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Wright’s column appeared in April 2007, even as a newly invested Democratic Congress was proposing legislation to force an American retreat in Iraq. In the column, Wright portrayed Bush as a polarizing figure who questioned his critics’ loyalties. Wright cited a contrasting Gospel statement by Jesus, “Whoever is not against us is for us,” as a model for what Bush should have said. Commented Wright: “Weeks after 9/11, George Bush says roughly the opposite. His famous ‘You’re either with us or against us’ means that those who don’t follow his lead will be considered enemies. The rest is history.” [26]

But this is a false reading of Bush’s sentence as well as of the New Testament, since Jesus also said, “He that is not with me is against me.” [27] It is also a false account of the history that followed, since it was Bush’s critics who made the White House and its supporters their enemies, not the other way around. Typical was an early attack by billionaire George Soros, the most influential non-elected figure in Democratic politics. Soros’s assault came in the fall of 2003, five months after the Democratic leaders had launched their scorched-earth campaign over the Niger incident, and just as they were escalating their offensive.

According to Soros, Bush’s statement was proof not only that he was a divisive force in domestic politics, but that he was pursuing a “supremacist ideology” reminiscent of the Nazis: “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans,” Soros said. “It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, like Der Feind Hört mit (‘The enemy is listening’).” [28]

Such rhetoric illustrated the degree to which the political debate had already become poisonous on the Democratic side only eight months into the war. No administration official had used such language to describe Democratic leaders opposed to the conflict. [29] The statement that a wartime enemy would be listening to its adversary was in any case hardly a Nazi idea. During World War II, almost identical slogans were popular in America, such as “Loose lips sink ships.” During the Cold War the code of bipartisanship was sealed in the phrase “Politics stops at the water’s edge,” to acknowledge the importance of political unity in wartime.

Soros’s statement was an example of the very politics it pretended to decry. If pointing to the fact that wartime divisions might entail some dangers made one a Nazi, as Soros suggested, what did that kind of comment do to the tenor of public debate? Yet no Democrat challenged Soros when he employed such a venomous allusion.

In fact, the meaning of Bush’s statement was grossly distorted by both Wright and Soros. The president’s remark was made in the context of an assessment of the threat America faced after 9/11. The purpose of his speech was to outline a new American response to the global war that Muslim fanatics had declared on America and theWest. This war had come to American shores eight years earlier, in 1993, with the first attack on the World Trade Center. It had been followed by attacks on American targets in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Yemen. But there had been no appropriate American response.

Bush’s agenda was to announce such a response. Henceforth, America would answer with a war of its own: “Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.” [30]

The president called the new response a “War on Terror.” It was a war, he said, that was rooted in ideology: “They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism.” He described the war as not merely with al-Qaeda, the Islamic group that had struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11, but with every element of the jihad: “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Having laid down these guidelines, Bush was ready to draw the line that caused Wright, Soros, and the Democratic leadership such consternation. Because the United States was now ready to recognize the global nature of the threat, it was also ready to recognize the complicity of Islamic governments such as Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and the Sudan in supporting the Islamic jihad and making possible the terrorist attacks. It was putting these regimes on notice: Sovereignty would no longer protect nation-states that aided and abetted the Islamic crusade. Governments would now be held responsible for the global terrorists within their borders.

If governments did not cooperate in the War on Terror and here the Taliban in Afghanistan was foremost in Bush’s mind they would be regarded as enemies, too: “And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. This was a warning to governments—to the Taliban and other Islamic regimes that might provide havens and support for al-Qaeda. This is the statement that Wright and Soros, and the president’s Democratic opponents, first distorted and then misrepresented as an attack on domestic critics. Bush had said nothing of the sort. It was a projection of the way his critics felt about him.

This new war policy of holding governments that harbored terrorists accountable was precisely what had been missing when terrorists struck the World Trade Center in 1993. After that attack, the bomb maker, an Iraqi named Abdul Rahman Yasin, was able to escape to Baghdad. The Clinton administration did not pursue Yasin to Iraq, nor did it hold the regime of Saddam Hussein accountable for providing refuge to him. If Clinton had done so, perhaps his fellow Democrats would better understand the connection between the Iraqi regime and the Islamic jihad against their country.

Instead, the Clinton White House regarded the World Trade Center bombing as a criminal act carried out by individuals unconnected to a global jihad. The identical attitude was evident when an al-Qaeda warlord in Somalia, Mohammed Farah Aideed, ambushed U.S. Army Rangers in the city of Mogadishu, also in 1993. The failure to grasp the place of these attacks in a global jihad led directly to America’s vulnerability on 9/11. It is what Bush has meant on those occasions when he has accused Democrats of “forgetting the lessons of 9/11,” or failing to understand them. This is the real political fault line in the disputes over the War on Terror and its battleground in Iraq.

Democrats believe that the War on Terror is a blunder committed by the Bush administration, even an invention of the Bush administration, rather than an actual war that has been declared on America by Osama bin Laden and the global forces of Islamofascism. This was the point of the celebrated statement candidate John Edwards made in 2007, during the presidential primary campaign: “The war on terror is a slogan designed only for politics,” Edwards claimed. “It is not a strategy to make America safe. It’s a bumper sticker, not a plan.” [31] And further: “We need a post-Bush, post-9-11, post-Iraq military that is mission-focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes. By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.” [32]

The same point had been made by Soros a year earlier. In a Wall Street Journal article, he explained that the War on Terror was “a misleading figure of speech [which] applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts—Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia—a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world . . . [W]e can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor.” [33]

In this view, George Bush and America are responsible for the war that radical Islam has launched against us. This is not a tactical difference between opponents of the war policy in Iraq and its supporters. It is strategic, and it explains why we have turned a corner in our history for which there is no precedent, and why the divisions over the war are deeper and more troubling than any of the specific issues that confront us.

By David Horowitz and Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, April 11, 2008

For the original article and footnotes:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=28679004-6C63-4119-97F6-96A2C5F64E84

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
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Response by Sallie D.: Wow is Nancy Pelosi stupid!

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Advance Praise for Party of Defeat

“Party of Defeat is an eye-opening account of one of the greatest political betrayals in American history: the unprecedented attack by leaders of an opposition party on a war they authorized and on America’s commander-in-chief while America’s troops were still in harm’s way.” - SEAN HANNITY, Fox News Channel anchor

“Candid. Brilliant. Forceful. Brave. Do not miss under any circumstances.” - R. JAMES WOOLSEY (former CIA Director)

“David Horowitz and Ben Johnson have written a timely and important analysis of the American political debate over the war on terror.” - Ambassador JOHN BOLTON

“This book is a must read for every American who cares about the security of the United States.” - Rep. GINNY BROWN-WAITE

“Brilliant, factual and historic, David Horowitz and Ben Johnson have documented how and why the Democratic leadership split the nation in the global war on terror. It will be judged as the seminal book on an unprecedented attack against America’s president and military in combat. Every American must read this book.” - Lieutenant General THOMAS McINERNEY, USAF (Ret.)

“Having been one of David Horowitz’s more severe critics as a young officer in the foxholes of Vietnam, I can say with some authority that he is now bringing a message of national importance to the American people.” - Major General JAMES E. LIVINGSTON, USMC (Ret.) Recipient of the Medal of Honor

“David Horowitz and Ben Johnson explain in detail the unprecedented attacks on a sitting President and expose the lack of understanding at the highest levels about the nature of our enemy. This book must be read by all Americans.” - Major General PAUL VALLELY, USA (Ret.)

“In concise and riveting fashion, David Horowitz and Ben Johnson have laid out a bill of particulars against an anti-war Left whose efforts to undermine the terror war are little short of treasonous. It offers a stark reminder of the folly of fighting a war on two fronts: one on the streets and battle fields of Iraq, the other here at home against ourselves.” - JOEL SURNOW, creator of 24

To say that Bush and his secretary of state don’t appear impressed by these problematic proclivities of the Palestinians is a great understatement. Condi Rice was here yet again this week in what has become a grimly obsessive quest to award the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians—in their current condition of moral development—with a sovereign state by the end of 2008.

Rice’s visit was seen as aimed at ensuring “progress” by the time Bush visits Israel in May to mark its 60th anniversary. Any remaining doubts as to whether Bush and Rice are serious—or just intended the “Annapolis process” as a spectacle to appease broader Arab opinion—can be laid to rest by the fact that Bush has also invited PA president Mahmoud Abbas to the White House in early May.

So Rice came to Israel with an agenda of “easing conditions” for the Palestinians—meaning mainly the removal of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank that the entire Israeli defense establishment regards as a key element in Israel’s mostly successful containment of West Bank terror over the past couple of years.

Rice’s main foil was reportedly Defense Minister Ehud Barak. A former military hero, a left-of-center, Labor politician who himself—as prime minister—made draconian offers to Yasser Arafat in 2000 and 2001, Barak is said to be concerned about jeopardizing the recent security achievements and, concurrently, his own ambitions to be prime minister again.

Nonetheless, Rice didn’t find Barak too tough a customer this time and, along with her U.S. delegation, was reportedly “amazed” at the gestures Barak offered in a three-way meeting with her and PA prime minister Salam Fayyad. These include, among other things, removing a major checkpoint near Ramallah and 50 dirt roadblocks, allowing 700 PA policemen (trained in Jordan under U.S. supervision) to enter the West Bank terror-town of Jenin, building a city or several neighborhoods near Ramallah, increasing the number of Palestinians allowed to work in
Israel, and easing security checks on Palestinian public figures passing through crossings.

Part of why Barak folded so easily has to do with the pressure on him: as Jerusalem Post analyst Calev Ben-David noted, It can’t be easy for Rice to sit opposite the most decorated soldier in Israeli military history, and counter his arguments that the concessions she is demanding risk endangering the security of his nation’s citizens. Perhaps that helps explain why she has enlisted some heavy brass to help her in that mission, a trio of top US military officials: Gen. James Jones, Lt.-Gen. William Fraser and Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton.

As Ben-David details, Jones—who is no less than former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe—is said to help Rice with putting the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” in a larger context and is the one who already “leaned on Barak to make security concessions ahead of the secretary’s visit.”

As for Fraser, he’s a former top-level air force commander and currently assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as Rice’s top military adviser, and he’s also entrusted with monitoring Israel and the PA’s compliance with the “process.”

Dayton , also no lightweight, was director of the Iraq Survey Group and a senior member of the Joint Chiefs, and helps oversee the training of the Palestinian security forces that Bush and Rice still hallucinate to be a pro-Western contingent that will resist and, if necessary, defeat Hamas. Ben-David speaks of “rumored tensions between Dayton and Barak, the latter reportedly bristling at [ Dayton ’s] criticism of [his] unwillingness to approve giving the PA security forces more operational latitude and higher-level military equipment.”

If that sounds like a lot of pressure on the defense minister of a democratic ally, it is. If it sounds like the idea that Israel is supposed to be a sovereign country in its own right is getting lost in the shuffle here, it is.

Barak’s recent reference to the decision to allow PA policemen into Jenin as a “calculated risk” prompted a letter to him from Nachman Zoldan, whose son Ido Zoldan—29 and a father of two—was murdered last November in a shooting attack by two PA policemen. Nachman Zoldan asked Barak to reconsider your decision. Over the years, considerable facts and figures have emerged that all point to deep involvement of those same Palestinian security forces...in the terror campaign against Israel . This involvement in terror, ranging from intelligence gathering through actual terrorist acts, is carried out by uniformed and plainclothed Palestinian policemen as well as high-ranking police officers….

Recent terrorist attacks have displayed a regrettably much-improved performance of the terrorist organizations. We are therefore very concerned regarding permission you granted to these same policemen to undergo training in Jordan . This training, under American guidance, will grant them heightened professionalism that will enable them, according to past experience, to act in the future against us, civilians and IDF soldiers alike, with increased effectiveness.

Zoldan concluded by requesting an urgent meeting regarding your appalling justification of your decision to “take calculated risks.” The many ramifications of this statement include life in the shadow of bereavement and loss, the ongoing hellishness of pain and grief for the immediate families and extended circles of friends of slain victims, and the rage at the murders. And the murdered victims!...“salt of the earth” who placed their faith in you, their elected leaders, to protect them. And you take “calculated risks” with their lives! You, our elected representatives, do not take risks with your own lives, but are closely guarded and secured at great monetary cost to the public. Therefore it is not ethically appropriate to cast “calculated risks” on the unwitting public.

As always it is hard to know how to apportion the blame between acquiescent Israeli leaders and American leaders who pressure them. One thing that appears certain is that even if the bereaved father’s letter had been brought to Rice’s, or Bush’s, attention, its pathos would not have mattered to them.

Rice has already expressed her perception of the Palestinians as analogous to blacks in the segregated U.S. south. As for what motivates Bush in this policy of bullying an ally into going against its very hard-won security wisdom and endangering its citizens in the name of creating a terror state—I wish I knew.

By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/3/2008

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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Response by Len S.:

Call me cynical. It seems to me that the US State Department has decided, some time ago, that since the strategic interests of the US depend MORE NOW on the ready availability of oil and the "friendship" of vast numbers of muslims throughout the world, sacrificing Israel, to obtain oil and arab friendship, is a small price to pay. I am convinced that, if tomorrow morning Bush were to awaken to headlines that Israel had been "wiped off the map" by nuclear weapons of unknown origin, his administration (and subsequent ones) would secretly sigh with relief that Israel was no longer the stumbling block and "burden" undermining America-Arab relations.

Yes, the president, whoever he/she is, would wring his hands, and condemn the "dastardly act", but he/she would not launch any counterattack in Israel's name, at the probable suspect(s). After all, that oil's got to FLOW. Such restraint might score points in the arab world but would more likely signal American weakness and unreliability to our arab "FRIENDS". American citizens have shown little interest in the impending scenario of a monolithic muslim state which will likely form when we leave Iraq.

Such a state, born with the assistance of Iran and its surrogates, will undermine the new Iraq government (as well as other weak middle eastern regimes), will murder huge numbers of Iraqis (just like the murder of 3 million asians
that resulted when democrats cut off funding to the Vietnam War, forcing our withdrawal there). America and the west will then sooner-or-later be confronted by a bellicose muslim monolithic state WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

But Americans can't think ahead about such geopolitics, and politicians running for office here understand that. Better to win elections with "Peace in our Time" sloganeering than to suggest that America's sons & daughters might be called upon in much greater numbers in a future conflict with radical Islam.

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Response by David R.:

The Arabs have Oil. The Israeli's don't. The leftists of the world hate Western Civilization, and myopically idealize any other "civilization" they can find, regardless of how violent, retrograde, or repressive. So the one thing big business and the leftists can agree on, is that they have no use for the Israeli's tiny little island of civilization, surrounded by bloodthirsty savages. Simple as that. It's always been easy to sell the jews up the river, who will care?

Madam Speaker, the West has no problems with Jews or Christians, but it does have problems with Islam. It is still possible, even today, for Muslims to view the Koran, which they regard as valid for all time, as a licence to kill. And that is exactly what happens. The Koran is worded in such a way that its instructions are addressed to Muslims for eternity, which includes today's Muslims. This in contrast to texts in the Bible, which is formulated as a number of historical narratives, placing events in a distant past. Let us remind ourselves that it was Muslims, not Jews or Christians, who committed the catastrophic terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London; and that it was no coincidence that Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered by a Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri.

Madam Speaker, I acknowledge that there are people who call themselves Muslims and who respect our laws. My party, the Freedom Party, has nothing against such people, of course. However, the Koran does have something against them. For it is stated in the Koran in Sura 2, verse 85, that those believers who do not believe in everything the Koran states will be humiliated and receive the severest punishment; which means that they will roast in Hell. In other words, people who call themselves Muslims but who do not believe, for example, in Sura 9, verse 30, which states that Jews and Christians must be fought, or, for example, in Sura 5, verse 38, which states that the hand of a thief must be cut off, such people will be humiliated and roast in Hell. Note that it is not me who is making this up.

All this can be found in the Koran. The Koran also states that Muslims who believe in only part of the Koran are in fact apostates, and we know what has to happen to apostates. They have to be killed.

Madam Speaker, the Koran is a book that incites to violence. I remind the House that the distribution of such texts is unlawful according to Article 132 of our Penal Code. In addition, the Koran incites to hatred and calls for murder and mayhem. The distribution of such texts is made punishable by Article 137(e). The Koran is therefore a highly dangerous book; a book which is completely against our legal order and our democratic institutions. In this light, it is an absolute necessity that the Koran be banned for the defence and reinforcement of our civilisation and our constitutional state. I shall propose a second-reading motion to that effect.

Madam Speaker, there is no such thing as "moderate Islam".... As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said the other day, and I quote, "There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it".... Islam is in pursuit of dominance. It wishes to exact its imperialist agenda by force on a worldwide scale (8:39). This is clear from European history. Fortunately, the first Islamic invasion of Europe was stopped at Poitiers in 732; the second in Vienna in 1683. Madam Speaker, let us ensure that the third Islamic invasion, which is currently in full spate, will be stopped too in spite of its insidious nature and notwithstanding the fact that, in contrast to the 8th and 17th centuries, it has no need for an Islamic army because the scared "dhimmis" in the West, also those in Dutch politics, have left their doors wide open to Islam and Muslims.

Apart from conquest, Madam Speaker, Islam is also bent on installing a totally different form of law and order, namely Sharia law. This makes Islam, apart from a religion for hundreds of millions of Muslims also, and in particular, a political ideology (with political/constitutional/Islamic basic values, etc). Islam is an ideology without any respect for others; not for Christians, not for Jews, not for non-believers and not for apostates. Islam aims to dominate, subject, kill and wage war.

Madam Speaker, the Islamic incursion must be stopped. Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe. If we do not stop Islamification now, Eurabia and Netherabia will just be a matter of time. One century ago, there were approximately 50 Muslims in the Netherlands. Today, there are about 1 million Muslims in this country. Where will it end? We are heading for the end of European and Dutch civilisation as we know it. Where is our Prime Minister in all this? In reply to my questions in the House he said, without batting an eyelid, that there is no question of our country being Islamified. Now, this reply constituted a historical error as soon as it was uttered. Very many Dutch citizens, Madam Speaker, experience the presence of Islam around them. And I can report that they have had enough of burkas, headscarves, the ritual slaughter of animals, so-called honour revenge, blaring minarets, female circumcision, hymen restoration operations, abuse of homosexuals, Turkish and Arabic on the buses and trains as well as on town hall leaflets, halal meat at grocery shops and department stores, Sharia exams, the Finance Minister's Sharia mortgages, and the enormous overrepresentation of Muslims in the area of crime, including Moroccan street terrorists.

In spite of all this, Madam Speaker, there is hope. Fortunately. The majority of Dutch citizens have become fully aware of the danger, and regard Islam as a threat to our culture. My party, the Freedom Party, takes those citizens seriously and comes to their defence.

Many Dutch citizens are fed up to the back teeth and yearn for action. However, their representatives in The Hague are doing precisely nothing. They are held back by fear, political correctness or simply electoral motives. This is particularly clear in the case of PvdA, the Dutch Labour Party, which is afraid of losing Muslim voters. The Prime Minister said in Indonesia the other day that Islam does not pose any danger. Minister Donner believes that Sharia law should be capable of being introduced in the Netherlands if the majority want it. Minister Vogelaar babbles about the future Netherlands as a country with a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, and that she aims to help Islam take root in Dutch society. In saying this, the Minister shows that she has obviously gone stark raving mad. She is betraying Dutch culture and insulting Dutch citizens.

Madam Speaker, my party, the Freedom Party, demands that Minister Vogelaar retract her statement. If the Minister fails to do so, the Freedom Party parliamentary group will withdraw its support for her. No Islamic tradition must ever be established in the Netherlands: not now and also not in a few centuries' time.

Madam Speaker, let me briefly touch on the government's response to the WRR [Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy] report. On page 12 of its response, the government states that Islam is not contrary to democracy or human rights. All I can say to that is that things can't get much more idiotic than this.

Madam Speaker, it is a few minutes to twelve. If we go on like this, Islam will herald the end of our Western civilisation as well as Dutch culture.

I would like to round off my first-reading contribution with a personal appeal to the Prime Minister on behalf of a great many Dutch citizens: stop the Islamification of the Netherlands!

Mr Balkenende, a historic task rests on your shoulders. Be courageous. Do what many Dutch citizens are screaming out for. Do what the country needs. Stop all immigration from Muslim countries, ban all building of new mosques, close all Islamic schools, ban burkas and the Koran. Expel all criminal Muslims from the country, including those Moroccan street terrorists that drive people mad. Accept your responsibility! Stop Islamification!

Enough is enough, Mr Balkenende. Enough is enough.

Geert Wilders Speaks: Anti-Koran Film (Part 2 of 2)

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Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran. We have scared Gaddafi's pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don't think Libya is now a threat. North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side.

So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability.

Missle Minutes

In 1989 I served as a Command Director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. That posting lasted for almost three years. My job there was to observe (through classified means) every missile shot anywhere in the world and assess if it was a threat to the US or Canada. If any shot was threatening to either nation I had only minutes to advise the President, as he had only minutes to respond. I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousand of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply.

At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat. Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them. (Editor's note: Recent reports out of Iraq, while in substance confirming the general's point, here, suggest that some folks there are beginning to get his point. If so, then in time Iraq may once again earn Iran's nervous respect.)

They have turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance, the United States. They are convinced they will win, because the United States is so divided, and the Democrats (who now control Congress and may control the Presidency in 2008) have openly said we are pulling out.

Iran is the Endgame

Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil will not be made available to this country at any price. I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program---declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade.

Yes, it is about oil. The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the "good-old-days".

The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over. One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war---if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age. I urge you to read the book "END GAME" by two of our best Middle East experts, true American patriots and retired military generals, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney.

They are our finest, and totally honest in their assessment of why victory in the Middle East is so important, and how it can be won. Proceeds for the book go directly to a memorial fund for our fallen soldiers who served the country during the war on terror.

On the other hand, we have several very angry retired generals today, who evidently have not achieved their lofty goals, and insist on ranting and raving about the war. They are wrong, and doing the country great harm by giving a certain political party reason to use them as experts to back their anti-war claims.

You may be one of those who believe nothing could ever be terrible enough to support our going to war. If that is the case I should stop here, as that level of thinking approaches mental disability in this day and age. It is right up there with alien abductions and high altitude seeding through government aircraft contrails. I helped produce those contrails for almost 30 years, and I can assure you we were not seeding the atmosphere. The human race is a war-like population, and if a country is not willing to protect itself, it deserves the consequences.

The Choice is Yours

There was a time when politicians could disagree, but still work together. We are past that time.

In my lifetime, after serving in uniform for President's Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I have a pretty good feel for which party supported our military, and what military life was like during each of their terms. And, let me assure you that times were best under the Republicans. Service under Jimmy Carter was devastating for all branches of the military. And, Ronald Reagan was truly a salvation.

You can choose to listen to enriched newscasters, and foolish people like John Murtha (he is no war hero), Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and on-and-on to include the true fools in Hollywood if you like. If you do, your conclusions will be totally wrong.

The reason that I write, appear on radio talk shows, and do everything I can to denounce those people is simple. THEY ARE PUTTING THEIR THIRST FOR POLITICAL POWER AND QUEST FOR VICTORY IN 2008 ABOVE WHAT IS BEST FOR THIS COUNTRY.

I cannot abide by that. Pelosi clearly defied the Logan Act by going to Syria, which should have lead to imprisonment of three years and a heavy fine. Jane Fonda did more to prolong the Vietnam War than any other human being (as acknowledged by Ho Chi Minh in his writing before he died). She truly should have been indicted for treason, along with her radical husband Tom Hayden, and forced to pay the consequences.

This country has started to soften by not enforcing its laws, which is another indication of a Republic about to fall. All Democrats, along with the Hollywood elite, are sending us headlong into a total defeat in the Middle East, which will finally give Iran total dominance in the region. A lack of oil in the near future will be the final straw that dooms this Republic.

However, if we refuse to let this happen and really get serious about an energy self-sufficiency program, this can be avoided. I am afraid, however, that we are going in the opposite direction. If we elect Hillary Clinton and a Democrat controlled congress, and they carry through with allowing Iran to take control of the Middle East, continue to refuse development of nuclear energy, refuse to allow drilling for new oil, and continue to do nothing but oppose everything Bush, it will be over in terms of what we view as the good life in the USA.

Now, do I think that all who do not support the war are un-American---of course not. They just do not understand the importance of total victory in that region. Another failure of George Bush is his inability to explain to the American people why we are there, and why we MUST win. By the way, it is not a war. The war was won four years ago. It is martial law that is under attack by Iranian and Syrian outside influences, and there is a difference.

So, what do I believe? What is the bottom line? I will simply say that the Democratic Party has fielded the foulest, most power hungry, anti-country, self absorbed group of individuals that I have observed in my lifetime. Our educational system is partially to blame for allowing the mass of America to be taken in by this group. George Bush has done the best he can with the disabilities that he possesses.

A President must communicate with the people. And, I would tell you that Desert Storm spoiled the people. Bush Senior's 100-hour war convinced the people that technology has progressed to the point that wars could be fought with no casualties and won in very short periods of time. I remember feeling at the time, that this was a tragedy for the US military. To win wars, you must put boots on the ground. When you put boots on the ground, soldiers are going to die. A President must make the war decision wisely, and insure that the cause is right before using his last political option.

However, CONTROLLING IRAN AND DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE ONLY CHOICE IF WE ARE HELL-BENT ON DEPENDING ON THEM FOR OUR FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS.

by James L. Cash, Brigadier General, USAF (Retired)
First published on the Internet in August 2007; reprinted here due to its continued applicability and importance.

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
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Response by Tom Wanamaker:

The General and I are beating the same drum on the dangers of Iran and their desire to control Iraq's oil. Oil is the lifeblood of our economy and the economy is the engine that drives the nation. I'm not sure we can imagine how desperate things would get here if our supply of Middle East oil were suddenly cut off. OPEC's greed is putting America on a collision course with the Arab world. Will we have to choose between going to war with Arab nations over oil, or letting them slowly bankrupt America?

How long can this nation sustain $100 - $120 per barrel oil prices and still maintain our standard of living? How long can we continue to transfer $400 billion of our wealth to the Middle East each year before our industry, agriculture, and technology fall behind?

Most people I talk to are feeling the economic squeeze to one degree or another. Now, the State of Illinois wants to raise sales tax, Crystal Lake today announced a sales tax increase, property taxes are going up, groceries prices have risen 25 - 30 percent in the last 6 months, natural gas is up, Com Ed just got a rate hike, college tuitions are out of sight, medical insurance is becoming a luxury, and wages are stagnant. And both Democratic candidates have declared they will roll back the Bush tax cuts if elected, bring back the old income tax brackets, make more of your income taxable under the Alternative Minimum Tax, and raise taxes to pay for Universal Health Care. Can the economy absorb a hit like that at a time like this?

There sure is a lot riding on this election.

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The EU involves the free movement of people across borders. If it expands to the Middle East, hundreds of millions of Muslims will have free access to Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Austria. If Turkey becomes a member, it means that Greeks, Bulgarians and others who have fought against oppression by Ottoman Turks for centuries will now be flooded with Muslims from a rapidly re-Islamizing Turkey. The same goes for Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and others who fought against Muslims for centuries.

The EU's Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini states that Europe must relax its immigration controls and open the door to an extra 20 million "Africans and Asians" during the next two decades. Most of these "Africans and Asians" come from the predominantly Muslim countries of North Africa and the Greater Middle East. The EU thus decided to flood Europe with tens of millions of Muslims at the same time as peaceful Europeans demonstrating against the Islamization of Europe were brutally harassed by the police in the EU capital of Brussels. Frattini has also banned the use of the phrase Islamic terrorism: "People who commit suicide attacks or criminal activities on behalf of religion, Islamic religion or other religion, they abuse the name of this religion." He thinks we shouldn't use the word "immigration," either, we should talk about "mobility."

While Dutch politicians, in what was until recently a peaceful country, have been killed for being too critical of Islam, while Islamic terror attacks have murdered people in London and Madrid, while more terror attacks are planned every single day from Italy via Paris to Denmark, and while people from Sweden to Germany are subject to Muslim street violence and harassment, EU leaders want to increase Europe's Muslim population by tens of millions in a few years. This is criminal and evil, pure and simple.

In Cologne, Germany, a Muslim teenager who wanted to mug a 20-year-old German man was killed in an act of self-defense, according to witnesses. This led to angry protests from Muslims. Apparently, non-Muslims are not supposed to defend themselves from attacks. This violence is usually labelled "crime," but I believe it should more accurately be called Jihad.

Those who know Islamic history, as described in books such as The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer or The Legacy of Jihad by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, know that looting and stealing the property of non-Muslims has been part and parcel of Jihad from the very beginning. In fact, so much of the behavior of Muhammad and early Muslims could be deemed criminal that it is difficult to know where crime ends and Jihad begins. In the city of Oslo, it is documented that some of the criminal gangs also have close ties to Jihadist groups at home and abroad. As Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen points out, the Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given "hunting licence," granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims. It is hardly accidental that while Muslims make up a minority of the population in France, they make up an estimated seventy percent of French prison inmates.

Why would anybody in their right mind want to import Islam, the most destructive force on the planet? Are EU leaders naïve? I don't think so, at least not all of them. You cannot maintain political power in the long run if you are totally naive.
We are told to treat cultural and historical identities as fashion accessories, shirts we can wear and change at will. The Multicultural society is "colorful," an adjective normally attached to furniture or curtains. Cultures are window decorations of little or no consequence, and one might as well have one as the other. In fact, it is good to change it every now and then. Don't you get tired of that old sofa sometimes? What about exchanging it for the new sharia model? Sure, it's slightly less comfortable than the old one, but it's very much in vogue these days and sets you apart from the neighbors, at least until they get one, too. Do you want a sample of the latest Calvin Klein perfume to go with that sharia?

I have heard individuals state point blank that even if Muslims become the majority in our countries in the future, this doesn't matter because all people are equal and all cultures are just a mix of everything else, anyway. And since religions are just fairy-tales, replacing one fairy-tale with another one won't make a big difference. All religions basically say that the same things in different ways. However, not one of them would ever dream of saying that all political ideologies "basically mean the same thing." They simply don't view religious or cultural ideas as significant, and thus won't spend time on studying the largely unimportant details of each specific creed.

In The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West, Lee Harris writes that: "What strikes us as irrationalities in the economic systems of Third World nations, such as the red tape documented by [Peruvian economist Hernando] de Soto, is not irrational at all from the point of view of the dominant elite: It is part of what keeps them dominant. With enough red tape, they can stay king of the mountain forever."

This reminds me a great deal of what the EU is doing, attempting to create a permanent oligarchy by keeping the native population in line though a combination of confusion, bureaucracy and intimidation from imported Muslims.

Far from being an irrelevant detail, religion is the heart and blood of any civilization. The greatest change (until now) in my country's history was when we adopted Christianity instead of the Norse religion. This changed the entire fabric of our culture. We became integrated into the mainstream of Western civilization at about the same time as we went from being a tribal society to a genuine state. Maybe Christianity helped in creating the foundations of nation states with an individualistic culture. If so, perhaps changing the religion is beneficial for those who want to replace nation states with authoritarian transnational entities, for instance the European Union. Islamic societies are always authoritarian. Those who want to abolish the democratic system and rule as an unaccountable oligarchy thus naturally prefer Islam.

The EU is an awful organization even if you don't take Muslim immigration into account. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy, who is not particularly preoccupied with Islam, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union: "The sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries."

The brilliant French political thinker Montesquieu advocated that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government should be assigned to different bodies, each of them not powerful enough alone to impose its will on society. This is because "constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go." This separation of powers is almost totally absent in the EU, where there is weak to non-existent separation between the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches, and where all of them function more or less without the consent of the public.

As Montesquieu warned, "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner." He also stated that "Useless laws weaken the necessary laws." The problem with the EU is not just the content of laws, but their volume. Law-abiding citizens are turned into criminals by laws regulating speech and behavior, while real criminals rule the streets. This will either lead to a police state, to a total breakdown in law and order, or both.

At least two conditions must be fulfilled in order to prevent the arbitrary use of power. The first one is a system of formal checks and balances, giving the possibility of peacefully removing officials who are not doing their job. The second is transparency, so people know what their representatives are doing. The EU deliberately ignores both these conditions, but especially the latter. Vast quantities of power have been transferred to shady backrooms and structures the average citizen hardly knows exist. Eurabia was created through such channels.

The pompous former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing declared that the creation of the proposed EU Constitution was Europe's "Philadelphia moment," alluding to the Philadelphia Convention or Constitutional Convention in the newly formed the United States of America in 1787. The USA has its flaws, but if Mr. Giscard d'Estaing had actually understood the American Constitution, he would have discovered that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others took great care to implement a number of checks and balances in the new state, precisely what is lacking in the EU. The American constitution is relatively short and understandable, whereas the EU Constitution is hundreds of pages long, largely incomprehensible and displays an almost sharia-like desire to regulate all aspects of human life. After it was rejected by Dutch and French voters, the Constitution has been renamed and is now being smuggled through the back door.

Madison, Jefferson, George Washington and the American Founding Fathers acted in the open and were generally elected by their peers and applauded for their actions. Contrast this with Jean Monnet, who is credited with having laid the foundations of the EU, despite the fact that most EU citizens haven't heard of him. He was never elected to any public office, but worked behind the scenes to implement a secret agenda. I read an interview with a senior Brussels lobbyist who dubbed Monnet "the most successful lobbyist in history." To this day, the EU capital of Brussels is dominated by lobbyists. The Americans in Washington D.C. have their fair share of lobbyists, too, and this can be problematic at times. The difference is that the EU capital is dominated ONLY by lobbyists and unelected bureaucrats, with little real popular influence. Those who read the excellent British blog EU Referendum regularly will know that this secretive modus operandi is still very much alive in the European Union.

Frankly, I don't think the EU has the right to use the term "European." Those inhabiting the European continent are first and foremost Germans, Dutchmen, Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Portuguese etc. "Europe" has existed mainly to protect the continent against Islamic expansionism. Charles Martel created Europe when he defeated the Arab invasion in the seventh century, aided by people such as Pelayo, who started the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula, John Hunyadi and Lazar of Serbia who fought against the Turks in the Balkans and John III Sobieski, King of Poland, who beat the Ottomans during the 1683 Battle of Vienna. The EU is actively trying to undo everything Charles Martel and these men achieved. This makes it the anti-European Union, an evil organization with no moral legitimacy whatsoever.

The EU is gradually reducing the indigenous people of an entire continent to the likely future status of second-rate citizen in their own countries. It is quite possibly the greatest betrayal in the history of European civilization since the fall of the Roman Empire, yet it is hailed as a "peace project" in the media. It is shameful to witness the bullying displayed by EU leaders vis-à-vis the Serbs, who are being forced to give up their land to Muslim thugs. This template will eventually be used against all Europeans. As Srdja Trifkovic warns, even if the Serbs are robbed of Kosovo, Muslims will not thank the West:

"In Europe most nations want to defend themselves—even the ultra-tolerant Dutch have seen the light after Theo van Gogh's murder—but cannot do so because they are hamstrung by a ruling class composed of guilt-ridden self-haters and appeasers. Their hold on the political power, the media, and the academe is undemocratic, unnatural, obscene. If Europe is to survive they need to be unmasked for what they are: traitors to their nations and their culture. If Europe is to survive, they must be replaced by people ready and willing to subject the issues of immigration and identity to the test of democracy, unhindered by administrative or judicial fiat. For those reasons too, Serbia must not give up Kosovo. By giving it up it would encourage the spirit that seeks the death of Europe and its surrender to the global totalitarianism of Muhammad's successors. Not for the first time, in Kosovo the Serbs are fighting a fight that is not theirs alone."

Some hope we can keep the "positive" aspects of the EU and not "throw out the baby with the bath water." I beg to differ. The EU is all bath water, no baby. The EU got off on the wrong path from its very inception, and is now so flawed that it simply cannot be reformed. Appeasement of Islam is so deeply immersed in the structural DNA of the EU that the only way to stop the Islamization of Europe is to dismantle the European Union. All of it. (Emphasis added)

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/019873.php
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After WW1, the winners discovered that war was messy and they didn't want to do it anymore. The businesses discovered that wartime profits didn't justify the cost and the politicians discovered that wartime successes didn't justify the ultimate price paid for using them and decided that the appearance of force was just as good as the use of force. The losers of WW1 though, Germany and Russia, which had taken a severe beating only to fall victim to a German infused revolution, were under no such illusion. While the winners of WW1 were busy digesting their post-war gains and proclaiming an era of universal peace, the losers wanted revenge.

When the winners faced off against the losers once more, the winners tried diplomacy and were nearly eaten alive for it. The aftermath of England and France's diplomacy with Hitler and America's diplomacy with Stalin left Europe in rubble and flames and the remaining half of it occupied. Yet the only lesson that seemed to have been learned from diplomacy's defeat in the face of Communism and Nazism was to repeat every one of the follies of appeasement twice over.

In the 21st century European civilization once again looks at a menace in its midst and the response is equally unfocused. Some call for negotiation and compromise, others call for battle and most sit on the sidelines and await the inevitable. While America fights the War on Terror abroad, Europe continues losing the Demographic War at home. Israel has become America and Europe's Czechoslovakia, the dainty treat on the menu of concessions meant to appease the Islamic beast.

But of course the strong do not make concessions, only the weak do. Yet militarily America, Europe and Israel have vastly superior militaries in comparison to the nations and factions that threaten them. The weakness in them is not a weakness of force but a weakness of will. But where has that will gone?

Let's go back to the two men in the room. One has a knife and one has a machine gun. One is determined to kill the other. Which one will walk out of that room alive? The answer is, the one who is determined to kill the other. A weapon is no good unless it is used. Using a weapon as a bluff only works once at most and it stops working if your opponent is willing to take the risk or knows you won't use it.

The nature of the world is two men in a room, one has a gun and one has a knife. The man with the gun insists on trying to reason with the man with the knife, to enlighten him and democratize him. The man with the knife meanwhile grins and creeps closer and takes a few swipes at him. In return the man with the gun threatens him, waves the gun around and occasionally takes a shot at him to warn him away, without really trying to hit him. Is it any real mystery who will emerge alive from this conflict?

More important than the ability to fight is the willingness to fight. A national government that is not willing to fight even to protect its own citizens has committed treason and ceased to have any continuing legal justification for its existence. There are only three things a national government is truly needed for and the first of them is national defense. Yet national governments across the world, from America to Europe to Israel, have substituted national accommodation for national defense. Amnesty, integration, moderation and tolerance have become the new watchwords.

"We are too good to fight," proclaims the new Western ethos. "We will fight only for human rights, to bring freedom to other nations." Yet how can one bring freedom to other nations, when the fundamental freedoms a national government exists to protect, the freedom to live in peace from violence and terror are not respected. Peace through accommodation only produces a one sided war. A war that is slowly being lost.

Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence but between violence and nonexistence. That is a choice faced by Europe and Israel right now, not tomorrow or the day after. 9/11 emerged out of Hamburg as much as it did out of Afghanistan. That is why 9/11 should have been more of a wake up call to Europe than to America because it had become infected by the second stage of the global Jihad. Europe had become no longer merely just a target but a launching pad, a partially occupied territory Jihadis were using to get to the front line.

9/11 should have produced a recognition of the intertwined problem of demographics and Islamic terrorism, as the Cold War should have produced a recognition of the intertwined problem of the Soviet threat and Communist infiltration. Yet the same liberal Western elites who did their best to silence the recognition of Communist infiltration are now doing their best to silence the recognition of growing Muslim populations in Western nations and the terrorist threat. Those same Western liberal elites who blamed American and European intransigence toward Uncle Joe for the Cold War now blame America, Britain and Spain and Israel for enraging Uncle Osama.

As superior morality has become conflated with superior comfort, both physical and psychological, the political, academic and business elites who are creatures of a Post-WW1 ethos that tells them that war is the least profitable way to achieve their goals, continue to dance between bluff and accommodation. The very same brilliant minds that spawned the technological civilization we live in today frantically seek for some alternative to having to defend it on the battlefield. In their hands civilization has gone from steel to glass, fragile and trembling on the edge of an abyss as an unwillingness to fight even when needed has become the new morality and surrender, the supreme sacrifice that civilization makes for its enemies.

by ‘Pet Sheep’
January 11, 2008
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/02/two-men-in-room-superior-force-and.html

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The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation.

The most gruesome FALN attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.

FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims "reactionary corporate executives" and threatening: "You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can't escape." By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.

On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.

Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. "For me," the president concluded, "the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose."

His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of "guilt by association," were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were "in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity."

The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.

"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."

Observed Judge George Layton, who sentenced four FALN defendants for their conspiracy to use military-grade explosives to break an FALN leader from Ft. Leavenworth Penitentiary and detonate bombs at other public buildings, "[T]his case . . . represents one of the finest examples of preventive law enforcement that has ever come to this court's attention in the 20-odd years it has been a judge and in the 20 years before that as a practicing lawyer in criminal cases."

The FBI cracked the cases with the discovery of an FALN safe house and bomb factory. Video surveillance showed two of those on the clemency list firing weapons and building bombs intended for an imminent attack at a U.S. military installation. FBI agents obtained a warrant and entered the premises, surreptitiously disarming the bombs whose components bore the unmistakable FALN signature. They found 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false IDs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

A total of six safe houses were ultimately uncovered. Seven hundred hours of surveillance video were recorded, resulting in a mountain of evidence connecting the 16 prisoners to multiple FALN operations past and present.

Federal law enforcement agencies considered these individuals so dangerous, extraordinary security precautions were taken at their numerous trials. Courthouse elevators were restricted and no one, including the court officers, was permitted to carry a firearm in the courtroom.

Given all this, why would Bill Clinton, who had ignored the 3,226 clemency petitions that had piled up on his desk over the years, suddenly reach into the stack and pluck out these 16 meritless cases? (The New York Times ran a column with the headline, "Bill's Little Gift.")

Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.

Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners' delay in refusing to renounce violence "speaks volumes," she said.

The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn't actually asked for clemency.

To push the deal through, signed statements renouncing violence and expressing remorse were required by the Justice Department. The FALN prisoners, surely relishing the embarrassment and discomfiture they were causing the president and his wife, had previously declined to accept these conditions. Committed and unrepentant militants who did not accept the authority of the United States, they refused to apologize for activities they were proud of in order to obtain a clemency they never requested.

So desperate was the White House to get the deal finalized and out of the news, an unprecedented 16-way conference call was set up for the "petitioners" who were locked up in 11 different federal facilities so that they could strategize a response to the president's offer. Two eventually refused to renounce their cause, preferring to serve out their lengthy sentences rather than follow the White House script.

Mr. Clinton's fecklessness in the handling of these cases was demonstrated by the fact that none of the prisoners were required, as a standard condition of release, to cooperate in ongoing investigations of countless unsolved FALN bombing cases and other crimes. Mrs. Clinton's so-called disagreement with her husband on the matter made no mention of that fact. The risk of demanding such a requirement, of course, was that the prisoners might have proudly implicated themselves, causing the entire enterprise to implode, with maximum damage to the president and potentially sinking Hillary Clinton's Senate chances.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rican politicians in New York who'd been crowing to their constituents about the impending release of these "freedom fighters" were enraged and insulted at Hillary Clinton's withdrawal of support. "It was a horrible blunder," said State Sen. Olga A. Mendez. "She needs to learn the rules."

The first lady called her failure to consult the Puerto Rican political establishment before assessing the entire issue a mistake "that will never happen again" -- even as the cops who had been maimed and disfigured by FALN operations continued to be ignored. Tom and Joe Connor, two brothers who were little boys when their 33-year-old father, Frank, was killed in the Fraunces Tavern attack, were dumbstruck to learn that White House staffers referred to the FALN militants as "political prisoners" and were planning a meeting with their children to humanize their plight.

Members of Congress viewed the clemencies as a dangerous abuse of presidential power that could not go unchallenged. Resolutions condemning the president's action were passed with a vote of 95-2 in the Senate, 311-41 in the House. It was the most they could do; the president's pardon power, conferred by the Constitution, is absolute. The House launched an investigation, subpoenaing records from the White House and Justice in an effort to determine whether proper procedure had been followed. President Clinton promptly invoked executive privilege, putting Justice Department lawyers in the impossible position of admitting that they had sent the White House a recommendation on the issue, but barred from disclosing what it was.

Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony.

The investigation revealed that the White House was driving the effort to release the prisoners, rather than the other way around. White House aides created talking points and strategies for a public campaign on the prisoners' behalf included asking prominent individuals for letters supporting clemency.

Jeffrey Farrow, a key adviser on the White House Interagency Working Group for Puerto Rico recommended meetings with the president and the three leading members of Congressional Hispanic Caucus who were pushing the effort, stating in a March 6, 1999 email, "This is Gutierrez's [sic] top priority as well as of high constituent importance to Serrano and Velazquez." The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste sent an email to White House Counsel Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency issue, supporting Mr. Farrow's view, saying, "Chuck -- Jeff's right about this -- very hot issue." Another adviser in the Working Group, Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, noted that releasing the prisoners would be "fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters)."

And there you have it. Votes.

While the pardon scandals that marked Bill and Hillary Clinton's final days in office are remembered as transactions involving cronies, criminals and campaign contributors, the FALN clemencies of 1999 should be remembered in the context of the increasing threat of domestic and transnational terrorism that was ramping up during the Clinton years of alleged peace and prosperity. To wit, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivan’s bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot.

It was within that context that the FBI gave its position on the FALN clemencies -- which the White House succeeded in keeping out of news coverage but ultimately failed to suppress -- stating that "the release of these individuals will psychologically and operationally enhance the ongoing violent and criminal activities of terrorist groups, not only in Puerto Rico, but throughout the world." The White House spun the clemencies as a sign of the president's universal commitment to "peace and reconciliation" just one year after Osama bin Laden told his followers that the United States is a "paper tiger" that can be attacked with impunity.

It would be a mistake to dismiss as "old news" the story of how and why these terrorists were released in light of the fact that it took place during the precise period when Bill Clinton now claims he was avidly engaged, even "obsessed," with efforts to protect the public from clandestine terrorist attacks. If Bill and Hillary Clinton were willing to pander to the demands of local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights activists defending bomb-makers convicted of seditious conspiracy, how might they stand up to pressure from other interest groups working in less obvious ways against U.S. interests in a post-9/11 world?

Radical Islamists are a sophisticated and determined enemy who understand that violence alone will not achieve their goals. Islamist front groups, representing themselves as rights organizations, are attempting to get a foothold here as they have already in parts of Western Europe by deftly exploiting ethnic and racial politics, agitating under the banner of civil liberties even as they are clamoring for the imposition of special Shariah law privileges in the public domain. They believe that the road to America's ultimate defeat is through the back door of policy and law and they are aggressively using money, influence and retail politics to achieve their goal.

On the campaign trail, the Clintons like to say that Bill is merely supportive and enthusiastic, "just like all the other candidates' spouses." Nothing could be further from the truth. Returning Bill and Hillary Clinton to the White House would present the country with the unprecedented situation of a former and current president simultaneously occupying the White House, the practical implications of which have yet to be fully explored.

The FALN clemencies provide a disturbing example of how the abuse or misuse of presidential prerogative, under the guise of policy, can be put in service of the personal and private activities of the president's spouse -- and beyond the reach of meaningful congressional oversight.

Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Wall Street Journal Online:
February 12, 2008; Page A17

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB120277819085260827-lMyQjAxMDI4MDEyMjcxNzI4Wj.html

The Die is Cast

Almost immediately after independence, the U.S. government found itself in conflict with the Barbary sheikhdoms of Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli. For centuries, these states filled their coffers by piracy, stealing cargoes, enslaving crew, and collecting ransom. European sea-going nations often entered into treaty and tribute arrangements with the Barbary leaders in order to buy immunity and curtail competition.[5] In 1784, Moroccan pirates hijacked the U.S. merchant ship Betsy in the Mediterranean and enslaved her crew. A year later, Algerine pirates seized two more vessels, the Maria from Boston and the Dauphin from Philadelphia. The U.S. ministers to England and France, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson oversaw a peace treaty with Morocco, but the Algerine leadership refused any accommodation. In 1796, President George Washington ordered construction of six warships to form a U.S. navy and to protect U.S. shipping from Barbary pirates. In 1801, in the wake of an upsurge in piracy, President Thomas Jefferson entered into war with Tripoli, bombarding the city three years later and winning the release of American hostages.[6] Peace did not last. With the U.S. military embroiled in the War of 1812, Algerine pirates again began terrorizing American crewmen and disrupting U.S. trade. They miscalculated. In 1815, President James Madison dispatched a squadron of U.S. Navy frigates, which defeated the pirate fleet and won reparations from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.[7]

Many historians consider the Barbary wars a sideshow relative to contemporaneous events such as the French Revolution, Napoleon's conquests, and the War of 1812, but the Barbary wars are significant to today's conflict. Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison each believed the Barbary wars to be a continuation of the American Revolution. The ground war in North America may have freed the United States from British tyranny, but the Barbary campaign was necessary to win the same freedom of action and commerce within the international community.[8] The episode also crystallized perceptions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the American mind. While Americans did not perceive the Barbary wars as a conflict between Christianity and Islam per se, religion was an issue. The two sides fought, not over theological differences, but rather as a result of the divergent ideologies enabled by the two faiths.[9] Washington and Adams referred to the Muslim leaders as "nests of banditti" while Jefferson's and Madison's campaign literature called them "petty tyrants."[10] The "despotic Turk" became the antithesis of early American republican identity.

What Americans and Europeans saw as piracy, Barbary leaders justified as legitimate jihad. Jefferson related a conversation he had in Paris with Ambassador Abdrahaman of Tripoli who told him that all Christians are sinners in the context of the Qur'an and that it was a Muslim's "right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners."[11] Islam gave great incentive to fighting infidels, Abdrahaman explained, because the Qur'an promised that making war against infidels ensured a Muslim paradise after death.[12] Richard O'Brien, the imprisoned captain of the Philadelphia merchantman Dauphin and later the U.S. consul to Algiers, related similar conversations with ‘Ali Hasan, the ruler of Algiers.[13] Ottoman leaders used the same rationale to justify the enslavement and trading of captives from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Ukraine.[14]

The role that jihadi ideology played in the Barbary wars is documented with explicit references to jihad and holy war in the treaties that U.S. officials entered into with Muslim rulers. Tunis and Algiers, as the western outposts of the Ottoman Empire, even described themselves to American envoys as the "frontier posts of jihad against European Christianity."[15]

U.S. officials took a conciliatory attitude. Realizing that the North Africans were hypersensitive to the historic conflict between Islam and European Christianity, especially in the context of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, U.S. officials bent over backwards to deny the religious and ideological nature of the conflict, especially to the Muslims themselves. They realized that religious conflict might jeopardize the commerce that the United States still hoped to find in the Mediterranean. In 1821, President John Quincy Adams was barely able to resist assisting the Greeks in their war of independence when both the American and European publics urged war with the Ottoman Empire.[16] The founders possessed a deep conviction for religious tolerance and proudly explained in the short-lived 1797 treaty with Tripoli that the U.S. was not a Christian state at all but rather one which had no official religion and maintained laws forbidding the prohibition of religion.[17] Perhaps their denial of the religious and ideological nature of the conflict foreshadowed the attitude many Washington policymakers adopt today. Then as now, it has become the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding of the root of the conflict.

The Barbary conflict was the beginning of continuous U.S. interaction with the Muslim Near and Middle East. While Jefferson and Madison believed that a continuous U.S. military presence in the Mediterranean was necessary to protect U.S. national interests, in 1831, President Andrew Jackson secured a treaty of amity and free trade with the Ottoman Empire leading the secretary of the navy to report seven years later that it was no longer necessary to keep a U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean.[18] Three years after Washington withdrew the squadron, Ottoman privateers began raiding U.S. shipping, forcing the reconstitution of the fleet after the U.S. Civil War.

No longer, though, did the U.S. government feel content to view relations with Muslim governments only through a commercial lens. The Civil War interjected discussion of natural law and freedom into U.S. policy formulation. American missionaries increased their presence in the Muslim Middle East throughout the nineteenth century although Muslim prohibitions on conversion to Christianity led them to focus their efforts more on aid and education than on proselytization. Simultaneously, the Ottoman sultan and other Muslim rulers began to pursue more pronounced repression against both Christians and Jews.[19] Intolerant, fundamentalist strains of Islam gained ground on the Arabian Peninsula and in North Africa.[20]

By 1840, the final year of his administration, and again during his unsuccessful campaign for a second term in 1848, Martin Van Buren expressed concern for the plight of Jews in the Ottoman Empire, which he called "the most anti-Semitic of countries."[21] In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, strife between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans and in Istanbul led President Ulysses Grant to dispatch six warships to the waterways around the city to ensure the safety of Americans.[22] In 1882, President Chester Arthur dispatched the Mediterranean Squadron to Alexandria to help evacuate Americans and Europeans following anti-Christian violence in the city. President Grover Cleveland even proposed an Anglo-American intervention in the Ottoman Empire to assist Armenian Christians against Muslim violence.[23] In 1903, an assassination attempt on the U.S. consul in Beirut amid anti-Christian rioting led President Theodore Roosevelt to dispatch marines to the city. A few months later, marines landed in Tangiers after the kidnapping of a Greek businessman from the U.S. consulate there.[24] Behind each incident was Muslim violence toward minority Christian and Jewish communities.

The nineteenth century foreshadowed increasing conflict between the United States and Muslim Middle Eastern countries. The failure of effective Ottoman political reform coupled with the evolution of Islamic reform toward greater Islamism and less tolerance set up a conflict between the American notion that governments rule at the consent of the governed and the dominant attitude among Muslim potentates who subscribed to an intolerant, coercive, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian ideology.

Twentieth-century Continuity

Into the early twentieth century, successive U.S. administrations sought to remain aloof from Arab and Ottoman politics. President Woodrow Wilson did not include the Ottoman Empire in the U.S. declaration of war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an omission he said was to mitigate the risk of Ottoman retaliation against its Christian or Jewish populations, thereby implying his sense that the Porte saw the United States through a religious rather than just diplomatic lens.[25]

The U.S. government sought to remain detached in all but the commercial sphere. The U.S. trade relationship with the Middle East expanded exponentially in the mid-twentieth century. In the decade following the end of World War II, U.S. commerce increased 167 percent. The next decade saw a 226 percent rise, and the following decade a 321 percent increase in absolute terms.[26] Such involvement, though, had diplomatic and strategic overtones.

During the Cold War, "armed neutrality" could no longer protect U.S. strategic interests. Successive administrations and the State Department pursued a "pro-Arab" policy in the region to stymie the expansion of Soviet influence into those countries. In a January 1945 correspondence, Dean Acheson, secretary of state and chief architect of the U.S. Cold War Soviet containment policy, argued for a pro-Arab tilt to U.S. policy in order to deny the Soviet Union any possible inroads into the region.[27] Successive administrations embraced the policy. Dwight D. Eisenhower sided with Gamal Abdul Nasser against Israel, France, and Great Britain during the 1956 Suez crisis. While the U.S. government often stayed on the sidelines, in eleven of the twelve major Cold War and immediate post-Cold War conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the U.S. government supported the former group.[28] Washington, for example, backed the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s and supported Bosnian Muslims against Serbs and Croats. U.S. administrations have even leaned hard on Israel, preventing the Jewish state's destruction of the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies in 1967; ignoring the Israeli government's pleas not to sell state-of-the-art weaponry to Saudi Arabia; and pressuring for concessions to the Palestinian Authority despite its embrace of terrorism. The only exception to Washington's pro-Arab tilt has been U.S. diplomatic intervention in support of Israel at the United Nations and White House commitment to maintain Israel's qualitative military edge.

During the six decades since Washington abandoned its "armed neutrality" policy in favor of deeper relations with Arab states, friction has increased between U.S. officials and Islamist ideologues. The pro-Arab tilt Washington pursued during the Cold War to stymie Soviet intrigues and maintain energy security, meant partnership with non-democratic regimes and often corrupt rulers in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and the Persian Gulf emirates. Islamists and other opposition groups argued that Washington should support the people and not autocrats. But such rhetoric is laid bare by the antagonism that U.S. support for Israel engendered among many of these self-professed democrats. Israel is the only democracy in the region. Its citizens, 17 percent of whom are Muslim, enjoy basic civil liberties regardless of their faith and, even in the West Bank, enjoy a standard of living far superior to that of Egyptians and Jordanians.[29]

Jihadi Antipathy

Both the United States and Jews have become the focus of Islamists' irrational enmity as Islamist thinkers and Arab demagogues deflect any internal responsibility for Muslim countries' woes. This was a common theme both of Sayyid Qutb, the leading Muslim Brotherhood ideologue and, later, Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.[30] In Knowing the Enemy, Mary Habeck, a professor of military history at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, documents how Qutb and bin Laden spread a message that the decline of majority Muslim polities is not the result of flaws within Islam itself but is instead the deliberate effort of the United States and the Jews.[31] Today Pakistani madrasas (Islamic schools) alone spin out more than one million graduates per year steeped in jihadi ideology.[32]

Underlying much jihadi thought is antipathy toward democracy. Both Qutb and bin Laden argued that democracy is not a solution to inequity and corruption in Islamic societies.[33] In a video that marked the sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, bin Laden said, "It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interest of the peoples and their bloody sacrificing of soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of major corporations."[34] While some Islamists—such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Muhammad Khatami in Iran[35]—speak of their embrace of democracy, seldom do they include Enlightenment concepts such as tolerance, rule-of-law, and property rights. They do not accept, as did the U.S. founding fathers, that people are endowed with both the natural right to freedom from coercion and the liberty to improve their lives. In practice, then, regardless of their rhetoric, they eschew democracy.

The failure of Islamic states to incorporate the Enlightenment's advances in thought has caused their stagnation, if not decline, over the last several centuries. In contrast, the incorporation of Enlightenment and democratic principles into Western governance has resulted in history's most rapid improvement in the human condition. Only those Muslim countries that have embraced, in some fashion, Western principles of democracy, free markets, property rights, tolerance, and the rule of law have prospered. Most Arab states refuse. Bernard Lewis, perhaps the doyen of Middle East studies in the Western world, explained, "By all indicators from the United Nations, the World Bank, and other authorities, Muslim countries—in matters such as job creation, education, technology, and productivity—lag ever further behind the West. Even worse, the Arab nations also lag behind the more recent recruits to Western style modernity, such as Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore."[36] All majority Muslim countries except Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Turkey, which have recently adopted significant free market and democratic reforms, rank in the bottom half of world productivity; of the rest, only Morocco, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh reach the third quartile.[37] According to the World Bank, the average per capita income of all majority Muslim countries collectively is less than half of the average for the globe. Only Kuwait approaches the global average life expectancy;[38] all other Muslim majority states lag in the bottom half of the world in this important measure of health.

Jihadis thrive in such stagnated conditions. This leads to negative annuity: Jihadism both grows amid stagnation and fuels stagnation. It accelerated coincident with the European Enlightenment and the relative decline of the Muslim Middle East. At its core, jihadism is a violent rejection of many of the fundamental principles of the European Enlightenment. Democracy, free markets, tolerance and freedom of religion, secular government, and separation between the religious, the political, and the individual spark religious fury. It is no coincidence, then, that jihadis, under the banner of cleansing their religion of evil Western influence, have focused their attentions on the United States, the clearest manifestation of the European Enlightenment today. They will continue to threaten Western civilization until they are checked.

Fumbled Strategy

One of the greatest challenges facing strategic leaders today is objectively examining the centuries-old roots of Islamic jihadism and developing a strategy that will lead to a lasting solution to the Western conflict with it. Many Western policymakers fail to assess realistically why Arab and Islamic governments have been unable to improve the condition of their populations, especially in contrast to the West. This inability to grasp the root of Islamic jihadism is the result of a moral relativism prominent in modern Western liberal thought. For example, over the last few decades, it has become common to value diversity and multiculturalism above societal well-being and improvements in the human condition.

It is not, as Thomas Friedman argues in The World Is Flat, that the fruits of the American experiment—free markets, property rights, tolerance, democracy, and the rule of law—have left Islam behind.[39] On the contrary, it is Islam that has opted out of progress by allowing, promoting, and embracing centuries of reactionary and retrospective reforms that rejected the idea that humans can indeed improve their condition through reason and rationality. Muslim clerics and leaders within the impoverished nations of the Islamic world need to understand that they are responsible for the condition and grief of their people. It is Islamism's rejection of religious tolerance, democracy, and the rule of law, in conjunction with its embrace of anti-Semitism, theocracy, and sectarian strongmen exempt from law and privileged by the authority they have usurped, that is the real enemy in the Islamic world's centuries-long interaction with the United States. While Islamists skillfully manipulate the Western mass media to enunciate an à la carte menu of grievances, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century interactions show these are not the root cause of jihadi terror. Indeed, a U.S. intelligence assessment, published two years before Israel's independence and any subsequent jihadi grievance, already highlighted Islamist terrorism as a long-term threat.[40] So long as Western officials adopt a nearsighted, grievance-based view of the roots of Islamist terror, they will embolden jihadis through appeasement.

It is essential that the grand strategy of the United States addresses this basic conflict of interest. The present conflict is not new. And it is religious. Believing that only a few "rogues" have misappropriated religion is both naïve and counterfactual. U.S. and Western leaders must confront the reality that jihadism is a religious phenomenon that has grown popular and powerful enough to threaten the continued progress of the American experiment and the European Enlightenment. In the new grand strategy to defeat Islamic jihadism, America must campaign, through its scholars and theologians if appropriate, to encourage and facilitate imams and other Islamic religious authority figures to reform Islam in a forward direction, one that breaks from the past and encourages tolerance, the rule of law, free inquiry, and free markets. Imams who support, either passively or actively, jihadism should be undermined and exposed.

How should the United States revitalize its strategy? At home, the U.S. government must better educate and explain the conflict to the general audience. Education at all levels should inculcate U.S. citizens in the history, philosophy, mechanics, virtues, responsibilities, and achievements of the Western approach to freedom, liberty, and the free market. Tolerance and diversity need not mean acceptance of oppression and tyranny. Such an effort would entail reinstalling this subject matter into the curricula of public schools. The strategic leadership of the nation should drive the public education effort, much as the founders did in the eighteenth century. The Federalist Papers, generally attributed to James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, are prototypical examples of effective strategic communications that aimed, among other things, to create a government strong enough to defend itself against the Barbary pirates.

Internationally, U.S. foreign policy should reflect U.S. national values and long-term objectives rather than near-term expediencies devoid of the principles enumerated by the founding fathers. U.S. foreign aid programs need reform.[41] Washington should set a visible standard by supporting non-corrupt democracies, rather than funding kleptocracies. Rather than fund short-term stability in regimes where power is centrally concentrated, Washington should promote trade and development in Islamic nations supporting the rule of law, tolerance, and democracy. Trade and development in these nations empowers people and entrepreneurs, catalyzes economic progress, and decentralizes power in a culture that has deep tendencies toward autocracy.[42]

The half-century-long policy of supporting Arab state stability regardless of its governance is a relic of the Cold War. In order to defeat jihadism, U.S. foreign policy should marginalize Muslim nations that are not supportive of the development of the rule of law, tolerance, and democracy. Washington should not apologize for supporting regional countries that seek peace, prosperity, and the improved well-being of their citizens. To do otherwise fuels jihadi rhetoric that the U.S. government seeks to oppress Muslims throughout the world.

Another requirement is for the West to embark on a radical program to redefine how its economies obtain and distribute energy. Former director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey argues that denying jihadis the use of oil as a weapon against the United States and the West should be Washington's highest priority.[43]

Finally, the history of U.S. interaction with Muslim polities shows that "diplomacy backed by force" is the only effective approach to relations with them.[44] Diplomacy is essential to ensure intentions are understood. Consistent diplomacy is essential to build the trust that majority Muslim countries need to support U.S. aims to advance Enlightenment ideals. Military weakness and the inability to project U.S. power have consistently led jihadis and Muslim kleptocrats to launch attacks against U.S. interests.

by Melvin E. Lee

--------------------------

Melvin E. Lee is a sea captain and a nuclear engineer in the United States Navy. He serves as special operations officer for the commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, and commander, U.S. 6th Fleet. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the Department of the Navy or U.S. government.

---------------------------

[1] Ussama Makdisi, "‘Anti-Americanism' in the Arab World: An Interpretation of a Brief History," Journal of American History, Sept. 2002, p. 546.
[2] David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), pp. 23-62.
[3] Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 305-15.
[4] Michael Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
[5] Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), pp. 106-9.
[6] Richard B. Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), pp. 103-30; Lambert, The Barbary Wars, pp. 49-78.
[7] Kevin Baker, "The Shores of Tripoli," American Heritage, Feb./Mar. 2002, p. 21.
[8] James A. Field, "Novus Ordo Seclorum," America and the Mediterranean World, 1776-1882 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 3-26; Lambert, The Barbary Wars, pp. 15-28.
[9] Lambert, The Barbary Wars, pp. 106, 112-4.
[10] Ibid., pp. 110, 123.
[11] Thomas Jefferson, "‘The American Commissioners' Report to John Jay," in Paul L. Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9 (New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904-5), p. 358; quoted in Lambert, The Barbary Wars, p. 116.
[12] Thomas Jefferson, "The American Commissioners' Report to John Jay," p. 358; quoted in Lambert, The Barbary Wars, p. 117.
[13] Lambert, The Barbary Wars, p. 110-1.
[14] Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), p. 175.
[15] "The Truce with Tunis," Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939), pp. 158-9; quoted in Lambert, The Barbary Wars, p. 117.
[16] Field, America and the Mediterranean World, pp. 133-40.
[17] Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary, pp. 134-5.
[18] Field, America and the Mediterranean World, p. 209.
[19] Ibid., pp. 345-73.
[20] Ahmad Dallal, "The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought, 1750-1850," Journal of the American Oriental Society, July-Sept. 1993, p. 352.
[21] Field, America and the Mediterranean World, pp. 345-73.
[22] Ibid., pp. 368-70.
[23] Ibid., pp. 445-7.
[24] Anne Cipriano Venzon, "Gunboat Diplomacy in the Med," Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, Apr. 1985, pp. 26-31.
[25] Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, pp. 259-60.
[26] Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 126-8.
[27] Dean Acheson, "Internal Correspondence of the U. S. Department of State, January 1945," quoted in Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil (New York: Crown, 2003), p. 79.
[28] Barry Rubin, "The Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism," Foreign Affairs, Nov.-Dec. 2002, p. 75.
[29] R. James Woolsey, "Grand Strategy in the Middle East: The Long War of the 21st Century," in K. M. Campbell, ed., An American Grand Strategy for the Middle East (Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute, 2004), p. 37.
[30] Richard W. Bulliet, "The Crisis within Islam," The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2002, p. 15.
[31] Mary R. Habeck, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadi Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 12.
[32] Michael G. Knapp, "The Concept and Practice of Jihad in Islam," Parameters, Spring 2003, p. 92.
[33] Reza Aslan, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 138; Habeck, Knowing the Enemy, p. 162; Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, p. 159.
[34] Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, CNN, Sept. 7, 2007; United Press International, Sept. 7, 2007.
[35] Muhammad Khatami, "Islamic Civil Society," speech to the eighth session of the Islamic Summit Conference, Tehran, Radio Islam, Dec. 9, 1997.
[36] Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, p. 114.
[37] James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and William Easterly, Economic Freedom of the World, 2006 Annual Report (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 2006), p. 39.
[38] Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, p. 113-9.
[39] Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), pp. 470-9.
[40] "Assessing the Islamist Threat, Circa 1946," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2006, pp. 76-82.
[41] Alberto Alesina and Beatrice Weder, "Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid?," American Economic Review, Sept. 2002, pp. 1126-38.
[42] Iqbal Z. Quadir, "The Bottleneck Is at the Top of the Bottle," The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Summer/Fall 2002, pp. 86-8.
[43] Woolsey, "Grand Strategy in the Middle East," pp. 33-4.
[44] Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary, p. 160.

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1830

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

And they were severely punished and isolated by Chamberlain. And as I read that, I realized that that's really where we are today. Our current problem is tragic. You have an administration whose policy is inadequate being opposed by a political left whose policy is worse, and you have nobody prepared to talk about the policy we need. Because we are told if you are for a strong America, you should back the Bush policy even if it's inadequate, and so you end up making an argument in favor of something that can't work. So your choice is to defend something which isn't working or to oppose it by being for an even weaker policy. So this is a catastrophe for this country and a catastrophe for freedom around the world because we have refused to be honest about the scale of the problem.

Let me work back. I'm going to get to Iran since that's the topic, but I'm going to get to it eventually. Let me work back from Pakistan. The dictatorship in Pakistan has never had control over Waziristan. Not for a day. So we've now spent six years since 9/11 with a sanctuary for Al-Qaida and a sanctuary for the Taliban, and every time we pick up people in Great Britain who are terrorists, they were trained in Pakistan.

And our answer is to praise Musharraf because at least he's not as bad as the others. But the truth is Musharraf has not gotten control of terrorism in Pakistan. Musharraf doesn't have full control over his own government. The odds are even money we're going to drift into a disastrous dictatorship at some point in Pakistan. And while we worry about the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon, the Pakistanis already have them. So, why would you feel secure in a world where you could presently have an Islamist dictatorship in Pakistan with a hundred-plus nuclear weapons? What's our grand strategy for that?

Then you look at Afghanistan. Here's a country that's small, poor, isolated, and in six years we have not been able to build roads, create economic opportunity, wean people off of growing drugs. A third of the GDP is from drugs. We haven't been able to end the sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan. And I know of no case historically where you defeat a guerrilla movement if it has a sanctuary. So the people who rely on the West are out bribed by the criminals, outgunned by the criminals, and faced with a militant force across the border which practiced earlier defeating the Soviet empire and which has a time horizon of three or four generations. NATO has a time horizon of each quarter or at best a year, facing an opponent whose time horizon is literally three or four generations. It's a total mismatch.

Then you come to the direct threat to the United States, which is Al-Qaida. Which, by the way, we just published polls. One of the sites I commend to you is American Solutions.com. Last Wednesday we posted six national surveys, $428,000 worth of data. We gave it away. I found myself in the unique position of calling Howard Dean to tell him I was giving him $400,000 worth of polling. We have given it away to both Democrats and Republicans. It is fundamentally different from the national news media. When asked the question "Do we have an obligation to defend the United States and her allies?" the answer was 85 percent yes. When asked a further question "Should we defeat our enemies?" Its very strong language - the answer was 75 percent yes, 75 to 16.

The complaint about Iraq is a performance complaint, not a values complaint. When asked whether or not Al-Qaida is a threat, 89 percent of the country says yes. And they think you have to defeat it, you can't negotiate with it. So now let's look at Al-Qaida and the rise of Islamist terrorism.

And let's be honest: What's the primary source of money for Al-Qaida? It's you, re-circulated through Saudi Arabia. Because we have no national energy strategy, when clearly if you really cared about liberating the United States from the Middle East and if you really cared about the survival of Israel, one of your highest goals would be to move to a hydrogen economy and to eliminate petroleum as a primary source of energy. Now that's what a serious national strategy would look like, but that would require real change.

So then you look at Saudi Arabia. The fact that we tolerate a country saying no Christian and no Jew can go to Mecca, and we start with the presumption that that's true while they attack Israel for being a religious state is a sign of our timidity, our confusion, our cowardice that is stunning.

It's not complicated. We're inviting Saudi Arabia to come to Annapolis to talk about rights for Palestinians when nobody is saying, "Let's talk about rights for Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabia. Let's talk about rights for women in Saudi Arabia."

So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis.

You keep pumping billions of dollars a year into countries like Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Russia, and you are presently going to have created people who oppose you who have lots of money. And they're then going to come back to your own country and finance, for example, Arab study institutes whose only requirement is that they never tell the truth. So you have all sorts of Ph.D.s who now show up quite cheerfully prepared to say whatever it is that makes their funders happy – in the name, of course, of academic freedom. So why wouldn't Columbia host a genocidal madman? It's just part of political correctness. I mean, Ahmadinejad may say terrible things; he may lock up students; he may kill journalists; he may say, "We should wipe out Israel;" he may say, "We should defeat the United States;" but after all, what has he done that's inappropriate? What has he done that wouldn't be repeated at a Hollywood cocktail party or a nice gathering in Europe? And nobody says this is totally, utterly, absolutely unacceptable. Why is it that the No. 1 threat in intelligence movies is the CIA?

I happened the other night to be watching an old movie, “To Live and Die in L.A.,” which is about counterfeiting. But the movie starts with a Secret Service agent who is defending Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the person he is defending Ronald Reagan from is a suicide bomber who is actually overtly a Muslim fanatic. Now, six years after 9/11, you could not get that scene made in Hollywood today.

Just look at the movies. Why is it that the bad person is either a right-wing crazed billionaire, or the CIA as a government agency? Go look at the Bourne Ultimatum. Or a movie like the one that George Clooney made, which was an absolute lie, in which it implied that if you were a reformist Arab prince, that probably the CIA would kill you. It's a total lie. We actually have Seals protecting people all over the world. We actually risk American lives protecting reformers all over the world, and yet Hollywood can't bring itself to tell the truth, (a) because it's ideologically so opposed to the American government and the American military, and (b), because it's terrified that if it said something really openly, honestly true about Muslim terrorists, they might show up in Hollywood. And you might have somebody killed as the Dutch producer was killed.

And so we're living a life of cowardice, and in that life of cowardice we're sleepwalking into a nightmare.

And then you come to Iran. There's a terrific book. Mark Bowden is a remarkable writer who wrote “Black Hawk Down,” has enormous personal courage. He's a Philadelphia newspaper writer, actually got the money out of the Philadelphia newspaper to go to Somalia to interview the Somalian-side of Black Hawk Down. It's a remarkable achievement. Tells a great story about getting to Somalia, paying lots of cash, having the local warlord protect him, and after about two weeks the warlord came to him and said, "You know, we've decided that we're very uncomfortable with you being here, and you should leave."

And so he goes to the hotel, where he is the only hard-currency guest, and says, "I've got to check out two weeks early because the warlord has told me that he no longer will protect me." And the hotel owner, who wants to keep his only hard-currency guest, says, "Well, why are you listening to him? He's not the government. There is no government." And Bowden says, "Well, what will I do?" And he says, "You hire a bigger warlord with more guns," which he did. But then he could only stay one week because he ran out of money.

But this is a guy with real courage. I mean, imagine trying to go out and be a journalist in that kind of world, OK? So Bowden came back and wrote, "Guest of the Ayatollah," which is the Iranian hostage of 1979, which he describes as the first shots in Iran's War against America. So in the Bowden worldview, the current Iranian dictatorship has been at war with the United States since 1979.

Every conceivable tenet of international law was violated when they seized the American Embassy and they seized the diplomats - killed Americans in Lebanon in the early '80s - killed Americans at Khobar Towers in '95. The Clinton administration deliberately avoided revealing the information, as Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI, has said publicly, because they didn't want to have to confront the Iranian complicity.

And so you have an Iranian regime which is cited annually as the leading supporter of state terrorism in the world. Every year the State Department says that. It's an extraordinary act of lucidity on the part of an institution which seeks to avoid it as often as possible.

And you have Gen. Petraeus come to the U.S. Congress and say publicly in an open session, "The Iranians are waging a proxy war against Americans in Iraq." I was so deeply offended by this it's hard for me to express it without sounding irrational. I'm an Army brat. My dad served 27 years in the infantry. The idea that an American general would come to the American Congress, testify in public that our young men and women are being killed by Iran, and we have done nothing, I find absolutely abhorrent.

So I'm preparing to come and talk today. I got up this morning, and a friend had sent me yesterday's Jerusalem Post editorial, which if you haven't read, I recommend to you. It has, for example, the following quote: "On Monday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, 'The problem of the content of the document setting out joint principles for peace-making post-Annapolis has not been resolved. One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state. We will not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.' "

What truly bothers me is the shallowness and the sophistry of the Western governments, starting with our own. When a person says to you, "I don't recognize that you exist," you don't start a negotiation. The person says, "I literally do not recognize" and then lies to you. I mean the first thing you say to this guy is "Terrific. Let's go visit Mecca. Since clearly there's no other state except Israel that is based on religion, the fact that I happen to be Christian won't bother anybody." And then he'll say, "Well, that's different."

We tolerate this. We have created our own nightmare because we refuse to tell the truth. We refuse to tell the truth to our politicians. Our State Department refuses to tell the truth to the country. If the President of the United States, and again, we're now so bitterly partisan, we're so committed to red-vs.-blue hostility, that George W. Bush doesn't have the capacity to give an address from the Oval Office that has any meaning for half the country. And the anti-war left is so strong in the Democratic primary that I think it's almost impossible for any Democratic presidential candidate to tell the truth about the situation.

And the Republicans are isolated and trying to defend incompetence. The Democrats are isolated and trying to find a way to say, "I'm really for strength as long as I can have peace, but I'd really like to have peace, except I don't want to recognize these people who aren't very peaceful."

I just want to share with you, as a grandfather, as a citizen, as a historian, as somebody who was once Speaker of the House, this is a serious national crisis. This is 1935 or 1936, and it's getting worse every year.

None of our enemies are confused. Our enemies don't get up each morning and go, "Oh, gosh, I think I'll have an existential crisis of identity in which I will try to think through whether or not we can be friends while you're killing me." Our enemies get up every morning and say, "We hate the West. We hate freedom." They would not allow a meeting with women in the room.

I was once interviewed by a BBC reporter, a nice young lady who was only about as anti-American as she had to be to keep her job. Since it was a live interview, I turned to her halfway through the interview and I said, "Do you like your job?" And it was summertime, and she's wearing a short-sleeve dress. And she said, "Well, yes." She was confused because I had just reversed roles. I said, "Well, then you should hope we win." She said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, if the enemy wins, you won 't be allowed to be on television." I don't know how to explain it any simpler than that.

Now what do we need to do?

We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless when they're strong, demand mercy when they're losing, show no mercy when they're winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we're living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You'll be able to tell who won and who lost by who's still standing.

Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn't going to stop this war. They're just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it includes winning the argument in the rest of the world. And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple example because we're now muscle-bound by our own inability to talk honestly.

Iran produces 60 percent of its own gasoline. It produces lots of crude oil but only has one refinery. It imports 40 percent of its gasoline. The entire 60 percent is produced at one huge refinery.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan decided to break the Soviet empire. He was asked, “What's your vision of the Cold War.” He said, "Four words: We win; they lose." He was clearly seen by The New York Times as an out-of-touch, reactionary, right-wing cowboy from California who had no idea what was going on in the world. And 11 years later the Soviet Union disappeared, but obviously that had nothing to do with Reagan because that would have meant he was right. So it's just a random accident the Soviet Union disappeared.

Part of the war we waged on the Soviet Union involved their natural gas supply because we wanted to cut off their hard currency. The Soviets were desperate to get better equipment for their pipeline. We managed to sell them through third parties very, very sophisticated American pipeline equipment, which they were thrilled to buy and thought they had pulled off a huge coup. Now we weren't playing fair. We did not tell them that the equipment was designed to blow up. One day in 1982, there was an explosion in Siberia so large that the initial reflection on the satellites looked like there was a tactical nuclear weapon. One part of the White House was genuinely worried, and the other part of the White House had to calm them down. They said, "No, no, that's our equipment blowing up."

In the 28 years since the Iranians declared war on us, in the six years since 9/11, in the months since Gen. Petraeus publicly said they are killing young Americans, we have not been able to figure out how to take down one refinery - covertly, quietly, without overt war. And we have not been able to figure out how to use the most powerful navy in the world to simply stop the tankers and say, "Look, you want to kill young Americans, you're going to walk to the battlefield, but you're not going to ride in the car because you're not going to have any gasoline."

We don't have to be stupid. The choice is not between cowardice or total war. Reagan unlocked Poland without firing a shot in an alliance with the Pope, with the labor unions and with the British. We have every possibility if we're prepared to be honest to shape the world. It'll be a very big project. It's much closer to World War II than it is to anything we've tried recently. It will require real effort, real intensity and real determination. We're either going to do it now, while we're still extraordinarily powerful, or we're going to do it later under much more desperate circumstances after we've lost several cities.

We had better take this seriously because we are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust. Three nuclear weapons is a second Holocaust. Our enemies would like to get those weapons as soon as they can and they promise to use them as soon as they can.

I suggest we defeat our enemies and create a different situation long before they have that power.

Newt Gingrich
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives

The above is a transcript of remarks delivered to a Jewish National Fund meeting November 15, 2007 at the Selig Center

Hat tip: Mike Milner

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Israeli hospitals and food along with Western aid prevent the inevitable famine and mass death, but that only builds up the pressure of a ballooning population dependent on the charity of others and devoid of any useful function. The picture looks nearly as bad across the Muslim world. Iran has its own demographic population explosion which is driving its own expansionism, while Egypt faces a swelling population and swelling poverty, driving the popularity of the Muslim brotherhood.

The well meaning Western aims for the Muslim world ran into the law of unintended consequences, because not only does the Muslim world suffer from a growth spurt but much of that growth spurt is single sex. Sex screening via ultrasound machines before birth in the areas that have access to them and infanticide and honor killings in the areas that don't have them, repeatedly target girls... creating an even greater surplus of males. Combine that with the propensity for older men to marry younger women and wealthier men marrying multiple wives, not only does the Muslim world have a population boom but that population boom quickly becomes a population of angry and dissatisfied young men. A population that has to be burned off somehow.

The engine of Islamist Jihad is that surplus of young men. Most Arab Muslim societies are static and slow to adapt to changing times. That means far fewer conventional opportunities for the newest generation of men which leads them naturally into armed gangs, militias, terrorist organization and madrassas. The dissatisfied populations of the Muslim world cannot be appeased with democracy or foreign policy changes. Their core problem is that they are members of societies incapable of coping with their own problems. Instead of addressing those problems, the Arab Muslim world exports them through immigration.

Immigration allows the Muslim world to unburden itself of a dangerous surplus male population. Those same males move on to Europe, America and Australia and become those countries problems. To compensate for the shortfall of Muslim women, they marry Western women. They send money back to the home country and support Jihad in their home countries, either financially or by actively enlisting in terrorist cells. This neatly exports the Jihad from Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the West and makes it our problem.

The simpleminded answers offered by everyone from Michael Moore to Ron Paul arguing that our foreign policy is to blame, ignores that terrorism is just another one in a card deck of problems generated by Muslim immigration and Islam's demographic problem. The same surplus of males that is set to destabilize China is already badly destabilizing the Middle East and the West. The difference is that where China is actively dealing with the problem, the Middle East is simply exporting it.

Islam's Demographic problem is the result of a meeting between two civilizations, with the superior civilization generously bestowing some of its humanitarian gifts on the more backward civilization without realizing the price that would be paid for it.

The Jihad, the Clash of Civilizations, the campaign of terrorism and violence that we have seen is the product of that same demographic expansion sweeping across the West and purging the way in the name of their own brand of Lebensraum, crying "Make Room. Make Room!"

As Western birth rates drop to "make room", Muslim birth rates continue rising, parasitic on the technology and charity of the West. Like a virus devouring the body that sustains it, Islam's Jihad would never survive its own success. Were that same agricultural and medical infrastructure to collapse, Muslims would wake to find themselves in a strictly Malthusian world devoid of charity or compassion in which they would have to face the consequences of their own destructiveness.

Democracy is not the solution to the Muslim world's problems, civilization is and civilization requires maturity. The West has provided the Arab Muslim world with just enough of a taste of civilization to infuriate it and to cause a variety of social and political problems. Democracy in the Muslim world just turns the violence, the irresponsibility and the frustration into the electoral platforms of Islamist parties. Civilization is what is needed, but a people must choose civilization, they must choose to grow and learn. Instead the Jihad is the Muslim world's reply to the West's offer of civilization.

Sultan Knish
December 18, 2007

Original article: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/12/islams-demographic-weapon-against-west.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

About the only real export of these Arab states is oil and this oil was discovered and developed by primarily American companies which were then slowly taken over and in effect nationalized by these Arab countries. The ruler of the House of Saud, Ibn Saud, began as a bandit and camel raider in the desert at the turn of the century. American and British patronage turned him into a monarch and turned Saudi Arabia into a wealthy land. The House of Saud turned around and has backed Islamic terrorism and expansionism across Europe, America and the World.

Saudi money drives the global Jihad but Saudi money and oil are really American money and oil. It was American tanks that kept Saddam out of Ridyah in 1992. But it is in fact America that has kept most of the Arab world intact. It was America which forced England, France and Israel to pull out of Egypt in the 1956 Suez Canal War. Egypt rewarded America for this by inviting the Russians in. It was American influence that kept Russia from going into Iran instead of Afghanistan. Today Iran is America's worst enemy. The list goes on and on.

If America and Europe did not exist, does anyone really believe that oil hungry world powers like Russia or China or Japan would have allowed the tinpot bandit Emirs and Princes and Tyrants of the Arab countries to keep control of their oil for very long? It was the long hand of America that protected them all along. For all their wealth and brutality, no Arab state has managed to defeat even tiny Israel, how long would they have lasted against Russia or China?

Not only has America protected their independence, it has even allowed them to nationalize resources developed by American and British companies. The United States has pumped in money and sacrificed the lives of American soldiers to protect them, in return we have received terrorism, oil boycotts and the funding of Islamic expansionism on our own soil.

Rarely has ingratitude been so viciously manifest, but all this goes to show that the Jihad is a self-destructing Jihad. The Jihad is aimed at the West, yet it could not exist without the West. The Islamic terrorists attacking America resemble an angry passenger carving a hole in his lifeboat in the hopes that everyone else in the lifeboat drowns while he somehow swims to safety.

The Arab world has produced nothing in the last century, its technology and its money come from outside. Its literacy level is below that of Sub-Saharan Africa and its labor, from its oil production to its simplest tasks is done by imported foreigners, often Westerners.

The self-destructing Jihad, should it destroy the West, would leave the Middle East barren, without customers for its oil, tourists for its cities, workers for its oil operations and protection for its kingdoms.

If the West responds by cutting immigration and achieving oil independence, then the Middle East will wind up with an economy based on worthless oil and a demographic time bomb turned against itself.

Either way the Jihad loses. The Jihad may succeed in either pushing the world back to the dark ages or at least turn the Middle East into fanatical Mullah and Imam ruled enclaves, but it won't create a new Islamic civilization, only chaos and dark ages. In Iraq and Gaza, the Jihad quickly degenerated into Muslims killing Muslims. This is nothing new, the Jihad in the end has always turned against fellow Muslims.

When Muslims in the West wage Jihad, these engineers and doctors also attack the very system that provides them with a generous income and generates the technology and resources that makes their profession possible. When Muslims in the Middle East wage Jihad, they attack their best customers and the source of their protection and wealth. One way or another the Jihad is engineered to kill the Goose with the Golden Egg and is literally a suicide Jihad, because its success would destroy the very sources of that Jihad.

Original article: www.sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/12/self-destructing-jihad.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

In the second incident, which occurred Sept. 13, a suicide bomber detonated in the mess hall of a military facility belonging to the Pakistani army's elite Special Services Group in the town of Tarbela Ghazi, Pakistan, killing 20 people and injuring 42. The attack was the latest in a wave of suicide bombings that have wracked Pakistan since the Pakistani army's assault in July 2006 against militants barricaded inside the Red Mosque -- an assault led by commandos of the Special Services Group. A report in the Indian media suggests the suicide bomber was a Pakistani military officer who had lost his younger sister in the Red Mosque operation. This report likely is not true, but nevertheless it raises the issue of the hundreds of women who were involved with the militants in the Red Mosque, many of whom were young students at Jamia Hafsa, the female madrassah affiliated with the Red Mosque.

These two operations were led by national armies in two totally different regions of the world, but their respective targets, concentration of militant Islamists and bloody and violent outcomes -- which, in both cases, were provoked and precipitated by the militants -- were very similar. The operations also were analogous in that they directly affected hundreds of radicalized young women who survived the operations. The factors raise the possibility that at least some of these women could go on to form the next wave of female suicide bombers.

History

Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon. They have been around for more than 20 years and have arrived in several waves. The first wave occurred in Lebanon in the mid-1980s. Though Lebanon is where Hezbollah pioneered modern militant suicide bombers, the women in the first wave were not fundamentalist Muslims; they were secular members of the communist Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party who conducted suicide car bomb attacks against the Israeli military and the Israeli-supported South Lebanon Army from 1985 to 1987.

The second wave of female suicide operatives began on May 21, 1991, when a female member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi after placing a garland around his neck at a political rally. Since the Gandhi assassination, the Tigers have used more female suicide bombers than any other militant group, reportedly deploying at least 46 women on suicide missions since 1991.

From 1996 to 1999, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) carried out a series of attacks against Turkish military and police targets using female suicide bombers. Several of the PKK operatives strapped their explosive devices to their stomachs to give the appearance that they were pregnant.

From 2000 to 2004, female Chechen militants, often referred to as "Black Widows," were involved in several suicide attacks against Russian military targets in Chechnya, civilian targets in Russia -- such as subways, rock concerts and airliners -- and an assassination attempt against the Chechen president. The bulk of the attacks in this wave occurred in 2003 and 2004. Female militants also played visible roles in the dramatic Chechen hostage operations, such as the October 2002 seizure of a Moscow theater and the September 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan.

The Chechen group was the first radical Islamist or jihadist organization to employ women as suicide bombers. Though the jihadist theology is very chauvinistic and the concept of martyrdom it dwells upon is largely focused on men, the concept of women martyrs is supported in the Koran. Indeed, Islam's first martyr was a woman named Somaiya. Therefore, it is not surprising to see such groups apply the arguments they use to justify men's martyrdom via suicide bombing to women as well. In addition to the anger and revenge motives frequently seen in other female suicide bombers, the Muslim concept of martyrdom involves the forgiveness of all sins and immediate entrance into paradise, so suicide bombing often is seen as an avenue to atone for the shame and sins of an extramarital affair or out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

With the beginning of the second or "al-Aqsa" Intifada in September 2000, suicide bombers became a commonly used weapon for Palestinian militant groups. However, when Israeli security responded to the rash of suicide bombings by instituting security measures that prevented most of the male suicide bombers from reaching their targets, the Palestinians countered those measures by employing female bombers. The Palestinian militant groups began using female suicide bombers in 2002, when a 28-year-old woman affiliated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade detonated in Jerusalem, killing one other person and wounding 100. Following the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade's lead, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas also have deployed female suicide bombers in attacks against Israel. The wave of Palestinian suicide bombers -- and particularly female Palestinian suicide bombers -- has waned dramatically since its peak in 2002-2003; there have been no reports of female Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel since 2005 (though there were two female suicide bomb attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza in November 2006).

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq got into the female suicide bomber business in late 2005, and Iraq is currently where female suicide operatives are used most frequently. Perhaps al Qaeda in Iraq's most highly publicized use of such an operative was in the Nov. 9, 2005, bombing attack against three Western hotels in Amman, Jordan. The female operative involved in the attack against a wedding reception in the Radisson SAS hotel attempted to detonate her suicide belt at the same time as her husband, but her device failed and her videotaped confession was widely covered by the world media. The publicity surrounding the Amman bombings eclipsed another interesting case that happened that same day in Baghdad, when a Belgian-born convert to Islam attacked a U.S. motorcade and became the first European female suicide bomber.

Some recent Internet reports suggest that the Islamic State of Iraq -- the al Qaeda-led jihadist group alliance -- has announced that it has formed a special all-female suicide bomber brigade and made an appeal for women to join it. However, the jihadists have sporadically employed female suicide bombers in Iraq since 2005 -- some were used as recently as this summer -- so even if this report is true, the formation of such a brigade likely will not make much difference tactically, as the use of female suicide bombers in Iraq is expected to continue. However, the creation of such a unit within the Islamic State of Iraq would seem to be ideologically important, signifying that the concept of female suicide bombers is gaining more widespread acceptance in the jihadist community.

Advantages

The advantages to using suicide bombers are obvious. They allow militant organizations to use "human smart bombs" who can guide ordnance around security measures and place a device in close proximity to a target -- such as a heavily packed crowd in a wedding reception, subway car or hotel lobby. Because of this, militant operational planners can use suicide bombers to cause more damage than would be inflicted by a larger device that detonates farther from its intended target.

Smaller explosive devices also are more economical to make. A large truck bomb might contain several hundred pounds of explosives and can only be used in a single location. With the same quantity of explosives required for one truck bomb, dozens of 10- to 20-pound suicide devices can be made. This allows for multiple simultaneous attacks, such as those witnessed in Amman, or the July 2005 London attacks or October 2005 Bali suicide attacks -- though it also can allow for a prolonged series of attacks.

Women provide a tactical advantage in that they do not fit many law enforcement and security professionals' preconceived profile of a terrorist. Mohammed Atta now personifies that profile, but a slightly built 20-year-old woman does not and will not receive the same scrutiny.

There also are cultural issues associated with searching women -- or even looking at them for that matter. This is especially true of Muslim women and of women in general in many Islamic countries. This means that female operatives are given a free pass at many security checkpoints. These cultural and attitudinal issues are expanded when combined with physical issues such as the burqa and the niqab (face covering) that obscures a woman's face. Such clothing not only makes it very easy to conceal an explosive device or other weapon but also hides many of the nonverbal cues that security forces are taught to look for when identifying possible suicide bombers. These factors sometimes lead male militants in Muslim countries to dress as women to attempt to gain an operational advantage.

Suicide bombers targeting VIPs pose unique challenges to protective details due to the close proximity of unscreened people at public events and the VIPs' desire to shake hands and mingle. The use of female suicide bombers in such a situation can be even more effective, as executive protection personnel are less likely to view them as a threat. This tactic was used not only in the Gandhi assassination but also in the May 2003 attempt on then-Chechen President Akhmed Kadyrov.

Using women as suicide bombers also provides militant organizations with a larger pool of operatives and allows a militant organization to deploy its male operatives for other types of missions. The psychological impact that comes with using female suicide bombers also is dramatic.

A Grim Forecast

In addition to the continuation of the current wave of female suicide bombers in Iraq, there soon could be new waves of female suicide bombers spawned by the recent events in Nahr el-Bared and the Red Mosque.

Before the storming of the Red Mosque, the students at the madrassahs associated with it were involved in a number of high-profile incidents. Following the July 2005 London bombings, Pakistani authorities attempted to raid the mosque to look for evidence tying the institution to the bombings; they were met by baton-wielding women who denied them entry to the facility. Earlier this year, authorities in Islamabad began to demolish part of the mosque that they said infringed on public land. This resulted in a group of female students (some toting Kalashnikovs) occupying an adjacent children's library and barricading themselves inside.

Later this spring, students took two groups of women hostage (including one group of Chinese expatriates) whom they accused of engaging in prostitution. In May, the students abducted four policemen and held them in exchange for some arrested colleagues. In all of these militant activities, the female students from Jamia Hafsa were in the thick of the trouble.

Given the historical trajectory of female suicide bombers and the concept's acceptance in the jihadist community in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, and considering the conditions that have produced female suicide bombers in the past, it is not hard to forecast that some of the young women who survived the bloody attacks against the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp and the Red Mosque will go on to become suicide bombers. In fact, when one considers all the militant activity the women from Jamia Hafsa have been involved in so far, it is amazing they have not yet been involved in a suicide bombing in Pakistan.

This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com

Red State Patriot response sent to Stratfor.com:

We’ve given some thought to the 9/19 article (well written) on female suicide bombers. Please forward our constructive comments to the authors.

To begin, please consider this point. By focusing on the female or male suicide bomber, we make the same mistake as those who focus on the gun as the cause of homicide. It is not the gun that kills; it is the person holding the gun. The weapon of choice, whether a bomb, gun or knife, is but a method – just as terror is a tactic.

In the current incarnation of suicide bombers, it is not the female or male who kills; it is the Muslim who kills. It is the Muslim who is all too willing to kill, regardless of perceived motivation or grievance, and then revel in the magnitude of the atrocity. Islam is pulling the trigger.

We also suggest that we turn the coin over on this issue and look at the other side.

It is not only that Muslims are willing to die as it is that Muslims are also willing to randomly kill anyone including the innocent.

May we suggest that, for the foreseeable future, we must address Islam as the core issue and not focus too closely on the gender of the suicide bombers or other distractions? While the article importantly addresses a tactic that we should grow to expect, a gender-focused approach misses the Islamic cult pathology.

Who is a Muslim? For example, can a Muslim be an American patriot and a loyal citizen? Can he or she be a Canadian, a Frenchman, a German, an Aussie, a Kiwi or a Brit?

Theologically, no. A Muslim’s allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of Arabia.

Religiously, no. No other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam (Qur’an, 2:256)

Scripturally, no. A Muslim’s allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Qur’an.

Geographically, no. A Muslim’s allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

Socially, no. A Muslim’s allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.

Politically, no. A Muslim must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and destruction of America, the great Satan.

Domestically, no. A Muslim is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34).

Intellectually, no. A Muslim cannot accept the United States Constitution or system of common law since it is based on Biblical principles and a Muslim believes the Bible to be corrupt.

Philosophically, no. Islam, Mohammed, and the Qur’an do not allow freedom of religion and expression.

Spiritually, no. When we declare "one nation under God," the Christian's God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in the Qur’an's "99 excellent names."

Perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in the United States. They obviously cannot be both "good" Muslims and Americans. Call it what you wish....it's still the truth. To be a “good” American would require that person be a “bad” Muslim. Muslim-American is a profound oxymoron.

The Islamic Wars are bigger, more complex and the stakes far greater than most Americans understand. While a Muslim may be an American citizen, no Muslim can be an American. The Qur’an prohibits it.

To simply re-emphasize in other words, it is not that one variety or another variety of snake may kill you, or that one species is more radical or militant than another. For our own individual safety and for obvious national security reasons, we must assume that any and all varieties of snakes are venomous and will willingly and indiscriminately kill without remorse.

If we can become confident, through proactive measures, that there are no snakes in our backyard, our innocent children, friends, neighbors, schools, cities and nation will be at lesser risk.

Is it foolish as a national policy to welcome snakes into our home and grant them any accommodation? Does it seem rational to try to walk, talk and work among them daily and believe we will not eventually be bitten? Are those who advocate taking the risk of living with snakes simply deluding themselves and engaging in a politically-correct inversion of sanity? We think so. The comparison seems apt.

Why is Islam not correctly classified as a global infestation or pandemic?

How many people of divergent faiths, including secularism, have to die before the realization sets in? By then, will it be too late (as it was in Eurabia)?

Muslim’s hope so.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Though the kidnappers demanded that the US arrest and return the Shah to Iran, the main reason for the attack was to bring attention and popularity to the Mullah's version of how the revolution should proceed. It was a successful strike for the islamists to wrest the popular revolution from the hands of secular socialists, and morph it into a radical religious movement. Even when the embassy was taken, the "students" would periodically release "discovered evidence" to paint moderates or the mullah's domestic political enemies as CIA spies, or collaborators. They used this means to create a "terror" phase of the revolution reminiscent of the terror phase of the French Revolution. It is typical for revolutions go through this stage, but in Iran killings consolidated the hold of a political religious class. The dreams and aspirations of those members of Iranian society who dreamed of a post Shah Iran as a progressive, secular, state, evaporated as their political leaders will killed or driven into exile.

However, the grim, austere, joyless world view offered by the Mullahs and Sharia law does not enjoy much popular appeal in its application. The Mullahs discovered what so many revolutionaries did before, that running a country is much harder than whipping up the emotion necessary to overthrow it. Ahmadinijad and the Mullahs had to fall back on "the perpetual revolution" as discovered by Robespierre, Lenin, Mao, and Fidel Castro. Maintenance of loyalty to the revolution, and hence the regime, was dependant upon a constant struggle against outside powers who sought to overthrow the great revolution. While the Embassy hostages were still in Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, sensing weakness in the chaos of post revolution Iran, attacked. The Mullah's revolution found a benefit in having a surplus of enemies. While the Iranian people felt besieged by Sunni Iraq, embargoed and vilified by the western world, and threatened by the "atheist" Soviet Union, the Mullahs did not need to offer anything attractive by way of governance. They merely had to call for unity in the face of enemies.

Ahmadinijad has problems at home. He and the Mullahs face a population that is one of the youngest in the world in terms of demographics. The Iraq war and the prolific birth rate have changed the face of the country he helped overthrow. Few of Iranians alive today were even born when the Americans were held hostage, and fewer still remember life under the Shah Pahlavi. The people of Iran are young and feel constrained by the oppressive rules of Sharia. They are using cell phones to transmit all sorts of subversive mpeg files to each other as humor, from a young woman using karate on the morality police who have come to chastise her for "indecency", to computer animations that transform Ahmadinijad's image into that of a monkey. While there is still a nationalist spirit and an autonomic hatred of the West, in practical terms the populace is tired of the Islamic Revolution. It is a very short step for them to stop supporting the regime, and make the intellectual leap to supporting western values in addition to the western lifestyle they crave. The moment that happens, Ahmadinijad and the Mullahs are out of power.

So, why is Ahmadinijad smiling? He is prepared to return to the successful tactics of his youth in politics. He can bolster his domestic powerbase by creating enemies which his public must fear. He can antagonize the West, and get sanctions so the economic problems aren't his government's fault. He can eliminate his political opponents and have them killed by claiming they are CIA spies. Finally, I suspect, he may plan to drastically reduce that burgeoning population of young people.

Ahmadinijad plans to launch a war. In earlier essays I discussed the means and methods by which Iran may choose to inflict nuclear terrorism on the United States and Israel. This suicidal tactic, a virtual "bomb belt" for his whole country, is very much in line with the martyr complex of Shiite Islam. Another, parallel maneuver he may implement as soon as this summer is also viable from his perspective. In fact, some of the recent developments across the Middle East may be preparatory maneuvers for just this action. Ahmadinijad may choose to launch another pan-Mid-East war this Fall along the lines of the 1967 Six-Day-War. Iranian controlled Hezbollah in Lebanon, combined with Syrian forces, may attack northern Israel and the Golan Heights. Hamas may have taken absolute military control of Gaza, so that it can launch a simultaneous ground offensive into Southern Israel, picking up "the Egyptian front." Iran would send forces to attack Israel, passing through northern Iraq (Kurdistan) to link up with Hezbollah and Syria. This would mean a massive Iranian army attempting to roll over the small U.S. force in Iraq, which has been re-tooled for peace keeping duties rather than large scale, heavy unit, maneuver warfare. No doubt that U.S. air superiority and advanced technology weapon systems will make mincemeat of the massive Iranian army, but that would suit Ahmadinijad just fine. The Iranian army will be composed of all those unreliable young men who may choose to reject Islamism, unless they personally suffer horribly at the hands of the Americans. The effect of the massive casualties would be magnified through out the remaining Iranian population, who would lose friends, relatives, lovers and children. The Mullahs could then take to the international, sympathetic airwaves, decrying the brutality of the U.S., and at home elevate a whole generation of good Shiite martyrs.

This is the strategy for the whole new generation of Islamic political leaders. They have yet to prove their strength of will, after having taken over from their fathers. Hafez Assad is gone, as are Arafat, Nasser, Yassin and Khomeini. For a new generation of Islamic political leaders, in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and amongst the Palestinians, it would be a win-win war. They get to prove to their populations that they are willing to attack the Zionists and Crusaders rather than just talk about it, and simultaneously kill off a large, potentially uncontrollable part of their own population, all while fanning the fires of rage that sustain their legitimacy, without having to produce results.

As Osama bin Laden said, "the West values life, while we value death." Massive casualties are bad for our politicians, but good for theirs. One best not play games against opponents, unless you know what their win conditions are. One hopes that our political leaders have, like Thomas Jefferson's reading the Koran, taken the time to get to know our enemies.

By David Roth

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Response from Mark L.
As Christians we know the ending don't we?

a. No moderation from the Palestinians or Islam. No realist ever has.
b. Western and European governments will try to deny legitimization of Hamas with little effect.
c. Some in the U.S. will call for ending financial subsidies of the Palestinian Authority, but Congress lacks the will to act in America's or Israel's best interests.
d. The free world will recant on its offer of a Palestinian state now that it has been made clear, yet again, that Palestine will be a terrorist state.
e. Liberals in Israel and the U.S. State Department will continue to advocate giving away more precious land and putting Israel at greater and greater risk.
f. Congressional influence will continue to be sold to Corporations and Media outlets who themselves are owned, in part or in total, by foreign Islamic interests - including Fox News. Middle Eastern countries, through growing ownership and control of the American media, will actively pursue feeding the American public a bitter pill that (if allowed to be swallowed) will lead to the media-assisted suicide of America.
g. Congressmen, who are directly or indirectly on the campaign contribution payrolls of Mexico, and Middle Eastern governments such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, will continue their attempts to disengage from the Middle East.

So, the first Palestinian Authority election has endorsed Hamas. What's the big surprise? In December, 2005, the Egyptian electorate came out strongly for the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic party. In Iraq, the post-Saddam electorate voted in a pro-Iranian Islamist as prime minister. In Lebanon, the voters celebrated the withdrawal of Syrian troops by voting Hezbollah into the government. Likewise, radical Islamic elements have prospered in elections in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Only someone blind in one eye and unable to see out of the other is befuddled by the events in Palestine. Yes, elections are bringing to power Islamic regimes in the Middle East, and some are deadly enemies of the West. It’s not a question of what went wrong with democracy. The recent democratic elections are simply a validation of what all rational people already knew. Islam is a formidable enemy of the West and a lethal threat to the existence of Israel. The PA elections reveal that the Islamic cause of exterminating Israel has now been pubically endorsed for all the world to see by the Palestinian electorate. It amounts to nothing less than a mandate. The only solution is to deal with reality, recognize and confront the threats. Just maybe the rantings of Iran will begin to take on more credibility in Europe and the United States Senate.

This may come as a surprise to the cool-aid drinkers in Congress, the U.S. State Department and much of Europe, but it’s not Islam or some obscure cultural factor that accounts for the difference in the outcome of installing democracy in the Middle East. Instead, permit the immodest observation that America’s ideological enemies in the Middle East have been pushed around and disrupted, but not yet defeated - not by a long shot and soon they will have nuclear weapons.

The issue is Islam itself and the centuries-old unrelenting ambition for world dominance by Islamofascists. What differentiates Islam in the current incarnation is their clear grasp of fact, history and technology. As harsh as it may sound to Americans trying to get in touch with their feminine side, in all conflicts there must be a winner who brutally crushes a loser and then imposes the unconditional terms of peace. There can be no peace without a winner and a loser. Adherents of Islam understand this. Muslims understand that no negotiation ever resolves conflict! Negotiation is only necessary when needed to extend a simmering conflict indefinitely until such day as the weaker party feels strong enough to once again try to reassert dominance. Today, internet chat rooms have replaced the ancient market squares and mosques as the mechanism for exporting the faith and recruiting.

Diplomats say:
a. Slow down. That would be the worst possible decision. The better choice would be to speed up - exponentially.
b. Settle in for the long run. The better choice would be to defeat our enemies quickly, decisively and without remorse or mercy. The slow down alternative results in unnecessary deaths in a gradual war of attrition on the "good guys."
c. Give diplomacy a chance. Diplomacy is a code word for negotiation. Attempts at negotiation will resolve nothing until the enemy is defeated. Ask Israel. Diplomacy is irrelevant anywhere in the Middle East until there is a winner and a loser. Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia and the Palestinian Authority understand this. The U.S. State Department has not a clue.
d. Try to establish stability. Forget about stability. Focus on a crushing victory first. Take the sissy gloves off and get on with it. Stability only comes from, and subsequent to, the defeat of your enemy. Pandering and hand-wringing, typical of Congress and the seditionist New York Times, only prolongs instability, both in the Middle East and in America.

There is no dilemma posed by the Hamas election victory. European and Western capitals need to recognize that Palestinians, like the Iranians, and like the Germans in 1933 – have chosen a path of ideological and physical world domination. Concerned politicians may attempt to isolate and reject the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, but the only solution that will have any reasonable chance of success will be to respond to the first lethal misstep of the Palestinian Authority against innocent women and children with a mind-numbing ruthless retaliation, from the PA leadership to the PA janitors, and decisively crush any PA desire to continue the error of their ways. The Israeli (or American) retaliation to the next Islamic suicide bomber or rocket attack should be sufficient to cause most people in Europe and America to say, “Oh, my God!” Only then will the military response have been just about right. Forget proportional or measured responses. Either win decisively now or surrender. As for collateral damage, it is the price our adversaries should have to pay in spades for their barbaric trangressions against humanity. Let's see some real collateral damage.

The following is a message for Congress and the Main Stream Media from a self-appointed spokesperson for the American public: "Engaging in sedition and giving aid and comfort to America's enemies will prolong the war. Prolonging the war will result in more of your own needlessly bleeding and dying. If you're not willing to win, if you're not going to fight to win, decisively, right now, if you think the solution is a negotiated peace, you are needlessly sacrificing American lives. Self-imposed restraint is viewed by Muslims as a pathetic weakness, and make no mistake, you are in a fight for our life."

Americans are tired of listening to Congressional Democrats and weak-kneed liberal Republicans wail in the night some variation of, "Cut and run." In the liberal view of the world, there are no other choices but to attempt negotiation, and failing that surrender and beg for mercy. If America stays in the Middle East another day, and there is no doubt we should and we will, then we as Americans must resolve that any and every future Muslim atrocity be met with additional examples of “shock and awe,” not proportionally but 1,000 fold. Until then, nothing will change, and the Islamic goal of exterminating Israel will remain on track and viable.

In the meantime, the next Congressman, staffer, or media employee who recklessly or knowingly releases classified information should be incarcerated for a long, long time. It's fine to disagree with the Congressional vote by our elected representatives to go to war, however there is a profound difference between disagreeing with a Congressional vote and attempting to undermine the entire United States of America by revealing classified information to the enemy or engaging in sedition.

The following is free advice, and worth far more than you paid for it: "Never start a fight, let alone a war, unless you are determined and committed to win, at any cost – at any cost - all or nothing - all in!" The “Islamic Wars” returned at the Munich Olympics from obscurity and Islam is fully committed to this newest struggle world-wide, as demonstrated by their reoccurring barbaric atrocities.

We "misunderestimate" Islam at our own peril. Political events subsequent to 9-11-2001 have convinced the majority of Americans, and the Muslims in the Middle East, that American liberals couldn't find the will to defend America if it were presented to them on a serving plate by Senator John F. Kerry's man-servant. Since liberals refuse to deal with the fact that America really is in a war for survival, in a fight for its literal existence, hopefully conservatives will just deal with it. Let's win and then discuss our recriminations; but for all that is precious in America, let's not lose.

The question now is about us. We know who they are.

Red State Patriot

"Iran is a leading world sponsor of Islamic totalitarianism and has long been waging a terrorist proxy war against the West, through groups such as Hezbollah. In Iraq, Iran's proxies have been slaughtering U.S. and British troops. Iran initiates all of this aggression--to say nothing of its nuclear weapons program--with the confidence that it has an Allah-given right to murder. No surprise, then, that when 15 British naval personnel came near Iranian waters, Teheran took them hostage--and unabashedly demanded an apology from Britain, its victim.

"What has been the British, and American, response to Iran's outrage? What has the West done in the face of such a confidently evil regime? Did Britain give Iran an ultimatum backed by the threat of force? Far from it. With Washington's endorsement, London meekly protested, renounced using force to free its troops, and solemnly vowed to pursue 'patient diplomacy.' It has brought up the issue at the international sewer known as the United Nations, London is hoping that the U.N. will condescend to issue a press statement--its weakest possible statement--deploring Iran's actions. But since the U.N. is packed with Iranian allies and sympathizers, even this futile gesture is unlikely to happen.

"What underlies this unconscionably weak response? Fundamentally, it is the corrupt moral principle that dominates the West, the principle that regards selflessness as a virtue and self-assertion in pursuit, and defense, of one's interests as immoral. To punish Iran militarily for its many acts of war would be wrong, it would flout the will of the 'international community,' it would, on this premise, be 'selfish.' It is this premise that inhibits, and thus disarms, the West in the face of the enemy--and, as a result, spurs our enemy.

"While the British may hope that their timid, deferential approach will avoid inflaming the crisis and antagonizing Iran, they are accomplishing the opposite. The spectacle of Western nations bowing in submission is an encouragement to Iran and Islamic totalitarians worldwide.

"Iran and other evil regimes grow stronger and more threatening precisely because the morally good nations, who should defeat Iran's regime, are cowardly, apologetic, and meek."

Commentary by David H.: The idea that sanctions would persuade Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons is laughable and demonstrates a total evasion of the nature of the Iranian regime and of its stated goals. Iran is a totalitarian Islamic country led by religious fanatics bent on a jihad to destroy Western civilization and subjugate the world to Islam. No amount of sanctions will deflect this leading terrorist state from its destructive mission. While the West plays diplomatic games at the United Nations, Iran moves closer to acquiring nuclear bombs. For the sake of its own security, the United States should start the necessary military action -- before it's too late. This does not mean an Iraq-like crusade to bring Iran elections. It means protecting U.S. lives by destroying Iran's militant regime.

By his looks, I assumed that he was either a Druze or from the Syrian region. He looked more like a teacher than a construction worker and, as I later found out, he was actually a teacher by profession. Since my conversation with the student five years ago, I was always curious to hear their side of the story; therefore, I decided to invite him for a cup of coffee to our house. I saw him hesitate for a moment; then he smiled and thanked me for my hospitality.

While we drank our coffee, he told me that he was from a small village in the Galilee called Jish, near the present Kibbutz Sassa. I remembered the village very well as I was one of the soldiers who captured the village while serving in the 7th Armored brigade during the War of Independence in 1948. I decided not to tell him about it because at the time we encountered some stiff resistance at that village and quite a few of the inhabitants were killed.

He went on to tell me a little about himself. “For a while I was a teacher and I loved teaching, but I couldn’t make a living at it and I decided to join my father in law who is in the construction business.” Judging by the large Honda he was driving, I figured that he didn’t do too badly changing his profession.

Our conversation soon turned to the present situation in the Middle East, about Hamas winning the elections, the situation of the Israeli Arabs, and the last Lebanese war against Hezbollah. “As Christians we are in a difficult situation here in Israel.

Unfortunately, the Moslems and especially the extreme Islamist section, are giving the tone here. My family who lived in Bethlehem probably since the Crusaders, had to flee for their life. The Moslems have been forcing us out, by threats and even murder. Bethlehem that was once predominantly Christian is now predominantly Moslem. Very little is written about it even in the Israeli press.”

He sipped his coffee and gave me a long look. He seemed like someone who wasn’t quite sure whether to say what he was about to say. I gave him an encouraging nod.

“I have to tell you something which very few of you seem to comprehend.” He continued, “Your bungling war against a few thousand Hezbollah fighters which you should have crushed no matter what, considering the importance of the outcome, has created a completely new situation, not only for this area, but globally. Your inept leadership totally misunderstood the importance of winning this war."

“As a matter of fact, the whole Moslem world, not only the Arabs, simply couldn’t believe that the mighty Israeli Army that defeated the combined Arab forces in six days in 1967, and almost captured Cairo and Damascus in 1973, couldn’t defeat a small army of Hezbollah men. As usual the Moslems see things the way they want to see things. Most think that the present generation of Israelis have gone soft and can be defeated."

“The American bungling of the war in Iraq only added to their conviction that victory not only over Israel but also over the West is not only possible, but certain. The ramifications of these two bungling wars may bring an Islamic bloody Tsunami all over the West, not only in Israel. The sharks smell blood and these two wars gave them the green light to attack sooner than they had in mind. Your problem is that you are on the defensive and they have the option to choose the time and the places when and where to attack and there is nothing much you can do about it. When will you Westerners realize that half measures don’t work with people who are willing to die by the thousands for Allah to achieve their goal? In their eyes the Western World is simply an abomination on earth that has to be wiped out.”

He spoke quietly and I could just picture him in the school giving his students a lecture. I poured him another cup of coffee and encouraged him to continue.

“The Americans, the Europeans, and even you Israelis really don’t know what it is all about, do you? During the last generation hundreds of thousands of children have been taught all over the Moslem world in Madrass schools to become martyrs for Allah in order to kill the infidels. These youngsters not only are ready to do it, but are actually in the process of doing it. Bombs are going off all over the world killing and maiming thousands of people, not only on 9/11 in the US, in London Madrid and Bali, but in Africa, India, Bengladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many other places. The first signs of the Islamic tsunami is already here, but the West doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to understand what is coming."

“The Americans, instead of realizing that this is as bad as World War Two, or even worse, are going to pull out of Iraq, handing it over to Iran on a silver platter. Next may come the Saudis and the rest of the Gulf States. When dirty bombs go off all over Western towns, who is going to stop the Iranians?"

“Now is the time to stop them, not only because they are developing nuclear bombs, but because Iran has become the base for all Islamic terrorist. They supply money, men, and weapons to Islamic terrorist around the world, quite often through their diplomatic mail. Billions of petro-dollars that are pouring into Iran are being funneled into terrorist organizations world-wide. They believe, and perhaps rightly so, that the West will do nothing to stop them in achieving their goals. Is history repeating itself? Are the Iranians making the same mistake that Hitler made when he attacked Poland? Is the situation similar?"

“As a history teacher who studied the subject thoroughly I can tell you that Western victory in World War Two was not all certain. Hitler could have won the war if he would have gone ahead with the atomic bomb development before the Americans. The Germans began working on it in the thirties, and it was Hitler’s decision to prefer building more conventional arms, as he considered atomic weapons sheer fantasy. Hitler made the wrong decision, but had he made the right decision the world would have been a different type of world today, wouldn’t it? The West won the war against Hitler by sheer chance. Very few people seem to realize that.”

I must say that his last words shook me up quite a bit. Had Hitler made a different decision, I would have died in Dachau, there wouldn’t have been a Jewish state called Israel, and most likely there wouldn’t have been any Jews left in the world. The idea that the Western democracies in general and the fate of the Jewish people in particular could have hinged on Hitler’s one decision, is a scenario of the worst nightmare.

He notices that his last words had an effect on me, and he smiled. “I see that my words are not wasted on you,” he said dryly. I nodded, and he continued with his lecture. “Coming back to our time, the Iranians rely on the West doing nothing about their development of nuclear bombs. They also rely on their secret weapon: an inexhaustible supply of Islamic suicide bombers, some of them who are already planted all over the Western World. Besides the Islamic countries that supply these suicide bombers, a second front has been opened, and that is the Internet with more than five thousand Islamic web sites, brain washing and urging young Moslems to become martyrs for Allah. They especially target young Moslems who live in Europe and the West in general. The Western intelligence authorities consider these web sites a bigger threat than the Iranian atomic bomb. Al-Qaeda recently issued a television broadcast that promised a devastating attack against its enemies this spring. As we all know, Al-Qaeda doesn’t make empty threats."

“Actually, I don’t understand why the Iranians bother to develop atomic bombs and bring the whole world down on them. Every suicide bomber is a potential atomic bomb, or a biological, chemical or dirty bomb that can be no less devastating than an atom bomb. The Americans and Europeans have no defense against this type of war."

“What can we do against this type warfare?” I asked him. “Well, you Israelis, should better prepare yourself for another round against Hezbollah. It will not be long in coming. It depends on the Iranians to give the word. This time you will have to destroy Hezbollah no matter what the cost may be."

“Of course, your next round against Hezbollah may involve the Syrians and the Iranians against you. The Iranians declared that they will not allow Hezbollah to be defeated no matter what and may launch their missiles against you. So will the Syrians. What will Israel do? It is unlikely that Israel will accept its destruction and may use their nuclear arsenal if the West will not come to their help. Perhaps our book of Revelation is not so wrong in describing that the end of the world would start at Armageddon, which we know as Har-Megiddo in Israel. The book of Revelations describe the last battle would be fought at Armageddon between the “Forces of good and the forces of evil.”

“And who would you call the forces of good ‘Israel or Islam?’ I asked looking him straight in the eyes. He gave me a startled look. “If I were a Moslem, I would have no problem to name the forces of good and it wouldn’t be Israel. As a Christian, I would probably name Israel, but as a Christian Arab I would prefer not to answer.”

We looked at each other. His answer made it clear where the Israeli Arabs stood, whether they were Moslems or Christians. And why should I be surprised? After all the Israeli Arabs call the establishment of the State of Israel their nakbah (disaster).

Is there a way to avoid the “Armageddon”?

“I think there are two ways to avoid it. One can be a major war which the West can win. As in World War Two, had the West attacked the Germans in 1936 the war would have lasted not more than a month with very few casualties. Their procrastination resulted in World War II with all its consequences. Eventually, the West will have to tackle the Iranians, it is better that they do it now to avert a world catastrophe later. With Iran defeated the Islamic onslaught will lose its base, and it may be the turning point in history to defeat the menace of extreme Islam. The majority of the Moslems don’t want this confrontation anyway.”

“You are painting a rather dark picture. When do you think we will have the next round against Hezbollah?” I asked. “I think they will attack again as soon as they are fully re-equipped and I think it will be during the summer, while Israel is still in a military and political turmoil.”

For a while, we sat in silence. He finished his second cup of coffee and got up. “I know what I am going to do. I am going to Canada to join my brother. This country is becoming much too dangerous for Christians as well,” he said. He thanked me for the coffee and we shook hands.

“You said there are two ways to avoid Armageddon?” I remembered to ask him.

“Sure, all the West has to do is follow Putin’s ways. He assassinates his enemies without blinking an eye. Assassinate the four or five Mullahs who run the show, Ahmadinejad, and a few more Iranian fanatics, and the War can be avoided. It may be difficult to do, but not impossible. With today’s hi- tech technology I am sure that new weapons against individuals are being prepared right now. I think it would be a better way of handling the matter than an all out war against Islam.”

The conversation with Francis was not more encouraging than the one I had with the Palestinian student five years ago. It was becoming clear that Israel may be on the forefront for the coming war of the West against Islam, unless we follow Francis’ suggestion to assassinate the heads of the snake, rather than going to war with Islam.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27385

Plummeting birth rates in most of the industrialized world is a critical problem. Throughout Western Europe and East Asia, the birth rate is well below 2.1 births per woman, which is the minimum needed to maintain a stable population. In other words, in the simplest terms, the indigenous population is measurably shrinking.

Environmentalist dogma argues that plummeting birth rates are a good thing. After all, people cause pollution. Well, officials in countries like Japan, Korea, France and Germany now know better. In these and other so-called “advanced” societies, shrinking populations irrefutably threaten both their way of life and their cultural identity.

In Japan, for example, a birth rate that is barely half of “replacement level” has forced the closure of more than two thousand schools in the past ten years, with hundreds more closures to come. It’s left the government wondering who will support Japan’s aging population. Sound familiar? These and other concerns, like the extinction of the Japanese people if the trend were to continue, have prompted older Japanese to call their childless children “parasite singles.”

In Germany, the population of some villages has shrunk so much that there are now too few people flushing for the sewage to properly flow. As a result, the government has had to spend scarce resources on retrofitting sewage systems. Elsewhere in Germany and the rest of Europe, the emptying landscape provides an opening for an unlikely immigrant: the Islamic wolf. German biologists expect the growing packs to head soon toward Berlin. This is deadly serious.

Wolves in Berlin sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it’s a science fact. What’s incredible is the response of the average European or East Asian. They literally shrug their shoulders; they can’t imagine changing their lifestyle to accommodate having two or more children instead of one or none. They believe against all evidence, in the face of incontrovertible facts, that a technological or political solution to this problem will be found.

There is only one precedent for managing a decline in societies as advanced as Japan or Europe’s. Throughout history, societies in demographic decline, usually as a result of disease, have faced two unattractive options, (1) a decline in their standard of living or, (2) the replacement of their native population with a more fertile immigrant one. Europe, essentially by default, has chosen the latter. But as the 7/7 bombings in London graphically illustrate, turning millions of Islamic immigrants into “Europeans,” however you define the term, is a dubious proposition at best and ultimately impossible if one carefully reads and believes the precepts of Islam.

In Japan, where racial purity is a primary cultural value, the population literally faces eventual extinction.

It’s hard to imagine a better example of the importance of the stakes involved. Europe’s ethnic decline is directly linked to its hostility towards Christianity and rejection by the elite of faith-based ethical commandments. Don’t flinch; the sentence is not a religious proclamation – it is strictly intellectual. Societal adoption of birth control by abortion, and the rejection of what Christianity teaches about the family, has made the European continent safe for another kind of family: four-legged ones who howl at the moon.

America will soon follow, with the certainty that night follows day.

How large an impact has abdication of Christian principles had on American culture?

You are more than capable of answering that question and provide countless examples. For our purposes, and again without a value judgment, since January 22, 1973 over 50,000,000 babies have been surgical aborted in America alone, 4,400 each day. The first of those children would be 34 this year, each potential future leaders of society and innovators of the most incredible evolving technology. But none of this will happen. They would have taken every job that Hispanics from Mexico and Muslims from the Middle East now seek in the United States, just as Muslims have backfilled both Europe and Japan.

The wolves are at our nation's door to the south and the horizon to the East is growing dark. It is very late in the day for many nations. Darkness is enveloping Europe and marching our way by the hour. Hopefully, Americans will realize that Islam is not an urban legend before darkness falls across our land. Unfortunately, that hope is only a remote possibility because it would require a day when Congess is not for sale. It would also require that Congressmen were intellectually awake and morally conscious long enough to make a last second fateful decision. In the meantime, the chorus of Alu Akbar is growing in a number of American cities.

Red State Patriot

To the untrained ear and uninformed mind, the first part sounds kind of ecumenical, a type of universalism and religious correctness, in which everybody's biblical or Koranic figures get equal billing, so as not to offend. But Muslims see all of these religious leaders as Muslim prophets. Their view is that Abraham, Moses and Jesus taught Islam and that the Jews and Christians perverted the Islamic faith and, according to some, deserve death for doing so.

Al-Husainy was engaging in something more dangerous than prayer. He proclaimed religious superiority and triumphalism. Surely Democrats do not subscribe to his not-so-subtle religious doublespeak, which places the United States and Israel among the people God "dooms." Neither do most Democrats believe that all of Israel is occupied and that "oppression and occupation" applies to the Jews who live there and must be evicted. So why invite a clergyman who leads them in such a prayer? It isn't that his background is unknown.

As blogger Debbie Schlussel has written, Al-Husainy led "almost daily protests" last summer "of thousands of Hezbollah supporters on the streets of Dearborn and Detroit, swarming with swastikas and anti-Semitic, anti-American signs. Later, I watched him … at an anti-Semitic rally of 3,000 Hezbollah supporters at Dearborn's Bint Jebail Cultural Center. He was among several who delivered hate-filled, anti-American rhetoric. I watched him cheer others on when they called for the hastened destruction of the Jews and when they said Americans are 'diseased.'"

On the Website "Jihad Watch" (a good place to keep up with what the Islamofascists are planning for us), Robert Spencer writes, "…the West is facing a concerted effort by Islamic jihadists, the motives and goals of whom are largely ignored by the Western media, to destroy the West and bring it forcibly into the Islamic world - and to commit violence to that end even while their overall goal remains out of reach."

A clergyman who advocated white supremacy and the inferiority of all other faiths would never have been invited to offer the invocation at a DNC gathering. Yet Democrats got the equivalent of such a person in Al-Husainy.

Democrats have been trying to get back in the religion game since Republicans cornered most of the Evangelical Christian vote in the last several election cycles, but choosing Husham Al-Husainy as their instrument to put them in closer touch - if not with God, than with Muslim voters - is more outrageous and shameful than Sen. Joseph Biden's remarks about Barack Obama, and far more dangerous.

The Muslim vote went largely to Democrats in last year's election. In Virginia, Democrat James Webb received 92 percent of the Muslim vote, compared to Republican George Allen's 8 percent, according to the Muslim American Society and the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee. Was inviting Al-Husainy to pray for the destruction of America and Israel payback to the Muslim community? If so, the price is too high and the potential consequences are too great.

Has politics come to this, that some politicians would sell out their own and other free countries for a voting bloc that contains elements committed to our destruction (Democrats), or pander to illegal immigrants who break our laws and then get Social Security checks (Republicans)? Have politicians no shame?

By Cal Thomas
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=19281

Commentary by Red State Patriot:

To answer Cal Thomas’ question, keep foremost in your thoughts the views of President Abraham Lincoln, who observed that, "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

President Ulysses S. Grant also gave an appropriate tribute to many in the main stream media, Hollywood and Congress when he recounted in his Personal Memoirs, "Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war, in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate 'war, pestilence, and famine' than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun.... The most favorable posthumous history the stay-at-home traitor can hope for is -- oblivion." (… and deservedly so …)

We have come to a point in our culture that politicians have no shame, ethical principles, loyalty to the United States of America and deserve neither citizenship nor your adulation. Instead they should be treated as the cancerous scourge they have become, because if for no other reason, they are willing to feed off the life-blood of their fellow Americans in their own self interest.

Stay as close to home as you can Dorothy, and try to keep Toto safe. The rest of the world is becoming the Land of Oz and a very dangerous place.

Let's begin by examining a few incontrovertible basics:

1. When did the threat to the United States start? Many will say September 11, 2001. The most likely beginning was the 1972 Munich Olympics. The answer as far as the United State is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us:

* Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979
* Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983
* Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983
* Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988
* First New York World Trade Center attack 1993
* Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996
* Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998
* Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998
* Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000
* New York World Trade Center 2001
* Pentagon 2001

We should not forget all the airline hijackings in the 1980's including the TWA on the runway in Lebanon where a U.S. sailor trying to protect other passengers was shot in the head and dumped on the runway. Do you remember the kidnappings and murders in Lebanon that included William Casey and Col. Higgins, USMC plus the kidnappings of Terry Waite, Michael Anderson and others? Are you old enough to recall the piracy of the Achille Lauro and the murder of a crippled American citizen Leon Klinghoffer who was shot and thrown overboard, still in his wheelchair? Do you remember the Lybia-sponsored bombing of the discothèque in Germany near a U.S. Airbase in which Americans were killed by Muslim terrorists. There are more, hundreds more. These are just a few examples. Most of the incidents would br describe by a civilized human being as atrocities. Not coincidentally, most of the indicents were directed by Imad Mugniya, the CURRENT Iranian head of the Pasdaran's Special Directorate (foreign intelligence missions). While every American could add any number of Islamic terrorist incidents or atrocities to the above list, the list is intentionally abbreviated to maintain some control over the length of this article. Hopefully the incidents that are listed will make the point of the uncompromising seriousness and international urgency of the Islamic Wars. How many people, do you think, are aware that during the period from 1981 to 2001, there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide - before September 11, 2001? How many victims of Islamic terrorism (killed or maimed innocent men, women and children) will be necessary before most Americans come to the realization that their life expectency may be far shorter than they had hoped? Do major cities in the United States have to resemble Baghdad before that realization finally sets in?

2. Why were we attacked? The answer is so elementary: envy, our nation’s success, our freedoms – and the Qur’an command it to the Muslim faithful. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter.

3. Who were the attackers? In each and every case, the attacks on the United States were carried out by Muslims.

4. What is the Muslim percentage population of the World? 20-25%.

5. Is the Muslim Religion peaceful? Hopefully, but the question is irrelevant. Claims that the large majority of Muslims are peaceful is sycophant propaganda and meaningless. There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful too, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests). Today, you either go along with the ruling Imam or you are eliminated – that means exterminated.

Unknown to most who no longer study history, almost the same numbers of Christians were killed by the Nazis as the six million holocaust Jews. We seldom hear about anything other than the atrocities committed against the Jews, which is completely understandable. Jews have no intention of letting history forget. If only Christians had the same resolve. Although Hitler kept the world focused on exterminating the Jews, he had no hesitancy about killing anyone who got in his way of taking over the world - German, Christian or atheist. It’s the same with the Muslims. They have focused the world on the United States, but they gleefully kill in the name of Allah any and all who gets in their way – including their own people, the Spanish, French or anyone else. The point is this: peaceful Germans provided no protection to anyone from the Nazis. No matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they will provide no protection from Muslim terrorists. Muslim leaders are fanatical and bent on killing all of us “infidels,” just as they are commanded to do by the Qur’an. Their own pronouncements confirm their actions throughout recorded history and their future intentions. Peaceful Muslims are no less worrisome or benign than peaceful WWII Germans. Whether Muslims or Germans, their choice was to participate, shut up or die!

6. So who are we at war with? There is no way anyone can challenge reality. The world is at war with the adherents of the Muslim faith. What distinguishes the Muslim terrorists is that they are non-state, non-uniformed, uncivilized in their atrocities, and engage in a form of asymmetrical warfare. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion will become fatal to tens of thousands - and without a coherent national response to Islam, possibly millions.

7. There is no way to win a conflict if you can't or refuse to clearly recognize and articulate who it is you are fighting. Then you have to respond accordingly, not focused on Political Correctness.

So with that background, the three major questions that will determine the outcome are:

1. Can we lose this war?
2. What does losing really mean?
3. What is required to win?

If we are to win, we must answer these questions without equivocation.

We can definitely lose this war, and as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose the war is that so many American citizens simply cannot fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing really mean? There is still one other unpleasant possibility. Our congressmen are so consumed by self interest and accumulating personal wealth and power that they don’t really care if we lose.

It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home after a media-engineered defeat and going on about our business, like post-Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get.

What losing really means is: We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks on American citizens and interests will not subside, but steadily increase in number and intensify in spectacular brutality. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they just wanted us quiet, they would not have orchestrated an escalating series of attacks against us over the past two decades. The Muslim plan is for terrorists to attack until all Western nations (civilized nations) are neutered and/or submissive to Islam. Secondly, we would have no future support from other nations. They would correctly fear Muslim reprisals. They would see we are pathetically impotent and cannot help them. For example, how much can we expect today from Spain or France, both of whom are held hostage? Muslims will continue to subvert other non-Muslim nations one at a time. It will become increasingly easy for them. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their trains and told them to withdraw their troops. It is a forgone conclusion that anything else Muslims want Spain to do will be done. Spain is finished. France is circling the drain and Germany is not far behind. Even Great Britain is in trouble. Try to imagine a world in which every one of the European nations is a Muslim dominated society that is the avowed religious, military and economic enemy of the United States.

Our one hope is that some of these countries might see the light and realize that if the United States doesn’t win, they’re finished too. They can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. It may already be too late for France. France is 20% Muslim, fading fast and hasn’t seen the light for several centuries!

If we lose the Islamic Wars, our production, income, exports (which are already diminishing fast) and our way of life will vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us if they were threatened by the Muslims. And they will be threatened by the Muslims. If the United States can't stop the Muslims, how can it stop anyone else? The Muslims know what is riding on this war, they’ve made huge inroads, and they’re completely committed to winning, “at any cost.” Muslim leaders know this has to be done quickly, before their oil revenues that are used to fund their weapons and terrorism are eliminated by alternative energy sources in the West, which until now Congress has mightily resisted at the behest of the petroleum lobby.

“At any cost” is the only words key to our survival. “At any cost.”

Are we united as a population and committed to winning “at any cost?” Are we committed to winning “at any cost” to our enemies? Not even remotely. Our nation’s fate will be sealed unless changes occur very soon. We don’t have 2-5 more years to debate the Neville Chamberlain standards of national defense and diplomacy, and a one-world order based on egalitarianism envisioned by President G.W. Bush. Muslims have as their goal an incredibly repressive one-world order firmly grounded in the “Religion of Death,” many elements of which you have already seen.

Until we collectively recognize the costs of losing, until our politicians recognize our nation’s peril, we will not unite. We will not put 100% of our thoughts and efforts into winning – at any cost. Until our elected representatives and the main stream media recognizes the costs of losing and elevates the nation above their own self interests, it won’t matter how many individual citizens recognize the costs of losing. Congress doesn’t listen to the “majority” now. It is going to take a 100%-effort to win the Islamic Wars, supported both by middle America and by every race-, gender-, religious-, media-, and ideologically-based fanatic currently wasting valuable national oxygen. What are the odds?

So, how can we lose the war? The answer is simple. We can lose the war by continuing what we’re doing, by culturally imploding, by defeating ourselves, by refusing to recognize the enemy and their purposes, and by not really digging in and lending full support to the war effort. If we’re united, and committed to winning “at any cost,” there is no way that we can lose. If we continue to be divided, and set arbitrary limits on the extent to which we are willing to go to win, then there is no way that we can win! With a liberal majority ruling Congress, any hope for a favorable outcome is currently nothing but a dream.

Let me give you a few examples of how we simply don't comprehend the life and death seriousness of this situation. Although all of the terrorist attacks for the last 30 years were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, the Democrats and the main stream media refuse to allow profiling. Does that sound like we’re taking this thing seriously? This is a war to the death – your death or conversion to Islam is the grand prize! If you don’t believe something as obvious as a hand in front of your face, ask Barrack Hussein Obama, Senator from Illinois.

For a specified and set duration of time, it is possible we may have to agree to give up some of the civil rights we’ve become accustomed to (and guaranteed under the Bill of Rights). We have a distinct choice, relinquish some of our civil rights temporarily or lose all of them permanently. Wait, you argue, recent administrations have been all too quick to deny Americans their civil rights – everything from speech to gun ownership. That is entirely true. However, if you open your eyes to reality, you will quickly realize that the erosion of our civil liberties was not as a result of the Islamic Wars, but the result of a liberal socialist agenda underway for 50-75 years. Now is the time to work the American magic and take the rights back. Begin by reinstituting full and total property rights, gun ownership and a universal flat tax. Agree to intelligence gathering and privacy compromises in the extremis of national defense. Put an end to institutionalized discrimination – once and for all - in a single stroke. And don't worry that it is a slippery slope. We gave up plenty of civil rights during WWII, and immediately forced the government to restore them after the victory in Europe and Japan. Those who are not willing to make the sacrifices right now - to facilitate winning - are those not willing to do what it takes to win. Take the risk. What is your selfish point. You already have a 100% certainty of losing if you don’t.

Do I blame President Bush or President Clinton before him? No, and you shouldn’t either. Presidents come and go. But by all means, blame Congress for 75 years of creeping socialist legislation, political correctness, assault on the Bill of Rights, judicial activism, abandonment of the rule of law and their unbridled corruption. That is where your civil liberties have gone.

There is no such thing as a clean, lawful and honorable war. If you are unwilling to accept that, then once again you will lose. A war, should it come to pass, and it has, is a time to kill people by the tens of thousands, without remorse, so that they will stop killing your sons and daughters.

Get any notion of egalitarianism and political correctness out of your head. Some politicians and the media have gone to such extremes in their blind self-indulgent criticism of the war and the current Administration that it seems they would like to see us lose. Well they do want the United States to lose, and that has not changed since the Spanish-American War before 1900. Not only don’t they recognize what losing means, they’re disloyal (feel no responsibility for anything but themselves). Nothing is more important to a liberal than “self,” including their own birthright. Forget Republican and Democrat political party labels. There are less than five conservatives (out of 535) in all of Congress and only one Libertarian.

Nevertheless, our liberal national conduct communicates to the enemy – correctly - that we are divided and weakening. Our immorality and lack of a value system concerns other nations deeply. It does great damage to our cause. When you hear that Europeans hate Americans, think disrespect and distrust for what Congress and the Supreme Court has caused our nation to become.

We have recently had an issue that bears mentioning, involving the treatment of Muslim prisoners of war by a small group of military police. These are the same prisoners who just months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering them just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein. And just a few years ago these same type of prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own citizens for the same reason. They are the same enemy fighters who were recently burned the bodies of Americans and dragged their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq. And still more recently, the same enemy was providing videos to international news sources of the beheading of Americans.

Compare these atrocities with the posturing by some of our press and politicians, who for several months have talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners - not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them. Can this be for real? The politicians and pundits even talked at one time about the impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, and the life and death struggle we are in, and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can. To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over the prisoner issue for no other reason that political self-interest makes us look like an insane Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned -- totally oblivious and without concern for what is going on in the real world.

Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this level of internal strife fueled by disloyal citizens (politicians) consumed by their own point of view, self-interest and personal ambitions. They are absolutely oblivious to the magnitude of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us for many years. They have no solutions, just criticisms. They have no alternatives, just disloyal rhetoric. They vote to start the war without the will to win decisively, without the will to win quickly, and without the will to win at any cost to the enemy.

Remember, the Muslim terrorist’s stated goal is to kill all infidels! That translates into ALL non-Muslims -- not just in the United States, but throughout the world. Like it or not, we in the United States are the last bastion of defense and “can’t we all just get along” isn’t going to cut it.

Americans have been criticized for many years for being 'arrogant.' That charge is valid in at least one respect. We genuinely believe that we are so good, so powerful and so smart, that liberals believe we can win the hearts and minds of all those who attack us, and that with both hands tied behind our back, we can defeat anything bad in the world! Well, that is arrogant, and we can't, and only a fool will drink that Jonestown Kool-Aid!

If we don't recognize this liberal arrogance for what it is, a pervasive and consummate ignorance of our enemy, our nation as we know it will not survive. It is an absolute certainty that no other free country in the world will survive if we are defeated. Can the stakes be any greater? Can liberal politicians, Hollywood wonks and the main stream media do any more harm if they tried? Yet liberal politicians and the media continue to spew hateful rhetoric at our Armed Forces, doing everything possible to undermine the United States in the Islamic Wars. Once again, it is an absolute certainty that no other free nation in the world will survive if we are defeated. Is this the unspoken goal of the Democratic Party, the main stream media and this administration.

Our national security and immigration policies on the southern border of the United States are making more reasonable Americans wonder aloud (as reflected in approval ratings of both the President and Congress).

And finally, I challenge each and every American to name a single Muslim country throughout the world that will allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal opportunity for anyone let alone everyone, equal status (or any status) for women, or any Muslim nation that has been productive and contributed in one single way to the good of the world.

This has been a long way of saying that we are not united in the defense of the United States of America, either in these Islamic Wars or national security. Our opportunity to regain our national unity has the trajectory of a gliding anvil that has been falling for some time. It appears that it is Congress’ wish and the media’s goal that the United States of America be equated in history books to the self-inflicted fall of the Roman Empire - assuming that is, if the Muslim leaders will allow history books to be written or read?

If we don't win the Islamic Wars, decisively, right now, by doing whatever it takes, at any cost to the enemy, then you should keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over the Middle East and France in the next five years. They will continue to increase their population in France and continue to encroach little by little on the established French traditions and into their political and legal process. In the meantime, the French will be fighting among themselves over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken their nation and prevent any united resolve, until it is too late.

Does that sound eerily familiar? Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Consumed by self-interest instead of unity, they give away their civil liberties, politically correct piece by politically correct piece. We who should know better are giving those freedoms away to Muslims who have shown worldwide that they abhor freedom. They will not permit civil liberties for you or even for themselves. Muslims have shown throughout history that when they have taken over, they start brutally killing any non-conforming person, and then begin killing each other in competition to determine who among them will be the next Imam that will control the masses.

I wonder if we will we ever stop hearing from the most ignorant among us (the politically correct) about the oxymoron "peaceful Muslims?" Your resolve to prevail, our national unity and all-important personal commitment are your children’s future – and ours. Without it, our children have no future. What does losing really mean?

Red State Patriot

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Koran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Koran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.

Ellison's use of Jefferson's Koran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic "Barbary" states.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women and children could be collected.

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers"--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.

Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute," Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America's best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast.

The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.

In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.

Jefferson's victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country's battles on the land as on the sea."

It wasn't until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a "visionary" wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.

By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch January 2007

Hat tip: Richard Polk

Would John Danforth or his successors—and for that matter, any and all of our elected representatives—have to defend our Constitution against enemies within our own country? Yes, they will—or they had better—because the enemy is upon us already.

In 2006, our country is again gripped and increasingly bound by tyrants—not regents and despots from afar, but by cancerous growths from within. Long ago it was prophesied by objective observers that America was too strong to be defeated by outside forces, but it could someday rot and crumble from within and go the way of all the other great nation-states, succumbing in the slime of selfishness, greed, immorality, and abuse of its own freedoms.

It’s happening all around us. Our valiant ship of state is listing, springing dangerous leaks in vital places, threatening after only 230 years to sink into the abyss of history. Fellow citizens, we won our first revolution under God; now, because of the inroads that have been made already against many of the values we hold dear, I call for a new revolution!

What are the powerful forces steadily binding us all around, like a sleeping Gulliver in Lilliput Land, robbing us of the very liberty to perpetuate the vision of our Founding Fathers? There are several, and they are pernicious, relentless, and eventually fatal. I’ll list the most obvious:

Ignorance, which is appalling, pervasive, and increasing daily. Basic literary and math skills diminish. Newspapers choose 4th grade vocabulary and short, shallow stories to cater to the lowest possible denominator. They’ve discovered that the median reading comprehension level in America today is at the 4th grade level. American history is abbreviated and given short shift, taught very selectively according to prevailing “political correctness” and intellectual bias. Left-leaning media and even liberal church groups abandon “first principles” and historic guidelines, constantly brainwashing the masses, cutting them adrift from ancient moorings into a sea of aimless relativism.

Apathy. America grew huge and strong on the near-unanimous involvement of its citizens. In war or peace, every vote counted and every voice could be heard. From each ward to each city hall to each county board to each state house and to each legislature to the very halls of Congress, the citizens took part, debated, came to majority agreements, and moved forward. Today, too often half or more of our citizens who are eligible don’t even vote! They feel left out, unnecessary, distracted, cynical, and alienated—and, of course, ignorant of the issues—so they stay home and grouse. This has to stop! Citizens, this new revolution must overthrow the bonds and blindness of ignorance and disinvolvement. Our country must be stirred and called to action!

Materialism/Need. I’m combining these two because I believe they are related. Greed, corporate and personal, combined with inevitable dishonesty (the Bible says “the love of money is the root of all evil”) widen the gap between multimillionaires and the multi-millions of hard-working families and retired seniors—not to mention the physically and emotionally handicapped and ill—who can’t pay all their bills or even afford their medicines, even if they work two or three jobs. Well-intentioned politicians keep calling on Big Brother government (the groaning taxpayers, namely, us) to solve the problems with bureaucracy.

Citizens, socialism is not the answer! Social responsibility is—individual, local, and active response to our brother’s needs. And the new revolution must have the sensitivity and heart and will to voluntarily use our vast resources to meet our human needs. The early colonists who gave us this nation knew how to do that; we’ve got to learn how all over again.

Humanism, Immorality, and Godlessness—an unholy trinity. Most Christians believe in a triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Many Old Testament scriptures foreshadow each of these three distinct persons in the same Godhead. But today in America, we are confronted and threatened by an unholy trinity that has sunk its roots deep down into our society: godlessness, immorality, and humanism.

Remove God from public life (as a number of perverse, determined, and well-funded activist groups are doing very effectively), and a cancerous spirit of immorality seeps relentlessly across the land like a poison gas, corrupting all forms of entertainment, encouraging drugs and violence and rampant promiscuity in the streets, in schools, homes, businesses, politics, and even some churches, with the inevitable surrender to humanism. Man rules his own destiny, God is dead, and “if it feels good, do it!” Radio personalities wince when they’re fined for obscenity and sacrilege by the Federal Communications Commission and rail at the President demanding their “First Amendment rights.” But they’re not seeking “free speech”; they’ve had that their whole lives and careers. No, they want “freedom of filth.” Our Founding Fathers would have had them tarred and feathered and whipped in the public square.

In 1952, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas declared, “The First Amendment does not say that in every respect there shall be a separation of church and state. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise, the state and religion would be aliens to each other-hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. We are a religious people and our institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion.”

Wise old Ben Franklin, certainly no religious fanatic, said “only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom; the more corrupt and vicious a society becomes, the more it has need of masters.”

George Washington clearly and bluntly stated, “religion and morality are the twin pillars of freedom!” And our fourth president, James Madison, to whom many refer as the “father of the Constitution,” said this, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization not on the power of the government, far from it. We have staked the future of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us…to govern ourselves according to the commandments of God. The future of America is not in the Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this constitution is founded.”

Citizens, the enemy within has already subverted the Constitution and bound us with ever strengthened cords of immorality and indecency and godlessness. We must mount a new revolution and throw them into the sea! Judicial Activism—lawmaking judges, Wyatt Earps who shoot not from the hip but from the bench.

Thomas Jefferson warned us: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.” Jefferson didn’t fear the executive or legislative branches of government; he knew they would obey the citizens who elected them. But we would have to be very watchful lest unelected jurists bind upon us their views, not the expressed will of the people. And look: In just two or three decades, renegades in black robes, ignoring or perverting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, have been responsible for taking prayer from school children, taking every mention of God from the public square, authorizing 40 million abortions, dictating severe reversals of states’ rights and individual freedoms, and even now they are redefining the institution of “marriage,” flying in the face of all recorded history and the very foundations of society.

Citizens, we need a new Boston Tea Party. Only this time, let’s not waste perfectly good tea. Let’s heave a bunch of black robes into the harbor with some of those vigilante judges in them. It won’t hurt the robes, and the defrocked jurists can swim out and reenroll in Constitution 101!

Fellow citizens, fellow Americans: Our forefathers, the early colonists, were decent, hardworking, ordinary people who rose to the challenge that confronted them, threw off the yoke of British bondage and unfair taxation, and established a new republic. Like trichinosis in pork, our muscles and our will have been sapped and weakened by insidious forces from within. Do we still have the will, the vision, the zeal—and the plain old gumption— to stand up to these invaders, root them out, overturn their unconstitutional rulings, and reestablish our republic that represents not just all its citizens, but our traditional morals and guidelines? If we do, let the revolution begin! And God bless America one more time!

Delivered at the Heritage Foundation, November 29, 2006 by Pat Boone.

Pat Boone is a recording artist, entertainer, bestselling author, and a national spokesman for the 60 Plus Association (www.60plus.org).

A day after the Democrats won both houses of Congress, President Bush accepted the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. The nomination for Rumsfeld’s replacement as secretary of Defense was Robert Gates, a cathartic election’s first fruits. Last week, Gates was confirmed by the Senate in a bipartisan vote that saw only two senators vote against him: Senator Bunning and myself.

The many failings of the administration in Iraq are well known. Ignored is the larger failing of our country’s leaders: their unwillingness to define, with clarity, honesty, and consistency, the enemy we face and the complex and enormous threat it poses to the lives and freedoms of all Americans.

If America were not at war, I would have deferred to the president’s judgment in his choice for secretary of Defense. Gates is a competent and experienced nominee. But we are at war, and we need exceptional leadership and insight. Gates unfortunately shares the view of the Iraq Study Group that we cannot win the battle in Iraq; at this point, our best option is to withdraw slowly and to negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran has been at war with us since 1979, and is today the principle instigator of systematic murder in Iraq; to negotiate a truce with that country at this point would be to negotiate our terms of surrender. This would be seen as an historic defeat for America – most assuredly, and notably, in the eyes of the radical Islamic world..

The Iraq Study Group and Secretary Gates see clearly the problems in Iraq and the contributions Iran makes to these problems. They do not think we can win in Iraq because they do not think that we can win in Iran; or, at least, they do not think that we must win in Iran. We must confront Iran to win in Iraq, and, more than that, we must confront Iran if we are to defeat Islamic fascism all over the world. The president’s nomination of Gates, and the Senate’s passive and overwhelming support of him, shows that our leaders have not understood the peril we are in and are not prepared to win the war that is being waged against us.

How could it be that a bitterly divided Washington has suddenly come to a consensus that will surely lead us on a path to failure in Iraq, and then to even more disastrous consequences? Can our country’s leaders really have concluded that the public’s discontent with the war in Iraq changes even one bit the nature of the threat our enemy poses to us? These are questions well worth asking our politicians, and first of all, our commander-in-chief, lest he contemplate changing his mind about the enemy we face.

The president is not unaware of the situation in Iran, but his view of the country is informed by the advisers who surround him, a collection of people from the various sectors of the foreign-policy establishment. His intelligence team, led by the director of National Intelligence, will advise him that the opposition in Iran is weak and divided and that there is no legitimate exile community; thus we have no real alternative to either bombing the country or establishing by diplomacy a modus vivendi. The Pentagon will advise the president that our already stretched forces are unable to engage in another conflict. The State Department and our new secretary of Defense do not think that there is a casus belli and that our best hope for mitigating the many crises of that region is to negotiate with Iran.

So, if we should not expect the president to explain why we must confront Iran, what of the Congress?

The Democrats of course would never confront Iran because they attribute their wins in November to America’s growing dissatisfaction with Iraq. If continued instability in Iraq works to their political benefit, why would they change the subject to Iran, particularly when they have no solution to propose and have always been skeptical that military force will do anything to stop Islamic terrorism?

Many Republicans understand the problems that Iran is causing in Iraq, but they have no wish to be portrayed as warmongers by the media and the Democratic Party. If Americans have had enough with Iraq, it would be only too easy to characterize any confrontation with Iran as the United States becoming hopelessly and dangerously entangled in a region whose ills defy remedy.

Iraq is only one front in a larger war being waged against the Western world. We are under siege by people with an ideology, a plan, hundreds of millions of dollars, and an ever increasing presence on virtually every continent. Yet none of the decision makers in Washington is willing to confront Iran; the threat that Iran poses, as the standard-bearer of Islamic fascism, goes unacknowledged.

This is undoubtedly an unpopular war. Those who define the enemy as radical Islamic fascism are ridiculed by the media and others; the term is dismissed as inflammatory and inapt. It is not inapt, and thus it is not inflammatory. The term “Islamic fascism” is no harsher than those we used to describe our enemies in the Second World War. And just as we did not call all Italians “fascists” then, so too we do not call all Muslims “fascists” now.

Words define the enemy we confront. They help the American people comprehend what motivates the enemy. Without clear, accurate words, we cannot fight effectively: our own people become confused and divided, and the fascists are encouraged to believe that we fear them. When we fail to recognize the connection between Iraq and Iran, we postpone the day when we define a strategy to win the war, instead of a list of steps to retreat from the Iraqi theater.

The Gates nomination and confirmation show that our leaders do not understand the true dimensions of the war. So long as they do not understand this, how can we ever expect to win? (Emphasis added)

Rick Santorum is the outgoing junior Republican senator from Pennsylvania.

But justice, in Mr. Ahmadinejad's eyes, has little to do with the concept as we know it in America, or indeed, the Western world. Instead, it's all about Islamization of the entire world. In making his case, Mr. Ahmadinejad does not position himself as president of Iran, but attempts to set himself up as a spokesman for all Muslims.

Iran itself barely figures in the letter. Instead, Mr. Ahmadinejad focuses on U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the Bush administration's "moral corruption," or as he puts it, the administration pursuit of "darkness, deceit, lies and distortion."

Students of recent Iranian history will recall that the "crime" most often used to justify a death sentence by Islamic Republic revolutionary courts during the early years of the revolution was "corruption on Earth." This was how the regime simply eliminated its opponents or those who rejected absolute clerical rule.

Media commentators in the U.S. have picked up on the "public relations" side of the letter. Mr. Ahmadinejad calls on the U.S. to bring the troops home from Iraq, to cut off support for Israel, and to stop "kidnapping presumed opponents from across the globe" and holding them in secret prisons. He even has some advice for the new Democrat majority in Congress: bend to the Muslim agenda, or you will be tossed out of power.

Mr. Ahmadinejad repeatedly tries to appeal to Americans as people of faith, who share Islamic values. "We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people," he drones. "Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine."

Certainly, Americans are aggrieved by the unnecessary killing of innocent civilians, which is why most of us have little sympathy for Palestinian imams and political leaders who teach their children to strap explosives to their bodies and blow up Jews.

Mr. Ahmadinejad can't help but trot out his old anti-Semitic saw, claiming "the Zionists" control America "because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors."

But to focus on these parts of his letter, however silly and objectionable, would be to miss the main point. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the Hugo Chavez of the Persian Gulf. He knows he soon will have his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Citing from the Koran at the close of his letter, he says that if Americans "repent" of their "injustice," they will be blessed with many gifts. "We should all heed the divine Word of the Holy Koran," he says.

The context of this particular verse (28:67-28, Sura "Al-Qasas," or The Narration), is very clear. It follows a graphic description of destruction and devastation that will befall those who fail to repent of their injustice, i.e., support for Israel and refusal to adopt Islam.

It also sets out the terms of the traditional Muslim warning to the enemies of Allah. "And never will your Lord destroy the towns until He sends to their mother town a Messenger reciting to them Our Verses." This is precisely what Mr. Ahmadinejad does in his letter.

Dump George W. Bush, allow the Muslims to destroy Israel, and adopt Islam -- or else you will be destroyed. This is Mr. Ahmadinejad's message.

-----------------------------------
Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of "Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran" (Crown Forum) and president of Middle East Data Project, Inc.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20061202-102122-5483r.htm

The esteemed historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, in his The Oxford History of the American People, has written of December 7, 1941:

"At the end of this sad and bloody day, 7 December 1941, the 'day that shall live in infamy,' as President Roosevelt said of it, 2403 American sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians had been killed, and 1178 more wounded."

In Hawaii, nearly 150 planes had been destroyed on the ground; at least six battleships had been sunk or rendered non-operational.

Soon, American air assets in Manila would be destroyed. The Japanese would roll over the Malay Peninsula and take Singapore. Guam and other islands in the Pacific would fall. Hong Kong would be taken. The fate of Bataan and Corregidor would be told by the Death March and hellish prison camps. And more. Much more.

Morrison, again, about December 8, 1941:

"To millions of Americans, whether at breakfast in Hawaii, or reading the Sunday paper in the West, or sitting down to dinner in the East, this news of disaster after disaster, seemed fantastic, incredible. As the awful details poured in, hour after hour, incredulity turned to anger and an implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks. On 8 December, Congress with but one dissenting vote declared a state of war with Japan . . . . President Roosevelt, in his war message . . . declared, 'Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization'."

Yes, on December 7th and September 11th there were sneak attacks. Yes, each day was one of infamy. Yes, there were considerable losses of American (and other) lives. Yes, substantial symbols of American power, the Pacific Fleet, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were destroyed. Yes, Americans fought back at Pearl Harbor and on United 93. Yes, the news on those days was fantastic, incredible.

And yes, then, as now, “Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization.”

And yes, on December 8th and September 12th there was among our people, an “implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks.”

But with these comparisons, the picture changes.

In 1941, and for nearly four year after, we saw full mobilization of our great nation’s resources: military, economic, social, spiritual, and political. Every sector of our society was engaged.

Men and women volunteered for the armed services.

Women went into factories.

Rationing was imposed.

Religious leaders prayed, and went into combat with their flocks.

Politicians joined hands, giving FDR what he needed to fight ruthless enemies.

Civilians willingly endured shortages and blackouts.

Kids (like me) collected newspapers, tin cans, used fat and grease - all for the war effort.

The radio, newspapers, and magazines supported the war effort, and exercised disciplined self-restraint about what they published.

Celebrities, who hadn’t enlisted, sold War Bonds and entertained the troops.

Images kept patriotic spirits high: Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the Iwo Jima flag raising; MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines; repatriation of emaciated POWs from Japanese prison camps; Patton, with his pearl-handle revolvers; the London blitz; the liberation of Paris. VE-Day. Then, VJ-Day. Times Square overflowing with joy.

And the man-in-the-street, and his wife, and his children, and all other Americans, knew that we were fighting Germany and Japan (and Italy) because, as FDR said, they posed a grave threat to "life, liberty and civilization.”

As do the radical Islamists who on 9/11 showed us a preview of their nihilism-driven corrupt religion’s vision for mankind, and who, before and since, have maimed and murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children throughout the world.

But after President Bush’s rousing post-9/11 speech to Congress and the American people, after flags flew everywhere for a few months, after passage of some useful but inadequate legislation, do we see within our country Morrison’s “implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks”?

Sadly, we do not.

Indeed, we see the opposite.

We see a narrow Supreme Court majority, infatuated with the romance of international law at the expense of American sovereignty, giving due process rights to terrorists, ignoring established precedent to nullify military tribunals, and treating irregular enemy combatants as if they were mere burglars to be dealt with by our domestic criminal law system.

We see international busybody organizations inspecting our detainee facility at Guantanamo, and solemnly pronouncing a verdict on our treatment of Islamic murderers who would make American citizens their next victims.

We see those murderers coddled, uninterrupted sleep, prayer time, outside recreation, nutritious food, health care by a soft administration bent on mollifying these international busybodies and their domestic crybaby cousins.

We see America-hating organizations such as the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Center for Constitutional Rights enlisting thousands of lawyers whose task is to monkey-wrench the terrorist adjudicatory system, as if they were representing O.J. Simpson in a Los Angeles courtroom.

We see leading newspapers disclosing top secret defense information, surveillance, money tracing, secret interrogation facilities, not only with impunity, but to the cheers of America’s left and those in the world who would destroy us.

We see a mostly partisan Democrat Party in Congress and at the National Committee playing politics with laws essential to our national security.

We see a weakened Republican president proffering legislation for military tribunals that provides for terrorists process at once unnecessary and dangerous, only to be trumped by the likes of grandstanding Republican Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham, who, not content to provide Islamic murderers with all the due process enjoyed by domestic criminal defendants, want to provide them, as well, with classified information about sources and methods. We see this senatorial quartet also determined to prohibit the time-tested “good cop/bad cop ‘technique of interrogation, sleep deprivation, loud music, dietary manipulations’ apparently believing that our military and CIA are dealing with some Chicago street gang, not savages out to destroy us and our way of life.

We see public officials acquiescing to the demands of homegrown Muslim organizations, in an effort not to offend, blinding themselves to that religion’s core belief in jihad, martyrdom, and its ultimate triumph.

We see in America, according to a nationwide Scripps Survey Research poll, that more than one-third of our countrymen suspect the government “assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East. Worse, if that be possible, is that sixteen percent of those polled attribute collapse of the World Trade Center towers not to the jet planes hijacked by Islamic terrorists, but to agents of George W. Bush who somehow, clandestinely, blew up the buildings.

We see in our colleges and universities an inbred corps of fanatic intellectuals whose life’s purpose is to brainwash the young minds entrusted to their care into believing that the enlightenment, Western values, and the political philosophy that created and sustained our nation are all malevolent, and that Islam, the religion of nihilism and murder, is mankind’s true aspiration.

We, who at the Battle of the Bulge shot captured German troops wearing American uniforms and on Guadalcanal incinerated Japanese defenders with flame throwers, we who firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, we who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, now send Senators to Washington who fight the president over “harsh” interrogation of terrorists who often have information that can save American lives.

We see the recruitment of radical Islamists in our prisons, aided and abetted by radical Islamic clergy— paid for by the American taxpayer.

We see politicians willing to turn over America’s national security, and perhaps the ultimate survival of our civilization, to unelected judges, responsible to no one, many of whom have been cloistered for so long that they lack an adequate understanding of the real world.

We see the much heralded publication of the Army Field Manual, providing Geneva Conventions protection barring outrages against personal dignity, like ‘hooding,’ forced nudity, and duct-taping eyes, to Islamic terrorists who behead, dismember, and disembowel captured Americans.

We see, in short, an utter, indeed a frightening, lack of understanding of the principles that animated our creation as the freest most successful nation ever to exist on this earth, principles that carried us through revolution, civil war, world wars, and a cold war.

We see that too many Americans have become ignorant and complacent, and thus broken the faith with those who fought at Yorktown, died at Gettysburg, survived the trenches, landed at Normandy, froze at Chosin, and were imprisoned in Hanoi.

We see our country in thrall to pernicious ideas that have sucked from us the understanding of what we face and the will to face it.

And time is running out.

Unless America wakes up fast, parents, clergy, intellectuals, workers, educators, veterans, celebrities, students, one day, perhaps sooner than later, we will look up and no longer see Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.”

We will see a Mosque.

Henry Mark Holzer, professor emeritus at Brooklyn Law School.

Hat tip: Richard Doubek

"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"

The Pope concluded from these references that "God,is not pleased by blood -- and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature."

Needless to say, peace-loving Muslims around the world entered the debate by immediately losing their collective minds and rioting, burning churches and threatening to launch suicide bombings against Christian targets... including the Pope.

So to review... when Muslims call practitioners (or leaders) of other religions, 'dogs', 'monkeys', 'pigs', etc... or compare non-Muslim religious leaders to mass murderers such as Hitler (his name should be obliterated), that is considered protected free speech. But let anyone say or write anything remotely critical of Islam... and out come the swords! Apparently, the sword of Islam cuts only one way.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of the present Pope. But in truth I don't have to be... I don't count myself among his flock. However, I am tickled pink over what I think is his well-formed strategy to get Europe to finally engage Islam head-on rather than continuing to roll over for increasingly unreasonable demands of Dhimmitude.

If one examines the content and timing of the Pope's statement, it becomes fairly clear that this was no accidental slip of the tongue.

First of all, one doesn't go around casually dropping quotes from obscure medieval emperors into speeches. That sort of thing requires a bit of forethought and research.

Second, if the Pope was casting about for unobjectionable content for his remarks during a politically delicate time in European history, he certainly wouldn't draw from a source that intimated that any aspect of Islam which Mohamed hadn't managed to steal outright from Judaism or Christianity was essentially evil.

Next, the riots which resulted from the prophet cartoons failed to force Europeans to take a stand against Islamic subjugation. In fact they may have actually prevented such a stand from taking place. This is because the issue at hand was not 'Islam vs. Europe'... but rather 'Islam vs. freedom of expression'.

This distinction is quite important.

You see, culturally, Europe prides itself on being extremely diverse. This diversity is only possible because of a delicate ongoing compromise/balance between freedom of expression and cultural sensitivity. However, this is also Europe's Achilles heel. It is the wedge that allowed Islam to divide and conquer European public opinion in the wake of the prophet cartoons.

Quite simply, the sacrificing of freedom of expression during the prophet riots on a narrow range of topics (Islam) did not make Europeans feel threatened since they were already conditioned to feel comfortable with compromise in the name of cultural sensitivity. They felt they had room to negotiate without giving up any part of their core identity. Giving in to the Muslims required a mental adjustment rather than ceding a core position.

However, the one unifying aspect that bridges most of Europe's cultural divides (even among die-hard secularists) is a deep-seated and long-standing Christian identity. One doesn't have to look much beyond most of the European flags to understand how central Christianity is to European self-definition.

I have a hunch that the Pope understood this quite well before he made his remarks.

My theory is that the Pope was disappointed... perhaps even alarmed... at the failure of Europeans to take a united stand during the prophet cartoon riots. So he sat down and figured out a plan that would pit Islam... not against Europe... but against Christian Europe (and ultimately all of Christendom).

He knew that any statement critical of Islam would elicit a swift and violent response, so he was careful to draw it from a historical source and present it as part of a scholarly, albeit tangential discussion. This way, when the expected explosion took place he could feign dismay and regret at the Muslim reaction while avoiding a direct apology. After all, why should he personally apologize for something that has been a matter of public record since the 14th century?

As expected, churches all over the world are now being targeted by angry Muslim mobs and the leader of the Catholic Church is being called unspeakable names... and even threatened... by a wide swath of the world's Muslims.

Europeans might not have been willing to stand up and take a stand for something as ill-defined as a personal freedom... but they sure as hell feel their backs have been pushed to the wall as their very religious identity comes under attack. The proof of this can be found in the fact that both religious and political European leaders are now closing ranks... firmly behind the Pope.

If the Pope's goal was to draw clear battle lines for the coming global struggle that would force Christian Europe to finally dig in and say 'not one more inch!'... he seems to have found an extremely effective way to go about it.

If it was merely an accident... there too, I doubt the Pope can be very unhappy with the results.

And since the enemy of my enemy is my friend... let me say for the record, "Onward Christian soldiers...".

David Bogner

In the field of military science, great shifts in tactics occur very rarely, and often only in conjunction with the deployment of a new technology. The prescient General or Military commander sees how a shift in technology can change the strategic balance, and exploits it with a new tactic. Patton wrote about how the Tank and mechanized warfare could completely change the face or warfare, and render static defenses obsolete. The wehrmacht read his book and changed warfare forever with the blitzkrieg. Here, the Islamic world has taken a change in world technology, and utilized it to wholly change the way battles are fought, probably forever in the foreseeable future. However, this tactic is not dependent on the Muslims themselves possessing any new technology, the means were available at any point in history. Despite its simplicity, this tactic was not thought of, or deployed by any of the great generals. Alexander the Great never tried it, no Roman General ever considered it, not did Genghis Kahn, or any of the Prussian Generals. It was not described or even predicted by Sun Tzu, Napoleon, nor during WWI. Neither the Axis nor the Allies attempted it in any theatre of WWII. The Islamists have created an entirely new form of warfare, based on this new tactic, to which the Western armies seem particularly vulnerable.

For simplicities sake, we can refer to this new tactic as "whining."

The way this tactic is deployed, the numerically and technologically inferior force launches an unprovoked attack on a Western power. They really only need weapons little better than stone knives and bearskins. Due to the fact that it is an attack oriented on surprise, subterfuge, or stealth, they manage to inflict some damage on the Western power, even if that may only mean one or two casualties. The brilliance of the strategy only then comes into effect. Like Genghis Kahn, this original attack force flees, retreating to safe territory. Unlike Genghis Khan, who would have a militarily superior force waiting to pounce on the counter attack, the Muslim armies have no need of a counterstrike force. They break ranks, flee, and retreat into populated areas, dispersing into a population by shedding any uniforms or military accoutrements. The erstwhile attackers adopt a cringing pose to better blend in with non-combatants, and hide behind civilians, multinational or UN forces.

Rather than the former paradigm, where propaganda organs minimize ones own losses and maximize the enemies, in an attempt to effect morale on both sides, their political organs maximize images of their own casualties. They loudly proclaim the utterness of their own defeat and rout, launching into full "Whine" mode. They demand the world community protect them, and condemn the Western power for using such "brutal" means in defending itself. Brilliantly, they use the ineffectiveness of their own assault as a basis for a claim that they the aggrieved party. As an "aggrieved party" they then begin to make demands of the party they just attacked. The demands are for the attacked party to voluntarily concede those strategic objectives the attacker could not achieve by military force. By utilizing the world technological shift, created by having a 24 hour, mass media news cycle, they turn the victims into "aggressors," and in the end use their own military weakness as a basis for making demands of the more powerful state, requiring concessions and reparations.

In no previous conflict has any expansionist movement considered effectively using whining to achieve tactical victory.

Interestingly, whining, as a tactic, only works if your opponent is a good guy! One cannot imagine fighting Stalin by continually launching ineffective attacks on him, and then yelling about how badly he treated your country afterward. Similarly, it would be laughable to postulate a Polish aggression against Hitler's Germany, consisting of a few mortar attacks, followed by pleas to the world about how it shouldn't be invaded over a few measly mortar rounds. The Islamists use our civility and compassion against us. This use of kindness, to exploit the good party, is the very definition of pure, uncomplicated, and evil. It is a tactic of which comic book villains and Snidely Whiplash would be proud.

This strategy has been well known in individual human relations as "the Little Bully." In many families or schoolyards, a smaller or younger individual realizes that he or she can attack larger members with impunity if he cries loudly and piteously enough at any retaliation. However, this situation can only occur when there is a structure or individual with actual or perceived authority over both parties to the incident. Further, that authority must have a clouded sense of justice regarding the individuals appearing before it, either through ignorance of the events, a profound absence of wisdom, or at worst some pre-existing bias in favor of the "Little Bully". It may be that this new tactic is only now viable due to a strengthening of the influence of a "World Community".

If so, then it speaks poorly of the attentiveness, wisdom, and motivations of this developing "Community." This community cannot be said to be ignorant of the provocations of the Islamic states, since their attacks and bellicose statements are widely broadcast. This means that the "Community" is condemning the wrong parties, and giving succor to "the Little Bully" either from a profound absence of sound judgment, or a pernicious bias towards a favored little sociopath. The world "Community" is cast in the role of either the idiot, or the wicked stepmother. The long held dream of a "Community of Nations" will be soured and squandered, if that community continues to express a will that is foolish and bereft of merit. The world will indeed be in sorry shape if it’s military, economic, political, scientific, technological, and philosophical leaders can be overthrown by "whining."

By David Roth

It is shocking to many why he would be so deliberately provocative, while he should be acting in a fashion to reassure the international community that he is not a threat, so as to forestall diplomatic action, sanctions or even a military strike by the US he could not possibly win. Conversely, he seems to be doing everything in his power, from testing missiles and torpedo's to goading the West's sensitivities, in what appears to be a campaign to pick a fight. He is making statements that clearly place him on a war footing with Israel, and in violation of the UN onus about non-defensive warfare. He also said recently, "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm" , Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians, where he also said "The land of Palestine, (referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank) "will be freed soon". In October he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

The pundit class is rife with speculation as to his true motives or game plan is. They optimistically label his behavior as jockeying for a diplomatic position rather than the actual seeking out of violent confrontation. They are wrong. He really is picking a fight, and he will continue progressively more outrageous behavior until he gets it. The puzzle which is boggling the minds of the Western "experts", is why he should want a fight which is sure to annihilate him, cause grievous harm to his country, and what could he possibly gain?

The answer to that question lies in the Muslim mind. Ahmadinejad lives in world steeped with false pride in their culture, their place in the world, their accomplishments and even their relationship with God. The Umah believe that their religion, its precepts and cultural mandates are the final word from God as to how he wishes, no demands that humans live. Despite their believed perfection, the Muslim world has seen its world position do nothing but wane, since the Western Renaissance. Wherever you find Islam as the dominant religion and culture, you find a backward society with a dismal economy, totalitarian rule, little concept of human rights, and much misery. By contrast, those societies the Muslims believe that God retrograded and outmoded through his revelations to Mohammed, the Christian world and the Jews, enjoy freedom, prosperity, respect, and technological preeminence. Even people "not of the Book", such as the Buddhists', Shinto'ists, Hindu and Atheists, seem to be pulling away from the Muslim world and leaving them farther behind than ever.

While this trend is not new, inescapable awareness of it, in the Muslim world, is. With the advent of the information age, to say the Muslim world is reeling with "Future Shock", is a bit like describing a triple amputation as a "flesh wound". They have spent hundreds of years believing themselves to be "the best", but the images coming over the new Computers (they did not invent), on the televisions (they did not invent), through the satellite dishes (they did not manufacture or invent), from satellites (they did not launch), clearly show the world is leaving their culture behind. Even worse, those images show that the world is outstripping them by engaging with gusto in virtually all the activities and behaviors they believe are forbidden by God. Their whole belief system and way of life are in crises.

Ahmadinejad is the leader of the one country in the world, where Islamic Fundamentalism triumphed over modernity, establishing Sharia as the way of life. According to Islam, this should have made Iran God's favorite country. Ever since the end of the Caliphate, devout Muslims have been told that their lands and countries have been suffering because they were not sufficiently in compliance with Gods laws. With the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of Iran's theocracy, it has become the leading example of Islam as a form of governance as well as an ideological paradigm, in much the same was as the USSR was the showcase for the actual application of the principles of Communism. With the theocracy in place in Iran for 30 years now, and with the successful transition of power from Ayatollah Ruyallah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khameni, as well as several sets of turnover in the governmental institutions, there should have been enough time for the "benefits" of strict Muslim rule to have manifested themselves. They have not. The people are more poor than ever. They lack comforts and luxuries. They do not enjoy world preeminence in economics, science, freedom, respect or worst of all, happiness. If the people of Iran look upon the lifestyle of the rest of the world, and see that they envy even some of what we have in our lifestyle, it cuts to the very core of their belief in their way of life. A couple of years ago, it looked as though Iran might be on the verge of another revolution, one that sought a more secular way in the world.

Ahmadinejad, and the clerics, know that if Iran's revolution collapses, Islam itself will be discredited in the same way that Communism failed with the collapse of its test case.

However, if Ahmadinejad can provoke the West into attacking, perhaps even destroying the regime in Iran, Muslims around the world will be able to spend the next 2000 years claiming that the Great Islamic Revolution in Iran would have succeeded, and been the envy of the world had it not been destroyed by the unbelievers and the Dhimmi. Islamic governance as a political movement will be saved from being discredited, and Iran will be held up as the martyr. This is his true game; better he and his country die as martyrs, than to slowly sink into discredited obsolescence and disrepute. He will force this fight, even if he knows it will bring utter annihilation. He will force this confrontation even if he is forced to use nuclear weapons to do it. The more pain and damage he inflicts on the Western World in the process of getting us to destroy him, the greater will his reputation and the "legend of Islamic Revolutionary Greatness" will be 600 years from now, when Muslims are bitterly weeping over the lost greatness brought to the Umah by Revolutionary Government in Iran, "back in it's heyday".

Sadly, we cannot defeat his goals by refusing engage in his conflict. The longer we delay, the greater his reputation will grow, and the more we will suffer before being forced to take him down. The only way to attack his long term goals is to openly challenge him on his motives. If western world leaders are willing to take to the airwaves, and the printed page, and the internet, and even leafleting in Arabic, they must call him out on his agenda. They must be willing to say, "We are greatly saddened that this little man, and this little country, are going to force us to bring great suffering to their people, just to hide the fact that they and their revolution have failed". "The world knows, it is obvious, that Islamic Fundamentalism is a failure." "It has failed its people in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Saudi Arabia, in Iraq, and in Egypt". "Now, simply to distract faithful Muslims from the failure of this ideology, its leaders are driving the people into a suicidal confrontation, simply to avoid having to admit failure". "We will regret being forced to kill the loud small dog, simply because it cannot acknowledge it never achieved the status of a large dog".

This will make it more difficult for the Muslim scholars of the future to proclaim the might of the "lost Great Revolution".

TECHNOLOGY AND TACTICS

Having discussed Ahmadinejad's intentions and strategic aims, let us now turn to his the tactics and technology he will use.

As Iran continues to enrich Uranium using the centrifuge method, the world is failing to realize the nature and extent of the threat due to a lack of imagination. Most of the strategic analysts are assessing the danger of a Nuclear Iran in terms of traditional methods of use of nuclear weapons and devices. They believe that in order for Iran to present an actual threat, they must have a functioning nuclear device, and a delivery system to place that device on or near its target area. They also believe that Iran does not pose a potential threat without the means to produce substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium (HEU). The experts also are operating under the classic assumption that a country with only one nuclear device, or very few, would be unwilling to deploy them in that they would be unwilling to part with their country's single greatest military asset. In the preceding section Irans aims are laid out, the point of this section is to lay out a possible scenario by which Iran and its terrorist proxy agents could carry out a nuclear strike on the US or its allies, bypassing all current safeguards that we assume are protecting us from nuclear terrorism.

Iran has a delivery system that bypasses all known or anticipated means of delivering a weapon, or smuggling a weapon into a western country.

The key to this nuclear strike lies in the enrichment technology Iran is hell bent on pursuing. It is not in delivery systems. Iran does not need a rocket capable of delivering a nuclear device. Nor do they need a device small enough to be man portable, or advanced enough to deliver by air. There has been much written about delivery of a device aboard ship, or aboard a commercial shipping container, so I assume that we have advanced safeguards to protect or reduce the threat of delivery by these systems. I have spoken with some of you about my beliefs regarding the capabilities of orbital satellites and the capacity to scan ships at sea, for signs of telltale emissions, and where I got that knowledge of capabilities. However my current concerns supersede earlier speculation, and my concerns are based on the nature of nuclear weapons themselves. Historically, the development of the Atomic Bomb as a weapons system was driven not only by the technology, but also by the tactical and strategic nature of it's intended use. The US developed the bomb during a total war with the Axis powers, equally advanced industrial societies fully geared to war with the US. We discovered that we could construct a "gun type" device that would detonate if fueled with very highly enriched uranium (VHEU). However, our methods of enriching uranium were primitive, and very time consuming. We could not manufacture enough of the very highly enriched uranium (VHEU), quickly enough, to deploy the multiple numbers of these "gun type" devices in a fashion that would have a strategic impact on the war. Therefore, we also developed the "implosion" type device, which would also achieve nuclear detonation using uranium with a cheaper, faster, more readily produced, less enriched uranium (HEU). We deployed one of each type device over Japan, the "gun type" device was dubbed "little boy" and "implosion" device was called "Fat Man".

Iran is not seeking a large quantity of deployable weapons, intended to be placed on ballistic missiles, bombers, or submarines. They do not face the strategic constraints of a real world power, since they are not trying to win a war. Their objective is simply to take lives and cause devastation. They do not operate on a strategic or even tactical time line, since they are not seeking to remove the capability for retribution. Consequently, their motives liberate their means and methods. Iran can afford to spend any amount of time enriching uranium, so that even a tiny trickle of VHEU is sufficient for their purposes. They will slowly acquire enough VHEU for two "gun type" devices. The gun device is painfully simple, it is simply driving a VHEU projectile into a VHEU receptacle with great force (picture a baseball striking a glove). The VHUE baseball is placed with a driving charge at the rear end of a cannon, and the VHUE glove is sealed into the muzzle of the cannon. When the cannon is fired, the nuclear weapon detonates. Cannons are very easy to build from easily acquired components. Since this is not to be used strategically, and time is not a constraint, the Iranians can deploy the device in a non-traditional manner.

They can build the device on the site of its intended detonation.

In Iran they would manufacture the VHUE, and shape "the baseball" and the "glove" to desired specification. They would then smuggle these two components into the US via separate routes through innumerable imaginable means. Bear in mind that these two items contain no explosives, electronics, fuels or even have any bomb like qualities, they are just machined hunks of solid metal. Meanwhile, in an apartment rented in New York, or Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Miami, or Atlanta, two tenants will begin assembling the cannon in the middle of the living room. The apartment will be in an upscale area and the rent will be fully paid. The two nuclear scientists will have a very respectable demeanor and will behave as expected for young professionals. No one will ever look into their condo. When the device is assembled from easily obtained local components, the two hunks of VHUE, "ball" and "glove" will be brought into the city, and attached to the device. Simultaneously to this activity, other nuclear scientists will have been assembling an identical device, from identical components, at a highly secured location inside Iran such as the Isfahan facility. When both devices are complete, The Iranians will transport the Isfahan device out into the desert and detonate it to make sure it works. The world will see the blast, and there will be all kinds of diplomatic furor. The Iranians will announce themselves to be a nuclear power, and will demand some kind of ridiculous concessions from the Western World or they will "destroy the infidels and unbelievers". In all likelihood, even if the demands are met, they will be followed by yet more demands in a ratcheting cycle ending in the detonation of the device. When we fail to comply, the two or three nuclear scientists in America will set the timer on the device in the condo, and return home to Iran. The US will suffer the worlds first incidence of nuclear terrorism, and will respond in fashion dictated by the whims of whatever administration holds power. Even if the attack is suicidal, generating an overwhelming response from the US, the Iranian regime will consider it to have achieved a victory, simply in the death and destruction wrought in the terror attack, and establish Iran as the return of the global influence of a Caliphate centered in Iran, even if only for a moment.

By David Roth
August 10, 2006

As Americans, we have arrived at the point, hopefully a defining moment, when every American should pause and take stock. Even though an investigation is under way in Europe and the United States which will undoubtedly confirm what we have already been told, it is absolutely irrelevant that the terrorist plot was suggestive of al-Qaida.

The primary issue – the only issue - is that the plot was real. It was fermented, carefully planned, and well orchestrated by highly-trained Muslims. The plot was international in scope and the probable death toll would have been in the thousands. At risk was the continued viability of safe, reliable international aviation and commerce. At least one of the plotters had attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, and more than one of the accused had already prepared a martyrdom suicide tape.

A quick review of recent history is always helpful. Since the WTC attack on September 11, 2001 which killed approximately 3000 people and injured thousands more, many for life, successful Muslim attacks on innocent people have included suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London on July 7, 2005; 58 innocent people who died in two attacks in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2003; and 202 tourists and citizens were ruthlessly killed in Bali in 2002.

Adherents of Islam killed 191 people in Madrid on March 11, 2004 and chose to blow themselves up a few days later when police were closing in to make arrests. Before 2001, recall the first Muslim attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. Before that was the Munich Olympics in 1972 during which athletes were kidnapped and massacred. The U.S. Embassy in Iran was sacked by Muslims in 1979 and hostages were held for over one year. Recall the numerous kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon during the 1980’s. The U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up in 1983 resulting in a tremendous loss of life. The cruise ship Achille Lauro was attacked in 1985 and in the process, a 70-year passenger in a wheelchair was thrown overboard and died. TWA Flight 845 was hijacked in Athens in 1987 and U.S. Navy diver trying to protect the passengers was killed. Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 resulting in 270 deaths. The U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998. Four airliners were hijacked in 2001 - three were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon. The fourth was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed. No doubt you can think of many others including Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber and an attack at the Los International Airport ticket counters. Do you remember hearing recently about college graduate Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar who slammed a rented SUV this March into a crowd of students at the University of North Carolina, hitting nine. The Iranian-born 22-year-old told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that he was attempting to “punish the government of the United States for [its] actions around the world.” In court days later, he said he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” And then there was Naveed Haq, hiding behind potted plants. Naveed Haq laid in wait and abducted a 14-year-old girl he could use as a hostage to enter the Seattle Jewish Federation. With a gun in her back, he pushed his way past security and through the door. He coldly, deliberately shot six women. When a wounded woman tried to flee up some stairs, he followed her, leaned over a railing and killed her.

During the Clinton administration, an undeclared war was fought ostensibly to protect Muslims from ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovinia. During the Bush (43) administration, a war of retaliation for the World Trade Center attack was fought against the Taliban in Afghanistan (and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City which was alleged to have connections to Iraq). In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered. The list of atrocities, wanton slaughter and beheadings by Muslims goes on in the Middle East today – none of whom by the way are extremists Muslims, only the faithful. Countless unsuccessful attacks on American soil were planned by Muslims and thwarted only at the last moment by luck or good intelligence. None of the above even begins to document hundreds of Muslim attacks in the rest of the world.

There is the mounting evidence in the minds of many that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a missile. Can you remember another incident that occurred at the Oklahoma University Stadium, a bombing attempt intended to inflict massive carnage to sports fans in a packed stadium? That incident was also linked to the same Islamic influences of one of the 9/11hijackers.

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23564

What about the Egypt Air plane crash which killed 217? A few courageous analysts revisited the chilling 1999 disaster in which the Egyptian co-pilot, a devout Muslim, reportedly had said "Allah Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," before the plane plunged to its destruction.

And then there is the issue of the bombing by Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 that killed 168 people. Jayna Davis, a former investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, gathered massive evidence of a foreign conspiracy involving Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, including hundreds of court records, 24 sworn witness statements and reports from law enforcement, intelligence and terror experts, all of which she turned over to the FBI, which refused even to accept the material. Apparently in 1995, even the FBI was unwilling to accept the premise that Islam, the "religion of peace," could motivate individuals through its teachings to that level of unspeakable depravity. To an educated, civilized mind, whether secular, Jewish or Christian, it was inconceivable.

For an amazing journey back into the archives of terrorism in the United States, find a copy of "The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing" (Hardcover or Paperback) by Jayna Davis, 2004. It is available through Amazon.com and retail book stores.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0785261036/sr=1-2/qid=1155303828/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-9931552-9675952?ie=UTF8&s=books

Despite Clinton impeachment prosecutor David Schippers' revelation that he was "thoroughly convinced that there was a dead-bang Middle Eastern connection in the Oklahoma City bombing" – the press was, by and large, immune from revisiting such stories, beyond reporting the official government conclusions. Only U.S. News & World Report, in a tiny news item buried in its "Washington Whispers" column, saw fit to report that some top Defense Department officials believe Timothy McVeigh, executed for his role in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, was an Iraqi agent.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110002217

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002216

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22122

Liberal intellectuals in the United States and Europe still foolishly believe al-Qaida’s call for global jihad is the triggering mechanism that acts as an inspiration for the terrorism - which is utter nonsense. (Disclaimer: Each and every person who reads this article must realize that somebody who feels the need to be politically correct, whether out of fear or timidity, cannot by definition speak with honesty.) Forget everything you’ve been told about political correctness and the babble that not all Muslims are Islamic extremists.

Killing and/or subjugating infidels is the single mainstream core belief of Islam – statement of fact! War with Islam, death to infidels and subjugation of non-believers as “dhimmi” constitute the impenetrable hard core about which all Muslim’s form their belief system. Disagree naively out of ignorance and at your own peril. Suffer the same fate as Israel who tried to trade land for peace if you choose. Congressional victims of America’s public education system and the main stream media will soon begin saying what the Democratic Party faithful have been saying all along - there is no threat to the United States from the “Religion of Peace.” Believing any of them is a mistake. The threat to the United States, and Americans in particular, is real and will continue to exist. Why? Because peaceful coexistence with Muslims as equals in a pluralistic society is not one of our choices. Our choices as unbelievers only include three options - accepting Islam, accepting institutionalized inferior status known as dhimmi, or war with Islam.

Negotiation of any other outcome is not possible with the “Religion of Peace,” nor is it permitted by the precepts of Islam, except as a stalling tactic until such day as adherents of Islam feel they have the strength to reassert themselves. Once again, negotiation by Israel, the nations of Europe or the United Nations with Islam is not possible. Win decisively, or at the risk of the rest of humanity, attempt to negotiate and lose inevitably and violently.

Muhammad says that Muslim faithful are “commanded to fight against people” until they become Muslim, and that those who resist risk forfeiting their lives and property. Violent jihad warfare against unbelievers is not a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists as the media and Muslim apologists would have you believe, but a constant element – the axle about which all mainstream Islamic theology revolves. In addition, the “gates of ijtihad,” or free inquiry into the Qur’an and Islamic tradition, has been closed for centuries. Islamic teaching on principal matters is settled and is not permitted to be called into question by the faithful. The Qur’an is not just a theology to the Muslim faithful; it’s is also the law.

A British police official speculated that the Muslim suspects in the most recent terrorist plot may be “homegrown.” Even if all of the suspects were not British citizens, it is totally irrelevant if the suspects were or were not British citizens. They were Muslims. Muslims have no nationalistic allegiance to anything – no country, no government, no geographic region, and even no family - just Islam. You need no other evidence that their willingness to sacrifice their children in the name of Allah. Muslims do not recognize any concept of nationalism or national boundaries – only world-wide Islamic dominion according to the precepts of the Qur’an.

The AP article on August 10th also informed us that as far back as 1995, al-Qaida attempted “to use liquid explosives to blow up a dozen airliners as they flew across the Pacific Ocean to U.S. destinations, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and New York.” Rodolfo Mendoza, a police intelligence official in the Philippines, pointed out the obvious - that the latest plot to blow up commercial airliners simply reveals the group’s unwavering and never-ending resolve – to kill all who Islam considers infidels. “These people are obsessed,” Mendoza was reported to have said. “They will try and try and try again to accomplish their mission.”

The greatest lie of the 21st Century will be, “Islam is a religion of peace.” Knowing and accepting that to be Islam’s public relations Trojan Horse, then recognize that the conflict in the Middle East between Iran, Syria and Israel is nothing less than a war to the death (or conversion, or subjugation as dhimmi), between Islam and the infidels of Judaism and Christianity. The thousands of Christians in the Middle East who have not been protected within the borders of Israel have already been systematically repressed and many brutally slain.

The main stream media and the United Nations would have you believe that Lebanon is a sovereign nation. However, the reality is that Lebanon ceased to exist as a viable independent political entity over a decade ago and its Christian population have been undergoing intense repression. Lebanon has been assimilated by the Muslim “borg.” Today, Lebanon is a delusional figment of international imagination, a government that exists in name only at the pleasure and humor of Tehran. Lebanon was once what many thought was a paradise. Today Lebanon is only the name of a piece of ground upon which the initial battles of the Islamic Wars in the Middle East are being waged. Muslims wish that the battles were being waged inside Israeli borders, as do many in Europe and the United Nations. Fortunately Israel may have other ideas and hopefully it has strong survival instincts.

Win decisively or lose inevitably. Anything less than the defeat of Iran and Syria will be seen by Muslims as a profound defeat of Israel and the United States, which is the principal reason why liberal secular Israelites, Europeans and Americans will tragically try to prevent Israel from winning decisively.

The latest foiled international terrorist plot was only the latest attempt of Muslims to extend their Islamic Wars with all of humanity beyond the Middle East and inside the borders of the United States.

There is some potentially good news coming out of the United Nations. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is reported to be pushing the U.N. Security Council to come up with a plan for ending what Kofi Annan describes as “Israel's conflict” with Iran’s Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon. This can only mean Israel must be gaining the upper hand. In a statement, Kofi Annan's office said the Secretary-General is working "very intensely" on reaching a resolution acceptable to both Israel and Lebanon. He repeated his call to end the fighting and "save civilians on both sides from the nightmare they have endured for the past four weeks."

It should be noted that Lebanon wields no independent power nor controls its own territory and that which is not currently occupied by the IDF is commanded by agents of Iran (Hezbollah) and Syria. "The Secretary-General believes that it ought to be possible for the Security Council to adopt a resolution by the end of the week," his office said. Such a ceasefire, if agreed upon by Israel, would give Iran ample time to re-supply both itself and Hezbollah with more weapons, re-organize on the battlefield, redeploy Hezbollah and Kaytusha rockets advantageously, communicate strategy with Hezbollah and Syria, and set new terrorist objectives.

Watch closely - those who fervently seek the defeat of Israel will most strongly advocate such a cease fire.

Red State Patriot

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride. They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

Source: Spanish newspaper article on Judaism (published in English)

A tragedy is something that due to its randomness and unpredictability, it is something that we can grieve for, but something that is a part of fate that we must simply move past. A tragedy may or may not call upon the survivors to take action; it is dependent on the specifics of the event. Even if that tragedy calls for lessons that can be implemented to prevent future tragedies, there is no moral component which requires retribution. The word "tragedy" is morally neutral. This is the reason that the mainstream media and those politicians who prefer moral relativism with inaction, drone on with the repetitive, soothing, mantra of the word "tragedy". They seek to lull the American public into acceptance and resignation, rather than allow them to maintain the fast-fading moral outrage that followed the events themselves. That moral outrage was the correct response, not an overreaction. That moral outrage and chest-expanding impulse, demanding swift, absolute, and merciless retribution, was the healthy response to what the events of 9/11 truly were. Not a "tragedy", but an "atrocity".

An unknown number of Islamic fanatics, unable to fulfill their desires to completely destroy Western Civilization, had 19 of their agents succeed, in seizing civilian airliners, packed with men, women and children passengers, only to slam them into buildings packed with office workers. This is the very definition of atrocity. The largest casualties occurred in buildings of a completely civilian nature. A horrific atrocity. The fanatic’s efforts were encouraged and cheered by the large number of their co-fanatics throughout the Muslim world. This intentional, diabolic, murder of civilians was not tragic, it was an atrocity. Worse still, it was an atrocity lauded or at least excused by the breadth and depth of the members of a specific religion. It was not a tragedy they celebrate, it was an atrocity. It should be repeatedly called such, by any responsible speaker or writer. The western world should not be sad, we should be outraged, and we should remain so, for as long as a single mullah, Imam, or cleric continues to praise or excuse this atrocity that opened our new millennium.

by David Roth
July 12, 2006

David Roth is a Generation X, former political science professor, now practicing law in Phoenix.

Another example of running out of gas is the decision to restore diplomatic relations with Libya, headed by the lunatic ruler, Moammar Gadhafi. This has been portrayed as a great breakthrough because Gadhafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction programs. But he still has the blood of dozens of Americans on his hands, including the destruction of Pan Am 103 in 1988, and he has never been prosecuted for these crimes. In addition, Gadhafi remains a dictator who shows no sign of giving any freedom to the Libyan people.

Still another example of a foreign policy that is running out of gas is the meeting that took place in Washington, D.C. between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a former leader of a terrorist organization.

It got almost no attention from the media, but Rice met with Agim Ceku, the so-called Prime Minister of Kosovo. We say "so-called" because Kosovo is not a country-not yet. It is a province of Serbia that is now under occupation by foreign forces, including from the U.N. and NATO. Ceku is a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the terrorist group that started a civil war that led to President Clinton ordering NATO intervention in the country on the pretext that he was stopping a "genocide" being committed by the Serbs.

Ceku, who was indicted by Serbia in 2002 for war crimes, is accused of responsibility for the murders by KLA terrorists of 669 Serbs and 18 members of other ethnic groups, 518 counts of inflicting serious bodily harm (including torture) and wounding, and 584 counts of abduction, many of the victims of which are presumed dead. Even after the end of hostilities between Serb forces and NATO, Ceku was accused of continuing attacks on Serbs, driving two-thirds of them from the province of Kosovo.

In meeting with Ceku, Rice was not only ignoring his record of violence, but lending the weight of her office to his campaign to separate Kosovo from Serbia and make it into an independent state. If this happens, it would become a Muslim state, by virtue of the fact that most of those left in Kosovo are Albanian Muslims. The Serbs, by contrast, are Christians.

The KLA, which was later disbanded and whose members were integrated into a "Kosovo Protection Corps," was accused of engaging in jihad terror practices such as the beheading of victims. Photographic evidence depicts this.

So we are fighting Muslim terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan but helping them come to power in Kosovo?

This is a foreign policy that has run out of gas and is running on empty. Strangely, Rice is continuing the Clinton policy on Kosovo. No wonder conservatives like Babbin are throwing their hands up in despair.

By Cliff Kincaid
July 11, 2006

Link to original article:
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/4699_0_2_0_C

"Mr. Russert: 'So it's inevitable they get the nuclear bomb, in your opinion?'

"Gen McCaffrey: 'I think so. I think they're going nuclear five, 10 years from now. We'll be confronted. And that's not a good outcome. That argues that perhaps Saudi money and Egyptian technology gets an Arab Sunni bomb to confront the Persian Shia bomb. None of us want to see proliferation in the Gulf. This is a time for serious diplomatic interventions.'"

The last sentence calling for diplomacy is such a feeble, mantra-like invocation of a hopeless solution when preceded by his confident statements that he thinks they want the bomb and will get it. Virtually no one believes Iran only wants peaceful nuclear generation. Neither do serious people believe that enactable economic and diplomatic sanctions will deflect the Iranians from their objective.

Thus, the offer on the table -- to give them peaceful nuclear technology or threaten them with non-military sanction -- suffers from providing a "carrot that is not tempting and a stick that is not threatening." (Ian Kershaw's "Making Friends with Hitler.")

This evolving mental path to appeasement mirrors in uncanny detail a similar path taken by the British government to Hitler in the 1930s.

Contrary to popular history, the British government was under little illusion concerning Hitler's nature and objectives in the early 1930s. Those illusions only emerged as mental rationalizations later in the 1930s.

In April 1933, just three months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the British government presciently assessed the man and his plans. The outgoing British ambassador to Germany, Sir Horace Rumbold, who had been closely observing Hitler for years, reported back to London in a special dispatch to the prime minister on April 26, 1933. He warned his government to take "Mein Kampf" seriously.

Rumbold assessed that Hitler would resort to periodic peaceful claims "to induce a sense of security abroad," and Hitler planned to expand into Russia and "would not abandon the cardinal points of his program," [but would seek to] lull adversaries into such a state of coma that they will allow themselves to be engaged one by one." Rumbold was sure that "a deliberate policy is now being pursued, whose aim was to prepare Germany militarily before her adversaries could interfere." He also warned that Hitler personally believed in his violent anti-Semitism and that it was central to his government policy.

Back in London, Maj. Gen. A.C. Temperley briefed the prime minister on the Rumbold dispatch that if Britain did not stop Hitler right away, the alternative was "to allow things to drift for another five years, by which time . . . war seems inevitable." In the event, general war in Europe came in six years, not five.

But because the British people, still under the sway of their memory of WWI, were against military action, and because the politicians wanted to spend precious tax revenues on domestic programs, they walked away from their own good judgment.

The unpleasantness of dealing with Hitler and the public's abhorrence of another war led the new British ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric Phipps, responding to the Rumbold dispatch, to argue in that fateful month of April 1933 that: "We cannot regard him solely as the author of "Mein Kampf," for in such a case we should logically be bound to adopt the policy of preventive war." So, he argued, "The best hope is to bind him, that is, by a [disarmament] agreement bearing his signature freely and proudly given. ... By some odd kink in his mental makeup he might even feel compelled to honor it."

Here we have the 1930s version of Gen. McCaffrey's statement. Ambassador Phipps first states the obvious: To wit, if Hitler is as the government believes him to be, logic requires a preventive war. But they don't want to do that, so he hopes Hitler isn't as they know him to be, and they seek a diplomatic agreement, which even Phipps recognized was unlikely to be honored.

Just so, Gen. McCaffrey, representing the overwhelming view of government officials and major media in the West, first states the obvious: Iran will get the bomb. Then he ends with: So let's just do diplomacy.

In fact, Western leaders are resigned to Iran getting the bomb. The diplomacy is understood to be as pointless as getting Hitler to honor a disarmament treaty. But "leaders" have to be seen to be doing something -- even if they know it is futile.

This defeatist attitude exists largely because with the Iraq war as bad precedent -- just as WWI was a bad precedent for another war in 1933 -- military action has been placed, as an emotional response to unpleasantness, out of the question by a weary Western elite.

That is where we are today: about four-fifths down the mental path to appeasement. As unpleasant as dealing with Iran today is, it will be incomparably nastier in a few years when they have the bomb operational. Where are the cold-eyed realists when we need them?

By Tony Blankley, Jun 14, 2006
Tony Blankley is the author of The West's Last Chance and editorial page editor for the Washington Times.