CAIR is not an organization that can be relied upon in any way to promote the moderation and modernization of Islam; rather, it is a mouthpiece for the ultra-radical sect that is the Wahhabi / Salafi Islam. If we as a people assimilate rather then challenge CAIR at every turn, then it will work a fundamental change for the worse in American values. If you wish to have an inkling of Wahhabi core tenants in action, please see this post. Additionally, search the word "CAIR" on this site, and browse through the posts on Saudi Arabia -- the birthplace of Wahhabi Islam, on the site Memri.org.
With that, let us parse CAIR's statement of yesterday issued in support of their latest cause celebre, urging Congress to become more involved in establishing peace in the Middle East. That, on its face, is certainly a noble endeavor. Though, in all honesty, the U.S. has been very involved in this for decades. But let us not prejudge, CAIR might have some ideas of which we have not yet thought.CAIR SAYS:
I am not impressed so far. Middle Eastern monarchs and governments have been blaming all of the problems of the Middle East on Israel since its inception. This has everything to do with the Wahhabi / Salafi dogma that it is the world's superior religion, destined to rule over all, as well as the Wahhabi dogma that Judaism is innately evil and must, in the end, be destroyed for Wahhabi Islam to triumph. Israel is a beacon of democracy and capitalism with a far higher standard of living for its citizens -- Jewish, Christian, AND Palestinian Muslim -- then any other Middle Eastern country. That it should be so -- without any oil or other natural resources that abound elsewhere in the Middle East -- is very telling.
In his speech before Congress, King Abdullah stated: "The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine. …I come here today, as your friend, to tell you that this is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world."
To the extent a problem exists, it is a problem created by the surrounding autocracies, who use Israel as a scapegoat and the Palestinians as pawns. The Wahhabi and Salafi Muslims, of which CAIR is but one tentacle, want Israel wiped from the map. If you believe CAIR, then the demise of Israel and institution of a Muslim state in formerly Israeli lands would be the end of all of the problems of the Middle East. But, given what we know of Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, in reality it would only be the end of the very beginning of our problems with the Wahhabi / Salafi Muslim world.CAIR SAYS:
Given our current policies towards Israel, no reformulation is necessary. We have stepped in with an eminently fair two state solution and a road map to peace. The first step from the Palestinian side is and has been for the Palestinians to stop murdering innocent Israeli civilians. Just what about that has to be reformulated? Must we accept wanton murder and Wahhabi attempts at genocide? Or must we accept and even support a Hamas led government that has as its fundamental thesis the destruction of Israel?
It is vitally important that our elected representatives reformulate a Middle East policy based on the cherished American principles of peace and justice for all people.
In actuality, Hamas is an outgrowth of Wahhabi Islam, and several members of CAIR have been sent to jail for their support of Hamas. What you will never see from CAIR is an explicit denunciation of any atrocity committed by Hamas. The reasonable words chosen by CAIR do not hide the blood of their actions.CAIR SAYS
"For too long the plight of the Palestinians has been ignored in the halls of Congress. For too long the discussion has been one-sided. Our lawmakers have spoken out in support of Israeli rights and national security, but appear content to leave the Palestinians with neither rights nor security. To the Muslim world, this is perceived a double standard and remains the number one source of anti-American hostility.
This is so thoroughly disingenuous as to be laughable. Any cursory study of the plight of the Palestinians since the birth of Israel will show that there has been a cynical manipulation of them -- but it has been by other Middle Eastern countries who have insured their poverty and used them as proxies to attack Israel. As to the U.S. not helping the Palestinians, until the election of Hamas, we were pumping millions of dollars in aid into the Palestinian economy and attempting to build an infrastructure. We supported the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from Gaza. But what have the Palestinians made of this chance? Nothing. Actually, worse then nothing. The Palestinians are now in a true civil war, with the gangster like PA, who have embezzled countless aid funds over the years on one side, and the radical Islamicists of Hamas on the other side. And sticking their fingers into this witches brew are the various middle eastern countries playing off one side against the other to insure that there is no peace with Israel.
The statement that our mistreatment of Palestine is the source of anti-American hostility is a giant canard. Wahhabi Islam has been described as more racist then the KKK -- there is both a hatred infused in true believers from childhood against anyone who is not a Wahhabi Muslim, and a sense of superiority to anyone not a Wahhabi Muslim. That exists wholly separate and apart from the question of Israel. And what CAIR and other Wahhabists want is U.S. support for a plan that will eventually lead to the destruction of Israel. Never, never be fooled by the lies of CAIR.CAIR SAYS
I agree, it is a tremendous tragedy. For those Palestinians who live at peace in Israel and who flatly refuse to have anything to do with the PA and Hamas, their standard of living is the highest among any Palestinians living in any state in the mid-East. At this point, Palestinians in Gaza are out of control. While there is no butter, money for guns and militias seems to flow like water. So how is that the responsibility of the West to fix? There is a problem, but it is not one caused by the U.S., nor can it be fixed by the U.S. without simply giving more support to the ever growing civil war. Further, while we may choose to give aid at times to Palestinians, that aid is a gift, it is not a right which they -- or CAIR -- can demand. The Palestinians portray themselves as perennial victims -- a choice of roles vigorously supported by CAIR and other Middle Eastern countries. When will the Palestinians ever take responsibility for their own actions?
"A tragedy is unfolding in Palestine with 70 per cent of the population now living below the poverty line. Unemployment is nearly 40 percent and expected to rise to more than 70 percent.CAIR SAYS
Isn't it nice to see CAIR and the Wahhabi's pick up on the language of Jimmy Carter? We have long attempted to convince Israel not to expand settlements, and indeed, Israel has given essentially the entire Gaza Strip to Palestinians, and has pulled back from many of its settlements in the West Bank. As to the buzz words "Apartheid-like," there is nothing stopping the Palestinians from setting up an orderly and productive society in Gaza. The solution begins there -- not with the United States kowtowing to the demands of Wahhabi Islamists.
"The choices that Israel makes have implications for the United States. It is time for America to use its power to influence counterproductive Israeli policies such as building illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land and subjecting Palestinians to Apartheid-like existence.CAIR SAYS
If no other sentence by CAIR gives away their true intent, this one certainly does. CAIR is asserting an innate right to claim Jerusalem for the Muslim world. The fact that Jerusalem is the most holy site in the world for Jews and Christians is not mentioned -- nor, I doubt, did it ever enter the author's mind. Why is that? This goes to the ultimate intent of the radical Wahhabi Islamists -- to wipe Israel from the map, and indeed, reinstitute claim to all lands that were ever in Muslim hands historically. That is step one.
"Any real and lasting resolution to the Middle East conflict will also have to address Israel's brutal occupation, the Palestinian right of return and the holy status of Jerusalem for Muslims worldwide.
Israel is a state with both a legal and historical claim to the land on which it sits, including Jerusalem. Israel is not an occupying entity. As to brutality, Israel's hands are not clean. But, in comparison to the brutality of the Palestinians and other Islamists, with the slaughter of women and children applauded by the Arabs, there is no comparison whatsoever. To call Israel brutal while ignoring the actions of Palestinians and their radical Muslim supporters goes beyond hypocrisy. They think we are guilt ridden idiots to be manipulated.
I could go on listing what CAIR says, but much of what I would say in response is already set forth above. The bottom line is that CAIR is a viper in the midst of our secular liberal democracy. While I, like Voltaire, will defend CAIR's right while in this country to say what they want, I will, and urge you to join me, in doing everything possible to thwart CAIR from taking their twisted messages into the acceptable mainstream of American thought.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Keeping an Eye On CAIR: Part III - CAIR & "Middle East Peace"
Hillary & FDR: Inviting An Unfavorable Comparison
Senator Hillary Clinton is in an unenviable position. She is having to stake out positions ever further left in order to placate the highly vocal, take no prisoners far left who seem be in control her party (see here). Nonetheless, she is simultaneously making a desperate effort to maintain a patina of credibility with the moderates and conservatives who form the bulk of the electorate - and without a portion of whom she has no chance of winning the Presidency.
The irreconcilable tension between those two goals was on evidence the other day in Senator Clinton's remarks to an audience from the Center for American Progress. As part of her remarks, she chose to quote from a speech made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt just days following the onset of hostilities in World War II:
"We are now in this war. We are all in it, all the way. Every man, woman and child isBut what Hillary omitted from her remarks was the salient point FDR made in that speech:a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history," Sen. Clinton quoted, adding "That was presidential leadership that understood that when American soldiers are in harm's way, we are all at war."
"The United States can accept no result save victory, final and complete . . . The sources of international brutality, wherever they exist, must be absolutely and finally broken . . . We're going to fight it with everything we got."But the dissonance did not end there. Following her remarks, "when asked point blank whether she believed America should win the war in Iraq, she hemmed and hawed, refusing to answer directly."
You can read the whole story here and the full text of Roosevelt's famous speech addressed to the nation here.
If Hillary Clinton is going to be successful in her Presidential bid, it would behoove her to choose carefully whom she quotes and whom she puts forth as a model of presidential leadership. The comparison it invites in this instance is not flattering. We are able to compare the resolute and forward looking leadership of FDR in order to achieve victory with Senator Clinton's determination to withdrawal from Iraq whatever the cost in order to achieve the Presidency. I think it fair, on that comparison, to paraphrase Senator Bentsen -- "Senator Clinton, you're no Franklin Roosevelt."
As a postscript, I would add a warning to Senator Kerry should he ever decide to quote the same lines from FDR's speech as did Senator Clinton. FDR also included the following in his speech:
It is not a sacrifice for any man, old or young, to be in the Army or the Navy of the United States. Rather is it a privilege.
The Poison That Is Multiculturalism
Diana West views multiculturalism as the single poison that is allowing for the march of radical Islam throughout the West. I could not agree more.
Only one faith on Earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it -- without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.Read her entire article in Townhall.
For a round-up of prior posts on multiculturalism or dealing with issues arising out of the multiculturalist's philosophy, see:
Guardian Sees Moral Equivalence Between U.K. & Iran
Britain's Existential Problem: Multiculturalism (Part I)
How to Define a Multiculturalist's Nightmare
A Hilarious Guardian Hit Piece or How to Twist the Fact When They Are All Bad
In the U.K. - The Liberal World On Its Head
Multiculturalism and the Death of Liberal European Mores
Hello, Auntie-Mum . . .
The Muslim Council of Britain & Its Plan For State Sponsored Islam in Schools
Reaction to the Muslim Council of Britain's Plans for Britains Schools
Trying to Wake Europe
U.K. Insanity - Criminalizing Criticism of Islam
Finnish Suicide
Germany Wakes Up to Its Own Problems With Fundementalist Islam
The Problems With Appointing a Special Prosecutor
Pelosi - Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place
The Wall Street Journal takes a serious look at the grist that I had fun with here.
Rarely Discussed Efforts to Bring Stability to Fallujah
Fallujah was the main center of Sunni and al Qaeda insurgents at the start of the war. It is a major city in Anbar province. If you recall, it was the city were the bodies of the four burned and mutilated contractors were hung from a bridge, and it was the site of a major offensive by the Marines some time ago.
Today, Marines are operating in Fallujah, both with military partrols and with civilian reconstruction efforts. The military aspect of operations is what takes up 99% of all reporting. Rare is the time when you read an article that touches on the reconstruction effort or civilian life in outlying cities in any depth. I remember last year one reporter for MSM said, and I paraphrase, "there are many good things happening in Iraq, but we don't report those things out of fear that they will become the target of insurgents." That is not an indictment; she was being very sincere.
Today, we get that very rare look into the civilian side of Fallujah, as well as some of the reconstruction efforts. The author of the In Iraq Journal interviews Marine Staff Sergeant Tyler Belshe who works for Civil Affairs.
The interview is very frank, open, and not sugar coated. It discusses the successes, the failures, and the limits of what the Marines can do in Fallujah. It shows the problems of dealing with Iraqi's who want to live in peace but who are under constant strain from gangsters, for lack of a better term, and who are still evolving to the point where they have the collective internal confidence to stand up and say "no more." I walked away from reading the interview with the belief that what the Marine's are doing in Fallujah is to buy the time for that change in collective paradigm while helping it along with good works. Its a slow process built on each small success.
I won't cherry pick quotes from this one. Because the topic and message is so nuanced, you really need to read the whole interview in context. You will find it here.
Friday, March 9, 2007
The FBI and NSL's - Trouble Looms on the CounterTerroism Horizon
There is a partisan storm on the horizon in response to the Dept. of Justice's Inspector General's report on FBI usage of National Security Letters, otherwise known as NSL's. And it appears to be both out of proportion to the scope of the problem and destined to lead to changes that will only further handcuff our counterterrorism efforts.
Prior to 9-11, our counterintelligence system was dysfunctional for a myriad of reasons. For example, Chinese walls prevented sharing of information, and there was difficulty in getting timely FISA warrants to examine potential terrorist leads such as to examine the 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui's, hard drive. Those are just two examples of many systemic problems. In the aftermath of 9-11, and in response to the systemic problems, the government implemented the Patriot Act, one provision of which -- Section 505 -- deals with NSL's.
The NSL is a unique administrative subpoena that was in existence before 9-11, but which was expanded in scope and made easier to secure by the Patriot Act. NSL's are unusual in two respects -- one, they do not require judicial overview to be issued. They are authorized by the Special Agent in charge of a FBI Bureau field office. Two, they only allow access to limited information. NSL's allow FBI agents to access financial data, internet usage data, telephone data, and credit report information. An NSL does not allow for eavesdropping or a physical search. Those are still the sole province of a warrant that must be authorized by a judge. Further, an NSL can only be approved if it is certified in the request that the information sought is:
"relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such an investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment . . . "
to gather enough information to support a warrant for search or surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
assess communications and financial links between the target and others
collect information to fully develop national security investigations or to close out such investigations as unwarranted
develop leads for other terrorism related agencies
corroborate information derived from other investigative techniques
Director of the FBI Mueller has taken responsiblity for his agency's shortcoming. Further, the FBI has issued a public statement on the matter here.
So, to put this in perspective, what we have is a vital investigative tool that is central to the FBI's investigation of terrorism, that is designed to find information limited in scope, and that has been used for proper investigative goals. We also have a bookkeeping and administrative system in the FBI that needs to be cleaned up and it needs to be done immediately. Lastly, documentation surrounding NSL's needs to be enforced. If necessary, a few heads should roll. Fair enough.
But if you listened to the crowing from the liberals today -- and unfortunately led by Arlen Specter -- one would be led to believe that the FBI is completely out of control and mining private data for a conspiracy worthy of Fox Maulder's imagination. They were falling all over themselves in the rush to get to a camera and take unbelievably outlandish shots while not one acknowledges any beneficial use of the NSL as a very timely and flexible investigative tool at the heart of the war against terrorism. See here and here.
From the New York Times:
“It is time to place meaningful checks on the Bush administration’s ability to misuse the Patriot Act by overusing national security letters,” said Senator Harry Reid."
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, “National security letters are a powerful tool, and when they are misused, they can do great harm to innocent people.” Mr. Leahy said his panel would hold extensive hearings on the inspector general’s findings.
In the House, Representative Silvestre Reyes, the Texas Democrat who heads the Intelligence Committee, said that the inspector general had painted “a highly troubling picture of mismanagement” and that it was up to Congress to “conduct vigorous oversight of this situation.”
Among the Republicans voicing anger was Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “When it comes to national security, sloppiness should be reserved for the hog lot, not the F.B.I.,” said Mr. Grassley.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who had been pressing for a review of national security letters since 2005, said the report "confirms the American people's worst fears about the Patriot Act."
"It appears that the administration has used these powers without even the most basic regard for privacy of innocent Americans," Durbin said in a statement. He called for "reasonable reforms" to the Patriot Act that have been proposed, but not acted on, in the past. "We should give the government all the tools it needs to fight terrorism," Durbin said. "However, I continue to believe that the Patriot Act must include reasonable checks and balances to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, like Specter a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the problems identified by the inspector general were a "profoundly disturbing breach of public trust." Schumer also promised that the panel would hold hearings and then likely consider legislation to rein in portions of the Patriot Act.
"This goes above and beyond almost everything they've done already," Schumer said of the allegations in the report. "It shows just how this administration has no respect for checks and balances."
. . . .
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the report shows the need for an independent investigation of the Justice Department's anti-terrorism tactics.
"It confirms our greatest suspicions about the abuse of Patriot Act powers and, specifically, national security letter powers," Romero said. "The report is really only a description of the tip of the iceberg."
The Far Left - Let No Voice Be Heard But Their Own
The last time the Democratic Party went to the far left, it culminated with the nomination of George McGovern for President, circa 1968. It proved disastrous in the long run for the Democrats. Is there any reason to believe that a hard turn to the left will result in any different consequence now?
The far left are every day speaking louder and louder, and all 
members of the Democratic Party are listening with uneasy attention. The first real demon
stration of the far left's new found power was the successful inquisition directed at ousting Joe Lieberman from power, thus insuring ideological purity. Now, the far left feels they hold the trump card over most, if not all Democrat office holders. The party of Roosevelt and Truman is now the party of Kos, Moveon.org, Michael Moore and George Soros.
A hallmark of the far left seems to be that speech should only be free if it is in concordance with their own deeply held views. Certainly, the hallmark of free speech and open debate is precisely that -- you seek out others whose views differ, and you debate them. Not so for the far left, and today is but the latest example.The Nevada State Democratic Party is pulling out of a controversial presidential debate scheduled for Aug. 14 in Reno and co-hosted by Fox News, according to Democratic insiders.
The debate was being hosted by Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio, the Nevada State Democratic Party and the Western Majority Project.
. . . .
The state party has been under pressure from progressive activists across the country, led by MoveOn.org, to cut its ties with the debate.
According to MoveOn, more than 265,000 people signed a petition sent to the Nevada State Democratic Party.In announcing the event, a statement posted by the state Democratic Party has Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offering high praise of the debate partnership with Fox.
“This is more great news for Nevada,” he said in the statement. “I'm happy FOX News will be a partner for the August presidential debate. Western issues will be a major focus of this debate in particular. With FOX News as our partner, candidates will have an opportunity to not only speak to Nevada voters, but voters across the West who will be instrumental to electing a Democratic president in 2008.”
But such was not to be allowed in the far left corner of the world dominated by Kos and MoveOn.org. Harry Reid proved once again his lack of any principles and, as the shrill cries came from the far left, he quickly folded. Reid now allegedly shares "activist concern about the event."
I personally think this is suicidal. Not that I am complaining, mind you. The ever greater drift to the left of the Democratic party left me behind a decade ago. But those voters still in play - the swing voters who do not share the purity of the belief of the far left -- are watching. And grossly ideological acts like this which both cast a pall over freedom of speech and evince a refusal to countenance any other opinion to be heard cannot be good for the Democratic Party.
Update: The following official statement from Fox News appears on Drudge:
Major Terrorist Capture Reported by Fox
Fox is reporting the capture of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a terrorist who came to prominence following the death of al Zarqawi. He is identified as the leader of the al Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq. According to reports from the Iraq military, al-Baghdadi was captured alive Friday when a group he led attempted a raid in an area on the western outskirts of Baghdad. The U.S. has yet to confirm al Baghdadi's capture.
"But, . . . what of the Goracle?"
Bafflement is being reported amongst the high priests of our new, green recoligion as they ponder why their message does not seem to be penetrating the undeducated masses:
TEN NETWORK's programmers are baffled. With so much attention on climate change and consumer research indicating viewers were keenly interested in a 2½ hour feast of practical advice on how they might save the planet, Ten's ratings for the Cool Aid blockbuster on Sunday night were still a disaster.
. . . .
"Truthfully, we're confused," says Ten's network head of programming, Beverley McGarvey. "They didn't come. It's not like they came to the show, sampled it and went away. They didn't come.
"We had study guides in schools, we had the full support of the print media, both editorially and with advertising, and an extensive [Ten Network] on-air campaign with a number of different creative treatments and different stances.
"We spent a fortune to get the audience there and it didn't work. We've talked about it quite a lot internally. We're disappointed."
Ten isn't alone. Despite the focus on climate change, the green conundrum is alive across myriad product categories, . . ."
Now admittedly this occurred in Australia. But I believe the general inferences that can be made are equally applicable to Western eco-church.
Thus, a few suggestions for the Goracle, as the Grand High Priest (using the Oscar as a sceptre), and his underlings. Preaching and gross hypocrisy are quite often mutually exclusive. Most of us less educated types are left high and dry when we see the Hollywood elite, including the Goracle, preaching how we commoners need to be drastically changing our lives while they merely purchase carbon credits to assuage their guilt as they climb into their gas guzzling cars and limos waiting to take them to their private jets. Perhaps that may have something to do with the less then desirable results discussed in the article above.
Two, stop the crushing of dissent. If what the Goracle and his bishop's pontificate is true, then why are contra-opinions being dismissed out of hand instead of being engaged in open debate. Many of us "fly over people" are curious about that.
Now, clearly our newest recolegionists are trying every technique in the left's hand book to promote their recoligion, but until the hypocrisy ends and legitimate debates are heard, don't expect the masses to embrace their every edict.
An IRGC General Goes Missing & Bad Things Start to Happen for Terhan
Amir Taheri looks at the importance of the defection of Ali-Reza Askari to America and ties it in to a spate of bad events for the Iranian theocracy that have happened of late
'A VERY big fish" - so Tehran sources de scribe former Deputy Defense Minister Ali-Reza Askari (sometimes called "Asghari" in the West), who disappeared in Istanbul on Sunday. Askari's disappearance fits an emerging pattern. Since December, the United States and its allies appear to have moved onto the offensive against the Islamic Republic's networks of influence in the Middle East:
* Jordan has seized 17 Iranian agents, accused of trying to smuggle arms to Hamas, and deported them quietly after routine debriefing.
* A number of Islamic Republic agents have been identified and deported in Pakistan and Tunisia.
* At least six other Iranian agents have been picked up in Gaza, where they were helping Hamas set up armament factories.
* In the past three months, some 30 senior Iranian officials, including at least two generals of Revolutionary Guards, have been captured in Iraq.
All but five of the Islamic Republic agents seized in Iraq appear to have been released. One of those released was Hassan Abbasi, nicknamed "the Kissinger of Islam," who is believed to be President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's strategic advisor.
Among those still held by the Americans is one Muhammad Jaafari Sahraroudi, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander wanted by the Austrian police in connection with the murder of three Iranian Kurdish leaders in Vienna in 1989.
All this looks like a message to Tehran that its opponents may be moving on to the offensive in what looks like a revival of tactics used in the Cold War.
This is all good news. You can read the rest of Mr. Taheri's article here.
Dr. Santy Expounds On Displacement by the Left
Dr. Sanity shining her spotlight on the pscyhological malignancies of the left as they ignore successes occurring in the surge in order to embrace and revel in defeat.
The truth is that Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha and the other Democratic leaders are completely uninterested in whether or not the Surge might work, primarily because they are wholly committed to American failure in Iraq.Read the whole post here.
Failure in Iraq means success for them, and a failure for President Bush and Republicans.
As I commented in the post just prior to this one: The Democrats are far more interested in "directly challenging President Bush" than they are in directly challenging the real enemies of civilization or the United States.
. . . .
What we are witnessing then, in their indifference to any actual facts about the matter; or their casual lack of concern the consequences of their thoughtless behavior and frenzied oppositional activity--is a psychological defensive maneuver that is probably the most common psycological response to the worldwide threat of Islamofascism since 9/11. This response is a very specific kind of psychological denial; and it is called displacement.
Muslim Militants Imposing Their Version of Islam in the West
These are two videos from a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. segment on how muslim militants in Candada are coercively imposing their view of Wahabbi Islam upon other "moderate" muslims in the country.
Hattip: LGF
Keeping An Eye On CAIR: Part II
What follows is an editorial from Investor's Business Daily on CAIR's extreme agitation over the first Secular Islam Summit held here in the U.S. The editorial is so good, I reproduce it here in its entirity.
What Is CAIR Afraid Of?
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 3/6/2007
Politics And Islam: The first Secular Islam Summit was a success if for no other reason than it intimidated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the PR machine of militant Islam.
The Washington-based group that boycotts airlines and bullies radio personalities and politicians into toeing the Islamist line is clearly worried about the message from Muslim reformers.
It dispatched its henchmen to Florida to shout the reformers down at their confab earlier this week. CAIR also posted on its Web site no fewer than four stories bashing the event and its courageous speakers, many of whom are women calling for an end to inequality and mistreatment under radical Islam.
CAIR declared the summit illegitimate because few of the participants are "practicing Muslims," and those who are, it claims, are merely pawns playing into the hands of "Islamophobes."
"In order to have legitimate reform, you need to have the right messengers," asserted CAIR spokesman Ahmed Bedier.
And who might that be? The four CAIR executives who have been successfully prosecuted on terrorism-related charges? The CAIR co-founder who said the Quran should replace the U.S. Constitution as "the highest authority in America"?
True voices of moderation are the delegates to the Secular Islam Summit, who insisted in their declaration that mosque and state should always be separate. They also called for tolerance for non-Muslims, and an end to violent jihad. CAIR should take notes.
So what if many of them are ex-Muslims? They risked their lives to leave Islam and now dare to openly criticize an ideology that everyone else is afraid to criticize. What these brave souls have to say carries far more weight than anything said by CAIR, which couldn't even bring itself to condemn Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11.
Yes, Bedier argued, but the summit's "funding is coming from the neoconservatives." An article posted by CAIR suggests "Israeli intelligence" is behind the movement.
In CAIR's kooky world, the Zionists are behind everything, even 9/11.
But if anyone was behind 9/11, it was the Saudis. And guess who bankrolls CAIR? Right: the Saudis.
Fittingly, CAIR's Bedier balked when summit delegate Tawfik Hamid, a former terrorist, challenged him to denounce Saudi sharia law for "killing apostates, beating women and stoning women."
"This is not about Saudi Arabia," he huffed. "We condemn any nation that misuses Islam, but we're not going to condemn an entire nation. That's like condemning London (sic)."
Another CAIR sugar daddy is the ruler of Dubai, which acted as the staging ground for the hijackers and the transit point for 9/11 cash.
Sheikh Mohammed, who before 9/11 requisitioned cargo jets to supply bin Laden's Afghan camps, owns CAIR's D.C. headquarters through his foundation, which also holds telethons for Palestinian "martyrs."
The same foundation recently pledged $50 million to CAIR to boost its operations, which includes a legal shop set up to intimidate critics with vexatious lawsuits.
Radical groups like CAIR have been on the offensive, primarily because counterattacks by moderates have been few and far between.
But the Secular Islam Summit offers a ray of hope. Just a handful of reformers gathered in Florida made CAIR squirm. Imagine if hundreds of moderate Muslim voices rose up and challenged the Saudi-backed Wahhabi lobby.
Hattip: Little Green Footballs.
Update: Dr. Sanity has an extensive post that speaks to and beyond the Secular Islam Summit.
Update: And it appears that CAIR is squealing like a pig.
Looking Up the BBC's Knickers
Robin Aitken, 25 years a BBC reporter, takes a long look up the BBC's knickers and tells us what he finds in his new book - Can We Trust The BBC? A hint -- Mr. Aitken tells us in advance that the view is decidedly not pretty. I am waiting for his book to hit the bookstores.
From my own personal standpoint, I have great respect for the BBC and all that the organization does as a whole, but by the same token, I believe that the BBC News Division is a cancer on the U.K. - and everywhere else it is shown in the world. I can recall sitting in a flat outside London a few years ago, just before the Iraq War began, and having my jaw drop in disbelief at just how far left the BBC news was in what it chose to report and how it reported it.
What makes the BBC news division truly objectionable is that it operates without having to compete in the marketplace. All citizens of Britain fund it, and it operates distinctly to the left of center, expousing both directly and by omission, a firm belief in multiculturalism and related views. Unlike PBS in America, which has more then once been threatened with funding cuts when it has strayed even a little out of the political mainstream, the BBC is a monolith that operates without adult supervision. It has worked a sea change in driving Britain to the socialist and multicultural left in the past half century, and it has done so on the public tit. It has never been challenged. Perhaps that will change with Mr. Aitken's new book.
Although there is tremendous publicity in the U.K. surrounding this book, the BBC has put a lid on it, refusing to comment or grant an interview with its former reporter. As Mr. Aitken states, in an article on 18 Doughty Street:Funny that not one of them seems to want to cross swords with an obscure reporter who has had the temerity to point out that the Corporation’s claim to impartiality is a Big Lie. And that if word was to get out about just how unfair, one-sided and biased most BBC programmes are there could be consequences. The Corporation’s cherished reputation might be irreparably damaged.
One can only hope that this leads to a groundswell at the grass roots level. In Britain of the past twenty years, it is not that there has been a silent majority of moderates and conservatives, it is that there has been a silenced majority. The first step towards normality in the U.K. involves, almost out of necessity, taking a very serious look at spinning off the BBC news division and letting it operate in the free market.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Trying to Wake Europe
The Gates of Vienna is covering the work of SIAD -- Stop Islamification of Denmark, as they take their activism beyond the borders of Denmark and take to the European stage.
Read the whole story here. It is heartening to see at least some sanity emerging from the continent before it is too late. If you or anyone you know can be there to support this group, please, by all means do so.SIAD is carrying its message to the very heart of the EU on September 11th. Anders Gravers, the founder and leader of SIAD, recently sent me the following press release:
Demonstration outside the European Parliament
September 11th 2007
Europeans are saying
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
NO SHARIA HERE!
So join the call
All European nations must be represented
SO IF YOU LOVE FREEDOM
IF YOU LOVE YOUR COUNTRY
BE THERE!!
The organizers of the demonstration are: SIAD (Denmark) sioe@siad.dk phone: +45 96771784 No Sharia Here (England), sioe.nsh@btinternet.com. We are in contact with Akte-islam in Germany, which is organizing the German participation. We seek people / organizations from all other European countries who will organize participation by their own countrymen. For questions or coordination amongst countries, contact SIAD or No Sharia Here.
Surge Succeeding; Dems Seek to Pullout
If one were to juxtapose all of the news from today and the past few days, "Surge Succeeding; Dems Seek to Pullout" would have to be the headline. There seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance there, does there not?
For a roundup of highlights:
News From the Surge
Iraq the Model
Back to (Iraqi) Politics
Street Justice
Imposing Law Enters Week III
Jules Crittenden
Pressing Petraeus
Michele Malkin
Gen. Petraeus Speaks
Powerline
Grounds for cautious optimism in Baghdad
Victory Caucus
It Was Inevitable
More Surge Achievments
Clearing Sadr City
Dept. of Defense
Baghdad Security Efforts Seem to Yield Results
Democrats Seek to Pullout:
My Posts:
Dems Assist Bush With Iraq Planning - Develop Plans B thru Z
Pelosi & Murtha Plan Slow Bleed / Vote Buying Strategy
New York Times
Democrats Propose Iraq Pullout in 2008
Washington Post
Democrats Unveil Pullout Plan for Iraq
Not the Real Vote
Powerline:
Never let the facts stand in the way of appeasing an interest group
And in the applauding a pullout catgory:
Al Jazeera
Hassan Abujihaad, U.S. Convert to Islam - Busted
Hassan Abujihaad, a navy vet and convert to Islam formerly known as Paul R. Hall, 31, Phoenix, was arrested today and charged with material support for a conspiracy with British Islamists to kill U.S. nationals and for transmitting classified information -- i.e., naval ship locations. It seems we finally have a real leaker being charged with a crime. Given that the NYT is able to publish our state secrets with impunity, and given that Scooter Libby faces jail for leaking something that was not illegal, it is comforting to see, at least once, our government apparently geting one right.
Read the whole story here.
Update: More on this story at Counterterrorism Blog.
Free Speech - Not Quite
If a news organization does not shill for Democrats, then it is not a legitimate news organization. Well, at least not according to the Kos kids, MoveOn.org, and several other of the far left. They believe that any such news organization is unworthy and must be silenced. Which has the liberals once again demonstrating how they view the concept of freedom of speech -- that speech should only be free if it is in consonance with their own beliefs.
In that vein, the far left -- who more and more seem to be in total control of the Democratic Party -- are demanding that Fox not be allowed to host a debate among Democratic primary candidates for President. And when the far left makes demands, all current members of the Democratic Party listen. Joe Lieberman is excluded from that group, of course, following the far left pogrom to insure ideological purity. But not such other luminaries as Harry Reid or John Edwards. Edwards has been the first candidate to jump on the far left side of the bandwagon, stating that he will not attend the debate hosted by Fox news.
Edwards' campaign said the involvement of Fox News, which is often accusedby liberals of having a conservative bias, was part of the decision to pass on the Aug. 14 debate in Reno. . .Read the rest of the story here.
The two Democratic presidential frontrunners, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, have not indicated whether they will attend the Nevada debate. .
Online activists and bloggers quickly hailed Edwards' decision as a victory in their campaign to urge Nevada Democrats to drop Fox News as a partner. MoveOn.org Civic Action says it has collected more than 260,000 signatures on a petition that calls the cable network a "mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel."
Fox News Channel vice president of news David Rhodes issued a statement calling it "unfortunate that Sen. Edwards has decided to abandon an opportunity to reach the largest mainstream cable news audience in America." On the language of the petition, Rhodes has said: "Everyone has a right to free speech."
Democratic Party officials and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially touted the partnership with Fox News as an opportunity to reach out to a different bloc of voters. But in a letter posted Wednesday on the party's Web site, Democratic Party Chairman Tom Collins said Reid now shares activists' concerns and "has asked us to take another look." . .
. . . .
"The Fox debate should just be canceled and a more legitimate news source should be found," Green said.
The bottom line is this: If anyone ever tells you that the left in America are or would ever be the best protectors of our rights -- and I mean those rights explicitly set out in the Constitution -- then they are being something even less then dishonest. Open your eyes and time after time, you will see the left do all that they can to suppress any speech not in agreement with their own. This is but the latest example.
Hello, Auntie-Mum . . .
Finish this line: You know your British when you go to family reunions . . . .
the correct answer, "to meet women." . . . or "men," as the case may be.
At least that's the impression I get after reading up on the facts in The Telegraph documenting the latest from a BBC report supporting an incestuous relationship between brother and sister. Displaying the latest in multicultural chic, the Beeb reporter was sympathetic and apparently saw nothing untoward in the relationship. Anyone want to bet that the schooling he received did not include a degree in genetics or pediatrics. Ahhhhh, but what of the liklihood of birth defects when there are cultural and religous taboos that can be challenged by the BBC. So avant garde they are. I could add amoral, suicidally liberal, etc., etc. Read the story here.
Alas, what amazes me truly is that, time and again when the BBC is attacked for being exceedingly biased and liberal in their reporting, they always denounce the charges, then pay one reseach organization or another to do a study that buttresses their claim. That the Brit's have not yet marched a million strong onto 10 Downing Street to demand that the BBC News be spun off the public tit is just beyond me. The blood of Alfred the Great, William the Conquerer, Richard the Lionheart, Churchill, etc. has become very dilute over the years, apparently -- and somewhere in the national DNA, a lamb and a lemming or two snuck in (Hey, if incest is ok, whose to complain about a wee bit of bestiality. I am sure that, if the BBC can support incest, they would not feel sheepish at all about supporting bestiality as a permissible life choice).
Below I posted on how the intersection of multiculturalism and Wahhabi Islam is destroying traditional European values. I need to amend that post to add the BBC.
Multiculturalism and the Death of Liberal European Mores
I have previously posted on multiculturalism in Britain here, and a problem with applying the philosophy of multiculturalism here. Now, Khalil Samir writes an excellent article in Asia News about multiculturalism and Islam, describing the intersection of the two as the "suicide of the West."
The ideology of multiculturalism, i.e. blind tolerance toward any culture and tradition, is destroying European identity and is above all doing away with human rights and, more specifically, women’s rights.
Samir goes on to quote an interview with a French imam Sheikh Abdelkader, and what he taught to his adherents on the male-female relationship, and then to discuss how the Sheikh's views are those of conventional Islam.
Q: In your opinion, are women equal to men?
A: No. For example, women do not have the right to work alongside men, as they [women] could be tempted by adultery.
Q: Must women necessarily be subjugated to men?
A: Yes, because the head of the family is always a man. But he must be fair to his wife: he must not beat her for no reason, nor consider her a slave.
. . . .
Q: Are you in favour of the stoning [1] of women?
A: Yes, because beating one’s wife is allowed by the Koran, but under certain conditions, in particular if she betrays her husband. Please note however: the man does not have the right to beat her everywhere: not on the face, but in the lower parts, her legs, her stomach, her bottom. He can beat her vigorously so as to induce fear, so that she does not start again!
Q: The Koran: wife beating is allowed
Various readers were up in arms, but in the end the imam defended himself saying that this is the Koran. And he’s right. If we open the Koran at Sura 4, verse 34, we can read:
“Men have authority over women due to the preference that Allah concedes to them over the other and because they spend their property [for women]; Good women are therefore obedient, guarding under secrecy that which Allah has preserved [sex]. [2] ; As for those on whose part you fear insubordination, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do nothing further against them; Allah is high and great.”
Last week on Al Jazeera, I heard another imam explain the four conditions for beating a wife: not on her face; without drawing blood; without breaking bones; not in the presence of children. . . .
Read the entire article here. Samir has also written another article of interest, "Islamic Finance and Sharia, Europe's Suicide:"
This is how European civilization is dying, in submitting itself to the rules of radical Islam that wants to destroy it. We can clearly say that Europe’s ailment is not Islam; its ailment is within Europe itself. The Pope has stressed this many times, especially at Regensburg. The European continent’s ailment is relativism, the loss of clear principles and of faith in itself for lack of an absolute foundation, as is instead the case in a context of faith. This is the real root of the problem. And the cause of this weakness is having excluded faith from the horizon of its search and its reasoning.
At this point, 3 projects are competing in Europe:· a secularist project, which has no principles, but seeks hedonistic well-being;
· a Catholic project, with principles – expressed in the Gospel and Christian tradition – that are to be constantly rethought and which proposes a reform of Western society, to recuperate what is good in the Enlightenment;
· a radical Islamic project which has come on the scene through considerable blackmail and power to condition, and affirms that the solution is that of God expressed in the Koran and in sharia.
The secularist world looks well upon the prospect of Islam cancelling Christian elements (let’s recall the controversy on crucifixes in hospitals and schools), because it recognizes an element of its secularization project. But, the fact is that Islam seeks Islamization, not secularization. Islam rejects Christianity, but to substitute it was Muslim law.
You can find the article here.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
The NYT Shills for Democrats on the Employee Free Choice Act
It is hard to imagine a more mis-named act then the Employee Free Choice Act. As I said in a previous post, it removes free choice by taking away the right for employees to vote on unionization in secret ballots. The act is nothing more then a grossly hypocritical attempt by Democrats to pay off their Union ATM's who themselves are trying to stem their ever declining membership due to irrelevance. Never one to let reality or facts stand in the way of shilling for a liberal cause, Pinch Salzberger's New York Times ran an editorial today repeating Democratic and AFL-CIO talking points. The Union-Free Employer blog has taken significant issue with the editorial. They seem to think that it is in serious need of an extensive fact check, and obligingly provide one here.
Fred Thompson on the Libby Fiasco
Fred Thompson is a fascinating man -- a former U.S. attorney, a former Senator, an actor on Law & Order, he is an excellent communicator, congenial, and has impeccable conservative credentials. There have been many conservatives who have urged him to throw his hat into the Presidential race; he is said to be considering it. At any rate, he has weighed in on the Libby trial:
Two crucial decisions were made in order for this sorry state of affairs to have played out this way. The first was when the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame leak and appointed a special counsel. When DOJ made the appointment they knew that the leak did not constitute a violation of the law. Yet, instead of standing on that solid legal ground they abdicated their official responsibility.
The Plame/Wilson defenders wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges. Therefore, the Department of Justice, in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent-counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.
From there the players' moves were predictable. Fitzgerald began his Sherman's march through the law and the press until he thought he had finally come up with something to justify his lofty mandate--a case that would not have been brought in any other part of the country.
Read the rest of his article. I agree with all that Mr. Thompson has to say. See my prior post on this topic here. Further, Mr. Thompson's criticism of the DoJ just adds another charge against an organization that is appearing more and more to be incompetent.
A Philosophical Question on Extremists From the Director of Al-Arabiyya
It is more then a little ironic that several of the most virulent radical islamists who preach hatred and violence against the West are now doing all that they can to remain in the West rather then return to their homelands. MEMRI has translated excerpts from a column by Al-Arabiyya TV Director-General Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed who criticizes these extremists as inexplicable hypocrites:
"The common denominator shared by Abu Qatada, currently under arrest in Britain, Osama Nasser, who was kidnapped in Rome, and Omar Bakri, who fled from London, is that all of them want to [live] in the West, rather than in their native Islamic countries. Abu Qatada prefers to remain under arrest in Britain, and not to be deported to Jordan. The Italian imam Abu Omar Osama Al-Masri, who was kidnapped by the CIA [and taken] to Egypt, is likewise demanding to return to Milan, the fashion capital, and is even suing for financial compensation. As for the most famous of the three, [Omar] Bakri, he hurried to the airport and grabbed a flight to Lebanon when the [British] government prepared [to take] punitive measures against [individuals] who incite to violence. [But] now, after spending some time in his homeland, he is begging to return to London, despite all the [British] decisions, and despite all his statements against them.
"What makes fundamentalist extremists, who incite against the West and its culture, the first to run into its arms, and to fight [for the right] to stay there? . . .
"What makes Omar Bakri, who enjoys liberty in Britain, spread hatred [against Britain], fight its culture, and say obscenely that [Britain] is a toilet in which he lives in order to defecate there? Does it make sense for someone like him to express a desire to return to Britain after everything he has said and done?
"As for Abu Qatada, he prefers to remain in prison and not to return to his homeland Jordan, just like [Osama Nasser], the imam from Milan, who is protesting about being taken to Egypt and about being imprisoned there. Not only is he protesting his abduction; he has also decided to sue for 20 million Euro in damages…
"It is blatantly obvious that all three are enjoying all the benefits of the [government] they despise: They want the financial aid, the security, the [rule of] law, the justice and the freedom of expression afforded by this government. Is this not the epitome of hypocrisy? When they preach, aren't they greatly deceiving their followers - [considering this discrepancy] between what they say and what they do?
"It is some of the extremist hate-mongers living in the West who are inciting the Muslims in the East against Western countries... - those [same] countries that have hosted them, given them protection and shelter, and in many cases also financed the education of their children, including their Islamic and Arabic language studies. It is also revolting to see writers denouncing the actions of [Western] governments that wish to get rid of the extremists by sending them back to their Islamic countries.
"Instead of demanding that the Arab [countries] mend their legal and security deficiencies, they ask the [Western] countries that have thrown out these extremists to spare them and to tolerate the ideological damage that they inflict upon their societies."
Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) - Busted
The FBI is reporting today that they have indicted 5 officers and directors of the now closed U.S. branch of an Islamic charity, the Islamic American Relief Agency. The men have been charged with illegally transferring funds to Iraq prior to 2003, as well as "laundering money, stealing federal funds, and obstructing tax laws by, among other things, falsely denying that a procurement agent of Osama bin Laden had been an employee of the charity." Good work.
Reaction to the Muslim Council of Britain's Plan for British Schools
I previously posted here on the Wahhbist "Muslim Council of Britain" initiative, published in a 72 page document, to enlist the state school system of the UK in imposing special and segregated treatment for muslim students. In the days following this initiative, the Guardian allowed a member of the Muslim Council of Britain to opine in their paper on the initiative -- a post that generated an incredible bevy of critical responses from muslims and non-muslims alike.
Unfortunately, I missed this article and the responses at the time, but Maverick News did not. They quote from Eye of the World blog, which had this to say:Recent publication of articles about the Muslim Council of Britain's critique of British public schools, and a list of its segregationist Sharia based "guidelines" created a firestorm to such an extent that the assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain,Tahir
Alam wrote a piece in The Guardian in which he tried to sell these
segregationist demands as "An agenda for integration." Much to our surprise, The Guardian, being as left wing as they come, provided a forum for discussion on which the readers, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, ripped Tahir Alam a new one. Here are some of the readers' comments on his piece (spelling and orthography
preserved).
Comment:
(by thetrashheap):
Do you honestly believe Muslims aren't integrating because they can't pray enough or have to shower infront of other children?They don't integrate becasue they wear burkas, won't do PE, won't go out socially, because women are scared of men, and because like all strongly religious they don't mix.
How many non muslim friends does the author have?Also do you honestly believe
Muslims aren't achieving because they can't pray enough or have to shower in front of other children? They aren't achieving because far to much emphasis is spent on knowledge of islam rather than real knowledge. To much time is spent on cultural identity rather that integrating and playing the system. I'm an Irishman who lived in England for a while and I saw a lot of integration from every community except the muslim population which lead me to think that a large part of the problem lies with the muslim community and its failure to adapt rather than the general population
(by Abair):
Didn't you get the memo Tahir? We don't want communitarian,sectarian politics being nurtured in our country. They've already caused enoughtrouble.The self-appointed Muslim commumity "leaders" who represent next tono-one (6% of Muslims in the case of the MCB, the most representative organisation) are no longer listened to. Who needs their Saudi-funded doctrines anyway?
Quite what Islam has to offer to the educational process is beyond me. Islam is an Arabic cultural product and its homelands have a dismal history of educational achievement - even now it's literacy rate lags behind that of the DEVELOPING world. Women's literacy is particularly poor.In fact in a thousand years the Arab world has only managed to translate the same number of books as Spain does annually, as the Arab authors of the UN Human Development Report pointed out: "Most Arab countries have not learned from the lessons of the past and the field of translation remains chaotic. In terms of quantity, and notwithstanding the increase in thenumber of translated books from 175 per year during 1970-1975 to 330, the number of books translated in the Arab world is one fifth of the number translated in Greece. The aggregate total of translated books from the Al-Ma'moon era to the present day amounts to 10,000 books - equivalent to what Spain translates in a single year (Shawki Galal, in Arabic, 1999, 87)." www.miftah.org/Doc/Reports/Englishcomplete2003.pdf
Introducing Arab-style gender apartheid will do nothing to improve children's education opportunities. It clearly has failed the Arab world for a
thousand years.
Comment
(by Alumindogg):
My own experiences of supply teaching in a wide variety of inner city Secondary schools in Yorkshire led me to the following conclusions (although bear in mind this is probably more relevant to Pakistani and Somali muslim groups).
1.Muslim pupils cared little for these kind of over-bearing dictats that merely reaffirmed the control of their parents inside, as well as outside the school. They effectively had the same interests and vices as the 'indigenous' students.
2. The tight grip that their parents would hold over their behaviour, appearance, and free time when at home, would lead to many pupils treating school as 'freedom' away from the pressures and norms of home-life. This was very positive for the students, but would often lead to very immature behaviour and made teaching very difficult. This issue applied to both the children ofrich and poor pupils.
3. Some muslim pupils lacked a natural respect for many of the
teachers in the schools, especially the younger ones. However teachers from
their own community (or from a similar background), would be afforded instant,
unquestioned deference. This perhaps being a sign that the pupils saw genuine
authority within the home, community and mosque rather than with their teachers
or school. For me, these are genuine issues effecting muslim underachievement
within the mainstream school system, not the use of mixed swimming classes.
Surely the MCB is hijacking the "Every Child Matters" agenda here to enforce its
own narrow, conservative view of Islam on ALL muslim pupils regardless of their
own beliefs?.
(by Btitishmuslim):
Alumindogg, What you have described is so true. The behavious of certain muslim children in school is one of the biggest barriers tothem obtaining good qualifications. The reason why so many children of a'pakastani background' underachieve is due to the various restrictions place by parents on them which results in them not being able to fully integrate with wider society. Also in majority of Pakastani families 'especially of Mirpuri descent' education is not considered important.Therefore what the reader is suggesting will make the isolation of the muslim community worse. The Muslim community needs to wake up to the fact that it is a minority in this country and not a majority. Education should not be mixed with religion.Needless to say that MCB's "guidelines" were branded everywhere in the UK as unacceptable.
Le Censorship
France has just passed major legislation limiting the rights of anyone not an officially licensed journalist to film acts of violence by others and then to broadcast them. Additionally, France is debating whether to impose rules on what may or may not be published on the internet. Fauta's blog has commentary and a round-up of posts on the latest in an ominous move to stifle the free flow of information in France.
The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.See the entire article here.
The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.
If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, . . . And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (US$98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.
. . . During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of “happy slapping,” in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker’s friends.
The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.
The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.
Besides the obvious problems with limiting information in a free society, it is especially problematic in France, where the Government, in apparent coordination with a complicit major news media, are not addressing France's extensive problems with a restive and radicalized Muslim population, but rather are deliberately ignoring it and minimizing coverage and commentary about the crimes that spring from it. As Fausta explains:
As it was, the French media did their best to not report on, and then underplay as much as possible, the stories about the Halimi murder, the 2006 New Year's day rampage on a train from Nice to Lyon, and the 2005 rioting banlieus, which continued into 2006. . . I expect a full news blackout on anything that doesn't reflect well on La Belle France. Everything else will be whitewashed to an appropriate shade.That seems a sure recette pour le désastre.
Taheri on the Generals Behind the Surge
Iranian journalist Amir Taheri has an article out today discussing the promising signs of the surge and his belief that the two generals most capable of making the surge a success are there in command -- LTG David Petreaus and his counterpart MG Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander in Baghdad. Read the whole story here.
Thoughts & Concerns from the Libby Trial.
The verdict is in. Scooter Libby has been convicted. He was, according to the New York Times, “convicted today of lying to FBI agents and grand jurors investigating the unmasking of a CIA operative amid a burning dispute over the war in Iraq.”
I an not concerned about the conviction of Mr. Libby per se. He was given a fair trial before twelve jurors. After hearing the evidence, they decided that Mr. Libby’s defense – that he did not lie; rather, he just had a memory lapse – was not credible. Not having heard all of the evidence, I will trust the jury’s assessment of the facts. There may be grounds for an appeal, I do not know. Regardless, in the narrow sense of this trial and the perjury related charges made against him, Mr. Libby has received justice.
That is possibly the only thing about this whole matter that does not trouble me: 
1. I am troubled that anyone publicly identified Valerie Plame to begin with. I know Joe Wilson claimed to have been sent on fact finding mission to Niger by the Vice President’s office – a falsehood -- but it was not necessary to identify Plame in order for the Bush administration to fully rebut that portion of Wilson’s claim. Her involvement was ancillary to the only real fact at issue – between Bush and Wilson, who was lying. George Tenet could have been tasked to set the record straight on Wilson’s claim. We should never be identifying our intelligence agents, at least under these types of circumstances.
2. I am troubled that the “leak” investigation by Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald resembled far more an inquisition then a criminal investigation. From Day 1 of his appointment, Fitzgerald had to know that there was not a criminally prosecutable leak, and in fact he knew, but kept secret, the name of the person responsible for the leak.
3. I am troubled that the only crime at issue, on Day One of the investigation, was whether, in leaking Ms. Plame’s name, the leaker had violated the 50 U.S.C. 421 et al – the act that protects a narrow category of agents from having their identity made public by another narrow category of individuals. The first question the Special Prosecutor had to answer was whether Ms. Plame qualified for that protection.
The statute only protects covert agents that are assigned overseas or who have “served” overseas within five years of the disclosure. We know that six years before the disclosure, Valerie Plame was transferred to a permanent assignment in Washington D.C. as a WMD analyst. We know that she made occasional trips overseas, but obviously the Special Prosecutor did not believe this was sufficient to meet the “service” requirement under the statute or he would have charged it.
And that was the threshold question for this entire investigation. The Special Prosecutor had to know all of this information from on or near Day 1 of his investigation. While revealing Plame’s identity may have been objectionable, it was not itself a crime. In other words, this Prosecutor conducted a near four year, multi-million dollar investigation and prosecution for something he had to know at the onset was not a crime.
4. Robert Novak made Plame’s identity public to the world when he published it in a newspaper. Novak received his information about Plame’s identity from Richard Armitage. Libby had nothing to do with Novak’s publication of Plame’s identity, nor the leak of that information by Richard Armitage.
5. I am troubled tht the Special Prosecutor knew even before he began his investigation that Armitage had provided the information to Novak – and he asked Armitage to keep quiet about that fact during the investigation. That is just incredible.
6. I am very troubled that Fitzgerald’s handling of this whole matter resembles in far too many ways the Duke rape prosecution by Mike Nifong. It was prosecutorial overreaching writ large.
7. I am troubled that Scooter Libby will not be the first or last person convicted of a felony for lying about something that was not a crime. I believe that law to be overly harsh in the extreme. If there is no underlying crime, then the punishments appropriate for perjury and obstruction related thereto should be something substantially less then the three years in prison that Libby now faces.
8. I find it of stunning irony that Libby is facing three years in prison for lying when there was no prosecutable crime, yet Sandy Berger, who stole a significant amount of classified material relating to 9-11 and destroyed it gets off with community service.
9. I am troubled that the left is rejoicing in Libby's conviction while the whole cause of this affair -- and the one true scoundrel -- is Joe Wilson. It was he who lied to all of America when, in his now infamous op-ed he made sweeping claims that he had investigated the Iraq-Niger connection on behalf of Cheney and found nothing. We know of course today that the report he gave to the CIA after his trip to Niger was that the former President of Niger had been approached by an Iraqi delegation whose purpose, the ex-President believed, was to purchase uranium.
10. I am troubled that Joe Wilson is now a hero of the left wingers. It saddens me that they have no criteria for heroes other then they must somehow degrade President Bush. There is no concern for accuracy or honesty – just partisan effectiveness.
11. I am troubled that, in order to protect Joe Wilson and his wife, the Democrats on the 9-11 Commission refused to join in the findings, based on unrefuted evidence placed before the Commission, that Wilson had lied and that his wife in fact had been in large measure responsible for Wilson being tapped to go to Niger.
12. I am troubled by the fact that I have yet to see, in a main stream newspaper of the past two years, a single newspaper article that, in giving background of the Libby trial, acknowledges that Wilson was anything other then honest in his attacks on the administration.
13. Wilson’s claim that he and his wife have been victimized by the administration really takes some brass ones. It reminds me of the story of the boy who slaughters his parents but then asks the Court for mercy because he is an orphan.
14. And lastly, I am troubled by having to listen as every partisan Democrat that can find a microphone and every liberal journalist who can find their computer grossly misrepresent and overstate the meaning of this conviction and how it is indicative of [insert your favorite outrageous assertion here] about Bush and Cheney.
Pelosi: Today’s guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual.This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed – at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq."
Reid: "I welcome the jury's verdict. It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics. Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct."
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Justice? Yes and No
Dems Assist Bush With Iraq Planning - Develop Plans B thru Z
The juxtaposition of two recent Washington Post stories provides a comic irony of rare clarity. Recently, the Washington Post reported that President Bush had only one plan for the Iraq War -- a Plan A, predicated on achieving U.S. goals for a stable and democratic Iraq. The clear tenor of the article was a shocked amazement that Bush would neglect the development of other contingency plans. As we now know, that concern is unjustified.
One day after the article mentioned above was published, a second article was published in the Washington Post, documeting 
the work of Democrats as they have set up a veritable cottage industry, printing out dozens of alternate plans for Iraq. Whole forests are being clear cut to provide the reams of paper needed by one Democrat after another as they rush to the presses, each with their own unique plan to navigate the minefield that is taking responsibiity for Iraq and the war on terror.
It is difficult work for the empowered Dems who seem adrift, trying to decide what to do with their power. The contours of their problem are clear. They want to develop a plan that will satisfy all five of the following conditions: 1) satisfy the anti-war/peace now wing that want nothing less then to get out of Iraq yesterday; 2) pass constitutional muster; 3) not lead to charges that they are failing to "support the troops; 4) not result in the Democrats having to take responsiblity for the long term effect of any plan that they propose to withdrawal troops or limit their mission; and, last but not least, 5) insure that Bush does not somehow manage to have, and be credited with, success in Iraq. This has proven to be a Democratic conundrum of the big round peg small square hole variety.
The far left -- along with John Edwards and Hillary Clinton pandering to the far left in o
rder to win the primary -- have put forth several plans, all variations on a single theme, to have us pack up our bags and get out of Iraq post haste. But for many of the other members of the party, lets call them the cynical yet realistic Democrats, the thought of voting for withdrawal would mean that they have to take responsibility for what transpires afterwards -- and they find that possibility unpalatable in the extreme.
Then 
there was the Murtha Plan to simply prevent any possibility of succeeding in Iraq by forcing a slow withdrawal of troops -- the slow bleed strategy. That would leave Bush holding responsibility for the war but without the resources he needs to win. That would have been as close to a perfect plan as possible for the Democrats. But, Murtha, obviously not blessed with an abundance of guile, then doomed his own plan by leaking his intentions. The result has been a groundswell of opposition.
Pelosi, horrified (as you can tell from her picture) that the perfect plan was slipping away, huddled with Murtha and
came up with the idea for some good old fashioned vote buying. They were going to write Murtha's plan into the supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq, and then tack on billions for domestic pet projects, each one aimed at buying the vote of a specific member of Congress. (Who was it that said that the two things that you never want to watch being made are sausage and legislation?) Unfortunately for Murtha and Pelosi, but fortunately for the rest of America, that incredibly cynical plan now seems to have fallen by the wayside also.
Yet another variation of the "Murtha" plan has been proposed, this keeping in all the provisions of the slow bleed strategy, yet allowing the President to waive all of them by simply notifying Congress and providing justifications for the waiver. That would be just one step beyond the House Resolution on the surge in substance. Because of that, it has failed the litmus test of the anti-war crowd.
In
the Senate, Joe Biden came up with the idea of withdrawing Senate authorization for continuation of the Iraq war, and then substituting some other authorization, the contours of which were never clearly spelled out. That idea has now been buried.
Then, a few days ago, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad suggested that they would cut $20 billion in funds from the war effort. That plan did not survive even a day.
And now there is the most recent proposal, to utilize the benchmarks that Bush mentioned in his speech to the nation on January 10, 2007.Under those benchmarks, . . . the Iraqi government would have to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November, and adopt and implement oil-revenue-sharing legislation. The government would also have to spend $10 billion of Iraq's money on job-creating reconstruction and infrastructure projects; hold new provincial elections this year; liberalize laws that purged Baath Party members from the government; and establish a fairer process for amending the Iraqi constitution.
If those benchmarks are not met, Democrats would demand Bush submit to Congress a timetable for withdrawing troops, leadership aides said. The idea is to force Bush to abide by his own promises but to make sure he remains responsible for conducting and ending the war.
We will see how far that one gets. In parsing the words used by the author, it appears that the failure to make a benchmark will not automatically trigger a timetable for withdrawal, but it would give the Democrats the cover they need to set in motion a process that might then lead to such a timetable.
Upd
ate March 8, 2007: The Pelosi Murtha Plan Bravo Alpha -- I think they have used up the alphabet and are now having to use two-letter designations. The not-quite- dynamic duo, having surveyed the broken terrain that is the Democrat's Iraq policy, have opted for a sort of goulash, taking bits and pieces of every plan discussed above and including them in their Plan BA. This one has a date certain for retreat from Iraq (September 2008); benchmarks that could trigger an earlier withdrawal; the slow bleed components that can be waived by the President; and to cap it off, Pelosi and Murtha have put back in the domestic spending proposals to buy votes.
Harry Reid, not to be outdone, wants legislation that would set a "goal" of withdrawal of all troops from Iraq by March 2008. Senator Reid has not flushed out the term "goal" yet, but it sounds as if it is one of those things subject to waiver. Waiver of course being an all-important tool if the cynical but realistic Democrats are to maintain that all important "plausible deniability" of any responsibility.
At any rate, watching the Democrats come up with and then discard plan after plan 
is starting to resemble the comic chaos of a Three Stooges short. As you can tell, the Washington Post's concern with President Bush for having only one Plan -- that being to succeed in Iraq -- was wholly unjustified. Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, and Harry Reid, the left's version of Moe, Larry & Curly, are more then taking up the slack. Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck . . . .
Musharraf, the Taliban, & Few Good Choices
The Pakistani newspaper The International News, contains a very thorough and perceptive analysis of the problems facing General Musharraf as he tries to both support the coalition forces in their operations against the Taliban while simultaneously keeping closed the flood gates of anarchy in Pakistan:
If this spring is going to witness a bloodier battle between the Taliban and coalition forces, it is going to bring much greater fall out on Pakistan who does not have the means and capacity to secure such a long and porous border with Afghanistan and stop Taliban's movement on both sides. Facing the onslaught by the ISAF, Taliban are bound to retreat to their sanctuaries on both sides of the border forcing the Nato-led troops to hot pursuits across the Durand Line into Pakistan's tribal areas. This will further exacerbate the dilemma President Musharraf is facing: if he does the job himself, he alienates his own tribes; and if he lets the coalition forces do the killing on our territory he invites a big political backlash at home. And if the Taliban succeeds in causing greater casualties to the ISAF and expanding the insurgency to the broader regions with the support of the local people at the grassroots, the Musharraf government will be in trouble if it tries to go beyond its capacity to deliver what the coalition forces would fail to achieve.I highly recommend this article.
Afghanistan is far bigger a quagmire than created by President Bush inIraq. It can't be sorted out in a few years. Expecting quick results and victory by military means alone will be a big folly. In the meanwhile, Pakistan will have to clear its own deck. Let Islamabad clear all suspicions regarding its alleged soft corner for Taliban and persuade its own tribes to keep away from the fire the Taliban are igniting. And let General Musharraf clearly define his limits and scope of partnership in the war against terrorism. We don't have any option to clean up or neutralise our tribal areas. If we don't, others will do for us, even if we protest. The test is coming and it is too close now to the next general elections. A failure to do our job or partial success at a high cost will, in turn, expedite the change in the dynamics of political power in Pakistan which still faces a bigger challenge of whether it is going to become governable or not.
News From the Shadow War - Location of bin Laden & an Iranian Intel Coup
Every so often, small news of a far larger clandestine war makes it into the public eye. Such is the case now. We have learned two bits of news recently that are uniformly good. The first is that we now have actionable intelligence as to the respective locations where bin Laden and al Zarqawi are believed to be in hiding. Further, we are flooding the area, which is reportedly in Pakistan, with numerous paramilitary troops. That is wonderful news. Let us hope that this time we finally have some success.
The second bit of news is particularly promising. It seems that we now have access to a significant Iranian intelligence asset, Gen. Ali Reza Asgari:
The mysterious disappearance of an Iranian general in Turkey in early February has led to speculation he either was kidnapped or defected.Now this one sounds very promising indeed. Either we have General and are debriefing him as fast as we can or, almost as good, the Iranians think that we have him and must proceed under the assumption that all he knows has now been compromised to the U.S. This could be a very significant event in either case.
. . . One respected analyst with sources in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard says Gen. Ali Reza Asgari has defected and is now in a European country with his entire family, where he is cooperating with the U.S.
. . . .
"This is a fatal blow to Iranian intelligence," said the source, explaining that Asgari knows sensitive information about Iran's nuclear and military projects. Iran called tens of its Revolutionary Guard agents working at embassies and cultural centers in Arab and European countries back to Tehran out of fear that Asgari might disclose secret information about their identities, according to the analyst.
. . . .
Asgari's years with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian defense ministry would make him an invaluable source of information. He was reportedly based in Lebanon in the 1990s and was in charge of ties with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.
At one point he was also in charge of military purchases at the defense ministry and exposed widespread corruption there which led to the arrest of a number of officials. Most recently, he worked as a consultant for the same ministry.
Monday, March 5, 2007
How to Define a Multicuralist's Nightmare?
To be a practitioner of that uniquely western philosophy, multiculturalism, means that the adherent adopts the belief that cultures of other countries are at least the equal to, if not better then, his or her own. The adherent makes no comparative moral judgments.
But sometimes that can be difficult. Sometimes, the mores of other cultures are so outrageous, so antithetical to liberal Western values, that only deliberate ignorance of reality will allow the multicultural philosophy to remain untarnished.
With that in mind, let me set a scenario. A man and woman go out, when they are accosted by five knife wielding men who kidnap them. They are taken to a remote location, where the kidnappers gang rape the woman a total of fourteen times. The kidnappers/rapists are eventually caught. On those facts, what do law and justice demand as punishment for the guilty and as recompense for the victim?
If we were in America, the charges would likely be aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape along with a smattering of other, lesser charges. It is quite likely the prison terms for these offenses, in sum, would range from twenty years to life. The victim would be be given counselling and she would likely receive funds from a government victim's compensation program.
That's in America, where we are ruled by a secular legal code that developed out of a judeo-christian ethic. It would likely be similar in any western country.
In Saudi Arabia, where this crime actually occurred, the nation is officially ruled by Sharia law -- the code of law discerned from a reading of the Koran -- and as interpreted within the strictures of Wahhabi Islam. Wahhabi Islam is, unfortunate to say, the triumphalist, grossly racist, misogynistic and brutal form of Islam that has been exported to the United States and across the world by Saudi Arabia, using billions of dollars of oil money. So what happens to the victim and her attackers under Wahhabi Sharia law? According to a report in the Agence France-Presse:Five men were arrested for the rape and given jail terms ranging from 10 months to five years by a panel of judges . . . But the judges also decided to sentence the woman . . . and the man to lashes for being alone together in the car.
Yes, you heard that correctly. The victim will be flogged for, as the article goes on to say, a total of 90 lashes.
Just to put how barbaric this is into perspective, what follows is a description of a Saudi judicial flogging given to a man.
I was brought to the whipping area. They tied me to a post. My hands were handcuffed and they also shackled my legs. I was wearing a T-shirt and jogging pants... The whip was one and a half metres long... with a heavy lead piece attached to the tip. It was terrible. Some fell on my thighs and my back. I would fall when the whip reached my feet but the prison guard would raise me up to continue the whipping. It was terrible. I was amazed to find myself still alive after the 70th lash was given. It lasted about 15 minutes... my back was bleeding. I cried.
As to the victim in the rape, she appealed her verdict but was "told by one of the judges [that] she was lucky not to have been given jail time." Since her trial, the woman . . . [has] tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family." Nice to see her family supporting her and protecting her honor, isn't it?
Such are Sharia law and the concept of family honor in Saudi Arabia. So please tell me now, is there anything about a culture that can treat someone this way that makes you feel as if it is, on balance, equal or superior to Western culture? And therein lies the problem for the multiculturalist. Facts are the clay from which their nightmares are made.
War Powers of the Congress and the President
So . . . .The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare wars, fund them, and oversee the way they are fought. Yet the Constitution never says exactly how these powers are to be reconciled with the president's authority as commander in chief. The Constitution surely must empower the president to fight wars effectively enough to win them. That means that war must be conducted under the president's direction, not run by committee.
Could the Congress pass a substantive resolution ordering the President not to send 20,000 more soldiers to Iraq? No.
Once Congress has authorized the president to fight, it has neither the competence nor the [constitutional] authority to tell him which troops should be placed where on the battlefield. Nor can it order him to withdraw particular troops—or particular numbers of troops—by a specified date, as Obama's proposal, among others, would do. Finally, Congress cannot limit the number of troops who may fight.
Can the Congress tell the President to be out of Iraq within 30 days? Yes.
Can the Congress tell the President to limit the battles in Iraq to fighting against al-Qaeda and not the Shia? Probably not under the existing constitutional tests.
While the Constitution provides some bright lines as to the separation of powers between President and Congress in regards to war, there is also a lot of grey area that we may well see tested in the future. This article provides a good overview. Please read the entire article here.
Ann Coulter-Kerry
At this last week's CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), a major event in the community of Republicans and one watched by all the major news media outlets, Ann Coulter was a featured speaker. Towards the end of her speech, she said, to paraphrase, "I'd call John Edwards a faggot, but then I would have to go to rehab."
Ann Coulter makes her living walking the very outer edge of what passes for acceptable commentary by a conservative pundit. She usually gets away with her wilder comments because there is an element of cold truth to them. For example, her colorful criticism of the highly politicized "9-11 widows" caused controversy, but Ann came with a point of view that had a rational basis, whether you agreed with it or not.
Unlike the left, for whom profanity laced diatribes are often considered acceptable, at least in the blogosphere, conservatives have a definite line in the sand where colorful polemic ends and unacceptable invective begins. Ann Coulter finally stepped over the line with her caustic attempt at a joke. She failed the rational basis test miserably -- and it will hurt her. As an aside, I wonder whether she honed that joke at the John Kerry School of Ill Advised Humor. It is a bit more then ironic that she and her polar opposite, John Kerry, should both find themselves wounded by their attempts (or alleged attempt, in Kerry's case) at a joke.
Part of the reason I think this so unfortunate is that Ms. Coulter has a very sharp and agile mind, and she has almost always been an asset to the conservative cause. She has never backed down from the inane arguments of the left wing -- and in such exchanges, she has usually been far more persuasive in her arguments then the left wingers she has been paired against.
Having said all of that, her performance at CPAC offended so many conservatives that Fausta, of Fausta's blog, has drafted an open letter signed by herself and several other top shelf bloggers, asking that "CPAC speaking invitations no longer be extended to Ann Coulter. Her words and attitude simply do too much damage." Fausta supports those propositions with well reasoned and compelling arguments.
In light of the value Ann Coulter has been to the conservative cause generally, I began this post with the intent of disagreeing with Fausta and urging her and the other signatories to take a page from the Democratic playbook and give Ms. Coulter another chance despite her sins. After all, if the left can forgive and reelect such people as Ted Kennedy (vehicular homicide), Cold Cash Jefferson (bribery), Gerry Studds (bending over a paige), Alcee Hastings (bribery), John Murtha (Abscam), Barney Frank (boyfriend running a prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment), Marion Berry (drug use), and in a special category, President Clinton, I would think that we conservatives could forgive Ms. Coulter's momentary lapse.
My intent to seek absolution for Ms. Coulter was predicated on the belief that Ms. Coulter's actions were, in fact, a momentary lapse -- that Ms. Coulter would recognize she had crossed the line and understand the consternation she had caused the great mass of conservatives for whom she speaks.
I was wrong. I investigated Ms. Coulter's approach to this situaton on her website. There, in response to a John Edward's e-mail to donors seeking to raise money off the back of her "faggot" remark, Ms. Coulter had posted: "I'm so ashamed, I can't stop laughing!"
It would seem that Ms. Coulter is now firmly in Howard Stern-like shock jock territory, seeking to stun and discomfit her audience for her own aggrandizement rather then to legitimately criticize in support of the conservative cause. Her judgment is such that I am compelled to concur with Fausta and her other signatories. My days of defending Ann Coulter and supporting her work with book purchases and the like are now officially over.
Vladimir Soprano
Publius Pundit examines what has become the mafia-like government of President Putin
It must be acknowledged that the Kremlin is not one-dimensional, and doesn’t try to solve all its problems with the use of brute force. Just like Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” (award-winning pundit Charles Krauthammer recently said “President” Putin’s “more accurate title would be godfather”), before the Kremlin kills you it will leave the head of a dead horse in your bed, and before it does that it will offer to buy your soul. If you won’t sell, they figure, that’s your problem.Read the whole story..
Obama and the Erosion of Democracy
No more transcending! Obama takes an important domestic policy position. Specifically, he pledges "We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. ... We may have to wait for the next president to sign it, but we will get this thing done." The idea of requiring a union, without a secret ballot election, if labor organizers can obtain a majority of "cards" from employees seems like both a big idea and a bad idea. If Republicans were smart and confident, wouldn't they make a big deal of this--drag the debate in Congress out to give it more prominence, highlighting Obama's support for this change which (more than any tax cut) would alter the very texture of the economy? Voters--even many socially liberal peacenik voters--traditionally worry that if Dems gain full power they will a) serve their special interests and b) cripple American capitalism in a fit of leftish nostalgia. This bill legitimately triggers both fears. ... P.S.: I don't think this is an endorsement Obama had to make for political reasons. As Dick Morris says, he's sitting pretty--he can be anything he wants to be. He could be a lot more Gary Hartish! He must want to be an old-fashioned unionizer. [But he has to win the Iowa caucuses, dominated by unions--ed Teachers' unions! They're already organized. They don't need no stinking card-check.** As for New Hampshire--look what the unions did for Mondale in 1984. ... And if Obama doesn't really believe in the card-check, wouldn't it still be smart for the GOPs to make him pay a price for selling out to the unions? That's a lot more important sign that he's a business-as-usual pol than his failure to repudiate David Geffen for taking some heartfelt shots at the Clintons.. ... ]
Imagine with me, for a moment, that we are standing at a voting station in Florida. Two large men wearing "vote Republican" buttons come to a woman just in front of us, hand her a ballot, and tell her to make her choice as they stand watching her, and possibly even explaining to her why voting Republican would be a good idea.
Is that functional democracy? Is there a good chance that the woman might feel intimidated? Is that a clear violation of our rights as Americans to vote without interference or coercion? Would the Democrats throw the mother of all hissy fits -- not to mention filing lawsuits charging voter intimidation -- if the Republicans pulled this stunt in Florida? Why, yes, of course, to all of those questions. And most Americans of both parties would support the Democrats cry of "foul" because it violates what we know to be fundamental notions of fair play and the democratic process.
So why then do the Democrats feel it appropriate to inaugurate precisely this type of overtly flawed voting system in regards to unions by passing the wholly inaccurately named bill, the "Employee Free Choice Act?" That is not exactly a mystery. As I posted here, this is a cynical act of payback on a massive scale to Unions that gave multiple millions of dollars to the '06 Democratic election campaigns. The fact that what the "progressive" Democrats are proposing is truly both anti-business and a regressive affront to American democratic principles has not slowed them one bit. They seem comfortable with their hypocrisy writ large.
What surprised me was that Obama has fully embraced this atrocity. Mickey Kaus at Slate has the whole story, with commentary:
Hattip: Instapundit
China Rising
China, with the world's largest active duty army of some 2.3 million men, has been pumping huge amounts of funds into its military over the past fifteen years -- far in excess of anything that they need to maintain the defense of their nation.
But China’s military modernization efforts, particularly its drive to develop advanced weaponry, have been raising concern from Washington to Tokyo to New Delhi, where officials are worried that the buildup could be as much offensive as defensive. In January, China set off fears of an arms race in space when it successfully tested an antisatellite missile that destroyed one its own aging weather satellites. A month earlier, the People’s Liberation Army began deploying the country’s first state-of-the-art jet fighter, the J-10.Read the entire story here. China is rapidly becoming a military threat in the Far East, even as they act to erode our strength abroad with their support of Iran and other countries hostile to the U.S. China must not only be watched, but there needs to be serious consideration given to militarizing Japan and giving greater military aid and equipment to Taiwan -- a democracy with a flourishing economy.
These advances reflect China’s intense focus on scientific and technological development, and are the fruits of more than a decade of increased military spending. China’s defense outlays increased an average of about 15 percent a year from 1990 to 2005, according to the Chinese military. This year’s jump is the largest one reported since military spending rose by 19.4 percent in 2002.
Military analysts in the United States and Europe say that China’s public military budget actually reflects only a fraction of its overall defense spending, and that the real figure is likely to be two to four times higher. Most defense analysts agree that China’s military focus is to build a force that would prevail in any conflict with Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, and also to be capable of creating a deterrent to American military intervention.
The Little Train That (thank God) Couldn't
Robert Novak has a column today discussing the victory of two Senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, in their ongoing battle against pork. This particular battle set them against another Republican Senator, John Thune, whose taste for pork was expansive and, unfortunately, emblamatic of an all too common problem in the Republican Congress over the past six years.
The Federal Railroad Administration handed a rare victory to the American taxpayer last week by denying a questionable $2.3 billion loan application by the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern (DM&E) Railroad. What makes this news of special interest is the paramount role Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) played in boosting the loan. Here is a cautionary tale of political life in Washington and how it corrupts.Read the whole article here. Senator Coburn, in particular, deserves great praise for his principled and unswerving stand against pork. And he has paid a political price for it, most recently compliments of Harry Reid. Porkbusters has the whole story:
The Democratic Congressional leadership didn't get nearly the kicking around it deserved for one particularly despicable provision in the fiscal 2007 spending bill: a clause which canceled funding for a program to prevent unborn babies from contracting HIV from infected mothers.Read the entire post here. While it is easy to become cynical about our government, the few principled men like Senator Coburn do help to keep the faith. Let's hope we hear much more from him in the future.
The program was sponsored by Senator Tom Coburn, who is as everyone knows a friend of the Porkbusting cause. In this case, however, the notoriously frugal Senator (who is also a M.D. ) was urging that the government spend money --- but spend it in a way that would achieve demonstrable results for the well being of children at risk of contracting HIV.
Coburn's office provides the following background:
Since 1994, medical experts have known how to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. “Baby AIDS” can be virtually eliminated if expectant mothers with HIV are identified and treated with AIDS drugs. Infants whose mothers’ HIV status is unknown may also be protected if HIV antibodies are detected soon after birth and treatment is promptly administered. With treatment, the risk of transmission from mother to child can be reduced to less than one percent. Without treatment, 25 percent of children born to mothers with HIV will become infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This may be perhaps the single most significant achievement in the battle against HIV/AIDS.
States such as Connecticut and New York have enacted laws that prioritize diagnosis, treatment and prevention and have, as a result, virtually eliminated baby AIDS. The New York Post has referred to the law as “New York’s Infant AIDS Miracle.”
In 2006, Congress established a $30 million HIV early intervention grant program—funded out of CDC’s HIV prevention budget—to provide financial incentives to assist other states eliminate baby AIDS.
So how far would that $30M go? I'm told that the treatment to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child costs a whopping $100. So let's assume that half the $15M goes to overhead and detection, and we've got $15M left for actual treatment. So that would mean 150,000 babies might be treated with the funding allocated.
By comparison, what if a child is born with HIV? Leaving aside the horrific indifference required to condemn a child to such a fate when it is so easily preventable, the financial cost of treatment during the child's lifetime is also staggering. A 2006 study stated "the monthly medical cost for people with HIV, from the time of beginning appropriate care until death, to be $2,100 on average. The projected life expectancy for these individuals, if they remain in optimal HIV care, has now increased to 24.2 years, and the lifetime per person HIV care cost is now $618,900 per person."
So: with your $30M, you can prevent 150,000 children from becoming infected at all --- or you can pay for a tragically shortened lifetime of treatment for fewer than 50 children.
But the funding bill is now law, which means that no funding can be used to implement the program, and the $30M will revert back to other CDC HIV/AIDS prevention activities.
So where will that money be going? Almost certainly to more than a few programs with a significantly more dubious return-on-investment than Senator Coburn's --- at least if the return you are looking for in your HIV/AIDS prevention program is, you know, preventing HIV/AIDS.
Maliki Stumbles As The Washington Post Charts the Path to Retreat
Two items of note in this morning's news. The first involves Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki who, along with his government, has been working magic the past three weeks -- including a draft of an oil law, full political support for the aggressive pursuit of shia insurents and militias, and the announcement that he will dismiss all cabinet ministers from Sadr's party. Maliki has worked a three week sea change in the direction of Iraqi politics. Today, however, is a first real misstep. It comes in response to a raid in Basra conducted by British soldiers and Iraqi special forces on the headquarters of an Iraqi intelligence unit.
"Major Gell said the intelligence agency office was raided after an investigation earlier Sunday led to the capture of five suspected bomb makers and evidence that pointed to possible violations at the agency’s offices. In those offices, he said, “Evidence of significant criminal activity such as torture was found.”Maliki was apparently "caught by surprise" when told of the raid. Instead of supporting the raid or waiting for a full report as to what was found, he immediately "condemned" the raid while ignoring the evidence of misdeeds.
“The prime minister has ordered an immediate investigation into the incident of breaking into the security compound in Basra and stressed the need to punish those who have carried out this illegal and irresponsible act,” said the full text of a statement issued late Sunday by his office.Read the whole story here. I hope this was a simple stumble that is quickly corrected by Maliki. I sincerely hope this does not signal in any way a return to business as usual with Maliki caving to pressure to protect Shia government members at the expense of fairness and the rule of law. We will see as this plays out in the coming days.
The second item of note today comes from the Washington Post, who, following on the heels of yesterday's horrid anti-American hit piece, continue their drumbeat of defeatism. Today's piece is an article by Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, "Bush Iraq Strategy Has No Option For Failure." Implicit in the article is a criticism of Bush for being unrealistic about the prospects for success in Iraq, and the article examines what seem to me to be wholly unrealistic "Murtha" options of redeployment to safe areas in Iraq, leaving the remainder of the country to flow into anarchy. Though ridiculous, it receives, of course, top billing in the WP today.
The Anarchist's Ball
I must confess my ignorance here. I honestly thought that, as a political movement, the concept of anarchy was dead throughout the world. It appears that I may have been wrong -- that or the term anarchists should read youthful hooligans who simply enjoy a good riot now and then. You know, shout some slogans, light up a car, meet like minded members of the opposite sex. It seems that this sort of anarchy is in fact still alive in the world, and its epicenter this date is Copenhagen.Riots that have resulted in 643 arrests in Copenhagen are expected to continue this week after anarchists travelled from across Europe to protest against the eviction of anticapitalist squatters.
They were answering an appeal to demonstrate against the seizure by antiterror police of Youth House, a centre for far-left activists. Once host to Lenin, it has now been bought by a Christian group.
Barricades were set up in surrounding streets, cars were burnt and officers pelted with petrol bombs after clearing the building on Thursday. Police responded with teargas but the clashes continued despite the arrests that included 140 foreigners.
Niels-Erik Hansen, the deputy police chief of Copenhagen, said yesterday that the violence could continue for several nights. “We expect that the moves to detain violent people and to expel the foreigners involved can calm the situation,” he said. “But we also expect that they will not give in.”
Read the whole story here.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
At the End of Week 3, News From the Surge Continues to Improve
Mohammed, the author of the blog Iraq the Model, himself a Sunni resident of Baghdad, reports on the changes he is personally observing in Baghdad as a result of the surge.
. . . Operation “Imposing Law” is an escalating effort with military and political components. After the troops fixed their feet on the streets of Baghdad, PM Maliki and the troops are pushing forward with both components.
Politically, Maliki put an end to speculations about his real intentions of a cabinet reshuffle and announced that the reshuffle is going to happen within two weeks from now.In his press conference this morning, Maliki also announced that the Supreme Judicial Council will be issuing warrants against a number of politicians and members of parliament who have connections to militant groups that are involved in attacks on civilians and security forces.
Meanwhile Iraqi and American forces are increasing their presence in and around Sadr city. Today hundreds of American and Iraqi solders swept through Jamila district just north of Sadr city. They searched homes and shops without meeting any resistance.
The Mehdi army is not responding to the raids with fire, but they are trying to undermine the security plan by spreading rumors about alleged crimes committed by US soldiers, specifically against the Shia. . . .
Violent incidents are still decreasing in number and impact in Baghdad. Yesterday for instance the only reported incident was the abduction of an adviser to the minister of defense by gunmen in western Baghdad. It was less than 24 hours until the security forces succeeded in freeing the abducted general and arresting 4 of his captors.. . .
Other law enforcement officials are also getting more serious in doing their job. Traffic cops who would normally stop a suspicious vehicle only if it passed by their post are now riding their motorbikes and chasing suspected vehicles down highways and other streets.This is an indication that Imposing Law does not mean only sending soldiers to kill terrorists. It is reaching out to deal with other aspects of mess and to counter relatively “benign” violations-like breaking the “odd and even” traffic rule, defensive irregular roadblocks and unlicensed kiosks and stalls-by providing protection for the personnel of civilian departments while they do their job.
This is all exceptional news. Please see the entire post here.
With Allies Like These, Who Needs Enemies
The Wall Stree Journal has an article discussing the Italian prosecution of 25 CIA agents involved in a joint operation with Italian intelligence to capture Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, an Islamist terrorist recruiter then living in Milan.
[This capture] . . . four years ago in an operation carried out by U.S. and Italian intelligence could have been a model for transatlantic cooperation in counterterrorism. Instead, it is becoming Exhibit A in how European politicians are working against the U.S., undermining the fight against Islamic terrorism and endangering the NATO alliance.
. . . .
. . . no one, including the Italian prosecutors, doubts that Nasr posed a security risk. In 2005, a Milan court, at Mr. Spataro's behest, issued an arrest warrant for Nasr, charging him with building a terrorist network in Europe that actively recruited terrorists, including for Iraq. Eight of his accomplices have been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison on similar charges, and Italian authorities believe more are at large
. . . .
European politicians are more at fault here than any prosecutor. Since the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., many European leaders have been playing a double game, working with the U.S. to root out terrorist plots on the sly -- and saving countless lives -- while publicly condemning "American methods" in rhetoric that has fed rising anti-Americanism. It doesn't help that many Europeans embrace the preposterous legal notion of "universal jurisdiction," the idea that an ambitious prosecutor can indict and try anyone for an alleged crime committed anywhere in the world.
This is the climate in which, for example, a German court this month issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents allegedly involved in transferring a German-Lebanese terrorist suspect, Khaled al-Masri, to Afghanistan for questioning. It made no difference that Mr. al-Masri had been arrested in Macedonia. Also in Germany, prosecutors are considering whether to bring war-crimes charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet and other senior civilian and military officials. Mr. Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney were targeted by Belgian courts until the law there was changed. And so on.
European officials need to understand the risks they're running if they keep this up. Italy and the U.S. are NATO partners, but such an alliance is meaningless if "allies" make a habit of prosecuting each other for cooperating against a common threat. Italy's political grandstanding is endangering NATO, as well as the lives of millions on both sides of the Atlantic.
The pettiness of our alleged allies, as well as the danger they run in the face of an ever growing internal radical muslim threat, never ceases to amaze me. Their blind anti-americanism, often used for political gain, is both appalling and, in the current state of the world, potentially suicidal. At any rate, read the whole story here.
Fun With Trolls
Peer Review: Lancet Report of 650,000 Iraqi Casualities Unsupported; Possibly Fraudulent
Remember the study released last year by British medical journal The Lancet that ludicrously claimed more than 650,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the Iraq War? The study that was seized upon by “anti-war” groups, and is now cited as fact and repeated endlessly in the propaganda from International ANSWER, CODEPINK, Stop the War Coalition and every other loony left organization on the planet?
Now, a damning peer review has come to the conclusion that the Lancet’s study has “no scientific standing”—and may in fact be fraudulent.
Well, knock me over with a feather. . . .
LGF continues with an excerpt from the peer review report that is worth a read. See it here. Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee that the Lancet numbers will be continuously repeated long into the future, as the people with a stake in those numbers have no desire to cloud the issue with facts. And if you do not recall, the Lancet study was expedited so that it could be published, sans peer review, prior to the last election.
The Surge and Sadr City
Sadr City is no longer a no-mans land as the U.S., in the turn-about strategy of the surge, increases the size of its footprint with a vengance.
More than 1,100 American and Iraqi soldiers in Humvees and armored personnel carriers moved Sunday into the volatile Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of Iraq’s largest Shiite militia, as part of the latest American-led security crackdown in the capital.
The soldiers met no resistance, and no shots were fired, as they patrolled the streets and conducted house-to-house searches for illegal weapons and militia fighters linked to sectarian crimes, according to residents and the American military command.
Iraqi officials said American soldiers also began to construct a small garrison, one of a constellation of neighborhood military posts that compose a major component of the new war plan, unveiled by President Bush in January, to pacify Baghdad.
The sweep was the largest military operation in Sadr City involving American troops since 2004, when the Americans suppressed a violent uprising of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, using ground forces and aerial bombardments.
This is all good news. Read the rest of the story here.
The Continuing Debate: What to do with Terrorists
The other side, led of late by Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, is that those whom we capture should be afforded the rights of all U.S. citizens and that they should have recourse to our court system. Can you imagine for a moment, giving every WWII POW access to the court system -- and the possiblity of release prior to D-Day, for example.
At any rate, several people smarter then I continue the debate today. For the left are Alberto Mora and Thomas Pickering, whose arguments appear in the Washington Post today. Powerline responds here.
The Washinton Post Lacks Any Journalistic Integrity
What article is the top billed story on the Washington Post website now? It is this atrocity of a WP news article titled "Afghan Civilians Killed After U.S. Marines Convoy Attacked." It is listed on the WP website as the "most viewed" article.
Before continuing, let me review the background. Afghanistan is a war zone, and the unfortunate truth of war is that, in fighting an indiscriminate enemy that uses civilians as shields in their attacks, or otherwise attacks in and from civilian areas, it is unavoidable that civilians will die. That is a reality forced on our soldiers by the actions of an amoral enemy.
But as you can gather, civilian deaths seen in that context are not why this is headline news. It is headline news because the AP found an Afghani who blamed the deaths on the Marines.
First, here are the uncontested facts. A Marine convoy was passing through a town near Jalalabad. An IED exploded next to their convoy, and that was followed up by enemy small arms fire from multiple directions -- a textbook ambush. The Marines returned fire. At some point, either from the IED explosion or the small arms fire, eight civilians died. A reporter questioned the Marine Corps about the civilian deaths. The jist of Marine Corp’s response was that they would debrief the Marines involved in the fight, conduct an investigation with the Afghani government, and then get back to the reporter.
So, explicitly, why did this becomes top line news?The Associated Press quoted several wounded Afghans as saying that the Marines had fired indiscriminately as they fled the explosion.
They were firing everywhere, and they even opened fire on 14 to 15 vehicles passing on the highway," Tur Gul, 38, told the AP. Gul was standing on the roadside by a gas station and was shot twice in his right hand. "They opened fire on everybody, the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot."
So how many problems are there with this particular article and this kind of reporting:
1. Anyone with no military background reading this report will likely be left with the impression that this is just another example of our military out of control. This report, as headline news, defames our soldiers.
2. The results of the debriefing will likely be published in a report buried deeply in the bowels of the WP several days from now. The damage done to the reputation of our soldiers and the nobility of their efforts under fire and in an ambush will not be undone.
3. When the results of the debriefing are released by the Marine Corps in a few days, I have little doubt that they will not show anything other then that the Marines returned suppressing fire towards the locations from which they were being fired upon. Anyone who has been a member of the United States military knows that our troops are trained and drilled repetitively to do precisely that. Wildly spraying bullets is counterproductive. If you are not firing in the direction of an enemy, you will be exposing yourself while at the same time allowing the enemy to keep his head up. That is something untrained or poorly trained soldiers do. The U.S. military, by comparison, is the most highly trained force in the world today. That is not to say that something else might have occurred on this occasion, but it is to say that the AP and WP should be suspect of claims to the contrary until they have all of the facts. That is certainly not what the AP and WP do in this case.
4. The jist of this piece turns morality on its head. It puts moral blame on our soldiers, and completely ignores the fact that the enemy are using civilians as shields, either directly or by staging attacks in areas were civilians are sure to be caught in the fire. This is an enemy wholly lacking in any sense of morality, and the cynical loss of civilian life for them is a plus because of hit pieces like this. Yet any reader who does not analyze what is going on will again just adopt the WP/AP thesis that it is our soldiers who are out of control.
5. Who is Tur Gul, the man making the accusations against the Marines. It is reasonable to assume that if Taliban were able to set up an extensive ambush in the area, including setting up IED's, that just about every civilian in the local area had do know about it. Further, they had to be complicit in it to the extent of not warning the coalition forces. I am not saying that such makes the civilian deaths justified. My point is only that there had to be civilians loyal to the Taliban in the area for this ambush to take place. So, is Tur Gul one of those loyal to the Taliban? We know nothing about him besides his name. By naming him, the W.P. gives a paper thin veneer of reliability to its article. What most readers will not know, however, is that just because the W.P or A.P. provides a name, that alone is no indicia of reliabity. Just do a search on Michelle Malkin's website for "AP."
6. The basic thesis of this hit piece is very damaging in another regard. It incrementally moves the public, and our government, to place an ever greater burden on our ROE -- "rules of engagement" -- that govern when and how our soldiers can fire and protect themselves in hostilities. Let me give you some idea of how the ROE -- and our soldiers who, unlike the enemy, place a value on human life -- operate by quoting from this article in the Guardian from February 22, 2007. And just for the record, as you read this article, know that the Guardian is the U.K.'s leading far left newspaper and it's editorial position is vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq.Boys on bikes cycle backwards and forwards on a footbridge over a small canal lined with houses and groves of date palms. Women in headscarves look anxiously in groups from windows. Men walk with shopping bags. A gunman, clutching an AK-47, bobs his head around the corner of an alleyway close to a school. Once. Twice. On the third occasion a child, a boy seven or eight years old, is thrust out in front of him. The gunman holds him firmly by the arm and steps out for instant into full view of the Bradley's gunner to get a proper look, then yanks the boy back and disappears.
"That is really dirty," says Specialist Chris Jankow, in the back of the Bradley, with a mixture of contempt, anger and frustration. "They know exactly what our rules of engagement are. They know we can't fire back."
A few minutes and a few hundred metres later the performance is repeated. A woman and three small children emerge uncertainly from behind a building, little more than a shack. They stare at the approaching armour. After a few seconds they retreat from view; then the process is repeated. The third time they emerge, a fighter is crouching behind them with a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at Jankow's Bradley. The group disappears.
There is a long pause, a moment of excruciating moral conflict for the soldiers and for the gunner in particular. Not to shoot would be to imperil their own lives or those of their colleagues, both American and Iraqi. To shoot would be to risk killing civilians who have been shoved in front of their guns to shield insurgent fighters.
7. This WP/AP article is one more in the mosaic of the MSM cynically and deliberately attempting to influence public opinion against our wars overseas.
8. On the very outside chance that there is a shred of truth to this story, it should be headline news -- ONLY AFTER THE MARINES HAVE BEEN DEBRIEFED AND THE MARINE CORPS IS ABLE TO RESPOND SUBSTANTIVELY TO THE ALLEGATIONS. That would hold our troops to appropriate standards and allow the newspaper to report facts, not shill for the anti-war crowd and their de facto allies, the radical muslims with whom we are at war. This AP/WP story, as headline news, is an atrocity.
9. I would urge you to complain to the Washington Post about their ethical, moral, and journalistic standards in running this piece as headline news. The Washington Post contact information is:
Newsroom: foreign@washpost.com
Main Phone: 202.334.6000
800.627.1150
Letters to the Editor: Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15 St. NW
Washington, DC 20071
and by e-mail at: letters@washpost.com
Update: The New York Times has a similar article, though, and I never thought that I would say this, the NTY provides a much more balanced article. The NYT at least includes the following:The United States military said the unit came under fire after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car near their convoy “as part of a complex ambush involving enemy small-arms fire from several directions.”
Members of the unit, on patrol near Jalalabad airfield, returned fire, and the civilians were killed and wounded in the cross-fire during the battle, according to a statement from the military press office at Bagram Air Base, 40 miles north of Kabul.
“We regret the death of innocent Afghan citizens as a result of the Taliban extremists’ cowardly act,” Lt. Col. David Accetta, a military spokesman, said in the statement. “Once again the terrorists demonstrated their blatant disregard for human life by attacking coalition forces in a populated area, knowing full well that innocent Afghans would be killed and wounded in the attack.”
The Carnival of the Insanities is Up
Britain’s Existential Problem: Part I - Multiculturalism
I am an anglophile – and remain so despite the recent unjustified attack by the Prince on that American icon, McDonalds. My respect for the U.K., its traditions, its history, and its people could not be higher. British culture at its best is, in my view, the pinnacle of culture in the Western World. Unfortunately, I also recognize quite clearly that the U.K. is in serious trouble, and at the top of the list of those troubles is the question of whether the U.K. can integrate its Muslim population, and if not, can Britain survive the coming storm with its Anglo-Saxon ethos intact?
With that said, I think that Britain's troubles are manifold, but in large measure derive from a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism and its intertwined doctrine of moral equivalence. A good place to start looking at its problems today is to look at multiculturalism's origins and how it mestastisized throughout the U.K. in the years following World War II.
Britain, Multiculturalism, and Moral Equivalence
Take u
p the White man's burden –
Send forth the best ye breed –
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Rudyard Kipling, excerpt from The White Man’s Burden, 1899
Kipling wrote The White Man’s Burden both as an exhortation for the United States to take up the banner of imperialism from Britain, and as a warning of its costs. You will not find a hint of the multicultural philosophy in this most decidely non-pc work. Multiculturalism would not really start to take hold in Britain for yet a half century. Kipling's work encapsulates the British belief that had existed for centuries, that the U.K.’s culture and societal values were morally superior and, as such, colonialism and imperialism were not only justified, but a moral imperative.
It was quite idealistic, and it conveniently ignored the profit motive that directly motivated colonialism. But, there is nothing evil in a profit motive – indeed, it is a simple reality of mankind. In all the places where people enjoy the most freedoms and the highest standards of living, even among the poorest of them, it is in those countries that embrace capitalism and acknowledge the reality that mankind is motivated by profit in return for their effort.
What were the Anglo-Saxon cultural mores that molded Kipling and the British citizenry of his day? There was democracy, a freedom of the press, a freedom of speech, there was education and culture, there was rule by law, there was tolerance – including religious tolerance, there was a sense of fair play and a chivalric ideal, and there was capitalism.
Were there a lot of acts taken by the British that were not only out of line with those mores, but indeed, blatant acts of brutal suppression? One could fill tomes with the atrocities. But the passage of years has shown that, where the British footprint was the largest – in the New World, in India, in Hong Kong, those higher mores – or the desire to achieve those mores – have been Britain’s enduring legacy. In essence, imperfect though our systems may be, Britain, more then any other country, can lay claim to being the mother of the best values that dominate Western society today.
But in the century that has past since 1899, Britain has changed in many fundamental ways. World War I saw the flower of British youth wasted by foolish generals in carnage on a never before seen scale. By the time Hitler rose, many of Britain’s colonies had risen in rebellion, taking a position that Britain had no right to impose their will upon the native inhabitants. In fairly short order, by the mid-point of the century, Britain had given up all but a few small remnants of its once huge colonial empire, having neither the manpower to maintain its colonies by force, nor the desire to further coercively impose its will upon restive colonies. The natives were shouting at the top of their lungs of their desire to rule themselves, and they demonized Britain and colonialism in the process.
But divesting the empire did not bring a clean end to Britain’s imperial period. The legacy of imperialism was ingrained in the British psyche. And with that, a large segment of the British intelligentsia bought into the proposition that not only did the natives have a right to self rule, but that Britain’s history of colonialism was a clear and immoral violation of that right. All prior acts of Britain were viewed not in the reasoned context of world history at any particular time, but through a modern, moralistic lens colored with the original sin of colonialism. Thus, history was set adrift from its moorings in reality. And being the intelligentsia, these were the writers, the teachers, the elected government officials – and thus, the people who held sway over the information in society. The end result, as one loyal subject of the queen cogently – and recently – observed, is that “[a]n overwhelming, politically correct, colonial guilt complex exists in Britain today and colonialism is synonymous with evil.”
With Britain’s past – and thus the mores and ethos that motivated that past – seen as evil, the concepts of multiculturalism and moral equivalence became the morally and politically correct doctrine of British society. By multiculturalism, I mean, a belief that “All cultures are equally good.” In other words, cultural norms are not subjected to a value analysis. Rational judgments of the relative value of any particular element of the comparative cultures are explicitly excluded from, and condemned by, multiculturalism. Inextricably intertwined in this concept is the equation of moral equivalence. The act of one country or one person is morally justified because of some act or prior bad act of another country or person.
When multiculturalism first started to creep into vogue in British society, it had two major lures. The first lure was that it allowed one to feel morally superior by divorcing themselves from a sinful past. Adherents adopted the proposition that, yes, the U.K.’s colonial past was evil, but the person bore no responsibility for that because they now recognized it as such. But then the truly insidious nature of multiculturalism surfaced. That being that it combined both a belief that one’s own past was sinful with a failure to subject the history and cultural norms of another country to a value analysis. Thus, the equation became that all other cultures are superior to our Western culture.
The second lure of adopting multiculturalism, from the time it first appeared in Britain until the point that it was thoroughly ensconced, was that it came with no societal cost. In the post World War II world, Britain had not yet opened the flood gates for Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants. Radical Islam was entombed far away in the Middle East and its reality known only to a few scholars. The only existential threat to Western Civilization was the Soviet Union, and it was held in check behind the Eastern Block borders by NATO.
Tod
ay, the story is completely different. Today, multiculturalism has matured and spawned numerous policies and norms – not the least of which include a lax immigration policy, a criminalization of the criticism of Islam, and a cringing guilt reaction when radical Muslims scream the word “Islamaphobia.” And today, for people who expouse multiculturalism, and indeed, for all of the people inhabiting the U.K., the bill for adopting the philosophy of multiculturalism is now due and owing.
How dangerous is the multicultural philosophy to the U.K.? It will take more time to answer that then this post. But its danger can easily be seen in the one example below:
I believe that we can all agree that a nuclear armed Iran may pose a threat to the Western world. In a recent piece in the Guardian, "Why Can't MP's See The Folly of Trident," Mary Riddel posited two related arguments that derive directly from the philosophy of multiculturalism and use the equation of moral equivalence. The first was that the U.K. could not upgrade its nuclear arsenal while at the same time maintaining that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. The second argument, this one made implicitly by reference to how other countries view the U.K., was that Iran should be allowed a nuclear weapon if the U.K. has one.
What follows is my response that I posted to the Guardian website and elsewhere on this blog:
--------------------------------------------------
Britain and Iran do not inhabit the same moral plane. State sanctioned murder on a grand scale is not something in which Britain normally engages. No one on this earth is worried that the U.K. will decide to smuggle a nuclear bomb into Delhi and then either set it off or otherwise use it as a form of nuclear blackmail. Britain does not open its meetings of parliament each week by asking for death to all of the people who inhabit Israel and America. Britain does not pay terrorist groups on a varying scale dependent on how much death and destruction they cause in Israel or elsewhere as needed. Britain does not use real physical torture as a state sanctioned instrument of its policies. Britain does not glorify suicide and suicidal cults. Britain has never sent tens of thousands of teenagers to their death by sending them unarmed to clear minefields or to charge machine gun nests in time of war. And Britain is not a theocracy founded upon an incredibly aggressive and triumphalist religion that explicitly animates its state policy. As the preeminent American scholar on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis wrote a few months ago:
A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."
In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.
The ultimate truth is this – the argument of moral equivalence is always a utopian canard. Britain and Iran do not inhabit the same moral plane. There is no hypocrisy in Britain's retaining or improving its nuclear arsenal in this imperfect and dangerous world even as it demands that a truly dangerous theocracy cease and desist in its own drive for nuclear weapons.
And the assertion that the U.K. "merit[s] the means of mass annihilation because [they] are 'good' and other countries are 'bad' is seen as risible throughout the non-nuclear world," that assertion is ridiculous. It is the penultimate multicultural argument, devoid of any discriminating value judgments or analysis. Rather then repeat, with slight variation, the argument made above, let me just put it simply: Please name for me any country still extant that has predicated its defense policy on opinion or popularity polls taken in other countries?
I will not hold my breath while you try to list them.
Iraq: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Good:
- Prime Minister al-Maliki is reshuffeling his cabinet and will dismiss all six ministers from Sadr's party. This ontop of Sadr's retreat to Iraq and the U.S./Iraqi surge -- now on the verge of setting up permanent base in Sadr City -- is good news and shows that, despite doubts by many, myself included, al-Maliki can and is acting decisively to stop the violence convulsing the country.
- For the second day in a row, there was only one major explosion in Baghdad.
The Bad:
- Sunni insurgents broke into the homes of two families of an influential Sunni tribe in Youssifiyah, north of Baghdad, and executed the males. The families had taken part in a series of meetings with local Sunni and Shia leaders arranged by the U.S. to stop the violence in their town.
- Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for kidnapping and executing 18 Iraqi policemen in retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Iraqi police force, which woman made her accusations on Al Jazeera. The tape of the cold blooded assassination of the policemen is described on al Jazeera.
The Ugly:
- Al-Maliki's handling of the Sunni woman's claim of rape by Iraqi security forces. Al-Maliki, the day after the woman aired her charge on Al Jazeera television, announced an investigation, but the day after announced that her "rape claim was fabricated to tarnish the reputation of the police and the security crackdown in Baghdad." I agr
ee with Maliki that the rape charges, carried nationally on television, struck me as having all of the indicies of a legitimate claim as does the Duke rape case -- and its timing coinciding with the surge was just too coincidental. Nonetheless, dismissing the claim without investigation was far too ham handed. He should have authorized a real investigation and waited until its conclusion, and then announced the results in detail to the country. What he has done instead opens him up to portrayal as a partisan -- the last thing he needs at this point.
Read more here.
