Fire Hydrant of Freedom

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111606E

What a Strange Way to Wage a War
 
 
 
By Josh Manchester : 16 Nov 2006 
 
 
 
 
I found myself seated at a meeting the other day next to a correspondent for an influential national news outlet. The discussion turned to Iraq. Having spent several years covering the Balkans in the 1990s, my counterpart voiced his concern that he sees in Iraq now many of the same actions - forced migration, for example - that proved to be the incipient signs of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans then. Then he surprised me. He stated that his fear was that should the US leave precipitously, such atrocities would become headlines rather than speculation, and the world would have no one to blame but the United States.


Nevertheless, over the abyss we happily plunge, with sober heads nodding as Sen. Carl Levin appears on a Sunday morning talk show calling for a "phased redeployment" of US forces to begin in "four to six months."


Why not now? What does the distinguished gentleman from Michigan believe will be accomplished then that isn't already? If the entire enterprise is a miserable failure, why ask our military, whom Mr. Levin will no doubt be the first to vociferously support, to stay one day longer? What magical event will occur four months hence? An optimist might wonder whether Mr. Levin was attempting a clever bit of early April Fools' Day humor, but such levity coming from Levin seems unlikely.


Rather than concerning ourselves with April 1st, 2007, or January 1st, or July 10th, or August 4th, or Saint Swithins Day, there is but one day that should be foremost in our minds during these debates, and that is the 5th of October, 1938. On this day, Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons, beginning "by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing . . . that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat." Churchill was the wet blanket at the parliamentary party to celebrate Neville Chamberlain's efforts at the Munich Conference, where the Sudetenland had been ceded to Hitler. About Czechoslovakia, Churchill said, "All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, [she] recedes into the darkness."


And so it will be in Iraq. When comparing the two, it is hard to know which is more ignoble: in one case, Britain bargained away a portion of another sovereign state; in our own, we are ready to cede a sovereign state to (insert here: Iran, Al Qaeda, or pure chaos), after having bought such real estate with the blood of thousands of our young.


Some Senators, mindful of the disaster a withdrawal will prove to be, warn against a precipitous exit. Yet precipitous or not, it is an exit that they seek. Yes, this is truly the problem. Having suffered decades ago from an affliction known as the Vietnam Syndrome, we seem forever destined to have periodic relapses, punctuated by someone offering a cure for our national hangover with a remedy called the Powell Doctrine.


It's an interesting brew, this one: it contains a dash of the idea that we should only fight wars that we know in advance that we'll win, even though no such creature exists; a bit of the notion that at the same time, we'll do so with every possible ally; and most importantly, a bit of whimsy called an "exit strategy," which in every other part of the world, where the inhabitants don't move every two years as we do, means that sooner or later the Americans will bail.


What a strange way to wage a war. It's almost as though everyone were promised . . . that they'd never really be waging one at all! Contrast that concoction with Marine Lieutenant General James Mattis, who related over the summer his reply to an Iraqi who asked when we would leave the country. "I said I am never going to leave. I told him I had found a little piece of property down on the Euphrates River and I was going to have a retirement home built there. I did that because I wanted to disabuse him of any sense that he could wait me out."


Iraq is dangerous. Progress is measured in weeks and inches, not minutes and miles. It is weakly governed when governed at all. But to leave too early will be to compound these seemingly intractable attributes with the most deadly of sins: a failure of willpower. The world will know that when Iraq becomes the next Taliban-like state, or the next Rwanda, that it was only because the United States, the most able, powerful, and wealthy nation in the history of the world, gave up. If that disturbs you, imagine how much it delights our adversaries.


When the "phased redeployment" begins, and the cries of "peace in our time" are shouted from the ramparts, the only important difference between now and 1938 will be that the British at least had a Churchill to tell them, "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."


Josh Manchester is a TCSDaily contributing writer. His blog is The Adventures of Chester www.theadventuresofchester.com
 
 

**This is a good analysis of the aftermath of the midterms.**

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11162006/postopinion/opedcolumnists/our_enemies_glee_opedcolumnists_amir_taheri.htm?page=0

Our Enemies' Glee 
By Amir Taheri
New York Post | November 17, 2006

Radical elements across the Middle East see last Tuesday's defeat of President Bush's Republican Party as their victory.
Calling the election "the beginning of the end for Bush," Ayatollah Imami Kashani told a Friday congregation in Tehran that the Americans were learning the same lesson that last summer's war in Lebanon taught the Israelis.

Tehran decision-makers believe that the Democrats' victory will lift the pressure off the Islamic Republic with regard to its nuclear program. "It is possible that the United States will behave in a wiser manner and will not pit itself against Iran," says Ali Larijani, Tehran's chief negotiator on the nuclear issue.

His view is echoed by academics with ties to "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei. "The Democrats will do their best to resolve Iran's nuclear issue through negotiations, rather than resorting to threats," says Yadallah Islami, who teaches politics at Tehran University. "Bush will be forced to behave the way all U.S. presidents have behaved since Richard Nixon - that is to say, get out of wars that the American people do not want to fight."

Nasser Hadian, another academic with ties to Khamenei, goes further. "With the return of a more realistic view of the world, the United States will acknowledge the leading role that the Islamic Republic must play," he says. "There is no reason for our government to make any concessions on the nuclear issue."

Arab radical circles are even more hopeful that Bush's defeat will mark the start of an historic U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. They draw parallels between the American election and Spain's 2004 vote, days after the Madrid terrorist attacks, which led to an unexpected change of government.

The radicals expect U.S. policies to change on three issues:

Iraq: The assumption is that America will cut and run.

Salafist groups linked to al Qaeda believe that this will mean a stampede of those Iraqis who worked with the Americans. Iraq's Shiite leaders would flee to Iran, where most had been in exile before Saddam Hussein's fall. Kurdish political and business elites will flee to the three provinces they have held since 1991. This would enable the Salafists, in alliance with the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Presidential Guards, to enter Baghdad and seize power.

Absent in that calculation is the role Iran might play: Will the mullahs sit back as Salafists and Saddamites lay the foundations of a new Arab regime that would turn against Shiite-dominated Iran?

Radical Shiites have their own vision of Iraq after the Americans have fled. They believe that, backed by Iran, they'll be able to move into the four Arab Sunni provinces that have been restive since 2004 - and crush the Saddamites and al Qaeda. This ignores the certainty that any Iranian intervention in Iraq will provoke a massive Arab reaction - with Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Syria (now an Iranian ally) forced to back Sunni Arabs in Iraq.

In other words, any hasty American withdrawal from Iraq could lead to either a long and bloody civil war or an even longer and bloodier regional conflict.

Iran: Radical circles are unanimous in their belief that Iran can now proceed with its nuclear program without fear of U.S. and allied retaliation. They expect Democrats to revert to Clinton-era policy and seek a "Grand Bargain" with the Islamic Republic - acknowledging Iran as the major regional power and recognizing its right to the full cycle of nuclear technology.

This perception has boosted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cause in next month's crucial elections. Ahmadinejad argues that Bush's defeat vindicates his own policy of "standing firm against the Great Satan he hopes to see his faction win control of the Assembly of Experts - a body that can elect and dismiss the "Supreme Guide." Ahmadinejad would thus control all levers of power in Tehran.

Yet the expected U.S. retreat on Iran may not materialize - or, if it does, produce the results Tehran desires. Why should Democrats be less worried about a rogue state armed with nuclear weapons than the vilified "neocons"?

Iran's entry into the nuclear club, even if not opposed by Washington, would provoke opposition in the region. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies - all would be forced to seek nuclear weapons. And the ensuing arms race would be a heavy burden on the Islamic Republic's ailing economy.

Israel: Radical Islamists in both Iran and the Arab countries believe that the Democrats' victory indicates "growing American lassitude." They believe that, once it becomes clear that Americans don't want to fight for the Middle East, many in Israel would emigrate to America and Europe to escape the constant daily pressure from Islamist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

In visits to more than a dozen countries in the past few months, Ahmadinejad has been vigorously promoting his "one state" formula for Israel-Palestine. He claims to have won the support of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Sudan's Gen. Hassan al-Bashir, and believes that, once it becomes clear that America wouldn't fight a war in support of Israel, most Arab states would rally along.

His "one state" plan turns on a referendum in which Palestinians, including those outside the region, will vote along with those Israelis who have chosen to stay to create a single state in which Jews and Arabs live together.

This euphoria, too, may prove problematic. There is evidence that a majority of Palestinians wish to have a state of their own as quickly as possible, and see outsiders' quest for a single state as a chimera. Nor is there any reason why many Israelis would choose to flee, as Ahmadinejad expects, rather than stay to defend their country.

Also, most Arab states remain committed to the Bush "road map," a fact underlined last week by Saudi Arabia's call for a new peace conference based on the two-state formula.

The mullahs and al Qaeda may soon find out that their celebration of "the end of Bush" was premature. Some Democrats may have promised cut-and-run. But, once in power, the party as a whole may realize (to its horror) that, this time, those from whom Americans run away will come after them.

One more fact for the mullahs and al Qaeda to take into account: Their nemesis, the reviled Bush, is around for another two years, and unlikely to dance to their tune, even if the new Congress demanded it. And two years is a long time in politics.

Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.

Ever since I have been introduced by you to the idea that Europe may become part muslim I have been discussing this topic with people around me I know. We all consider this a very absurd prediction.

**I think in general, europe is very much in denial, from the top down as to the changes taking place around them. A unwillingness to examine the crisis coupled with deeply ingrained "political correctness" prevents a basic discussion of the problem. The fact that this German needed to hear about this subject from an American demonstrates the core disconnect.**

1.) Yes, there will be a gap in the social welfare. After all, the birthrate prediction is a statistic and may not represent the actual situation but can only show trends. One trend is that people get children at a later age than our parents. The average family now has two children at the age of 31, before it has been at the age of 21. There are a lot of young couples around me that have children now. Europeans will not die out.

**Statistics are empirical evidence. This writer is citing anecdotal oberservations that young couples around him (I'm assuming it's him, not her) are having children. The issue isn't that europeans aren't reproducing, it's that they aren't reproducing at a sufficient rate to stabilize their population loss and the economic death spiral of socialism.**

2.) Yes, most countries in Europe have problems with their immigrants. France and England are an exception due to their colonialist past. They will face massive problems in the future. However not all of these immigrants are Muslims. There are a lot of people from former Yugoslavia and Africa. A lot of immigrants from Arabian countries however are Christians. Due to the conflicts in those countries, it has become harder for them to live there. A lot of refugees from Iraq for example are secular Christians.
**I'm not sure if the author intends to say that the UK and France have a better or worse problem with immigrants due to a colonial past. I'm assuming the author is aware of the ongoing problems with the growing French "Intifada" in the Parisian suburbs and the British lads who grew up speaking the Queen's english, cheering for Manchester United and eating fish and chips who none the less were ready to wear bomb vests and walk into the tube and become shaheeds in the midst of their fellow British subjects. They weren't poor, disenfranchised refugees living in squalid conditions. They were the products of "Cool Britiania" and the call of jihad which seems to greatly overwhelm any alligence to "Queen and Country". As far as christians fleeing the middle east, that's very true. In the US, the majority of arabs aren't muslims. The majority of muslims aren't arab. As the global jihad grows, the fate of non-muslims in muslim areas worsens and you'll see many more fleeing to non-muslim nations. For many, europe will provide only temporary shelter.**

3.) Yes, fundamental islam has become a haven for lost souls. Indeed, to a lot of young kids of former immigrants Islam gives a home. BUT, Islam does not equate terrorism, as being christian does not include being a mormon. There is fundamental islamism in Europe, as there is a by far greater number of hardworking, honest and reasonable muslims, no better or worse than a jew or christian.
**Islam doesn't always equate terrorism, but it's core theology does. It's long and bloody past and very bloody present demonstrate that islam across the globe very rarely peacefully coexists with other religions and cultures. A religion, which was founded by a genocidal rapist who funded the violent growth with attacks on caravans when his early attempts to spread his new religion by peaceful evangelization failed is a trap that which would-be reformers of islam haven't figured out a theologically viable way to escape. To create a version of islam that is willing to peacefully coexist with a secular society requires throwing out much of the koran and vast amounts of hadith and sira. It means that the core concept of islam as not only a religion, but a wholistic way of life that dictates not only personal conduct and a relationship with god, but law and government and a requirement for islam to be globally dominant must be shed. Those within the islamic world that attempt to do so in a public manner rarely die of natural causes and the jihadis can support much, if not all of their actions by core aspects of islamic theology.**

4.) Europe will NOT become semi-muslim - this is wishful thinking. There're facts you can build such a theory on. Europe rather will see another wave of Nationalism.
**It's not my wish. I'd very much prefer not to see it happen. As far as nationalism, the most likely scenario is at a certain point those europeans who wish to fight to sustain themselves will turn to right wing fascist groups and fight a very ugly civil war. A much better approach would be a rational and moderate discussion and policy changes now, but as the topic is still very much unexamined by the majority of europeans precious time is being lost.**

5.) Europe has a different mechanism of integration. While in the US an immigrant is assimiliated within one generation, in Europe it takes about 3 - 4 generations. Immigrants then also aren't assimiliated, but in a profound process the origin culture is being put under a test by European values. That brings forth a lot more conflict and takes longer.
**I'm not sure what the writer means by this. The fact that the US has and is very successful in creating Americans from immigrants is our great strength. It's ironic that the parents of european suicide bombers were much more intigrated into their adopted countries than their culturally compitent, yet rejectionist children are. Exactly how many more generations are required before the new demands for sharia law are forgotten?**

6.) Yes, Europe has an identity crisis. The changes of the 1990s were over here , not in the US. 20 years ago the new members of the EU have been our enemies. 20 years ago we learned to shoot russians in the military, now they're our ally. The US will have to show a bit more sensitivity to the changes we haven't yet been able to acclimate to anyhow. If you want Europe as a new enemy, I guess scribes like Hanson, Peters or Steyn will be very quick to give reasons for that.

**The US made possible the changes in europe and continues to provide for europe's collective protection, despite the flagrant ingratitude that seems to have become a core element of european culture at this point. It hate to break it to the writer, but Russia, especially now isn't western europe's ally. Watch how Putin is manuvering to control europe's energy supply and tell me it's out of an ally's benevolent feelings. I don't fear europe as an enemy. I fear watching it's demise. I fear seeing ancient site and artifacts destroyed because they are seen as "haram". I fear that a future crisis with an nuclear armed "Francostan". It won't be Europeans, as we know them now that we'll be confronting.**

**More on the "ethical issues" facing the dems.

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/15/abc-news-abramoff-implicates-reid/

**It ain't over until we say it's over.**

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111006A

Why Intellectuals Love Defeat
 
 
 
By Josh Manchester : 13 Nov 2006 
 
 
 
 
James Carroll, recently writing in the Boston Globe, wondered if America could finally accept defeat in Iraq, and be the better for it, comparing it to Vietnam:


"But what about the moral question? For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat?"


To be frank, no. In Mr. Carroll's fantasyland, the United States is deserving of defeat, and through some sort of mental gymnastics, that defeat is honorable, because it smacked of hubris to ever have fought in the first place.


I contend instead that the ultimate dishonor will be to leave hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of Iraqis to violent deaths; and that this is far too large a price to pay for Mr. Carroll to feel better.


In his book The Culture of Defeat, the German scholar Wolfgang Schivelbusch described the stages of defeat through which nations pass upon losing a large war. He examined the South's loss of the Confederacy, the French loss in the Franco-Prussian War, and the German loss in World War I. He saw similar patterns in how their national cultures dealt with defeat: a "dreamland"-like state; then an awakening to the magnitude of the loss; then a call that the winning side used "unsoldierly" techniques or equipment; and next the stage of seeing the nation as being a loser in battle, but a winner in spirit. Schivelbusch expanded upon this last as such:


"To see victory as a curse and defeat as moral purification and salvation is to combine the ancient idea of hubris with the Christian virtue of humility, catharsis with apocalypse. That such a concept should have its greatest resonance among the intelligentsia can be explained in part by the intellectual's classical training but also by his inherently ambivalent stance toward power."


Who knows whether Mr. Carroll has had classical training, but should Schivelbusch meet him today, would he not recognize this idea of defeat as moral purification?


The only problem for those such as Mr. Carroll is that we have not yet lost. It is difficult not to conclude that there is a class of well-intentioned individuals in the United States like him who don't merely feel as they do upon witnessing a defeat, but instead think this way all the time. Like it or not, this mentality of permanent defeat plays a large part in the Democratic Party. It is now up to President Bush and the new Democratic congressional leadership to see that it does not become dominant.


How to do so? A charm offensive is not quite what is necessary. Instead, perhaps a combination of sobering events that will impress upon Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid the gravity of our current situation would do the trick. Why not invite both Pelosi and Reid to the White House every morning until the new Congress is sworn in - and ask them to listen with the President to his Presidential Daily Brief, describing what Al Qaeda has cooked up of late? Or, why not invite them along with the President to one of his private sessions with the families of those who have paid the ultimate price overseas? Speaking of those overseas whose lives hang upon American policy, Pelosi and Reid could be participants in the next conference call that Bush has with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki.


The point of all of this would be to create a true bipartisan consensus on Iraq that does not leave the Iraqis and US credibility to disaster. The Iraqi blogger "Sooni," who describes himself as a "free man" living in Baghdad, recently was asked what would happen if the US partitioned Iraq. "Just imagine it this way [sic] partitioning Iraq will create a small Iran in the south of Iraq and a small Afghanistan in the middle of it!"


Leaving Iraq will be worse than leaving Vietnam, not necessarily in terms of bloodshed, though that will be no comfort to those who will be slaughtered, but because the jihadist threat today is more dangerous than the Soviet threat then. Despite lacking - so far - in similar capabilities to the Communists, our enemies more than make up for it with an insatiable bloodthirsty ruthlessness. The honor that Mr. Carroll sees in defeat will soon be forgotten should Al Qaeda establish a caliphate in Anbar Province and begin a healthy trade in the export of mayhem throughout the West. The Furies that will visit us from such a redoubt will engender much more than a little longing that we had stayed.


Josh Manchester is a TCSDaily contributing writer. His blog is The Adventures of Chester (www.theadventuresofchester.com).
 
 

**The MSM is waking up, slowly....**

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/beck.extremistagenda/

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/12/video-nancy-pelosi-addresses-the-nation-on-snl/

GM:?

I'm getting that this is no longer available.

Also, pretty please with a cherry on top, give a description of URLS and articles that you post.

Marc

It was a new SNL skit. Worth a laugh. I will work on it Guro Crafty. 

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=1425483&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Do you feel better about this newly elected congressman?

Michael Yon is the MAN! If you are going to read anyone, read him.

Former President Bill Clinton: "And They Will Be All The More Lethal If We Allow Them To Build Arsenals Of Nuclear, Chemical And Biological Weapons And The Missiles To Deliver Them. We Simply Cannot Allow That To Happen. There Is No More Clear Example Of This Threat Than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His Regime Threatens The Safety Of His People, The Stability Of His Region And The Security Of All The Rest Of Us." (President Bill Clinton, Remarks To Joint Chiefs Of Staff And Pentagon Staff, 2/17/98)

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): "The Problem Is Not Nuclear Testing; It Is Nuclear Weapons. ... The Number Of Third World Countries With Nuclear Capabilities Seems To Grow Daily. Saddam Hussein's Near Success With Developing A Nuclear Weapon Should Be An Eye-Opener For Us All." (Sen. Harry Reid, Congressional Record, 8/3/92, p. S11188)

Former Vice President Al Gore: "f You Allow Someone Like Saddam Hussein To Get Nuclear Weapons, Ballistic Missiles, Chemical Weapons, Biological Weapons, How Many People Is He Going To Kill With Such Weapons? He's Already Demonstrated A Willingness To Use These Weapons ..." (CNN's "Larry King Live," 12/16/98)

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY): "I Voted For The Iraqi Resolution. I Consider The Prospect Of A Nuclear-Armed Saddam Hussein Who Can Threaten Not Only His Neighbors, But The Stability Of The Region And The World, A Very Serious Threat To The United States." (Sen. Hillary Clinton, Press Conference, 1/22/03)

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/07/flashback-democrats-urged-pre-emptive-voter-intimidation-in-2004/

How the Grinch Stole Michael Moore 
By Peter Schweizer
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 13, 2005

Peter Schweizer's new book, Do As I Say (Not As I Do), is available from the FrontPage Magazine Bookstore for only $18.95.

In a recent speech broadcast on C-SPAN, Michael Moore complains that a "crazy person" (that would be me) has been spreading lies about him, including the story that he owns stock in a number of evil vicious multinational corporations, including Halliburton. "Michael Moore own Halliburton stock?" the anti-corporate activist told his supporters at the Paul Wellstone Memorial Dinner. "See, that's like a great comedy line. I know it's not true - I mean, I've never owned a share of stock in my life." He went on: "Anybody who knows me knows that, you know - who's gonna believe that? Just crazy people are going to believe it - crazy people who tune-in to the Fox News Channel." (Looks like this crazy person is in good company.)

On the back cover of my book, I include part of Michael Moore?s 990PF that he files with the IRS for a tax shelter he and his wife set up and control. The form clearly shows that Moore bought and sold shares in Halliburton and a number of other vicious, evil corporations. Look through the tax forms from 1998 to the present, and you will find more of the same.

How is it possible for Michael Moore to say he doesn?t own any stock while his tax forms say otherwise? Since Michael Moore simply never lies, this must be a case of identity theft.

Here is what must have happened. Someone set up a tax shelter and registered it at Michael Moore?s home address in Michigan. The thief transferred money from Moore?s accounts into this private foundation and then hired an investment broker to pour the money into corporate stock and bonds. The thief must have practiced forging Michael Moore?s name because the signature on the tax form is a perfect match. To make matters worse, the thief must look exactly like Michael Moore because the only other person involved with the tax shelter is his wife, Kathleen Glynn, and she never noticed anything going wrong. (The private foundation has no staff or other trustees.)

So who is behind this nefarious plot? My first guess is Dick Cheney. Think about it, Cheney has a lot of experience with this covert operations. And a look at the stocks in portfolio includes plenty from the military-industrial complex and oil industry, who are of course all of Cheney?s best friends. When the Halliburton stock in question was first purchased, Cheney was CEO. What better way to boost the stock price than use Michael Moore?s money?

But at second glance, this sort of operation is too soft for Cheney. If he wanted to get Mike, a dirty ops campaign like this would be too mild. Wouldn?t he just trump up charges and invade Michigan?

That brings us to another possibility: Karl Rove. Whenever anything goes wrong on the Left (remember those fake Bush National Guard papers?), Mike thinks Rove is behind it. He has to be behind this, too, right?

All joking aside, Michael Moore is following a tactic that too many of the liberal-leftist elite use to avoid any sort of accountability. Think about it: when was the last time you heard a leader of the Left apologize for anything? Too many seem to embrace the Stalinist precept that they cannot make mistakes.

The real question facing the Left?s rank-and-file when it comes to the hypocrites I highlight in my book is this: are you going to stand by your principles or your heroes? If you truly believe what you claim, you shouldn?t tolerate this kind of hypocrisy on the part of your leaders.

Conservative leaders who have fallen short publicly apologize, take responsibility for their actions, and work on changing. Leaders on the Left simply are not held into account in the same manner. The media give them a free pass and rank-and-file leftists do not want to question them. Being a leader on the Left means never having to say you are sorry. It?s time for that to change.

So I ask those on the liberal-Left: Who are you going to believe, Michael Moore or his tax returns?

Rogt,

Please give your definition of a "necessary war".

As far as blatant corruption, would you like a list of democratic congress members with "issues"?

A city left to drown was left that way by Ray Nagan and Kathleen Blanco, both democrats. FEMA, is at best 3rd string. More a check-writing entity than a first responder.

No one can top the left for smug self-rightiousness.

SACRIFICE Troop cradled grenade to save others
Los Angeles Times
12-7-2004 | TONY PERRY and RICHARD MORRIS


SAN DIEGO ? Sgt. Rafael Peralta is dead, but the story of his sacrifice to save fellow Marines will live long in Marine Corps lore.

In the fierce battle for the Iraqi town of Fallujah, Peralta, with gunshot wounds to his head and body, reached out and grabbed a grenade hurled by an insurgent, cradling it to his body to save others from the blast.

The explosion in the back room of a house injured one Marine, but four others managed to scramble to safety.

Peralta, 25, an immigrant from Mexico who enlisted the day he got his green-card work permit, was declared dead en route to a field hospital.

?If he hadn?t done what he did, a lot of us wouldn?t be seeing our families again,? said Lance Cpl. Travis J. Kaemmerer, who witnessed the blast.

Garry Morrison, the father of Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison, had trouble keeping his voice from breaking when he spoke of Peralta.

?He saved the life of my son and every Marine in that room,? Morrison said in a phone call from Seattle. ?I just know one thing: God has a special place in heaven for Sgt. Peralta.?

Similar gratitude was expressed by family members of other Marines in Peralta?s unit who were close to the blast. The unit was Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division.

In a modest home in a blue-collar neighborhood here, the Peralta family feels pride but also grief, anger and confusion.

Rafael Peralta was the oldest son: strong, a weightlifter and athlete, head of the family since his father died in a workplace accident three years ago. He loved the Marine Corps.

He joined in 2000 and recently had re-enlisted. While in the Marines, he became a U.S. citizen. The only decorations on his bedroom walls are a copy of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and a picture of his boot camp graduation.

As Peralta waited last month to begin the assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, he wrote a letter to his 14-year-old brother, Ricardo.

The letter arrived the day after several Marines and a Navy chaplain came to the Peralta home to notify the family of his death.

?We are going to destroy insurgents,? Peralta wrote. ?Watch the news. . . . Be proud of me, bro. I?m going to do something I always wanted to do.

?You should be proud of being an American. Our father came to this country and became a citizen because it was the right place for our family to be. If anything happens to me, just remember I?ve already lived my life to the fullest.?

Peralta had left his mother, Rosa, with similar words. She said he told her, ?I want you to be strong and take care of my brother and sisters because I don?t know if I?ll return.? His mother added, ?I?m proud of him, but my heart is sad.?

Rafael Peralta had not been assigned to the Nov. 15 attack on Fallujah. Still, he volunteered.

As a scout, assigned to perimeter security, he could have stayed on the periphery. Instead, he took the lead as his platoon stormed a house in search of heavily armed insurgents known to be hiding in the neighborhood.

The house appeared empty. Then Peralta opened a door to a back room, and three insurgents fired their AK-47s. Marines fired back at near point-blank range with M-16 rifles and automatic weapons.

Hit several times in the chest and once in the head, Peralta went down and appeared dead. Insurgents tossed a ?yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped? grenade toward the Marines.

To the amazement of the other Marines, Peralta, apparently with his last bit of strength, ?reached out and pulled the grenade into his body,? said Kaemmerer, a combat correspondent from the 1st Force Service Support Group assigned to the battalion. Peralta?s body absorbed most of the deadly fragments from the blast.

?Most of the Marines in the house were in the immediate area of the grenade,? Kaemmerer said. ?Every one of us is grateful and will never forget the second chance at life Sgt. Peralta gave us.?

After the grenade blast, the house caught fire, and Marines repositioned in the street for a second assault. Within minutes, the three insurgents had been killed by Marines and Peralta?s body was recovered.

In the hours after the battle, Marines spoke quietly of Peralta?s heroism.

?You?re still here, don?t forget that,? Lance Cpl. Richard A. Mason told Kaemmerer. ?Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and other Marines today.?

Even in their pain, Peralta?s family members are not surprised that he decided to lead from the front.

?My brother was very courageous,? Ricardo Peralta said. ?He wasn?t scared of anyone or anything.?

  Whoops! My bad.

Above is one of the best writers in the "blogosphere" who rarely posts, but when he does it's well worth the wait. In his current post he demolishes current soundbite sloganeering which is utterly false but commonly believed.

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/06/video-nasrallah-tells-muslims-us-will-abandon-you-just-like-they-abandoned-the-vietnamese/

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=000C...54B-9AF483027AF1010E

Radical mufti finds backing here

Saturday November 4, 2006
By Simon Collins


A Sydney mufti who compared unveiled women to "uncovered meat" has gained followers in New Zealand, despite an attempt by the country's official Muslim body to disown him.

A former president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, Dr Abdul Hafeez Rasheed, says Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali may have used an "inappropriate" analogy, but his message that women should cover up was "quite legitimate".

Another Auckland man, 23-year-old website developer Eyad Arwani, wrote on a local Muslim discussion website: "Just as there is [sic] thieves among men, there are those who cannot control their sexual desires, and if a woman attracts attention of such men and is violated, then she can only blame herself."

Sheik Alhilali attended a conference at Auckland's Sheraton Hotel organised by the local Islamic federation and the Saudi-based Organisation of the Islamic Conference in June 2003 and claims to be the "Mufti of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific".

In a sermon reported last week in Australia, he said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street or in the garden or in the park or in the backyard without a cover and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem.

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib [scarf or veil], no problem would have occurred."

But the current Islamic federation president, Javed Khan, issued a statement rejecting Sheik Alhilali's claim to be the "Mufti of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific".

"We have no dealings with this mufti," he said. "I have been president for 3 years and I have never met him."

He said the title "mufti" was given to Islamic scholars with authority to settle issues of religious law but did not carry any administrative powers such as those of Christian bishops.

Egyptian-born Sheik Alhilali attended the Auckland conference in the same month that Mr Khan was elected the federation's president.

Mr Khan said yesterday: "I attended some of the sessions but I can't remember whether he spoke. It was before my term."

The imam of New Zealand's oldest mosque, in Ponsonby, Sheik Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ayrut, attended a dinner with Sheik Alhilali at the conference. He said that, if correctly reported, the mufti's latest sermon was "a mistake".

"You have to call people to be in good morality and to follow your religion, not to condemn them and say these ladies ... are like meat on the street," Sheik Ayrut said. "If he said that, that's wrong."

Fiji-born Dr Rasheed, now a lawyer in Mt Roskill, believed the criticism was part of an international campaign against Islam by "Zionist Christians".

He said the Koran was clear that women should cover themselves "from the wrist right down to the ankles and all over except the face - that is one interpretation. The other interpretation is that they should be completely covered."

Writing on the "Info for NZ Muslims website", Syrian-born Mr Arwani called on Muslims to support Sheik Alhilali.

"The argument that men should control themselves is ludicrous. It is just like saying thieves should not rob houses whose doors and windows are left wide open," he said.

But a Hamilton Muslim woman who wears the hajib, Anjum Rahman, responded that "self-control is the basis of Islam".

"It is the meaning of submitting your will to Allah. It is one of the reasons we fast during Ramadan. It is how we strive for Jannah [Paradise] - by controlling our desires."

http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/w_phares/11042006.htm

Future Terrorism: Mutant Jihads
Terrorism Dr. Whalid Phares
November 4, 2006 
The strategic decision to carry out 9/11 was made in the early 1990s, almost ten years before the barbaric attacks on New York and Washington took place. The decade-long preparations?and the testing of America?s defenses and political tolerance to terrorism that took place before September 11th?were a stage in the much longer modern history of the jihadist movement that produced al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. Decades from now, historians will discover that the United States, the West and the international community were being targeted by a global ideological movement which emerged in the 1920s, survived World War II and the Cold War, and carefully chose the timing of its onslaught against democracy.

Undoubtedly, the issue that policy planners and government leaders need to address with greatest urgency, and which the American public is most concerned about, is the future shape of the terrorist threat facing the United States and its allies. Yet developments since 2001, both at home and overseas, have shown that terror threats in general?and the jihadi menace in particular?remain at the same time resilient and poorly understood.

Defining the War
The jihadi war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War?and the struggle against the United States and some of its allies thereafter?are all part of a single continuum. Over time, jihadi Salafists and Khomeinist radicals alike have become proficient in selecting their objectives and infiltrating targets.

Indeed, an analysis of the security failures that made 9/11 possible clearly demonstrates that the hijackers exploited systemic malfunctions at the national security level. Learning these lessons is essential for better counterterrorism planning in the future. But the jihadists are also learning, and the advantage will go to the side which can adapt most quickly. If the jihadists learn to understand and anticipate their opponents, their tactics and strategies will mutate.

The first strain of mutating Islamist ideology is that of al-Qaeda and its affiliates. In his now-historic April 2006 speech, Osama Bin Laden confirmed his commitment to global, total and uncompromising jihad. ?It is a duty for the Umma with all its categories, men, women and youths, to give away themselves, their money, experiences and all types of material support, enough [to establish jihad in the fields of jihad] particularly in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kashmir and Chechnya,? Bin Laden has maintained. ?Jihad today is an imperative for every Muslim. The Umma will commit sin if it did not provide adequate material support for jihad.?

"All the indications suggest that al-Qaeda is planning to open a new battlefield in Africa. In the speeches of Bin Laden and other Islamist leaders, Sudan represents a central arena of confrontation with the infidels..."
 
Bin Laden?s latest risala (message) is as important as his initial declarations of war and of mobilization, laying out his most comprehensive vision so far. As this ?world declaration? makes clear, the global Salafi agenda accepts no truth other than radical Islamist dogma. All non-Islamist governments must be brought down, and pure, pious ones erected in their stead. Global jihadism, in its Salafi-Wahhabi form, is ideologically at war with the rest of the world. The conflict is universal in nature. It encompasses the entire West, not just the United States and Europe. Russia, India, and at some point even China, in addition to moderate Muslim governments, must be brought down. Like no other document to date, Bin Laden?s speech outlines the final fantasy of the jihadi mind: world domination.

The second branch of jihadism is smaller, and concentrated in the hands of a single regime: the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since its inception, Khomeini?s Islamic Revolution has seen itself as universal in nature. And today, flush with oil dividends, it is rapidly expanding its influence in Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Similar to its Salafi counterpart, the Khomeinist worldview seeks to erect Islamist regimes, launch radical organizations and expand its ideology. But unlike in Wahhabism, the chain of command is narrow and tightly controlled; Iran?s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the unquestioned ideological head, while Iran?s radical president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, decides the time, place and scope of the battles.

Future Battlefields
By understanding the objectives of these forces, it is possible to extrapolate some theaters of likely confrontation in the years ahead.

Iraq
Today, U.S.-led forces in Iraq are battling al-Qaeda and other Salafi forces in the so-called ?Sunni Triangle.? In the south, meanwhile, Coalition forces have engaged Iranian-supported militias, such as Muqtada al Sadr?s Mahdi Army. U.S. and Iraqi forces will continue to battle on both of these fronts, in Iraq?s center and south. The Salafi strategy will center on classical terrorist attacks, while Iranian-supported forces are likely to attempt to infiltrate and take control of Iraqi forces. U.S.-Iraqi counterterrorism cooperation will continue to expand, but a decisive victory for Baghdad cannot take place before Iranian and Syrian interference has receded?and that will not happen until both of those regimes are weakened from the inside. Hence, American support for democratic and opposition forces in Syria (and by extension Lebanon) and Iran is the surest way to ensure success in Iraq.

Afghanistan
The consolidation of the Karzai government in Kabul is essential to American strategy, both as a bridge to a younger generation of Afghans and as a counterweight to the appeal of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda is committed to preventing such a development. It has a vested interest in causing the country?s post-Taliban government to fail, and in preventing a new generation of citizens from being exposed to non-Salafi teachings. U.S. and NATO forces therefore face a long-term struggle against jihadists in that country, both on the military and the socio-cultural level. Sustaining engagement there will depend on two factors: American public support, and the outcome of the struggle between fundamentalists and the government currently taking place in Pakistan.

Pakistan
Many of the components of the worldwide war with jihadism are concentrated in Pakistan. So far, Pakistan?s radical Islamists have been able to block their government from taking back control of the country?s western tribal areas and uprooting the fundamentalist organizations in its east. But potentially even more dangerous is the possibility that jihadists could take control of Pakistan?s nuclear arsenal. In this context, the most serious threat to the United States would be the collapse of the Musharraf government and the Pakistani military at the hands of radical Islamists. Should this happen, the U.S. would be under direct nuclear threat from a nuclear-armed al-Qaeda regime?one that would have tremendous control over many other Muslim countries.

Asia
A major shift in south Asia will not only impact Afghanistan and Pakistan, but is likely to spill over into Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the southern Philippines, with ripple effects on U.S. allies Australia, Thailand, and India. The U.S. will be deeply and adversely affected by the expansion of jihadism in Asia.

Iran
While the Salafi threat is likely to extend east into Asia, Khomeinism is likely to expand westward, from Iran to southern Lebanon via Iraq?s Shi?ite areas and Syria?s Alawite-dominated regime. Since its inception, the radical regime in Tehran has had a vision of itself as a great power, and consequently perceives itself to be on a collision course with the ?Great Satan?: the United States. The imperial vision of a Shi?a Crescent from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean held by Iran?s leaders mirrors the Sunni Caliphate envisioned by al-Qaeda and its followers?albeit one with a modern twist: nuclear weapons. Bolstered by its partnership with Syria and the strength of its proxy force in Lebanon, Tehran today envisions a global confrontation with the United States. As such, the Iranian regime represents a cardinal threat to democracies in the region and, by extension, to the United States.

Syria
Ever since Hafez al-Assad chose to permit Iran to expand its influence in Lebanon, a Syrian-Iranian axis has existed in the region.2 During the Cold War, Damascus was able to outmaneuver the U.S. on a number of fronts, chief among them Lebanon. By 1990, the latter had been abandoned by Washington to Syria. The Ba?athist domination of Lebanon, in turn, led to the ascendance of Hezbollah. But America?s post-9/11 volte-face brought the dangers of Syrian-occupied Lebanon into sharp focus. By 2005, Syria had been forced out of Lebanon, but Bashar al-Assad remains defiant. Today, in the aftermath of Hezbollah?s war with Israel, Syria, like Iran, finds itself hurtling toward confrontation with the United States.

Lebanon
Since the 1970s, Lebanon has been a key battlefield between the forces of terror and the West. The country houses a dense conglomeration of anti-democratic forces, ranging from Hezbollah to pro-Syrian groups to extreme Salafists. Since the 1983 attacks on the U.S. Marine barracks, the United States has altered its strategy toward Lebanon several times, but today, Washington finds itself forced to contain a rising Hezbollah and support a struggling ?Cedar Revolution.?

Sudan and the Horn of Africa
All the indications suggest that al-Qaeda is planning to open a new battlefield in Africa. In the speeches of Bin Laden and other Islamist leaders, Sudan represents a central arena of confrontation with the infidels, and a major launching pad for world jihad. The jihadists aim to thwart the international community in Darfur and reignite a holy war in southern Sudan. In addition, fundamentalists are expanding their influence in Somalia, and conspiring against U.S. ally Ethiopia. Here again, the U.S. and other democracies find themselves on a collision course with radical Islamists, even though international engagement in Africa today is essentially limited to humanitarian assistance.

Europe
With the Madrid and London attacks, the many plots foiled in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the violence in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, the French ?intifada? and the ?Cartoon Jihad,? Europe has well and truly become the next battlefield. Transatlantic cooperation could give way to tensions between America and its European partners, as European jihadis become a danger to the United States. Indeed, jihadi penetration of Europe, particularly Western Europe, is expected to facilitate the infiltration of North America.

Russia
Since the 2002 Moscow theater hostage-taking and the subsequent Beslan school massacre, jihadism has engulfed Russia. Wahhabism has already taken hold in Russia?s southern provinces, and jihadists are thinking beyond Chechnya, toward the dismemberment of the Russian Federation. Russian strategy, for its part, has been peculiar; while Moscow has confronted fundamentalists at home head-on, it nonetheless pursues a policy of support for Iran and Syria?and, by extension, Hezbollah. In doing so, Russia?s foreign policy has become antithetical to its own national security. The U.S. and Russia have a solid basis for collaboration against international terrorism, but unless Moscow abandons its tolerance of Tehran?s radicalism, the two countries will miss a strategic opportunity to defeat world terror in this decade.

Latin America
While the Soviet legacy has mostly dissipated in Latin America, with Fidel Castro?s regime in Cuba the last ailing vestige of the Cold War, it has taken just one decade for new threats to emerge. The populist regime of Hugo Ch?vez in Venezuela not only poses a challenge to liberal democracies in the region, it also serves as a conduit for foreign jihadi threats. With an alliance with Iran in the making and with an al-Qaeda and Hezbollah presence in the country, Venezuela is facilitating the activities of a network of forces inimical to U.S. interests. Deeper in the continent, meanwhile, both al-Qaeda and Hezbollah have successfully put down roots in the Andes and the Tri-Border Region between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. With the long and porous Mexican-American border a major vulnerability, another future threat to the U.S. is brewing to its south.

Canada
Finally, American security is also at risk from the north. Not only is Canada considered a passageway by which international terrorists can enter the United States, it has also become a site for the proliferation of jihadi groups. The arrests made in Toronto in the summer of 2006, and the coordination between U.S.-born radicals and their Canadian ?brothers,? are signs of a new era?one in which Islamists view the United States and Canada as one strategic arena for operations. Washington therefore will increasingly need to coordinate its counterterrorism strategies with its northern neighbor, despite the differences in political culture, institutions and attitudes.

The Home Front
For the United States, winning the War on Terror depends on two battlefields. The first is overseas, where Washington must confront jihadi forces and help allies to win their own struggles with terrorism. This will require the United States to support democratic change abroad, both as a counterweight to jihadist lobbies and as a means of assisting Arab and Muslim democrats to win the conflict within their own societies.

The second, however, is closer to home. Homeland security planners must be thinking seriously about a duo of unsettling questions. First, are jihadists already in possession of unconventional weapons on American soil, and how can the U.S. government deter them? This crucial issue tops all other challenges, for a terrorist nuclear strike on the U.S. has the potential to transform international relations as we know them. Second, how deeply have jihadist elements infiltrated the U.S. government and federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and various military commands, either through sympathizers or via actual operatives?

As the recent scandal over the National Security Agency?s domestic surveillance program has shown, the answers are fraught with complications. Five years into the War on Terror, the U.S. has not fully made the transition from the pre-9/11 legal counterterrorism framework to one based on intelligence, prevention and robust police action. And, without a national consensus about the seriousness of the jihadi threat, America will lose its own war of ideas. The future enemies of the United States will be a mutation of current and past terrorist foes. In confronting these forces, knowledge of their ideologies, objectives and determination will make all the difference.
Dr. Walid Phares is Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America (Palgrave/St. Martin, 2005). He is also a Professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University.

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http:...nists_mark_steyn.htm

A DARK GLOBALISM
By MARK STEYN

October 17, 2006 -- New Hampshire-based columnist Mark Steyn is one of the most trenchant writers in the English-speaking world today. Hitting stores this week is his new book, "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" - a grim look at the West's fecklessness in the face of the threat from radical Islam. The Post is happy to give its readers a taste with this excerpt.
- THE EDITORS

THE dragons are no longer on the edge of the map: That's the lesson of 9/11.

When you look at it that way, the biggest globali zation success story of recent years is not McDonald's or Microsoft but Islamism. The Saudis took what was not so long ago a severe but peripheral strain of Islam - practiced by Bedouins in the middle of a desert miles from anywhere - and successfully exported it to Jakarta and Singapore and Alma-Ata and Grozny and Sarajevo and Lyons and Bergen and Manchester and Ottawa and Dearborn and Falls Church. It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop.

And now, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalized insurgency.

As a bleary Dean Martin liked to say, in mock bewilderment, at the start of his stage act: "How did all these people get in my room?" How did all these jihadists get rooms in Miami and Portland and Montreal? How did we come to breed suicide bombers not just in Gaza but in Yorkshire?

IN the globalized pre-9/11 world, we in the West thought in terms of nations - the Americans, the French, the Chinese - and, insofar as we considered transnational groups, were obsessed mostly with race. Religion wasn't really on the radar.

So an insurgency that lurks within a religion automatically has a global network. And you don't need "deep cover": You can hang your shingle on Main Street and we won't even notice it. And when we do - as we did on 9/11 - we still won't do anything about it, because, well, it's a religion, and modern man is disinclined to go after any faith except perhaps his own.

But Islam is not just a religion. Those lefties who bemoan what America is doing to provoke "the Muslim world" would go bananas if any Western politician started referring to "the Christian world." When such sensitive guardians of the separation of church and state endorse the first formulation but not the second, they implicitly accept that Islam has a political sovereignty too. Thus, it's not merely that there's a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project - and, in fact, an imperial project - in a way that modern Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are not.

Furthermore, this particular religion is historically a somewhat bloodthirsty faith, in which whatever's your bag violence-wise can almost certainly be justified. (Yes, Christianity has had its blood drenched moments, but the Spanish Inquisition, still a byword for theocratic violence, killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in a typical year.)

So we have a global terrorist movement, insulated within a global political project, insulated within a severely self-segregating religion whose adherents are the fastest-growing demographic in the developed world. The jihad thus has a very potent brand inside a highly dispersed and very decentralized network much more efficient than anything the CIA can muster. And these fellows can hide in plain sight.

NOT long after 9/11, I said, just as an aside, that these days whenever something goofy turns up on the news chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammad.

A plane flies into the World Trade Center? Mohammad Atta.

A sniper starts killing gas station customers around Washington, D.C.? John Allen Muhammad.

A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri.

A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet.

A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed.

A British subject self-detonates in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammad Hanif.

A terrorist cell bombs the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? Ali Mohamed.

A gang rapist preys on the women of Sydney, Australia? Mohammad Skaf.

A group of Dearborn, Mich., men charged with cigarette racketeering in order to fund Hezbollah? Fadi Mohamad-Musbah Hammoud, Mohammad Fawzi Zeidan and Imad Mohamad-Musbah Hammoud.

A Canadian terror cell is arrested for plotting to bomb Ottawa and behead the prime minister? Mohammad Dirie, Amin Mohamed Durrani and Yasim Abdi Mohamed.

Sophisticates object that very few of the Mohammads on the list above are formal agents of al Qaeda. But so what? There are no "card-carrying members" of this enemy: That's what makes them an ever-bigger threat: You don't need to plant sleepers. If you've got a big pool of manpower and a big idea that's just out there all the time - 24/7, flickering away invitingly like a neon sign in the Western darkness - that's enough to cause a big heap of trouble.

AND there are minimal degrees of separation between all these Mohammads and the most eminent figures in the Muslim world and the critical institutions at the heart of the West. For example, in 2003, Abdurahman Alamoudi was jailed for attempting to launder money from a Libyan terror-front "charity" into Syria via London.

Who's Abdurahman Alamoudi? He's the guy who until 1998 certified Muslim chaplains for the United States military, under the aegis of his Saudi-funded American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. In 1993, at an American military base, at a ceremony to install the first imam in the nation's armed forces, it was Mr. Alamoudi who presented him with his new insignia of a silver crescent star.

He's also the fellow who helped devise the three-week Islamic awareness course in California public schools, in the course of which students adopt Muslim names, wear Islamic garb, give up candy and TV for Ramadan, memorize suras from the Koran, learn that "jihad" means "internal personal struggle," profess the Muslim faith, and recite prayers that begin "In the name of Allah," etc.

OH, and, aside from his ster ling efforts on behalf of multicultural education, Alamoudi was also an adviser on Islamic matters to Hillary Clinton.

And it turns out he's a bagman for terrorists.

Infiltration-wise, I would say that's pretty good. The desk jockeys at the CIA insist, oh no, it would be impossible for them to get any of their boys inside al Qaeda. But the other side has no difficulty setting their chaps up in the heart of the U.S. military, and the U.S. education system, and the U.S. political establishment, and the offices of U.S. senators and former First Ladies.

Mark Steyn was a winner of the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism. Excerpted with permission from "America Alone: The End of the World as We KnowIt" (Regnery).

U.N. Indecision on Iran Leaves Bush With Tough Choices
BY DANIEL PIPES
October 31, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/42617

 
Where, one wonders, will the desultory, perpetual efforts to avert a crisis with Iran end? With a dramatic calling of the vote at the U.N. Security Council in New York? Around-the-clock negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna? A special envoy from the European Union hammering out a compromise in Tehran?

None of the above, I predict. As the Iranian government announced a doubling of its uranium enrichment program last week, the Security Council bickered over a feeble European draft resolution. It would do no more than prohibit Iranian students from studying nuclear physics abroad, deny visas for Iranians working in the nuclear area, and end foreign assistance for Iran's nuclear program ? oh, except from Russia.

Recent evidence suggests that Tehran is not likely to forgo its dream of nuclear weaponry.

? Hostile statements provoking the West. Perhaps the most notable of these was President Ahmadinejad's warning to Europe, reported by Reuters, not to support Israel: "We have advised the Europeans that ... the [Muslim] nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt." Yet more outrageously, the chief of the Iranian judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, said America stands "on the threshold of annihilation."

? A mood of messianism in the upper reaches of the government. In addition to the general enthusiasm for mahdaviat (belief in and efforts to prepare for the mahdi, a figure to appear in the end of days), reliable sources report that Mr. Ahmadinejad believes that he is in direct contact with the "Hidden Imam," another key figure of Shiite eschatology.

? The urgent nuclear program. Bolstered by the economic windfall from oil and gas sales, since mid-2005 the regime at almost every turn has taken the most aggressive steps to join the nuclear club, notably by beginning nuclear enrichment in February.

A focused, defiant, and determined Tehran contrasts with the muddled, feckless Russians, Arabs, Europeans, and Americans. Six months ago, a concerted external effort could still have prompted effective pressure from within Iranian society to halt the nuclear program, but that possibility now appears defunct. As the powers have mumbled, shuffled, and procrastinated, Iranians see that their leadership has effectively been permitted to barrel ahead.

Nonetheless, new ideas keep being floated to finesse a war with Iran. A Los Angeles Times columnist, Max Boot, for example, has dismissed an American invasion of Iran as "out of the question" and proffered three alternatives: threatening an economic embargo, rewarding Tehran for suspending its nuclear program, or helping Iranian anti-regime militias invade the country

Admittedly, these no-war, no-nukes scenarios are creative. But they no longer offer a prospect of success, for the situation has become crude and binary: Either the American government deploys force to prevent Tehran from acquiring nukes, or Tehran acquires them.

This key decision ? war or acquiescence ? will take place in Washington, not in New York, Vienna, or Tehran. (Or Tel Aviv.) The critical moment will arrive when the American president decides whether to permit the Islamic Republic of Iran to acquire the bomb. As the timetable of the Iranian nuclear program is murky, that might be either President Bush or his successor.

It will be a remarkable moment. America glories in the full flower of public opinion on taxes, schools, and property zoning. Activists organize voluntary associations, citizens turn up at town hall meetings, associations lobby elected representatives.

But the American apparatus of participation fades away when it comes time to make the fateful decision to go to war. The president is left on his own to make this difficult call, driven by his temperament, inspired by his vision, surrounded only by a close circle of advisers, insulated from the vicissitudes of politics. His decision will be so intensely personal that which way he will go depends mostly on his character and psychology.

Should he allow a malevolently mystical leadership to build a doomsday weapon that it might well deploy? Or should he take out Iran's nuclear infrastructure, despite the resulting economic, military, and diplomatic costs?

Until the American president decides, everything amounts to a mere rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic, acts of futility and of little relevance.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Miniatures" (Transaction Publishers).

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/sto...a1-821b-77366f7af920

Michael Coren
National Post


Friday, November 03, 2006


Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims.

He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.

"Yes, 'imperialism,' " he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."

Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while at medical school in Cairo, and devoted himself to the cause. His group began meeting in a small room. Then a larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers of al-Zawahiri. By the time Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating other students who were unsympathetic.

He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.

"I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."

His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.

"We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."

He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.

"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."

A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted it."

This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification.

"The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"

He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."

Then he leaves -- for where, he cannot say. A voice that is silenced in its homeland and too often ignored by those who prefer convenient revision to disturbing truth. The tragedy is that Tawfik Hamid is almost used to it.

- Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster. www.michaelcoren.com

Of course I agree with the basic premise, but exactly what does that mean in Iraq right now? 

Do you think that our training of the Iraqi Army is working? I wish I knew. I read different things. As I don't have "ground truth" knowledge I can't really answer this.

Do you think that we should support the Sunnis against the Shiites?  Will that drive the Shiites (futher?) into the arms of the Iranians?  We need to have a "sit down" with Sistani and other leaders and draw lines. Friend or foe? Choose now and live with the consequences either way.

Should we support the Shiites and Kurds against the Sunnis? We need to support the Kurds and entrench ourselves there. Iraqi Kurdistan is the one good thing we have there. The Kurds deserve our full support and protection, even if we need to let the Sunnis and Shias sort things out themselves in the usual way.

Should we take out Al-Sadr even though this is against the wishes of the elected sovereign government of Iraq? Yes. We should make it clear to everyone in that part of the world that we reserve the right to kill whomever we need to, them demonstrate it a few times. Al-Sadr should be first on the list.

If we don't, then what of the Shiite militias killings of Sunnis and what of its policies of de-Sunnification out of certain regions? If they can't accept our ultimatum, we pull out from the Sunni and Shia areas and tell them we'll be back when they are ready. Pull our forces into secure perimeters and watch the fireworks.

If we don't stop Shiite militias and de-Sunnification by Shiites, what about the Kurds efforts to de-Sunnify the Sunnis who were moved north by SH to de-Kurdify oil regions of the north? The Kurds have been our friends. We need to demonstrate loyalty and protection to our friends and Machiavellian ruthlessness to those who aren't.

Or do we say that the Sunnis deserve it for being such buttholes to the Shiites for so long, especially under SH? We make it clear, work our program fully, or we'll let them hash it out without us.

But if we do so, what of incipient Arab/Sunni support for taking a hardline with Iran? As OBL said long ago, they'll support whomever they thing is the "strong horse". Time to flex muscles and let natural consequences happen.

Can we fight Iran now?  No?  If not, what is the point of fighting in Iraq if it keeps us from stopping Iran's nuke program?  Isn't stopping Iran's nukes essential?  Won't we have failed if we do not? It's time to take out Iran's nuclear program and engage with "Unrestricted warfare". Iranian resistance gets training and support along with air support and SpecOps direct action, but no nation building. That is up to the Iranians. Killing the mullahs is crucial.

What do we tell our troops as they go out on patrol to get sniped at and IED'd?  What do we tell them that they are fighting for?  Democracy in Iraq?  Do you think that rings true right now?  Do we tell them that we are preparing to deal with Iran?  Does that ring true right now? Tell them this is one round of a thirty round fight. They are prepping the battlespace for future generations.

Is Iraq part of the strategy for Iran or is it a stand-alone theater of WW3? The stakes in Iraq is Iran becoming a much larger state that they intend to span into Lebanon, under a nuclear umbrella while they wage "Unrestricted warfare" across the globe.

After Olmert's failure to finish the job with Hamas, doesn't Iran now have a forward base from which to neuter the Israeli threat to take out Iran's nukes?  In this context, is there any substance to President Bush's comments the other day that he would understand if Israel acted against Iran? Both the Israeli and American leadership know what is at stake, but neither wants to be the one to cross the line, knowing what awaits.

Do you think what we are doing now is working? It's working to a degree in Iraq, but we're losing the psywar.

If not, then what should we be doing?  And is there any chance at all that the American people will support what you suggest? Sadly, we'll need a nuclear 9/11 to get the majority of Americans ready to fight this war.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,226482,00.html

Documentary Portrays Islamic Extremists' Call to Arms Against the Free World

Friday , November 03, 2006




We often hear that 9/11 was a wake-up call for Americans. But have Americans really woken up to the truth of how much radical Islamists want us dead, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to fulfill their mission?

According to a shocking new documentary called ?Obsession,? the free world is still unprepared to face the unwavering commitment of those who have pledged their lives to our destruction. The film states that we suffer not so much from complacency, but from the na?ve disbelief that we remain targets of thousands, perhaps millions of radical Muslims around the world.

The film takes the position that there is no middle ground for radical Islamists -- or Islamic fascists, to use the phrase invoked by President Bush. ?Obsession? is filled with fiery speeches, from the Middle East to the streets of London and New York, in which Islamic extremists offer a stark choice for the world: either convert to a Taliban-like form of Islam or face death.

This is not a point for debate or something we can negotiate our way out of.

Of course, the vast majority of the world?s 1.1 billion Muslims, they say, would never personally engage in terrorism. But what of those who do? How do they develop their following and spread their message?

FOXNews.com has obtained permission to show segments of the DVD. Click HERE to watch Part I. Click HERE to watch Part II.

We see in ?Obsession? how closely the Hitler youth bear resemblance to the young Islamic fundamentalists training with Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups. Of course, Nazi Germany did not train children in the use of suicide belts, as the Islamic fascists do. But manipulating the pliant minds of youth toward fanatical hatred employs the same techniques.

The film contradicts those who say that Muslim extremism is prompted by our actions in the Middle East, pointing out that anti-Western propaganda, school curricula and other indoctrination of Islamic youth has been going on for quite some time. Like Nazi Germany, with whom radical Islamists had a deep affinity before and during World War II, the first step of indoctrination is to dehumanize Jews and Christians by comparing them with pigs and dogs. What we too easily dismiss as infantile stereotypes, particularly regarding the Jews and their supposed domination of America, can sink in if repeated often enough.

Again, the film contends that it?s our own sophistication, and our na?ve belief that we?re too likable to be hated, that plays into the enemy?s hand. Muslim extremists often say one thing to the Western media and a very different thing to their own followers. (In one segment, a Muslim condemns 9/11 publicly and then praises the ?Magnificent 19? at a 9/11 anniversary ?party.?) Our vision is often blinded by our own political correctness, which is used by extremists to their advantage. Instead of focusing on their deceptions and their ultimate intent on our destruction, we obsess on question like ?Why do they hate us.?

Unlike our confrontation with Nazi Germany, the current crisis may be worse for two reasons: First, Adolph Hitler, for all his charisma, did not rely on the power of pure religious faith to compel his followers. Islamic fascism is more similar to the fascists in Imperial Japan, who fortified their political positions with the compulsion of a leader who was deemed by loyalists to be a god. Second, this war has no defined national barriers. In fact, the 9/11 hijackers relied on the services and training facilities of the U.S. to become expert in their deadly arts.

Thus, it may well be that today?s fascists are a far greater threat to the free world than the fascists of yesteryear. But there is still time to prevent them from gaining any more ground, if we begin to take the threat more seriously.

As ?Obsession? points out, there are many Muslims on whom we can rely for support. Without the support of Muslim leaders to direct the attention of Muslims to the lies and distortions of the Islamic Fascist propagandists, we stand little chance of winning the war against terror without a conflagration on the scale of a world war.

This is a frightening conclusion, but one that ?Obsession? concludes we ignore at our own peril. The film begins and ends with a familiar refrain, first coined by the English admirer of the American Revolution, Edmund Burke: ?All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do nothing.?

How determined to kill you is radical Islam? This weekend, FOX News Channel examines the full scope of the threat to the United States, with the help of documentarian Wayne Kopping. This hour-long program exposes the stunning and explicit threats made against the West made by Islamic leaders. It features interviews with former terrorists, shocking Islamic news video never before broadcast in America, and undercover footage taken inside suicide bomber initiations and secret jihadist meetings.

The special will air Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET, and will be repeated Sunday at 1 a.m. ET, 5 a.m. ET, 4 p.m. ET and 10 p.m. ET.

Islam - What the West Needs to Know
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 3, 2006


A new documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know has recently been released.

An examination of Islam, violence, and the fate of the non-Muslim world, the documentary features numerous experts. Today we have invited three of them to discuss the new film. Our guests are:

 

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist who has become an ardent Zionist and evangelical Christian. He is the author of Why I Left Jihad. The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam.

 



 

Serge Trifkovic, a former BBC World Service broadcaster and US News & World Report correspondent, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles, and author of The Sword of the Prophet. The sequel, Defeating Jihad, was published by Regina Orthodox Press in April. Read his commentaries on ChroniclesMagazine.org.

 



 

and

 

Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World?s Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). His latest book is The Truth About Muhammad.

 



 

FP: Walid Shoebat, Serge Trifkovic and Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Magazine.

 

Walid Shoebat, let?s begin with you. Tell us a bit about this new documentary and your contribution to it.

 

Shoebat: Ever since I left radical Islam, I have consistently run into westerners who are oblivious to the mind-set of radical Islamists, and being on both sides of the fence, I have felt like I am Captain Spock of Star Trek -- always having to explain to Captain Kirk how the aliens thought. Yet the first problem I encountered when speaking to westerners is that they always think that the Muslim world has the same aspirations as they do, seeking liberty, equality, modernization, democracy, and the good life.

 

Today, Islamism, a forgotten giant that ruled the ancient world and was finally wounded by the West, is now coming back to life - quickly. In many countries with a Muslim majority, secularism and socialism is out of style, and we have a new trend (actually very old) that is having a come-back, and is growing like wild-fire -- radical Islam.

 

This documentary I participated in links Islam?s history from it?s beginning until now showing the myths and facts. The documentary relies primarily on Islam?s own sources with the undeniable statements made by Muhammad, Islam?s founding father, and how his teachings still live in our modern time. While all this evidence is discussed, many statements by world leaders and politicians deny the undeniable - that Islam in its core teaching is not simply a "beautiful and peace loving religion", but a system of government as well to be forced on the rest of the world.

 

While the East already knows Islam since it lived with it from the beginning, the West is still oblivious not only to Islam?s history, but its growth in the West as well.

 

It?s a documentary that every westerner must see, especially since we still have our freedom to critique Islam, at least for now.

 

FP: Serge Trifkovic, how come I have a feeling this documentary won?t be part of the curriculum for too many university courses?

 

Trifkovic: I?d say that your feeling probably isn?t entirely intuitive. It is also based on ample empirical evidence that the elite class that controls the education, media, and entertainment all over the Western world does not want a serious debate about Islam?s tenets, historical record, and geopolitical designs. Worse still, since you ask about university courses, our educators don?t want to educate young people about Islam as it is ? for which purpose ?What the West Needs to Know? would be an excellent tool ? but to indoctrinate them into accepting the elite consensus.

 

That consensus, as we see in the opening clips of Blair, Bush and Clinton, rests upon the implacable dogma that there is something called ?real Islam? (peaceful, tolerant, and as American as apple pie), and then there is ?extremism? that is an aberrant and unrepresentative deviation of Muhammad?s faith. (Blair?s assurances that the 9-11 attackers were not ?Islamic terrorists? but ?terrorists plain and simple? would have been on par with FDR declaring, after Pearl Harbor, that the attackers were not ?Japanese airmen,? but ?airmen? plain and simple.)

 

Let me offer a striking example of this dogma, lengthy for the symposium format but useful as to what gets into college courses and school curricula. It is provided by Houghton Mifflin, publishers of a history textbook, Across the Centuries, that is compulsory for 7th grade students in California. It employed one Shabbir Mansuri, a man with terrorist connections and a founding director of the Council on Islamic Education in California, to help with the book?s chapter on Islam. The results, while predictable, defy belief.

 

The first verses of the Qur?an, the textbook teaches 12 and 13-year-old Americans, ?were revealed? to Muhammad in AD 610, and the initial revelation came from ?a being he later identified as the angel Gabriel.? Such quasi-factual statements would befit a textbook used in a Pakistani medressa, but not one used in an American public school. More egregiously, Across the Centuries states that ?some Jewish leaders would not accept Muhammad as God?s latest prophet,? and blithely glosses over the fact that Muhammad reacted to the Jews? refusal to accept his prophetic claims with a host of violently Judeophobic ?revelations? in the Kuran. Such injunctions from Allah paved the way for the ethnic cleansing and eventual extermination of all Jews under Muhammad?s domain. To omit his Endloesung from the history of early Islam is equal to the history of the rise of Nazism purged of the Kristallnacht and the Nuremberg Laws.

 

Another bold misrepresentation is contained on p. 64, dealing with ?an Islamic term that is often misunderstood,? jihad. The textbook provides only one ?true? definition: ?The term means ?to struggle,? to do one?s best to resist temptation and overcome evil.? It admits that ?nder certain conditions the struggle to overcome evil may require action,? but hastens to add that the Kuran and Sunna ?allow self-defense and participation in military conflict, but restrict it to the right to defend against aggression and persecution.? American teenagers are also taught that Muslim women enjoy ?clear rights? in marriage and the right to an education, that the Muslims were ?extremely tolerant of those they conquered,? that ?Christians and Jews had full religious freedom? under Islam, and a host of similar lies. The exercises in the textbook require them to wear an Islamic robe, adopt a Muslim name, memorize Kuranic verses, to pray ?in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful? and to chant, ?Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation.?

 

The upholders of the mindset that promotes and mandates such rubbish in our classrooms will naturally treat the truth about Islam as inadmissible, and that?s why ?What the West Needs to Know? will be ignored by them. They dominate the entertainment industry ? just look at Ridley Scott?s Kingdom of Heaven, which conveyed the message that, in a conflict between Christians and Muslims, the former attack, the latter react. The true hero of the movie is Saladin, a wise warrior-king sans peur et sans reproche; its villains, the coarse and bloodthirsty Europeans.

 

The manner in which the media routinely misrepresent Islam tends to be more insidious, especially when it is wrapped in the guise of scholarship. Take the 2002 PBS mini-series Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, financed mostly with our money, which offered an uncritical hagiography on par with the Soviet state television?s treatment of Lenin. Just as the comrades routinely glossed over some two million innocent victims of the 1917-1921 Bolshevik terror, the PBS glossed over the matter of slaughtered Jewish tribes, of the razzias, murders, rapes, of poll tax and dhimmitude. All Muslim battles were presented as defensive. Nine ?specialists? vied with each other to praise Muhammad in extravagant terms. The result bordered on the ridiculous: e.g. ?he deeply, deeply loved? his first wife Khadija, and each of his many subsequent marriages was ?an act of faith, not of lust? ? nine-year-old Aisha included for sure. Muhammad was presented as the liberator of women, and no mention was made of many Kuranic verses and Hadiths that allow, even sanctify rape, violence against wives, and discrimination.

 

On each and every score ?What the West Needs to Know? sets the record straight, and that?s why it is subversive and dangerous. I expect it will be formally banned in the European Union, and I and my four fellow-?stars? should think twice before boarding the next flight for Heathrow or Schiphol lest we end up in a slammer with the book thrown at us for saying things that must not be said. On balance that may well be a price worth paying to alert our naive, complacent or manipulated fellow Westerners that their house is on fire.

 

In The Firebugs, Swiss playwright Max Frisch thus tells the story of Gottlieb Biedermann, a prosperous, guilt-ridden businessman who responds to an epidemic of arson in his town by letting two shady characters who look like arsonists into his home, lodging them, feeding them, and finally providing them with the incendiary materials. Even when he and his initially uneasy wife realize who the visitors really are, they remain in denial about their intentions. Biedermann tries to buy security by displaying generosity, even when the writing is clearly on the wall. Far from being grateful, the arsonists despise him and smugly state that ?the best and safest method? for hoodwinking people ?is to tell them the plain unvarnished truth.?

 

?What the West Needs to Know? seeks to present that unvarnished truth soberly, even dryly, with no bells and whistles, no dramatic music and no special effects. It offers a breath of fresh air and an alternative to the non-debate on Islam that we?ve had for over five years.

 

Spencer: It all reminds me of Eugene Ionesco?s delightful play Rhinoceros. In it, human beings one by one become rhinoceri, and even those who initially vow to hold out eventually succumb, out of the pressure of conformism and the sheer weariness of holding out. The absurdist premise is not so absurd when one looks at the global situation today: the free world is under assault everywhere from the forces of jihad, working from the teachings of the Qur?an and Sunnah, and notably the words and deeds of Muhammad. Yet in America and the West, taking note of these rather obvious facts only brings one opprobrium, if the chattering classes deign to take notice at all: one is compelled in the mainstream of public discourse to deny the obvious. Everyone is busy tossing away common sense, reason, and basic powers of observation and becoming a rhinoceros, and vilifying those who decline to do so.

 

Although the facts presented in Islam: What the West Needs to Know are readily and easily verifiable, they are not to be spoken, not to be noticed, and anyone who dares do so will in effect be read out of polite society. In a sane West, interested in its own defense, such a documentary would not have been produced by a small and indeed quixotic independent production company ? Quixotic Media ? but would have been just one part of a larger effort by Hollywood itself to educate the public about what we are facing, and why our civilization is worth defending. It would not have seen limited, quasi-furtive distribution, but nationwide, front-burner attention.

 

Nevertheless, however anxiously the media and political mainstream wish to ignore the information in this film, and however successful they are in diverting people away from seeing it or even hearing about it, they will ultimately not be so successful in preventing jihad terrorists from continuing to act upon the teachings of Islam we explain in the film. And eventually it will become painfully clear to the politically correct authorities that no matter how much it discomfits them, what we have explained in Islam: What the West Needs to Know is simply the truth. The sooner it is recognized and policies constructed accordingly, the safer we will all be.

 

Shoebat: I share similar frustration as Spencer and Trifkovic. My last episode speaking at Colombia was not only frustrating, but some of the questions made by the student audience reveal a dangerous trend. In my speech, I critiqued not only Islam, but Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer who wrote ?The Jews and Their Lies." I also elevated Martin Luther King Jr. for fighting for Black rights, yet students criticized my speech as anti-Islam, racism and bigotry. Why is it that when I critiqued Martin Luther I was not accused of bigotry against Christianity?

 

When I was a terrorist the world labelled us as freedom fighters. When I was a ?freedom fighter?, I was free to say that ?Jews are shylocks, Israel is a racist state, Jews run the Congress and the media??. In those days, I hated Jews, but when the day came that I changed my mind and loved everyone, I was labelled as a racist.

 

Yet similar statements to the things we said when we were terrorists are made at our universities ? Richard Falk taught that Iran is a model for a humane government, Andres Steinberg ?Israel destroys Christian shrines?, Rashid Khalidi ?Israel is racist?, DeGenova ?Patriot Americans are white supremacist?, Hamid Dabashi ?Jews are vulgar?.

 

All these are so similar to what I learned as terrorist, yet these professors are not labelled as terror supporters, and I am being labelled as racist?

 

At another speech, one Rabbi critiqued the New Testament as ?riddled with violence,? I had no problem with his right to state this, yet when I confronted him I asked ?Why do you feel free to critique the New Testament, but afraid of critiquing Islam?s well documented violence?? to which he could not reply.

 

It didn?t matter that I stated in my speech that a Jew had the right to critique Christianity, a Christian had the right to critique Mormonism and Islam, and a Muslim had a right to critique the Bible and Christianity, I was still accused of racism and bigotry against Islam. One can say almost anything against any other religion but Islam. Why?

 

Our basic religious freedom is at stake. We might be going on the same road as I witnessed in England while doing interviews in the media. In one Christian TV show, the interviewer stated that he cannot critique Islam in fear of closure. Only the interviewee can do so. He feared a shut down of his Christian station.

 

The other dangerous trend is that all fundamentalists are being lumped as fanatics. At the BBC in England during one interview the interviewer stated to me that ?the problem with today?s world is fundamentalism? to which I responded ?Christian fundamentalists give the world a headache, I confess, but Muslim fundamentalists will whack your head right off your shoulders, sir? I was quickly thanked and escorted out of the BBC.

 

I concur with Trifkovic?s findings in regards to Across the Centuries school textbook. I remember the day I reviewed the same book my son brought from school, the next day I walked into the vice principle?s office when I threw the book on the desk asking ?do you know what is today?s date/?, to which he replied ?it?s September 11?. I replied him ?I reject teaching Islam as fact, while my son cannot learn Christianity. Islam is the religion of millions who condoned 9/11.?

 

Fortunately for my son, he said ?Sir, in this school we skip the whole subject, the book is enforced on us, but we do not comply.? Yet I doubt that the rest of the school system was as wise as this one.

 

I also concur with Trifkovic?s Kingdom of Heaven analysis. In one videotape I have by Sheikh Qaradawi, who spent six years in the Middle East as security adviser to the EU spreading his ?peaceful Islam?, was giving an example to Muslim students in America about Salahuddin (Saladin). While Saladin?s Arab advisor was asked by Saladin that the Crusaders want a peace treaty, in which his Arab advisor gave the example from Surah Al-Anfal:61 ?And if they concede to peace, so shall you concede, and place your trust in Allah?, yet Saladin argued ?I am a Kurd and you are an Arab, you should know the Quran better then I? in which Saladin quoted Surat Muhammad verse 35 ?And be not slack so as to cry for peace and you have the upper hand.?

 

Indeed, as Muhammad stated ?Al-Harbu Khid?a? in English ?War is deception?, yet, and while we try to fight the deception by Islamic terrorists from outside, we need to first fight the Islamic terror support that is coming from the inside.


This deception wants to change the next generation Americans. If they succeed, it?s all over -- they won.
Trifkovic: None of us should have any delusions about the prospects that "What the West Needs to Know," or any other single book, movie, or TV appearance, will alter the paradigm and change the terms of what is still a very one-sided debate about Islam. This film nevertheless represents a quantum leap from what we've had available in filmography so far, most notoriously that disgraceful PBS series on Muhammad.

I'd hope the producers will come up with a shorter version that can be marketed to some potentially friendly TV channels (they do exist), or perhaps a 3-part mini-series of 30 min. each, and for the mass market the material may need to be "jazzed up" a little with more documentary clips and a more lively delivery of the voice-over reading Kuranic verses and Hadith, all of which would broaden the film's potential appeal.

This would be well worth the Quijotic team's while, as the movie makes a solid contribution to the effort to define the Enemy in the nebulously named "War on Terror," and to grasp the nature of the threat. It brings us a little closer to the day when the West will discard the taboos and start analyzing Islam without fear, or guilt, or the shackles of mandated thinking. "If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles," says Sun Tzu. Those who see this film will be a step closer to knowing the enemy, his core beliefs, his role models, his track-record, his mindset, his modus operandi, and his intentions.

But the main problem remains with ourselves, with those among us who have the power to make policy and shape opinions, and who will wilfully ignore, or else reject and condemn "What the West Needs to Know," and all of its contributors, and all of their works. Let's face it: they are beyond redemption, and the time for euphemisms and diplomatic restraint is over. The elite class that continues to peddle the lie about the "Religion of Peace and Tolerance," is composed of either idiots or evil traitors (and in Tony Blair's case the two blend seamlessly). As I wrote in "Chronicles" a week ago, the crime of which Jihad's Shabbos-goyim in the West are guilty "far exceeds any transgression for which the founders of the United States overthrew the colonial government."

 

FP: Walid Shoebat, Serge Trifkovic and Robert Spencer, thank you for joining Frontpage Magazine.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20690632-5006029,00.html

Backing a bigot
Andrew Bolt

November 02, 2006 11:00pm

ANDREW Bolt writes: It's the code of the tribe: the worst of us is better than the best of you. We have urgent work to do if we want to save ourselves.

Excuses over. The disgraced mufti of Australia set Muslims a test last month and they failed.
That test couldn't have been easier: make Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly pay for preaching that unveiled women invited rape.

Prove that Muslims can't be led by a man who says raped women must be "jailed for life". Prove we have nothing to fear from your faith.

Simple? Yet yesterday 34 Muslim groups signed a petition backing this bigot, while others plan a big rally for Sydney tomorrow, denouncing not Hilaly but the non-Muslims who criticise him.

The results are in: Islam here -- as represented by many of its leaders -- is now a threat.

What's more: our culture of self-hate makes us too weak to properly resist.

I know saying such things is hard on the many moderate Muslims I keep insisting are out there. I am sorry for that, but where in God's name are those people? How much longer must we wait for them to speak?

For more than 20 years they said nothing as their most prominent imam, in their biggest mosque, damned Jews as perverts, called suicide bombers heroes, praised terror groups, vilified non-Muslims and hailed the September 11 terror attacks on the United States as "God's work against oppressors".

They said nothing as he gave the run of his mosque to a pro-bin Laden youth group and hired one of its translators as his spokesman.

For years they let this man, their mufti, represent Islam in this country, whose language he never really bothered to learn in nearly 30 years of living here.

But I never lost hope, and so for a few days last week thought . . . at last!

At last we heard Hilaly being damned by Muslims, too -- by women's groups, a Melbourne University academic and even the Islamic Council of Victoria, which had foolishly helped to make this Egyptian the mufti so no government would dare deport him. At last Muslims were disowning this man. He was disinvited from a Brisbane festival. There was talk of stripping him of his title.

The Lebanese Muslim Association, which runs the Lakemba mosque, even debated sacking him as imam, before banning him from preaching for three months.

No, this wasn't much, but many in the media grabbed it hungrily. We badly want to find Muslims who'll renounce the values of the hate-preachers, to show that it's not us against Islam.

Mind you, we shouldn't have had to be so pathetically grateful. What sane person could want a woman jailed for being raped?

But we should have known already this was a bigger problem than just Hilaly.

Last year Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed also gave a speech in Sydney, which said raped women had themselves to blame.

And which of the 500 men who heard Hilaly say the same at his sermon complained? Only when it was reported in the English-speaking press did some concede Hilaly had gone too far.

Yet even then supporters sent him vanloads of flowers, and when he returned to his mosque last Friday he was greeted "like a rock star", said one paper, by an adoring crowd of 5000.

And that criticism of him? It faded away. Now the Lebanese Muslim Association isn't so ashamed of him, after all: "We did accept his apology and we want to move on."

The Muslim Women's Association, which first admitted to being "shocked" by Hilaly's sermon, now said he was "very good to all Muslim women". Said founding president Aziz El Saddik: "Those who say bad things about him, they have very bad manners." His sermon on rape was for Muslims only. Not our business.

But we can't afford to believe that any more. They weren't Muslim women, after all, who were raped by a Lebanese gang in Sydney, which called them "sluts" and "Aussie pigs".

It wasn't a Muslim teenager who was pack-raped in Sydney by Pakistani brothers, whose father told the court: "What do (the victims) expect to happen to them? Girls from Pakistan don't go out at night."

When Hilaly preaches excuses for such rapes, that concerns us all. Very much.

But it is true that not all those defending Hilaly like what he said. The people behind tomorrow's rally say, rather, that our criticism of him has degenerated into just Muslim-bashing.

Yesterday's statement by 34 Muslim groups -- most representing Islamic colleges and students, or the Muslims of tomorrow -- says the same, even as it confirms something far more scary.

"We believe that the public scrutiny of this matter should have ended with the sheik's apology," it says.

"We believe that the Muslim community should be allowed to deal with the ramifications of the incident without interference from people who only wish to promote hostility and incite hatred towards our community. Finally, we consider this matter to be closed."

Closed? In fact, Hilaly has not retracted a word of what he said. If this matter is "closed" then he has won.

But what is most frightening is not that he's won, but how. Both this statement and the rally show he's won because even educated Muslims, born right here, think it's better to defend a Muslim bigot than to have him criticised by infidels.

I t's the code of the tribe: the worst of us is better than the best of you. It's a closed community speaking -- a paranoid one that sees itself at war even with people whose only worry is that their preacher excuses rapists.

And menace is in the air. What other congregation at prayer needs to be reminded -- as Hilaly reminded those at his mosque last week -- not to punch people on the way out? Which other rally for a religious leader needs to be warned -- as the NSW Police Minister warned this week -- that police would not tolerate any violence?

I'm not surprised one of Hilaly's former advisers, Jamal Rifi, warns that if he hangs on as Lakemba's imam he may trigger "racial tensions, much bigger than what we had over the Cronulla riots".

But what are we doing to help Muslims to break from him and leave this cultural ghetto, this encampment, before things get truly ugly?

Not enough. For a start, we make too many excuses for the Hilalys, as if they were mere children, or Australia the real villain.

Yesterday Suzanne Bassette, national secretary of the Australian Democrats, even said: "I'm willing to stand up with anybody else in this country who happens to agree with Sheik Hilaly's sentiments . . . Unfortunately, how a woman dresses does affect her level of likeliness to be chosen."

She said the "real lesson" from this fuss was this "latest opportunity to get angry". The problem wasn't the mufti who wants to jail raped women, but his critics.

Bassette wasn't alone. The Age ran a big cartoon likewise blaming sluttish white girls for putting themselves in danger, and federal Labor's Peter Garrett, the former singer, said Hilaly's comments were terrible, but "at the same time, the levels of violence against Australian women is something happening in the bars, in the clubs, in the bedrooms, in the boardrooms".

Again, we are the truly wicked. Leave Hilaly alone.

How can a culture so sick of itself resist the kind of challenge that Hilaly and his angry supporters represent? How can it inspire young Muslims to side not with him but with us?

I don't know, when we teach the young we are a country of child-stealing, land-raping, Muslim-murdering, Yank-licking, gas-belching vandals. Until that changes, expect the traffic to flow more into Hilaly's ghetto than out of it.

Just consider the radical mother of two of the Australian Muslims arrested in Yemen last week on terrorism charges, and accused of ties to al-Qaida -- a so-called former "hippy chick" from Mudgee, who found in Islam what she couldn't in the society that raised her.

As I said: Muslims have failed. But so have we all. We now have urgent work to do, if we want to save ourselves from far more strife than we dare yet imagine or say.

Join Andrew at blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt