GDCritter

... demonstrating that he barely has enough intelligence to read what’s been written for him by someone brighter than he (even if they are part of the insane Left).

I heard the audio, and I saw the video, of parts of Penn’s rant. Both show his difficulty in making his speech, even when reading from his script.

Incidentally, I found it instructive comparing the audio and video I heard and saw, and the written version linked above, with the very mild descriptions in the San Francisco Chronicle. Why are they covering for these people?

They’re not anti-war. They’re just on the other side.

Category: War on Terror
 

I like good stories, and I saw a good one from Blackfive a couple of days ago called The Terminal Guardian. It gave me a chuckle -- it's definitely worth a read. Go there now.

Category: “Other”
 

I’ve opened a new window. Today I opened a new site at blogspot, and will be trying it out for a while.

For the time being, I’ll be putting posts up both here and there. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

Category: “Other”
 

I've noted a long overdue Congressional Medal of Honor presentation to then-Maj Bruce Crandall, the hotshot helo pilot from We Were Soldiers and the book on which it was based. Both book and movie were mostly about the 1965 battle in Viet Nam's Ia Drang Valley. I can only react with “About d----d time!” It's only forty years late! Part of that delay was Crandall’s insistence that his name be withdrawn in favor of his wingman, then-Capt Ed Freeman, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001.

I'm sure there are other (better?) descriptions of Crandall’s Medal of Honor and the events on which it was based, and I would appreciate hearing about any good ones. The ones I've noted include the article from AFIS and the item written by Joseph Galloway, who was there and with LtGen Harold Moore co-authored We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young. I also liked the write-up by Blackfive. LtCol (ret.) Crandall now lives in Washington state, and is featured in a story in the Seattle Times. Some quirks in the coverage are noted by Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal.

I haven’t read much of the book yet, but will. The movie is extremely well done. Both are highly recommended.
 

It is a great story. There are many such stories, most of which don’t result in the CMH being awarded. I know Bruce, having served with him and living nearby.

The specific acts that he did pretty much parallel the acts of Major General Pat Brady, an aviator from the Medical Service Corps. He actually received his medal “in due course” i.e., within a couple of years. He lives out here too and he and I were on the board of a non-profit for a couple of years, the only veterans on it, so I was honored to be with him. Also knew him from our time in the Pentagon. His BG job was Army Chief of Public Affairs.

The major thing about both of these instances, and quite a bit differently from folks who jumped on grenades to save their buddies, is that they knew what the risks were, and were out of harm’s way when they went back for more help, more fuel and replacements that enabled them to go back in and evac the wounded. They knew and had plenty of time to think about what they were doing and risking. That is when you know what you are made of. When you are really pretty sure you are going to die doing what you are about to do, and you do it anyway, for the chance that you may help save someone else's life?

If any of you have not read the novel The Aviators, by W.E.B. Griffin, I'd suggest it. Tells more about the kinds of guys like Bruce and Pat. But after that, seek out a copy of a book whose title I’ve forgotten but it was written by William E. Butterworth, which is WEB Griffin’s real name, while he was in the Army and worked at Fort Rucker in Public Affairs. It is the only book by that name that you will find, published in the sixties or early 70’s by the government printing office. I know there is a copy in the Pentagon library because I’ve read it.

Well, in that book, he tells some of the stories of heroism in flight by Army helo pilots that “only” resulted in them getting a Distinguished Service Cross or Silver Star, numbers two and three in the list of heroism medals. I was put on it by the Chief of Military History, who was a War College classmate with whom I occasionally had lunch.

I would tell you that the awards system has its faults, but it got it right this time with Bruce. I have seen other pilots turn pale when told they were needed to go on such a mission.

Warm wishes, to you all

Category: History
 

It was predictable — anything that in any way supports what we’re doing in the Middle East or that supports George Bush must be shot down and denied. And so we saw the Administration holding up its press conference laying out the evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq until it could be as sure as it could be that its evidence would stand up even in an American court of law. And we saw its opponents attacking that evidence like a slick defense attorney in a high-profile trial. They have lots of questions, but no answers: “How do you know this?” “What makes you say that?” “Why should we believe you?”

One part of the evidence is going to be very difficult to deny. The government of Iran purchased 800 specialized Steyr Mannlicher HS50 .50 caliber sniper rifles — very expensive (about $19,500 each) and very rare — from an Austrian company. These rifles fire specialized armor piercing rounds which are manufactured by Iran. Within 45 days of the first of these rifles arriving in Iran, one of them had been used to kill an American officer in an armored vehicle. Now more than 100 of these rifles have been collected from terrorists in Iraq — so far — and at least 170 American soldiers have been killed with these Iranian-supplied weapons and ammunition — so far.

Other information also implicates Iran in the payment, training, and supply of all varieties of insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. The only thing we don’t have is a video of people clearly identifiable as Iranian Revolutionary Guards (like those captured in Irbil) actually killing American soldiers.

As noted, this evidence is difficult to attack. Perhaps that’s why it seems to have been so thoroughly ignored by the main media.

Category: War on Terror
 

Early this morning (late last night) I was listening to Senator Chuck Hagel, with the assistance of the PBS “news” reader, repeatedly characterizing a vote for cloture as a vote to allow a debate on the Democrats’ anti-Administration resolution. According to them, the Republicans are trying to prevent a debate on the Administration’s Iraq war policy, while the Democrats (and folks like Hagel) are trying to have that debate.

This is Twilight Zone stuff! A vote for cloture is a vote to cut off debate. It is a device the end debate and force a matter to a vote. To describe a vote for cloture as a vote for debate is an absolute lie. Anyone with an IQ above that of an idiot making such a claim is a liar, and is guilty of deliberate political fraud.

UPDATE: I saw a clip of Senate Majority Leader harry Reid explicitly calling a vote for cloture (to cut off debate) a vote to allow debate. How do he and his fellow travelers get away with such complete lies?

UPDATE II: John McCain made his comment on the Democrats’ resolution two ways: First, he didn't go back to Washington, DC for the vote. Second, he stated his opinion that the resolution is “idiotic”, a “purely political stunt”, and “an insult to the public and our soldiers”. John McCain is absolutely right.

Category: War on Terror
 

The voters of Albuquerque were given an opportunity in 2005 to vote on a proposed law requiring voters to show proper identification at their polling places when they go there to vote. The voters approved the law, with 73% of the voters voting in favor of it. They did so, in part, because of the tens of thousands of fraudulent registrations appearing before the 2004 election in the names of children, pets, etc. And that was before 2006 when more than 200,000 voter cards (for 18% of all voters) were returned to the county clerk’s office by the post office as undeliverable, indicating that they were for voters who had moved or died, or resulted from fraudulent registrations. The ACLU, of course, filed suit to block the new law.

Now, 16 months later, a federal judge has struck down this law. An ACLU representative announced the ruling Tuesday afternoon. As reported in Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal, “U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo ruled the disparate treatment of absentee and in-person voters violated the equal-protection clause of the Constitution.” In other words, the judge ruled that the city is not allowed to try to fix any element of the vote fraud problem unless it is fixing the entire problem.

Others had noted that the failure to deal with absentee ballot problems was the weakest element of the new law, and that this gap had to be filled. The city of Albuquerque was willing to put up with this gap — temporarily — because it still left the city with a law that was far better than its state equivalent.

This ruling is inappropriate, and will make it a lot harder to have elections with even a pretense of propriety. As I have noted before, those who oppose a serious voter identification requirement are actively promoting vote fraud.
 

Category: Voting Issues
 

The conventional wisdom is that the federal budget deficit is huge and getting worse, and that any thought of reaching a balanced budget is pure fantasy — or worse, another “Bush deception.” That viewpoint is well expressed in this cartoon.

Category: “Other”
 

Iran is increasingly showing up as the key player in the War on Terror. Let’s just look at some of the news in this past week or so.

1. Iran funds and runs Hizballah. The money, arms, and direction are funneled to Hizballah through Syria. Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah admitted this to an Egyptian interviewer, but it’s no surprise since Hizballah was created by Iran in the first place.
    
2. Iran funds and supports Hamas. Iranian weapons experts were apprehended by Fatah manufacturing weapons and explosives for Hamas at the Islamic University in Gaza City.
    
3. Iran is supplying and supporting forces attacking U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi forces in Iraq. We’ve heard most about the Iranian-supplied new-technology IEDs, but there’s now evidence Iran is supplying other advanced technology weapons to be used against us.

• The first two items demonstrate — once again — the falsity of the unsupported (and unsupportable) assertion that Sunnis and Shias cannot cooperate. Those two groups can (and do) cooperate with each other and with “secular” dictatorships more easily than the U.S. cooperated with Josef Stalin’s Russia against Nazi Germany in World War II. And, of course, the first item by itself demonstrates that a militant Muslim theocracy (Iran) can easily cooperate with “secular” Syria, as they previously did with “secular” Iraq.
   
• Those same two items suggest the probability that the two fronts of attack against Israel last summer, initiated by means of kidnappings of Israeli soldiers by Hamas and Hizballah, were carried out under Iran’s direction. (This also suggests the Israeli soldiers, if they have not yet been murdered, will be returned when and if it suits Iran’s purposes.)
   
• Iran has been confirmed to have been working closely with al Qaeda in Somalia.
   
• Some of the weapons Iran supplied were apparently used by the mixed force of Sunni and Shia terrorists defeated at Najaf. New technology IEDs and other advanced weapons have also been used against U.S. and Iraqi forces in and around Baghdad.

There are indications the new tactics are having a positive effect. Those who want us to win the War on Terror — or, at least, not to lose — hope those indications continue and increase.

Category: War on Terror
 

“We gave them a civil war? Why? Because we failed to prevent it? Do the police in America have on their hands the blood of the 16,000 murders they failed to prevent last year?”
      — Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, February 5, 2007

Category: War on Terror
 

I couldn’t believe my ears last night, when I listened to Senator Jim Webb’s rebuttal to the State of the Union message. I had to check the transcript. But my ears were right. There was what I’d thought I’d heard, right at the end of the speech.

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. “When comes the end?” asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These Presidents [Webb spoke of President Theodore Roosevelt before speaking of Eisenhower] took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action ....

That’s why I couldn’t believe my ears — I couldn’t believe Senator Webb and his fellow Democrats in the Senate were advocating having President Bush threaten and carry out nuclear attacks in the Middle East to end the conflict there. But there it is: “Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action”

It was already pretty clear the Democrats selected Senator Webb so their rebuttal would be given by someone without a negative record on national security. Still, advocating nuclear warfare is beyond unexpected.

Or maybe these people just don’t know any history.

Update: Obviously, I’m not the only one to notice this. Jonah Goldberg passes on an e-mail on the subject, and Pastorius notes it, too. I’m sure it’s showed up other places as well — it was pretty obvious. (I also added the Eisenhower action link in this update.)

Category: War on Terror
 

The leadership of the nation’s Democrats clearly does not believe in democracy. That is the only conclusion that can possibly be drawn. They are among those who attack President Bush for (supposedly) damaging our Constitutional rights while, in fact, they are the ones who are attacking those rights. (I’m hearing the Church Lady’s voice: Can you say projection?)

In the latest example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had come up with a small grenade which Reid slipped into Senate Bill 1 (S.1), the lobbying and earmark reform bill. Under it (Section 220), bloggers read by 500 or more people — paid or not, as well as community and other groups, would have to register as lobbyists with the Federal Elections Commission or face a $100,000 fine and/or prison time. (!!) It would also make failure to register a criminal rather than a civil offense.

The bill would require reporting of “paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying,” but defines “paid” merely as communicating one’s views to 500 or more members of the public, with no other qualifiers. Thus, a blogger who has never gotten any money from anyone but who has been read by 500 people becomes a paid lobbyist, along with a citizen who speaks on a street corner or at community meetings and is heard by 500 people. (And to how many people have your e-mails been forwarded?) With Section 220, the Senate sought to make the exercise of First Amendment rights a criminal offense. That would make us a totalitarian state, not a democracy.

Is this really an attempt by the Democrat Congressional leadership to scare citizens into silence and blame its critics for its own corruption, or is it simply extreme incompetence in the drafting of the proposed legislation? If the former, they have clearly crossed the line. If the latter, they may have crossed the line in another way and “jumped the shark.” (Heck, even the ACLU opposes this one, though apparently only because it would require them to report their activities, too.)

This has led to a “good news/bad news” moment: The good news is that an amendment has been passed (by a 55-43 vote) to strike Section 220 from the bill. The bad news is that 43 senators (all Democrats, including my state’s own Senator Jeff Bingaman) voted to gut the Constitution’s First Amendment (Bill of Rights, Article 1). And, unfortunately, I’m sure Reid and Pelosi will continue to try to kill democracy and silence dissent.
 

Nor is this the only current threat to our freedoms. Congressman (and, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, committee chairman) Maurice Hinchey of New York — who believes, with no evidence, that Karl Rove conned CBS and Dan Rather into committing hara-kiri (seppuku) with the forged National Guard memos — is attempting to re-establish the horribly misnamed “fairness doctrine”, which would effectively require broadcast stations to balance commercially successful shows with unsuccessful ones. (The problem with the “fairness doctrine”, in practice, it that it requires balancing conservative views with “liberal” ones, but never requires balancing “liberal” views with conservative ones.) There are other threats, too, like that sponsored by John Conyers, which I’ve written about before.

And so the threats to our rights and liberties continue. I suppose it must always be thus: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
 

Update: Captain Ed isn’t worried. He says this bill only “applies to anyone who communicates on behalf of a paid client and earns $25,000 or more in a quarter, or firm spending $25,000 or more in a quarter on grassroots lobbying efforts.” I have not read the complete bill, but I have read the section in question, which says “The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public.” (This is part of the reason for my query as to whether this amendment was just incompetently written.) The question is this: Would the courts emphasize the exclusion in Section 220 or the alternate definition Captain Ed relies on? And do you really want to leave your rights up to some judge’s finding on that question?

Category: Individual Rights
 

... against a worn-out weather satellite in low earth orbit.

Category: “Other”
 

I’ve waited a few days to let things settle before weighing in on the change in direction put forward by President George Bush a week ago tonight. My two key thoughts on it are

1. I would have preferred a larger number of reinforcements — perhaps enough to bring the troop strength up to what it was a year ago. But, independent of this number,
    
2. The more important part of the speech spoke to the changes in the rules of engagement — many of which were more suggested than stated.

You might want to think I was reading the rule changes into the speech, that they weren’t really there. My only defense, initially, was the knowledge (based on experience and observation) that the specific words used by senior officials are important.

What’s most important, though, is how the changes work. And the initial returns are positive. Even before the speech was delivered, word filtered out of Baghdad that changed operations had already begun. The next day, we learned that action had been taken in Irbil against a pseudo-diplomatic facility (that apparently had no formal diplomatic status) that was providing direction, weapons, and money to Iraqi and foreign terrorists in Iraq. That action occurred two hours before the speech was given. (And now we learn that one of the five Iranian Revolutionary Guard members detained in that raid is wanted on a murder warrant in Austria.)

We are also beginning to see how the terrorists see the speech and our rule and mission changes. Within a few days, we started seeing the terrorists fleeing Baghdad for safer regions, apparently mostly in Diyala. (The fact that they are not going to Anbar province says a lot about how successful our forces have been there.) These movements have now been confirmed by others, so we can be reasonably sure they’re not some observer’s wishful thinking. At least one observer suggests these movements may make it easier to locate and neutralize them. But the most important thing about what’s happening is that the terrorists see a heightened resolve on our part and are reacting to it.

We are beginning to see how Iraq’s non-terrorists are reacting, too. There has been a sharp and unexpected increase in recruits seeking to join the local Iraqi police forces in Anbar province, the most violent province in Iraq up till now. That says Iraqis believe in what President Bush has said, and are putting their lives and livelihoods on the line behind it. (This paragraph is an update, made up of text intended for this item that didn’t get into it as originally posted.)

The final results aren’t in, but this looks promising.

Update: Glenn Reynolds has a similar viewpoint on the surge. He says “The additional troops, such as they are, won't make a difference in that; only a change in approach will.” He also identifies my worry “I don't have a clear sense of whether we'll follow through.”

Category: War on Terror
 

Senator Ted Kennedy today said he was introducing a bill that would prohibit any troop surge without the prior permission of Congress, a move even Senator Joe Biden said was unconstitutional. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted any troop surge would have to be justified to the Congress. Both have insisted they will not cut off funding for the war and for the troops already in Iraq.

This is actually a turnaround for these people and their fellow travelers. They campaigned for election on a “cut and run” platform; now they’re preaching “stay the course.” They castigated President George Bush for being inflexible and not changing strategy, but are attacking again now that he is (reportedly) changing strategy. In any other field of endeavor, such a bait and switch would result in large fines and jail time.
 

I have been fairly intolerant of these people in the past, but I’m trying to be more tolerant now. With that tolerance, I can understand where these people are coming from. The key to this understanding is the recognition that these people do not believe it is possible to win in Iraq. They believe the U.S. has already definitively lost the war. Believing this, it makes sense that they would insist on our forces leaving the field.

What their actions would actually do, if they were successful, is produce the defeat they pretend has already occurred. The one sure way to lose is to abandon the field, and accept defeat.

And then what? If we abandon the field, do these people really think the jihadists won’t follow us home? That was not the result when we abandoned the field in Somalia after “Blackhawk Down”. The jihadists took our action as weak and cowardly, and stepped up their attacks against us. Similar, but stronger, responses can be expected this time.

Actually, the question is rhetorical — Nancy Pelosi, Dennis Kucinich, and others (along with people like Cindy Sheehan) have repeatedly said the jihadists would stop if we would. Such extreme self-deception is dangerous to our national security.

Meanwhile weapons, terrorists, money, and direction have continued to cross the borders into Iraq from Iran and Syria — including in the persons of “diplomats” from the rogue regime in Iran visiting to direct their Shia and Sunni forces. So here’s a thought: How about if we turn primary responsibility for counter-insurgent operations in Baghdad over to the Iraqi army and security forces, and redeploy our troops to secure Iraq’s borders. That way we provide a key test for the Iraqi forces, and move to strangle the insurgents’ supply lines and starve the insurgents. It would also tend to get more of our troops away from the IEDs and car bombs.

We should also quit asking our troops to fight this war with their hands tied behind their backs — and quit running our military effort in such a “politically correct” manner. A good first step would be to declare that, in accordance with the internationally accepted laws of war, any place from which our forces are fired upon is a fully legitimate military target, subject to attack and destruction. And then follow up on that announcement. It should only take once or twice for the point to get across.

I don’t know what President Bush will announce tomorrow; all I can speak to now is what I hope for. Bush has a history (though not recent) of staying silent until opponents commit themselves; once they’re out on the limb, he quietly cuts it off. I hope he does that tomorrow, and lets the partisans of defeat fall of their own weight. I hope that, if a surge is announced, a surge is not all that is announced. The plans and strategies we have been following have not been effective, and I hope they are changed. The generals whose counsel he has taken have been ineffective, and I hope they are (as they apparently have been) replaced with generals who have a commitment to and a plan to win.

In short, what I hope for is that everything in tomorrow’s speech follows from and supports the following two statements:
      1. Victory is the only exit strategy.
      2. Defeat is not an option.

Category: War on Terror
 

Baron Bodissey has posted a particularly important piece at the Gates of Vienna today. The topic is Free Speech, and some of the ways this Constitutionally guaranteed freedom is being whittled away.

The most dangerous current attack is by a senior member of the new Democrat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Conyers of Michigan. It is embodied in the resolution he introduced (H.Res.288) which, literally applied, would make it illegal to “insult” Islam. While it would not establish Islam as the U.S.’ state religion — yet — it would place it in a preferred position over all other religions and non-religions. Worse, it panders to the most intolerant and xenophobic form of Islam, that of the terrorists that have attacked us all around the world.

Yes, H.Res.288 was introduced in the outgoing Congress, and will have to be reintroduced for consideration by the new Democrat-controlled 110^th Congress. But does anyone really think John Conyers won’t reintroduce it? Only the number will change, to protect the guilty.

Please, read Baron Bodissey’s piece, and let your Congressional representatives hear from you.

Category: Individual Rights
 

There was a reason I flagged this December 15 article in Canada’s National Post, even though I didn’t manage to read it until today:

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas. [emphasis added]

...

Their conclusions upset conventional wisdom that Type 1 diabetes, the most serious form of the illness that typically first appears in childhood, was solely caused by auto-immune responses — the body’s immune system turning on itself.

They also conclude that there are far more similarities than previously thought between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes

Diabetes is a disease we thought we understood. And we thought we understood that there was little or no interaction between the nervous system and the endocrine system. This research shows how wrong we were about diabetes. Now the question is, what other surprises does biology have waiting for us?

Twenty months ago, at the start of May 2005, I noted the approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) of a then-new anti-diabetes drug derived from gila monster venom. (The Mexican beaded lizard was also noted as usable. The gila monster is the “critter” that is this site’s logo/symbol.) That posting came to mind when I read the National Post article because, like the new treatment, gila monster venom works on the nervous system.

Category: “Other”
 

Deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged Friday evening (U.S. time). That should take the wind from the sails of the Ba’ath party extremists, since there is now absolutely no way to put Saddam back in charge in Iraq.

That still leaves a lot of challenges, not least from the foreign elements from (and funded and armed) by Iran and Saudi Arabia and Syria. In addition, Forbes Magazine identifies oil revenues as another domestic cause of friction in an article in its January 8 issue (registration required for the electronic article version).

The dispute over hydrocarbons is very much at the heart of the civil war raging in Iraq. Sunnis, who ruled under Saddam, want their share of oil riches, which mostly lie in the Kurdish-controlled north and the Shiite south. The factions seem close to a federal law over how to distribute petro-revenues — which might clamp down on the violence — but are hung up on who would have final say, the feds or the regional government.

....

Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, a Shia, insists that Baghdad will not recognize any contract between foreign oil companies the the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the KRG, counters that the Kurds, who compose 17% of Iraq's population, will secede if their authority over regional oilfields is eroded.

Category: War on Terror
 

I found this article interesting, particularly since I was raised as a Methodist and have a family line going back to some of the earliest members of the denomination in the U.S.

Category: Religion
 

The Iraq Study Group released its report this week. Much of the report was unsurprising since one or more individuals in the group, or in its staff, have (for their own unknown purposes) been leaking material from the report for weeks.

The good news is that the report rejects any precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, or the issuance of a threat or deadline for such a withdrawal. It clearly identifies the ugly consequences — including the chance of a bloodbath that would make Rwanda look tame — that would almost certainly result from any “declare victory and leave” (like what we used in leaving Viet Nam), or “cut and run” or “redeploy” (maybe to Okinawa) approach. One commentator puts it this way: “If the report helps to politically isolate John Murtha and the get-out-now left, its authors will have done some good.”

The bad news is that the report’s authors clearly believe the U.S. mission in Iraq is doomed. Some of them have thought so since before it began. That is no doubt why the only reference in the report to possible success deals with the possible success of the terrorist side. And why its entire focus seems to be on how the U.S. can leave Iraq in a way it can pretend is not an abandonment. They authors think we should not have gone in, and have been trying to find a way for us to back out.

I don’t intend to go through the whole report and all 79 of its recommendations. But there are a few major points that really require comment.

The first is what the report recommends be done with troop strengths. Here, the report shows the effect of being designed by a committee. The report recommends both troop strength increases and decreases, and I think they do so in a particularly illogical and unprincipled way. They call for a large increase in the troops committed to training the Iraqi forces, substantially increasing the number of American targets. Then, having said the combat troops we have in Iraq are unable to protect the population or themselves, they call for substantial reductions in those troops. This combination seems sure to increase American deaths in Iraq.

But that’s logical compared to the flight of fancy embodied in another panel recommendation. The panel calls for a New Diplomatic Offensive and the formation of an Iraq International Support Group, asking Iran and Syria to help stabilize the situation in Iraq. That would be as funny as a Marx brothers comedy, except that these people are serious. Iran and Syria have been providing men, money, materiel, and direction to the Iraqi insurgent groups and militias since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. They have been the biggest sources of instability in Iraq. Whatever possessed the panel members to think they might be talked into promoting Iraqi stability? At best, this is wishful thinking; at worst, it is either duplicitous or simply insane.

If we want to be more flippant, we could also say

The "bipartisan" Iraq panel has recommended that Iran and Syria can help stabilize Iraq. You know, the way Germany and Russia helped stabilize Poland in '39.

And then there are the words out of left field: Somehow if we force Israel to give up even more, in return for even more empty promises their opponents have never had any intention of honoring, somehow that will help us find a solution in Iraq. That, to me, seems to be lacking reality on a multitude of levels.

I have no doubt the panel’s Middle East sources told them of the need for a solution to the Israeli-Paelstinian questions as a precursor to finding a solution in Iraq. The jihadists have said that before, too. But their anger over Israel is more an excuse than a reason. The jihadists are equally angry that Spain had the temerity to throw off the Muslim yoke in the Reconquista (finished in 1492) and that Europe had the bad form to stop the invading Muslim armies at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Israel is not part of the problem in Iraq, except in the sense that Iran, Syria, and the other jihadists — our enemies and Iraq’s — are also avowed enemies of Israel.

There are also some broader points. One is brought out in an exchange between Jonathan Karl of ABC and two of the panel members:

MR. KARL: You're certainly a group of distinguished elder statesman. But tell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said, given, as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb; none of you made it out of the Green Zone - why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he's hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?

MR. HAMILTON: The members of the Iraq Study Group are, I think, public servants of a distinguished record. We don't pretend now, we did not pretend at the start to have expertise. We've put in a very intensive period of time. We have some judgments about the way this country works and the way our government works, and some considerable experience within our group on the Middle East.   . . .

MR. BAKER: Let me add to that that this report by these - this bunch of has-beens up here is the only bipartisan report that's out there.

Ralph Peters has made the point, “Washington insiders pretend to respect our troops but continue to believe that those in uniform are second-raters and that any political hack can design better war plans than those who've dedicated their lives to military service.” The entire report is contemptuous of the military, spoken of as pawns on a chess table, barriers, observers, buffers, and trainers. Never as what they are trained to be: the greatest warriors in the world. Would it have been too much to ask that one general, or even one outspoken believer in the mission from the get-go, be on this commission?

For myself, I think half the report reflects the panel’s need to (as my father used to say) “Do something, even if it’s wrong!” The other half is pure wishful thinking.

Retired former CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks said on Wednesday evening that he hoped this report would provide a foundation all factions could come together and build on. I'd like to hope so, too, but I really don’t hold out much hope. I do, however, give strong credence to the prediction he made: If we come home without solving this problem, the terrorists will follow us home.

Category: War on Terror
 

Weapons, terrorists, and money have continued to cross the borders into Iraq from Iran and Syria. So here’s a thought:

How about if we turn primary responsibility for counter-insurgent operations in Baghdad over to the Iraqi army and security forces, and redeploy our troops to secure Iraq’s borders. That way we provide a key test for the Iraqi forces, and move to starve and strangle the insurgents’ supply lines. It would also tend to get more of our troops away from the IEDs.

This thought is in response to the challenge in Glenn Reynolds’ posting on Sunday, and the Mudville Gazette follow-up to it.

Category: War on Terror
 

I ran across a group of articles a little while ago that brought into focus some of the things my friends and I have been trying to talk about. I’ve taken some time to let these ideas develop, and I’ve had some discussions with other knowledgeable and very analytic people. Now I’ll try to encapsulate here what I think I’ve gotten from them, including much that has come from considerations and researches triggered by them.

One thing that is reinforced is that the jihadists’ ideology is not Islam, no matter how much they may claim to be the true Muslims and to speak for Islam. (I confess that I’ve been holding that as a hope as much as a belief; quite a number of others [including (ex-?)Muslims] have written quite persuasively that these doctrines are inherent in Islam.) One trigger was in a Mark Steyn column in which he said that

any religion that needs to do that (coerce “conversions”) is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies.

Incidentally, this may provide at least a partial answer to the question as to why Arab (or Muslim) societies have been more susceptible than others to European fascist ideologies. They were more susceptible because significant segments of their populations had already accepted a similar/parallel totalitarian socialist ideology. It certainly also didn’t hurt that the translation of Mein Kampf is My Jihad.

That’s not to say jihad is a recent Islamic innovation. Clearly, it’s not. The term jihad has been used — in its current “holy war” sense — at least since the 12th century when Saladin (Salah-ad-Din) was obsessed with jihad and issued a “call to jihad” to take Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Thus, the term jihad has had the meaning the West understands for it at least since the 12th century, and apparently all the way back to the days when Mohammed led his wars of conquest. (It may also be of interest that a 1991 authoritative manual of Sunni Islamic law — ‘Umdat al-Salik, published in English in 1999 — continues to define this class of jihad as “war against non-Muslims”, and notes that the word jihad “is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.”) The recent (20th century) innovation is the grafting of a political ideology onto the religious concept.

That leaves the problem of the Shi’ite jihadists, the other “major tree” of jihadism. Their motivation is different. Most Shi’ite jihadists are apparently members of the Hojjatieh sect, which is a Khomeinist group even though it was banned (forced underground) by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when it opposed his political agenda. The Hojjatieh (Hojjatiyya) Society was founded in Iran in the early 1950s (some references say in 1953) by Sheikh Mahmoud Tavallai, popularly known as Sheikh Halabi, an extremist Shi’ite cleric who founded the group to eradicate members of the Baha’i faith (an offshoot of Islam). This millennialist sect awaits the return of the twelfth imam (the 12th grandson of prophet Mohammed), the so-called “hidden” (Savior) Imam Mahdi who disappeared as a child in 941 AD. They believe he will return only when the world contains enough oppression, misery, tyranny, and sorrow to warrant his coming. As a result, they believe in spreading evil and creating chaos as their way to hasten his return. This is the sect to which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (or Ahmadi-Nejad) belongs, along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iraq’s Moqtada al-Sadr.

The Hojjatieh sect went down the Salafis’ religion-to-politics path much more quickly than did the Salafis. It was banned (forced to disband) in 1983 because it opposed religious involvement in political affairs and wouldn’t go along with Ayatollah Khomeini’s “rule of the supreme jurisconsult (Vilayat-i Faqih)”. Now, however, they support the Khomeinist state — and have a shot at making their leader (Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi) the annointed successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As has been said before “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So now the Hojjatieh approach absolute corruption in Iran, and do their best to spread as much evil as possible throughout the world.

All of which supports Steyn’s assertion (quoted above) that

the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies.

If I were a Muslim, with the inheritance of Islamic tradition behind me, I’d be deeply ashamed of the babbling idiots who claimed to speak for me. I would be very loud in contradicting them. Their ideology is tied to Islam, and constructed largely with an Islamic vocabulary and rough grammar, but hardly with an Islamic syntax. By this I mean, that it is inconceivable that anything resembling the “blovulations” of the Salafists, and Shia revolutionists of Iran, could emerge from a purely Islamic course of reasoning. There are too many extraneous elements. In the use of Islamic terms, there is too much slapstick and self-parody.
. . .
But it is certainly true that Muslim authorities, in most preceding centuries, offered a view of God and man’s duties and destiny, that was a whole lot more impressive than the current lot offers. Islam has long been the West’s rival. But we could never have wished our rival to be idiotized to such a degree.

Thus, my digging seems to have produced confirmation that the modern jihadi ideology is not Islam, and not really Islamic, but is the ideology of those who would use and pervert Islam for their own evil purposes.

With that, my encapsulation is complete. But that leaves some questions for consideration. The general one to begin with is, what do we (Muslims and non-Muslims) do about it? How do the Muslims show the problem is the perverters of Islam rather than Islam itself? How do they act to take back their good name from the evildoers claiming to be acting in that name? And what do we do to protect ourselves from these sons of dog crap — and help turn Islam back to the real Muslims?

Does anyone have

Category: War on Terror
 

After years of falsely claiming the Bush administration intended to bring back the military draft, with the only actual attempt to do so being his own, Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY, soon to be Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee) said on Sunday’s Face the Nation that he will introduce a new bill to reinstitute the draft when the new Congress convenes. He also said “I don't see how anyone can support the [Iraq] war and not support the draft.”

This is absolutely the dumbest idea and statement I’ve heard in a very long time. Despite strong disagreements with his political viewpoint, I’d always credited Rangel with an IQ in the high double digits, or conceivably (though unlikely) higher. This incident says I’ve been wrong.

Except for one thing: Charlie Rangel is a liar and a fraud. Despite his statement quoted above, he is not proposing a new military draft because he supports the war against the terrorists. He is proposing it as a means of undermining the military. On that same Sunday program, he “said he hoped his military-draft bill would discourage lawmakers from voting to authorize future military conflicts.”

Clearly, Rangel would rather have let those responsible for the 9/11 attacks remain free to plan — and execute — further attacks.

Category: Left & Right
 

New Mexico law requires the official vote canvas to be completed, and the official vote counts turned in to the Secretary of State by all the state’s county clerks, by ten days after the election. That time period expired yesterday. Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera (just elected as New Mexico Secretary of State) didn't make it, but requested and obtained a court order allowing her to comply with Friday’s requirements on Monday.

I know it’s legitimate, but that sounds to me a lot like
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

As a result, one of the country’s last six undecided Congressional races — New Mexico’s First Congressional District (the Albuquerque area) — has been decided. Republican incumbent Heather Wilson will be returning to Washington, having beaten New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid by 879 votes out of almost 211,000 votes cast. Heather Wilson claimed victory in the race a week ago when the outcome became clear; Patricia Madrid has not yet conceded, and indicates no decision has yet been made as to whether a formal recount will be requested.

Category: Voting Issues
 

In the weeks leading up to the election, a prominent talk show host in Albuquerque repeatedly expressed his wish for the Republicans to lose control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. He (and others) felt the Republicans needed to be punished. He, as a Republican, believed the Democrats — restored to power — would behave more responsibly than the Republicans have the last couple of years.

As a Democrat, I was unconvinced. I haven’t heard any program from my party except “We’re not Bush”. (I’ve heard a LOT of program pieces — different ones from different office holders and ALL mutually contradictory. Just think of the ideas on Iraq being pushed by Joe Lieberman and John Murtha. There really is no “Democratic Party position” on anything.) And I was very concerned over the left-wing extremism of many of those slated to be committee chairmen in a Democrat-controlled Congress.

As always, Albuquerque Journal political cartoonist John Trever is right on point.

So, what’s going to happen now? That’s a good question! The one thing I know for sure is that predictions of the future are always wrong, especially in their details. All I really have are questions. Will the Democratic Party’s Congressional leadership follow through on their more extremist statements last May (for example), or their more conciliatory statements since election day? Are they going to make repealing every single “Bush tax cut” a priority (Rangel, last May), or will they insure that no taxes rise from their current levels (Schumer, after election day)? Will they push for a rapid or immediate withdrawal from Iraq, or not? There are similar questions on many other issues.

Another big question is the impact of the Congress’ newest members. The Democratic Party leadership’s drive to “win at any cost” drove it to recruit candidates who mirror their communities. That produced more conservative candidates, quite a number of whom ran against their Republican opponents from the right. How will the very liberal leadership and these much more conservative freshmen interact, react to, and affect each other? Will the ascendancy of this group mark the start of a movement in the Democratic Party back from the left toward the center?

As I said, lots of questions. The answers will emerge in time.

I really hope that talk show host is right. If he’s not, we’re all in for a very bumpy ride. In the meantime, I'm going to keep a couple of things in mind:

• America is not only much, much stronger than you imagine; it is stronger than you CAN imagine. —Bill Whittle
  
• Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities. —Winston Churchill

Category: Left & Right
 

The situation in New Mexico is getting stranger. It came out on Thursday in the Albuquerque Journal and on Albuquerque radio station KKOB that the Secretary of State’s office had rejected both bidders (the state’s #2 and #6 accounting firms) for the independent canvass auditor contract — for which the state legislature had appropriated $200,000 — and would perform the general election canvass itself with its partisan (Democrat, of course) staff.

The story came out because of the accusation by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici that Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron was “playing politics” with the November 7th vote. The Secretary of State’s office said neither of the two bidders “met the agency’s expectations”, and it was now “too late” to go out for new bids.

The office of Governor Bill Richardson responded to Senator Domenici on Thursday on behalf of the Secretary of State: “The governor feels that Senator Domenici is out of touch with New Mexico voting procedures, and he should concentrate on representing New Mexico in Washington. ... Senator Domenici and Republican lawyers should stop exploiting the election process and scaring voters.”

This news apparently created a small firestorm when it was featured on the radio (on KKOB and, presumably, other stations) on Thursday. As a result, it was announced on the radio news later in the day on Thursday and reported in Friday’s Albuquerque Journal that an accountant (Robert Rivera, described on the radio as an “independent auditor”) had been selected to review the performance of the canvass function by the Secretary of State’s staff. There was no indication of how this contract had been generated, in apparent violation of the state’s competitive procurement processes. “Rivera said he signed a contract Wednesday afternoon shortly after a phone call from Vigil-Giron's office,” the newspaper reported, leading Republican attorney Pat Rogers to comment “They were not going to retain him until after that press conference (on Wednesday).”

As Drudge would say, “Developing ....”

Category: Voting Issues
 

... delivered at Pasadena City College on Monday:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

— Essentially all officers have bachelors degrees (at least); 49.2 percent of officers have advanced or professional degrees; 39.4 percent have master’s degrees; 8.5 percent have professional degrees; 1.3 percent have doctorate degrees.

— Essentially all Airmen have at least a high school education; 73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree; 16.2 percent have an associate’s degree or equivalent semester hours; 4.7 percent have a bachelor’s degree; 0.7 percent have a master’s degree; .01 percent have a professional or doctorate degree.

The troops respond to John Kerry:

No, I don’t think Kerry deliberately insulted the U.S. military. That would be stupid. I think the mask slipped — just a little — and his natural disdain for the military and for military personnel showed through.

UPDATE: A newspaper columnist says “No word yet on the identity of the troops in the photo”, but PowerLine identifies the unit as the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 34th Infantry Division (MN National Guard). That unit has done itself proud!

UPDATE: Kerry has now “apologized” — sort of. But he’s not sorry for saying what he said. He merely regrets that his words were “misinterpreted”. (Those terrible right-wing nut-jobs, taking what he said at face value!)

John Kerry may not have intended to insult all the U.S. troops, but he did. An apology would have been something more like “I’m sorry I insulted you. I really didn’t intend that the way it came out.” Of course, that assumes he really didn’t mean what he actually said.

Meanwhile, Steven Den Beste invites us to consider how new technologies (through the troops’ picture above) have given us all a horse laugh at Kerry’s expense.

Category: Left & Right
 

The Republican Party of New Mexico filed a request in July under the state open records statute for the names of foreign nationals who have been issued drivers licenses in the state. Their intent was to compare that list with voter lists, to try to determine how many of these roughly 30,000 ineligible individuals might actually have become registered voters. A large number of such registrations are thought to be likely since individuals are routinely offered a voter registration opportunity when getting a drivers license.

They finally got a response from the state — 150 pages of information with everything (or everything except ZIP codes, in another account) blacked out. That obviously made any verification attempt impossible. As a result, the GOP filed a lawsuit in state district court on Friday to force the release of the names.

This news was broken on the KKOB AM morning show on Friday, and was reported in the Albuquerque Journal on Saturday. The accounts in the two places differed in some specifics. In particular, GOP secretary-elect Nina Martinez said on the Friday radio show that the party was told that “executive privilege” was the reason state officials would not release the list, though she said there was no citation of the reason (from a short available list) for the redactions as is required by the open records statute. By the time the newspaper story came out, federal privacy laws had become the stated reason for the refusal.

The interview and the article identified another problem with the voter lists, as well: When the Secretary of State sent voter ID cards to all 1.1 million registered voters this year (plastic cards, but without pictures), more than 201,700 (over 18%) were returned by the post office as undeliverable. That probably means these voter registrations had nonexistent addresses (suggesting they may be fraudulent registrations) since mail to legitimate addresses is normally delivered regardless of the addressee’s name.

Of this situation, GOP secretary-elect Martinez said, “This does not make rational sense, that one in five cards would be returned as undeliverable by the Post Office. This is a major problem.” And yet neither the state nor the counties have taken any action, and the Secretary of State has said those people “retain their rights and can still vote”.

The number of voter ID cards returned as undeliverable also does not include the registrations of children and pets as voters, and the continued voting by dead people, that have turned up in the past. All this suggests that probably well over one in every five people listed as voters in New Mexico — more than 20% of all voters — is not actually a legitimate voter, in a state whose color is routinely decided by very thin margins.

And yet, Governor Bill Richardson and the state Democratic Party can’t seem to understand why trust in our elections processes is plummeting, or why more and more people are demanding a real ID requirement at the polls.

Category: Voting Issues
 

I supported John Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. I hadn’t decided about Bobby Kennedy before his assassination in 1968. But I’ve always known that Teddy Kennedy was completely dishonest and totally free of any scruples whatever.

Now there’s word that all Teddy’s unethical and illegal behavior was just the “tip of the iceberg.” Political science professor Paul Kengor, in his new book (The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism) on Ronald Reagan, notes Teddy’s contacts with the Soviet KGB, and his offer and attempt to work with the KGB and the Soviet government to thwart the foreign policy of the government of the United States.

Comment on this case can be found (among other places) here and here. And Clarice Feldman notes that

We know that Senator Kerry while still a reserve officer, negotiated with the enemy during the Viet Nam War and that Senator Rockefeller traveled to Syria before the war in Iraq to tip off our enemies about our battle plans. Now we know that Senator Kennedy offered help to the Soviets.

This man is a disgrace to the U.S. Senate, the Democratic Party, the Kennedy family, and the human race.

Category: Left & Right
 

Here we go again!

The Albuquerque Journal reported today that some 1,300 voters there, in Bernalillo County, New Mexico — that we know of, so far — have each received two absentee ballots. The news story said a mailing on October 13th was repeated on October 16th. The report continued, saying that

the cause of the glitch is unknown, but the clerk’s staff is “double-checking and triple-checking. Everything’s back on line.”

Absentee ballots are handled by the office of the Bernalillo County Clerk. That office is currently held by Mary Herrera, who is now the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State in this year’s election. This is the same county clerk that, in 2004, accepted at least 10-20,000 fraudulent voter registrations, most produced by Soros-funded organizations such as ACORN for (possibly nonexistent) people at nonexistent addresses and for “voters” who were actually 12- and 13-year-old children or family pets. (This year, ACORN is embroiled in a voter fraud scandal in St Louis, currently being covered by Gateway Pundit.)

I hope I’m wrong, but this looks like the beginning of a very problematic election.

Category: Voting Issues
 

Rich Galen wrote about the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta in his column Friday.

Which made me remember a question called in to KOB radio (now KKOB) a few years ago:

Do you have to be Catholic to go to the Mass Ascension?

Category: “Other”
 

A large earthquake hit the Big Island of Hawaii this morning. The reported Richter magnitude was 6.6. (That’s big.) The news reports say there are no reports of fatalities or major injuries, but there are reports of major damage — and power went out all over the state. (Power was expected to be back on most of Oahu sometime this evening.)

Category: “Other”
 

A colleague has often told me that I’m nuts, that the “liberal media” is a myth and a figment of my imagination. Well, if she won’t take my word for it (whether I’m nuts or not), or that of her own eyes, here’s some commentary from someone she considers a great president, William Jefferson Clinton (from the Washington Post, as cited in the Wall Street Journal):

He said Democrats of his generation tend to be naive about new media realities. There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies — and will rebut political accusations and serve as referees on new-media excesses.

“We’re all that way, and I think a part of it is we grew up in the ’60s and the press led us against the war and the press led us on civil rights and the press led us on Watergate,” Clinton said. “Those of us of a certain age grew up with this almost unrealistic set of expectations.”

James Taranto comments on this:

This Clinton is an astute one, isn’t he? We’ve made essentially the same argument many times — including with reference to Clinton’s own recent outburst on “Fox News Sunday.” The former president, used to sycophantic interviewers like David Remnick and Larry King, was unprepared for a tough question and lashed out, delivering an angry, paranoid rant.

Somehow Clinton understands that “we,” his fellow liberals, are fatuous about the media but he fails to grasp that he is.

Myth? Figment? I guess not.

Thank God for the blogosphere!

Category: Left & Right
 

Yes, I know I’m late coming to this topic, but I’ve been out.

Every person, every group, every country, every civilization has a history. And every single one has things in the past that, looked at from today’s viewpoint, can leave one less than proud. Since none of us has the power to change the past — and since doing so, if we had the power, could have really interesting consequences — the appropriate response is to (1) acknowledge the history, (2) resolve to do better, learn from history, and not make the same mistakes again, and (3) move on. Inappropriate responses would include denying the historical facts and getting angry at historians for stating them.

Whatever might be the proper doctrine, and however Muslims may want to interpret their own history, it is absolutely clear that those conquered and threatened by the Islamic jihad in Islam’s early centuries saw Islam as a religion being spread by conquest — by the sword. For the descendants of those involved to deny this — or, worse, to use comments about it as an excuse to incite mayhem — is worse than inappropriate.

Or perhaps they are simply ignorant of their own history.

I don’t know which is worse, lying about one’s own history or being totally ignorant of it.

Category: Religion
 

Do not forget either the villains or the heroes of that day.

Category: War on Terror
 

(from Chris Muir’s Day By Day for Friday, September 8, 2006)

We are now 60 days from the midterm elections, a key date for anyone hoping to exercise free political speech in the world's first free and democratic republic. America has entered the John McCain-Russ Feingold blackout period, where the federal government must enforce a ban on any third-party political advertising that has the temerity to mention incumbent politicians by name

The Left pretends we’re losing our rights, while exercising the rights we’ve supposedly already lost. While they’re doing that, though, they are ignoring a real suppression issue — one that is effective today. What is it? Here’s The Examiner:

Something almost without precedent in America will happen Thursday. That’s the day when McCain-Feingold — aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — will officially silence broadcast advertising that contains criticism of members of Congress seeking re-election in November.

No, this is not really a left-right political issue. Both parties and much of the Washington political establishment are complicit in the assault on freedom of political speech for the rest of us. And, apparently, depriving us of our right to free speech — the variety most important to the Constitution’s framers — was bought by the campaign finance lobby for just $140 million.

I wrote about this issue last year (in McCain-Supported Political Speech and Easy As 1-2-3). In the latter, I wrote

I will make a prediction: The Supreme Court majority’s pretense that McCain-Feingold (the BCRA) is constitutional will be seen in the not-too-distant future as more egregious than the Dred Scott decision, which at least had the benefit of not having the actual words of the Constitution saying it was wrong. (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech . . . .”)

McCain-Feingold should not simply be repealed; it ought to be replaced with a new law that uses transparency in campaign finance rather than censorship in political expression.

Category: Individual Rights
 

I ran across a group of articles last week that have brought into focus some of the things my friends and I have been trying to talk about. I’ll try to encapsulate here what I think I’ve gotten from them, including much that has come from the considerations and researches triggered by the articles.

One thing that is reinforced is that the jihadist’s ideology is not Islam, no matter how much they may claim to be the true Muslims and to speak for Islam. (I confess that I’ve been holding that as a hope as much as a belief; quite a number of others [including (ex-?)Muslims] have written quite persuasively that these doctrines are inherent in Islam.) One trigger was in a Mark Steyn column in which he said that

any religion that needs to do that (coerce “conversions”) is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies.

Incidentally, this may provide at least a partial answer to the question from one of my friends as to why Arab (or Muslim) societies have been more susceptible than others to the European fascist ideology. They were more susceptible because significant segments of their populations had already accepted a similar/parallel totalitarian socialist ideology. It also wouldn’t hurt that the translation of Mein Kampf is My Jihad.

That’s not to say jihad is a recent Islamic innovation. Clearly, it’s not. The term “jihad” has been used -- in its current “holy war” sense — at least since the 12th century when Saladin (Salah-ad-Din) was obsessed with jihad and issued a “call to jihad” to take Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Thus, “jihad” has been used in its current “holy war” sense since at least since the 12th century, and apparently all the way back to the days when Mohammed led his wars of conquest. The recent (20th century) innovation is the grafting of a political ideology onto the religious concept.

That leaves the problem of the Shi’ite jihadists, the other “major tree” of jihadism. Their motivation is different. Most Shi’ite jihadists are apparently members of the Hojjatieh sect, which is a Khomeinist group even though it was banned (forced underground) by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when it opposed his political agenda. The Hojjatieh (Hojjatiyya) Society was founded in the early 1950s (some references say in 1953) by Sheikh Mahmoud Tavallai, popularly known as Sheikh Halabi, an extremist Shi’ite cleric who founded the group to eradicate members of the Baha’i faith. This millennialist sect awaits the return of the twelfth imam (the 12th grandson of prophet Mohammed), the so-called “hidden” (Savior) Imam Mahdi who disappeared as a child in 941 AD. They believe he will return only when the world contains enough oppression, misery, tyranny, and sorrow to warrant his coming. As a result, they believe in spreading evil and creating chaos as their way to hasten his return. This is the sect to which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (or Ahmadi-Nejad) belongs, along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iraq’s Moqtada al-Sadr.

The Hojjatieh sect went down the Salafi’s religion-to-politics path much more quickly. It was banned (forced to disband) in 1983 because they opposed religious involvement in political affairs and wouldn’t go along with Ayatollah Khomeini’s “rule of the supreme jurisconsult (Vilayat-i Faqih)”. Now, however, they support the Khomeinist state — and have a shot at making their leader (Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi) the annointed successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As has been said before “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So now the Hojjatieh approach absolute corruption in Iran, and do their best to spread as much evil as possible throughout the world.

All of which supports Steyn’s assertion (quoted above) that

the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies.

If I were a Muslim, with the inheritance of Islamic tradition behind me, I’d be deeply ashamed of the babbling idiots who claimed to speak for me. I would be very loud in contradicting them. Their ideology is tied to Islam, and constructed largely with an Islamic vocabulary and rough grammar, but hardly with an Islamic syntax. By this I mean, that it is inconceivable that anything resembling the “blovulations” of the Salafists, and Shia revolutionists of Iran, could emerge from a purely Islamic course of reasoning. There are too many extraneous elements. In the use of Islamic terms, there is too much slapstick and self-parody.
...
But it is certainly true that Muslim authorities, in most preceding centuries, offered a view of God and man’s duties and destiny, that was a whole lot more impressive than the current lot offers. Islam has long been the West’s rival. But we could never have wished our rival to be idiotized to such a degree.

Thus, my digging seems to have produced confirmation that the modern jihadi ideology is not Islam, and not really Islamic, but is the ideology of those who would use and pervert Islam for their own evil purposes.

With that, my encapsulation is complete. But that leaves some questions for consideration. The general one to begin with is, what do we (Muslims and non-Muslims) do about it? How do the Muslims show the problem is the perverters of Islam rather than Islam itself? How do they act to take back their good name from the evildoers acting (purportedly) in that name? And what do we do to protect ourselves from these evil people — and help turn Islam back to the real Muslims?

Your thoughts?

Category: Religion
 

Two relatively small, but very telling, changes noted in recent reports (since “the large is often most visible in the small” — David Warren):

• David Warren notes a small change in Lebanon.

  I return to Mr Ben Dov. He noticed the sort of thing so simple and obvious, that it would escape the attention of most intellectual observers. It was about Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, born and raised in the village of al-Bazuriya -- whose great grandparents might easily have sheltered Mr Ben Dov’s grandparents. It was that Nasrallah wears a Persian turban, and Persian clothes. His ancestors would have worn their own version of kaffiyeh and awal (the headcloth and cord), and sharwal (baggy trousers). Nor would his women have worn veils.

  Definitely go read Warren’s whole column.

• Meanwhile, Michael Totten visited near Gaza.

  “The beach in Gaza is amazing,” Shika had told me earlier. “It is virgin. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “You’ve been there?” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “We used to go there and eat in the restaurants.”

  “When?” I said.

  “In the early 80s,” he said.

  “It was friendly then?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Israel ruled there. The Palestinians were friendly, I think they miss that period. They had money, they could walk freely.”

  Read all of that one, too.

Category: War on Terror
 

Good news and bad news today. The good news is that Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and his cameraman Olaf Wiig were released by their kidnappers. The bad news is part of their ransom was their conversion to Islam at gunpoint.

Forced conversions are supposedly forbidden in Islamic law, and Muslim apologists are fond of quoting the passage in the Koran that says “There is no compulsion in religion.” Other authorities, however, assert that this verse is among those abrogated by “later revelations”. It certainly has been constantly and consistently violated by the Islamists.

How bad a religion must this be? It seems the only ways they can keep their membership up are

• Gaining members by
  • Coercing “conversions” at gunpoint and by other “convert or die” methods, or
  • Brainwashing children from birth, and
• Keeping members by executing (murdering) any that try to leave.

Yes, and what an appealing faith these thugs must believe Islam is, that conversions have to be effected at the point of a gun.

So much for “There is no compulsion in religion.” Evidently, that’s just another lie.

Update August 29:

Others have had similar thoughts. Shelby Steele, for example, notes that

Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism — not their continuance — forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism. ... Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of an inferiority complex.

Which means there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today’s mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been “idiotized” by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles’ heel just ripe for exploiting.

Category: Religion
 

In discussion a while back, my friend JB asked “why would Arab leaders/societies be prone to hold on to Fascism more than other populations?” Since this propensity is marked in more than just Arab societies (Iran comes immediately to mind) I would broaden this question to ask “why would Muslim leaders and societies be more prone to fascism than other populations?” This broadens the question, but it doesn’t provide an answer.

My recent posts have concentrated on Islamists, fascism, and history. Their focus has come from observation — what has happened. That’s good, as far as it goes, but it leaves open the bigger question: Why? So I haven’t had an answer for JB’s question. Yet.

A number of things I have read suggest pieces of the puzzle. An article on a New York Muslim school, for example, describes it as teaching its pupils to memorize the Koran. And the school teaches nothing else. This is these students’ only school, but these students learn nothing else. No mathematics. No science. No history, either of their own country or of other parts of the world. Nothing of world cultures or other religions. No languages — not their “mother tongue” of English and not any foreign language. No literature but the Koran — and that not taught, but just put up only for phonetic memorization — in Arabic, which the students neither speak nor understand, and are not taught. In a school like this, the students actually learn nothing.

How many of the world’s other Muslim religious schools are like this? How many of the Madrassas’ teachers were trained like this and have little or no real understanding, even of the meaning of the words they are teaching? I was already wondering.

Then I was referred to the Pedestrian Infidel, and the “conversion epic” by Avenging Apostate. His multi-part piece is a definite must read! His story taught me a lot — in the first person, supplementing what I had learned before. From the beliefs he was taught, and considering how widespread some of those beliefs appear to be, it would seem a great many Muslim teachers are effectively unschooled and teach their students out of their own ignorance.

His story has caused an idea to gel in my mind. I now plan (hope) to do a series of items on various of the misonceptions and false ideas held by Muslims generally or by various Muslim groups or sects. (If you have a favorite Muslim misconception, please let me know — it may be one I haven’t come across.) Other items will deal with some of the consequences of these misconceptions or groups of misconceptions.

One thing, however, seems clear: Muslim groups and sects appear to be aware of how badly they have been taught. They seem to believe their faith cannot withstand questions, or to be seriously concerned that it cannot. As a direct result of this belief or fear, they make possession of another religion’s scriptures a more serious criminal offense than dealing drugs. Fearing their members may be vulnerable to hearing stories from another religion, they make prosyletizing a more serious offense than murder. And fearing or knowing their religion cannot withstand scrutiny, they make conversion from it a capital offense.

As a sentient being, I can’t think of much that is worse than succumbing to this kind of fear — and living with the sense of inferiority it produces.

Category: Religion
 

A Muslim friend asks, “How likely are the Lutherans ... to wholly denounce the Pope and the Catholic church?” The answer is that they did. And the Catholics, at the time, responded in kind. And not just against the Lutherans, either — the first people burned at the stake, for example, were the Unitarian heretics in Transylvania. (Unitarians, as their name implies, do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. The persecution didn’t work — the Unitarians still exist, and founded the first church in Plymouth, Massachusetts.) They and other Western groups engage in détente now, but that took decades (and in some cases centuries) to occur.

A more recent example is the group that split off from the Catholic church after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s. That group’s priests (and those who followed them) condemned the Pope and the Catholic Church, saying the latter had abandoned the right path and proper Church teachings. They objected, among other things, to the Catholic Church’s move to have the Mass celebrated in each country’s common language rather than in the traditional Latin. The Catholic Church, for its part, excommunicated many of those priests.

The same thing occurs within the Ummah, the Muslim community. The Wahhabis, in particular, consider all Shiites to be polytheists or apostates. In either case, when they take over an area, they commonly insist that all Shiites in that area (and all non-Wahhabi Sunnis as well) convert or die. (They consider that Muslims not in their sect are not really Muslims. And, of course, they treat leaving Islam — or trying to — as a capital offense.) Under these conditions, I don’t think that, to quote my friend, “to expect one sect to completely denounce another is rather unreasonable”. The Wahhabis (and similar Shiite sects, etc.) are already doing so, and have done so to varying degrees for centuries; I’m just suggesting the more rational elements return the favor.

Category: Religion
 

President Bush called the terrorists planning to blow up U.S.-bound passenger jets “Islamic fascists”. All the usual suspects — from CAIR to the Saudi Embassy — objected, claiming Bush tarred all Muslims as fascists. William Shawcross, in a column reprinted in the Jerusalem Post, notes his own use of the term.

In a live BBC interview recently, I called Hizbullah “Islamo-fascists.” The interviewer said nervously, “That’s a very controversial description.” I replied that it was merely accurate. She brought the interview to a swift close.

I have long objected to the term “Islamofascist,” and even moreso to Michael Medved’s new atrocity, “Islamo-Nazi”; but it’s not because I’m afraid to hurt the feelings of some poor Moslem somewhere. My objections are:

a. The term diminishes the true evil of the real Nazis and Fascists from World War II by “genericizing” their eldritch horror;

b. The term also disguises the true evil of the murderous jihadis themselves; their perfidy is not some fabricated similarity to the Italian or German national socialists, but rather their end-of-the-world fanaticism that causes them to see murder as a mitzvah and death as a promotion.

I have heard it said (and I have written) that the Islamists contracted their fascism from the Nazis. It seemed that one point of infection was when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem visited (and allied himself with) Adolph Hitler in Berlin in 1937. Now it seems to me that different parts of the fascist infection moved both ways. Indeed, the Nazi requirement that Jews wear a yellow Jewish star reflect (among others) Persian dress requirements from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Similar requirements go back over a thousand years in some of the lands conquered by Muslims. Thus, a major part of the Nazi ideology and practice appears to be derived from earlier Islamic fascist racism. Maybe that’s why the more severe segments of Islam have consistently been most comfortable with their European totalitarian compatriots — whether Nazis, Communists, or whatever else.

You think I’m fantasizing this association? Here, as an example of that current association, is a collage of pictures from several Hezbollah gatherings (from Strategy Page). As another example, I would remind that, historically, the Ba’ath parties in both Iraq and Syria were explicitly modeled on the German Nazi party. And that’s not even counting their shared anti-Semitism, totalitarianism, and xenophobia. Draw your own conclusions.

As for the CAIR and Saudi objections that referring to Islamic fascists tars all Muslims — they make no logical sense at all. Speaking of Swiss bankers does not mean that all Swiss are bankers, or even that a large fraction of them are. Speaking of Irish fishermen does not imply that all Irish are fishermen, or even that a significant fraction are. Speaking of American soldiers or American Leftists does not imply that all Americans are either soldiers or Leftists, or even that a significant fraction are either. In each case, the terminology identifies a rather small subgroup within a larger identifiable group. Similarly, speaking of Islamic fascists does not imply that all Muslims, or even a large fraction of Muslims, are fascists — unless CAIR and the Saudis know something about their co-religionists the rest of us don’t.

Category: Religion
 

My mother had two younger brothers, Charles and Robert. (Robert was the baby of the family.) Because of them, family car trips (into town or anywhere else) could be interesting. It would begin as soon as they were under way. Robert would start at Charles — poking him, pinching him, hitting him — always careful to keep his actions slightly out of sight. Finally, one would be the “last straw”, and Charles would punch Robert back. That, of course, would be observed, and Charles would be punished. Robert thought that was appropriate: “He started it. He hit me back!” (It was some time before their parents caught on.)

This true story often comes to mind when I hear somebody complaining about the Crusades. I think it is quite apt as a metaphor. After all, the purpose of the Crusades was to take back Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Allow me to restate: The purpose of the Crusades was to take BACK Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which had been taken from the Christians and the Jews by the Arab Muslims in the seventh century, and taken from them by the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century. This history demonstrates at least three interesting points:

1. The current Islamist claim that Christianity and Islam were at peace until the Crusaders attacked is simply false. Muslim armies had been attacking Christian and Jewish lands (and other lands, too) continually since before Mohammed died.

2. The claims by the Wahhabi Sunnis and the Khomeinist Shias that their mistreatment of non-Muslims and their racism against Jews and Europeans (among others) is based in the Koran and dates back to Mohammed is another falsehood. Christian pilgrims visited the Holy Land from the seventh to the tenth centuries with little interference, and Christian and Jewish residents were apparently not terribly oppressed (by the standards of the day). It was only after the conquest of the Holy Land by the Seljuk Turks that the major interference and oppression began. THAT is what triggered the Crusades.

3. The Islamists’ claims that Muslims do not make war against other Muslims is revealed as yet another falsehood. The Seljuk Turks were Muslims more like the modern Islamists. They attacked and conquered the Arab Muslims who at that time controlled the land the Seljuk Turks coveted. And the mistreatment of pilgrims began after the conquest of Arab Muslims by the Turkestan (Seljuk) Muslims. Thus, the claim that Muslims are somehow “better” than non-Muslims, and treat other Muslims as brothers, is shown to be just a self-serving pretense.

Nor does this pretense apply only to the distant past. In World War I, the Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Germans, while the Hashemites (in Arabia) allied with the British. The two Muslim nations fought against each other. The Hashemites won, and moved north to take over Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. After the war, the Wahhabis (the house of Saud) stormed out of Arabia’s Nejd Province to take from the Hashemite monarchy — by conquest — Mecca, Medina, and the rest of what is now referred to Saudi Arabia. Self-serving pretense confirmed.

What about the Crusades themselves? A Muslim friend has asked if I separate myself from the crusaders, seeming to draw a moral equivalence between history’s crusaders and today’s jihadists. I answer his question in three ways: (1) Of course. The kinds of barbarity that were commonplace a thousand years ago have no place in the modern world. (2) No. A counterattack responding to attacks and aggression of even greater barbarity is justified. (3) I don’t need to. I am separated from the crusaders by 800-1000 years of civilizational progress. The West is proud of the progress it has made in that time, and glad to be separated from its forbears’ barbarism. The jihadis aspire to return to the tenth century — or maybe the seventh — as the pinnacle of their history, and work to continue the barbarism of that time.

Things have changed over the centuries. (Certainly they have in the West, and they should have in the East as well.) So let’s look at a few comparisons from current times. The armies of the West do not use rape as a weapon of war (as Islamists have, most recently in Lebanon, Kuwait, and Bosnia) or a technique of terror and interrogation (as Islamists did in Saddamite Iraq, and do in Iran). The West considers rapists to be criminals and punishes them; Islamist governments put them on the payroll. The West did not have to create the hijab (in 1971) to protect its own women from its own rape gangs; the Islamists did. And the West got beyond beheadings centuries ago, while jihadis revel in this barbarity today. Western armies do not, as a military policy, target civilians; Islamists constantly do, and often target only non-combatant civilians — possibly because they are afraid to attack people who can actually fight back. Islamists also consistently and routinely hide behind/among civilians in an attempt to prevent those with Western morals and standards from retaliating against them. Western soldiers are sent to prison for even slightly humiliating prisoners; jihadists are glorified for kidnapping and torturing and beheading civilians.

This comparison also holds true outside of war, in the civil and criminal realm. The West considers things like spouse abuse and statutory rape to be crimes. The jihadis’ fellow travelers consider “honor killings” a religious duty and support arranged “marriages” of pre-teen girls. (They also sanction “short term marriages” — often for just one night — providing a pretense of legitimacy for affairs and the use of prostitutes.) Another action preached by the jihadis and their imams and supporters is attacking non-Muslims (especially Christians and Jews) simply because they are not Muslims. The West has a term for such actions — they are called hate crimes. Larger and more official groups of such actions are genocides.

All this brings me back to a question I’ve had before: Is the Islamist terrorist jihadi ideology inherent in the Islamic religion and/or culture, or is it an aberration? If it is an aberration, how do we non-Muslims help the non-jihadist Muslims rid their community of this cancer and separate Islamist terrorist jihadis (the Islamic fascists) from the legitimate Muslims? How do we separate the Muslim religion from the terrorists when, generally, it seems Muslims themselves won’t? If Muslims don’t or won’t consider terrorists un-Islamic, why should anyone else? And if terrorism is inherent in Islam, what do we do about that?

Category: Religion
 

The majority of people in the San Diego area have always supported keeping the Mt. Soledad Cross — a Korean War memorial erected in 1954. They voted by a more than 3 to 1 margin to donate the monument to the federal government when it looked like that would be necessary to protect it from destruction.

None of that mattered. In a classic example of tyranny of the minority over the majority, one man (aided by a federal judge) ordered the city to destroy the cross, and a $5,000/day fine if they didn’t do so. (See my previous post for more information.)

Now it’s out of the city’s hands. A bill went quickly through Congress, unanimously passed by the Senate after passing by a 349-74 vote in the House. The bill became law when it was signed by President Bush yesterday, and the memorial was transferred to the federal government. And so, as Captain Ed notes,

Now the government owns a cross, and one can expect the usual suspects to come out of the woodwork to protest this “endorsement” of religion. Once again, people mistake freedom of religion for freedom from religion, the latter of which is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. That people get so offended by a religious symbol in the public square testifies to the power of symbology less than it does to the spoiled brattiness of American politics. This cross does no one any harm, and has sat on the mountaintop for over five decades without giving any distress to anyone except those who go out of their way to be offended.

Papers have already been filed in Federal District Court in San Diego claiming the mere presence of a cross on federal land is unconstitutional. Plaintiffs’ success would mandate a lot of digging in national cemeteries all over the country. And there would still be the issue of all the signs with religious names like San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, St. Louis, St. Augustine, St. Petersburg, St. Paul, etc., etc., etc.

Category: Left & Right
 

JB and I had lunch together last week. Lunch was accompanied, as usual, by a wide-ranging discussion. JB followed up that discussion with a note that said, in part:

Regrettably, the tenor of our conversation on (at least on my side of the table) reached a new plateau. Somewhere between despair and disgust. The biases of the MSM are so obvious, the presentations of the Arab media so outrageous, the machinations of the UN so blatantly political, how can we ever hope for peace in the Middle East?

If we give Hezbollah a pass (read, "cease-fire") it will only be a matter of time before they rearm and we play this game again. Doing so would clearly encourage the rest of the Islamic world to think that we're weak. If we don't slap down Hezbollah hard, now, we'll be playing cease-fire games with a dozen off-spring in five years. Bolton is on to something here.

At least the football season is starting. Like I said, between despair and disgust.

“Somewhere between despair and disgust” is a good description. Similar feelings assault me often these days, too. The current feelings are not brought on by the sense of “there's nothing I can do”, which has produced some similar feelings in the past. This time there is a sense that there is nothing anyone can do — nothing that can be done.

One part of this is due to the war between Israel and Hezbollah (often misreported in the press as the war between Israel and Lebanon). JB is right that we (and Israel) cannot afford to give Hezbollah a pass (“cease-fire”) — we cannot allow the French and whoever to save Hezbollah’s backsides from the consequences of their own actions yet again. JB’s analyses are right on point. My concern, however, is that they may not go far enough. At least part of the time, I suspect ending this threat will require the complete destruction of Hezbollah. In my more hopeful times, I hope it may only take completely defeating Hezbollah and cutting these mercenaries off from their masters (also their allies/suppliers/controllers) in Syria and Iran.

This part is also linked to the continuing problems in Iraq. Those, too, are heavily financed and supplied and directed from Iran. (The direction may be less for the Ba’ath and Sunni elements than for the Shia, but that doesn’t seem to matter much.) Nevertheless, if we can get through this difficult period — if we and those in the Middle East who value freedom can cut off the Iranian interference and prevail — creating real democracies in the Middle East still seems to provide the best long-term hope for the region’s salvation.

With that statement, the hope passes and the despair and disgust return. Indeed, the hope and the despair seem to alternate. The root cause for this is a recognition that we seem to be at a historical turning point, and I don’t yet know which way we will end up turning. Will we succeed and thrive? Or will we slide back into the quagmire and barbarity that was the world of the seventh century?

One thing, along with his message, that has helped crystalize some of these thoughts is yesterday’s article on The American Thinker web site titled A Hinge of History. (A hinge seems an apt metaphor for a turning point, doesn’t it? The hinge is the turning point, and the door can swing either way.) Rick Moran (the article’s author) really seems to have caught what we’ve been feeling, as well as the possible impacts of events coming in the near future.

This morning’s news did little to diminish the despair and disgust, either. Judging from al Qaeda’s past predilections, tomorrow (August 11) was probably their target day. The good news is these guys were caught before they could do their damage. The bad news is in the question of how long we can maintain a perfect record.

I try to remind myself that folks must have felt pretty despairing in 1941-2, too. Yes, I am well aware the situation today is different. But this war is against fascism as surely as was World War II. It’s just harder because the fascist totalitarians this time are hiding behind a religion rather than a government, in the hopes that will make us less likely to attack them. (I’m not the only one feeling a 1941 parallel — see Batchelor’s New York Sun article, which I saw after writing this.)

Yesterday, too, The American Thinker had an article from James Lewis talking about what is for me a disgust-producing part of our generation. That article is titled The Habit of Betrayal. The part described isn’t quite the concern that the Israel-Hezbollah war is, but it is an element of my overall feeling of disgust — and responsible for a lot of what we see in the mainstream media.

I hope I have remembered this next correctly: I recall that the Chinese word for crisis is a digraph made up of the characters that separately mean danger and opportunity. At previous crisis points, our world has managed to step back from the abyss and acatually make some progress. We can only hope that will happen this time as well. The one thing we can be pretty sure of, though, is that whatever happens will be different from anything we project or predict.

And on that cheery note, I close. And now I ask my friend, “Who looks good for the upcoming football season?”

Category: War on Terror
 

This story was forwarded to me by a friend. I can’t vouch for it — and I haven’t been to the World War II Memorial yet — but it is very plausible and fits in with other incidents of “Political Correctness” from around the country.

Send the Engravers Back

Today I went to visit the new World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. I got an unexpected history lesson. Because I’m a baby boomer, I was one of the youngest in the crowd. Most were the age of my parents, veterans of “the greatest war,” with their families. It was a beautiful day, and people were smiling and happy to be there. Hundreds of us milled around the memorial, reading the inspiring words of Eisenhower and Truman that are engraved there.

On the Pacific side of the memorial, a group of us gathered to read the words President Roosevelt used to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor:

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.”

One elderly woman read the words aloud:

“With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbending determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.”

But as she read, she was suddenly turned angry. “Wait a minute,” she said, “They left out the end of the quote. They left out the most important part. Roosevelt ended the message with ‘so help us God.’ ”

Her husband said, “You are probably right. We're not supposed to say things like that now.”

“I know I'm right,” she insisted. “I remember the speech.” The two looked dismayed, shook their heads sadly and walked away.

Listening to their conversation, I thought to myself, “Well, it has been over 50 years. She's probably forgotten.”

But she had not forgotten. She was right.

I went home and pulled out the book my book club is reading — Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. It's all about the battle at Iwo Jima. I haven’t gotten too far in the book — it’s tough to read because it’s a graphic description of the W.W.II battles in the Pacific.

But right there it was on page 58. Roosevelt’s speech to the nation ends in “so help us God.”

The people who edited out that part of the speech when they engraved it on the memorial could have fooled me. I was born after the war. But they couldn’t fool the people who were there. Roosevelt’s words are engraved on their hearts.

Now I ask: Who gave them the right to change the words of history??????

Category: History
 

A friend of mine wrote me on Tuesday (August 1st), and said

Has anyone else heard the rumor that the Massacre in Qana was caused by Hezbollah, not the Israelis? Rush was suggesting, but did not come out and say it or give references.

My reader may be wondering what happened to all the coverage from Qana. As usual, when the “liberal” media begin to realize they’ve been had, the story disappears. But it is never properly corrected. We get a few days of blazing headlines, and round-the-dial TV coverage of an “Israeli massacre”, laden with innuendos, and then — the fade-out. This will not do.

What happened at Qana was, almost certainly, what happened at Jenin in 2002, what happened on a beach in Gaza a few weeks ago, and what has happened on innumerable other occasions.

• The people whose bodies were used in the Qana photo-op were killed sometime the night before, probably in houses near the edge of the town, probably in Israeli air raids.
• The bodies were brought the next morning to a collapsed building in the center of town, where the photo-op took place. That may be the building that collapsed the morning of the photo-op.
• The bodies were placed in a void in this collapsed structure, and brought out after the photographers arrived. A number of the bodies were carried about for the photographers for quite some time.
• The activity in the center of Qana to which the photojournalists were invited was not linked to any sort of actual rescue activity.

Not the Iranian mercenaries’ finest hour.

Category: War on Terror
 

When I was in college, TJ was one of my friends. He had spent much of his childhood in the Panama Canal Zone. He never liked being in the Zone, and did his best to best to keep himself insulated from it while he was there. He never even learned Spanish, and I mean not any.

A group of our friends came to get me one night. TJ had gotten very drunk, and they could no longer either talk to him or understand him. He wasn’t belligerent. It just appeared he could no longer speak or understand English. And he was speaking what sounded to them like Spanish. That’s why they came for me — they knew I spoke at least some Spanish.

I got to where TJ was, and they were right. Anything said to him in English produced an uncomprehending look, and often a question. In each case, he clearly had not understood what had been said. And he was speaking in a fluent idiomatic Spanish. I can’t be absolutely certain the idiom was that of the Canal Zone, but some of the words he used led me to believe it was. And it was fluent idiomatic Spanish, which he could not speak when sober.

I was able to communicate with TJ, and we were able to get him settled down for the night. The next morning, sober again, he could not believe what we told him about the night before. And he could no longer speak Spanish.

If I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. And yet, there it was.

Is this the sort of thing that happened with Mel Gibson last weekend? I have no idea. But the lack of any history of previous anti-Semitic incidents, and the acknowledged high level of anti-Semitism in his childhood home, suggest to me that it is possible.

Category: “Other”
 

Can we have a little straight talk about Hezbollah?

I’m tired of hearing about ”Hezbollah fighters”. George Foreman was a fighter — Hezbollah’s members are something else. Nor are they “freedom fighters” or guerillas. They’re not soldiers, either, though (in their own barbaric way) they perform some somewhat similar functions. And they’re more organized and controlled than your run-of-the-mill terrorists. I think another term is needed.

Hezbollah (the “Party of Allah”) was organized by Iran. It is armed by Iran. Its costs are paid for by Iran. Its operations are directed by Iran.

Let’s just cut to the chase, and call Hezbollah’s members what they are — Iranian mercenaries.

Unlike Hezbollah, Hamas was not founded by Iran. But it is armed and funded by Iran — just like Hezbollah. We probably ought to consider them Iranian mercenaries, too. They certainly do not deserve to be called “soldiers of Palestine”.

Whatever we call them, there is a huge difference between them and legitimate soldiers. This is best exemplified by the two groups’ interactions with civilians. Hezbollah hides among civilians for protection, usually behind women’s skirts and behind children. Hezbollah also targets civilians — much of the time, it targets civilians exclusively. Real soldiers do not target civilians; they do what they can to protect civilians, avoid civilian casualties, and minimize collateral damage — a task made difficult by an enemy that routinely uses civilians as human shields.

I trust you can all see the difference.

(A hat tip to Atlas Shrugs, where I saw it first, for the cartoon.)

Category: War on Terror
 

Insulting to Islam

This is the beautiful Nadine Chandrawinata, who represented Indonesia at the Miss Universe pageant this year. Robert Spencer notes that Miss Indonesia is now the target of jihadis in her “modern, moderate” Muslim home country. Reuters reports she and her pageant aides may face jail time for “insulting” Islam:

A MILITANT Islamic group has filed a police report against Indonesia’s Miss Universe candidate, accusing her of indecency. Nadine Chandrawinata’s participation in the contest and display of her body in a swimsuit “is actually insulting for Indonesian dignity and women”, Islamic Defenders Front lawyer Sugito said yesterday. Ms Chandrawinata did not make it to the competition’s final in Los Angeles on Sunday, which was won by Miss Puerto Rico, but she had drawn heavy media coverage in Indonesia.

More from Antara News: “‘We have reported Nadine Chandrawinata as she has harassed Indonesian women by appearing in vulgar poses at the Miss Universe 2006 contest on behalf of Indonesia,’ said FPI lawyer Adnan Assegaf.” Indonesia Matters is blogging the story. Miss Indonesia says she’s not concerned.

The rest of us should be.

(Quotations from Michelle Malkin. A hat tip, too, to dhimmiwatch.)

Category: Religion
 

There’s a column I first read just under three months ago that my mind keeps going back to. I cannot claim the library the Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren evidently has, or the accomplishments of his lineage, but this column of his comes very close to expressing my feelings on the subject of anti-Muslim bias. His final paragraph summarizes the case well:

Or put it like this. If self-declared Buddhists had been committing acts of terror and intimidation in the name of Lord Buddha, with the same frequency and on the same scale as self-declared Muslims have been doing in the name of Allah for the last many years, I think I would be writing about Buddhism and Buddhists in about the same way. Ditto for Confucians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Jews, or even Christians for that matter. Now, my reader will observe: I hardly ever say anything against Buddhists.

Category: War on Terror
 

UPDATES BELOW

A federal judge has (again) declared atheism to be the state religion of San Diego, as he evidently feels it should be of the United States.

“It is now time, and perhaps long overdue, for this court to enforce its initial permanent injunction forbidding the presence of the Mount Soledad cross on city property,” said U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson.

Thompson first found the presence of the cross on city property unconstitutional in 1991 because it violated the separation of church and state.

Gateway Pundit has some of the back story.

A federal judge ruled on a 15 year-old ACLU case on Wednesday ordering the city of San Diego to remove a mountain-top cross within 90 days or face a fine of $5,000 a day.

The Mount Soledad cross was built in 1954 as a memorial to veterans of the Korean War. It was used as a backdrop for sunrise services until atheist Philip Paulson filed a lawsuit in 1989.

And also against, and in violation of, the majority and the democratic process. The city’s voters have twice voted to save the Mt. Soledad Cross, most recently by voting to deed the site to the federal government. That decision has also been challenged in court, and is now on appeal. It looks to me that Judge Thompson’s determination to take action now, before the appeals court rules, is a reflection of his (probable) assessment that the higher court will allow the popular vote to stand and effectively overrule his previous (arrogant, in my view) decision.

SMASH (formerly LT SMASH) has more:

One man — atheist activist Philip Paulson — has been repeatedly suing the City of San Diego for over 16 years to remove the offensive symbol. Most of the rest of us recognize it as a fitting memorial to our military heroes, and a striking landmark atop one of San Diego's most prominent natural features.

Now, because one man's atheistic sensibilities were offended, the people of San Diego must suffer the loss of one of our most treasured civic landmarks.

This political correctness has gone too far. If Mr. Paulson doesn't like the cross, he doesn't have to visit the memorial. But for a federal judge to force the rest of us to conform to Paulson's delicate sensibilities isn't only a mockery of justice, it's downright undemocratic.

UPDATE (June 23, 2006): The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the most reversed federal appeals court in the nation) has upheld Judge Thompson, and held that the mere presence of a Christian cross on public property is unconstitutional. In concert with San Diego’s Taliban-equivalents, that court supported the destruction of any and all religious symbols (on public property) that are not their own. To them, the will of the people (as expressed by their 76% - 24% vote to save the cross) doesn’t matter. Democracy is irrelevant. Political correctness must be preserved.

This case must be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

UPDATE (June 26, 2006): And now it is.

Category: Left & Right
 

OK, this Mike Adams piece is two years old — but it’s circulating again — and it’s still on point.

I have decided to make a formal public apology to the entire Arab world in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib. It is my hope that the following apology will help bring some clarity to the situation and, who knows, maybe even lasting world peace:

Dear Arabs,

I am truly sorry that Americans decided to take up arms and sacrifice their own youth in the defense of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the first Gulf War. After we clear up this mess in Iraq, we will refrain from any such activity in the future.

I am truly sorry that I did not hear any of you call for an apology from Muslim extremists after 911. After all, the hijackers were all Arabs.

I am truly sorry that Arabs have to live in squalor under savage dictatorships throughout the Middle East. I am also sorry that the “leaders” of these nations drive their citizens into poverty by keeping all of the wealth in the hands of a select few.

I am also sorry that these governments intentionally breed hate for the U.S. in their religious schools while American schools do the exact opposite.

I am sorry that Yasir Arafat has been kicked out of every Arab country and has attached his name to the Palestinian “cause”. I am also sorry that no other Arab country will offer nearly as much support to Arafat as we offer to them.

I am sorry that the U.S. has continued to serve as the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arab nations while wealthy Arab leaders blame the U.S. for all of their problems.

I am sorry that left-wing media elites would Rather (pun intended) not talk about any of this, thereby perpetuating your anger towards us. It’s probably really bad for your blood pressure. I am also sorry that most of you lack the medical resources to measure your blood pressure. And, of course, I’m sorry that few of you have indoor plumbing. That’s bad for your health, too.

I am sorry that the U.N. cheated so many poor people in Iraq out of their “food for oil” money so they could get rich while the tortured, raped, and poverty-stricken citizens of Iraq suffered under Saddam Hussein.

I am sorry that some Arab governments pay the families of homicide bombers after their children are blown to pieces in pursuit of Arafat’s “cause”.

I am sorry that these homicide bombers have as little regard for babies as the local office of Planned Parenthood.

I am sorry that so many people are unable to differentiate between the gang rape rooms and mass graves of Saddam Hussein on the one hand, and the conditions of Abu Ghraib on the other.

I am sorry that our prison guards do not show the same restraint that Arabs show when their brothers in arms are killed. (By the way, you shouldn’t be sorry about that.)

I am sorry that foreign trained terrorists are trying to seize control of Iraq and return it to a terrorist state. I am sorry we have not yet dropped at least 100 Daisy cutters on Fallujah in order to stop that effort.

I am also sorry that cleaning up the mess in Iraq is taking so long. It only took Saddam Hussein about 30 years to accomplish all he did in the realm of human rights. Come to think of it, that’s about ten years less than the duration of our War on Poverty in the U.S. Come to think of it, I’m sorry we haven’t sent all of our gang bangers from South Central Los Angeles to Fallujah.

I am sorry that every time the terrorists hide, it just happens to be inside a “Holy Site”.

I am sorry that Muslim extremists have not yet apologized for the U.S.S. Cole, the embassy bombings, and for flying a plane into the World Trade Center, which collapsed in part on Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which is one of our Holy Sites.

I am sorry that we have not taken a portion of the diet of Michael Moore and shipped it to one of your starving villages in the Middle East. You need it Moore (pun intended) than he does.

I am sorry that your only supporters are professors, journalists, and other assorted Leftists who also support homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, partial birth abortion, and everything that you abhor in this world. I am sorry that everyone else in America is against you.

Finally, I am sorry that I am going to have to end this apology by asking you to kiss the right side of my conservative butt. I’m probably just having a bad day.

For that I am truly sorry.

Category: War on Terror
 

There’s a group of news stories out today saying that this past year was the warmest in 400 years. (Other stories make that 1000, or even 2000, years.) The question that brought up in my mind was: What made that earlier time so warm? And what produced the cooling after that (the “Little Ice Age”)? In Jay Nordlinger the same story produced another thought:

That story got me to thinking, What happened to acid rain? I mean, it was on the cover of Time magazine about 100 times. It was the concern of the century, the environmental crime of the century. Schoolteachers everywhere told their kiddies that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans were climbing into the sky to create that rotten rain. At a minimum, they were indifferent to it.

And then . . . silence. No Time magazine cover. No Democratic talking point. The enviro crowd just moved on to something else (chiefly global warming, a successor to the coming ice age).

To repeat: What happened to acid rain? Or rather — to ask this differently — what does the Left say happened to acid rain? Did their crusade take care of the problem — or did they simply get bored, searching out different alarmist pastures?

(You will recall that, at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, the Left and the media claimed that the Republicans were “putting arsenic back into the water” — that was before the administration began wiretapping Aunt Hazel’s phone, for no good reason.)

I don’t know what happened to acid rain. But I continue to be amazed at the rapid flickering out of the most burning issues in American life. Just wait a little while: Global warming will be the dangerous new ice age again. Environmentalist scaremongering is sort of like hemlines.

Category: Left & Right
 

Some things require some thought and analysis. Others are simply self-evident and completely obvious. This is one of the latter.

We’re now hearing that coalition forces have found more than 500 chemical weapons munitions. (See, for example, these initial stories.) Thus, regardless of arguments over details, it appears that
  — John Kerry[*] told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — Teddy Kennedy told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — Hillary Clinton told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — Bill Clinton told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — Nancy Pelosi told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — Harry Reid told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — Tom Daschle told the truth about Iraq’s WMDs before lying about them.
  — etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum

It now appears the top politician who was consistently telling the truth was George W. Bush. (!) (But, of course, the Left has been telling us for years that BUSH LIED! — which just goes to show how deliberately ignorant and/or duplicitous the Left has been in this area.)

*   “I actually voted for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.”

Category: War on Terror
 

Many of us have dodged bullets of one kind or another. Once in a while we may even know it. But not like Pat Gilmore.

Pat Gilmore was a Delta 767 pilot (now retired) who had Mohammed Atta in his cockpit just six weeks before the 9/11 attacks. One can only imagine how he felt when he saw his jumpseat passenger show up on TV as the lead hijacker.

There’s also a reminder (for those who have forgotten) that the 911 attacks were part of a larger plan. Specifically, he notes:

[W]hile only four airliners crashed that day, four more were targeted, and two of them were Delta flights. The only reason these four weren't involved is because they either had minor maintenance problems which delayed them at the gate or they were scheduled to depart after the FAA decided to ground all flights. Theirs are the pilots and flight attendants who REALLY dodged the bullet that day.

Gilmore’s account is at Maggie’s Farm. A definite Must Read!

Category: War on Terror
 

A federal judge has (again) declared atheism to be the state religion of San Diego, as he evidently feels it should be of the United States.

“It is now time, and perhaps long overdue, for this court to enforce its initial permanent injunction forbidding the presence of the Mount Soledad cross on city property,” said U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson.

Thompson first found the presence of the cross on city property unconstitutional in 1991 because it violated the separation of church and state.

Gateway Pundit has some of the back story.

A federal judge ruled on a 15 year-old ACLU case on Wednesday ordering the city of San Diego to remove a mountain-top cross within 90 days or face a fine of $5,000 a day.

The Mount Soledad cross was built in 1954 as a memorial to veterans of the Korean War. It was used as a backdrop for sunrise services until atheist Philip Paulson filed a lawsuit in 1989.

And also against, and in violation of, the majority and the democratic process. The city’s voters have twice voted to save the Mt. Soledad Cross, most recently by voting to deed the site to the federal government. That decision has also been challenged in court, and is now on appeal. It looks to me that Judge Thompson’s determination to take action now, before the appeals court rules, is a reflection of his (probable) assessment that the higher court will allow the popular vote to stand and effectively overrule his previous (arrogant, in my view) decision.

SMASH (formerly LT SMASH) has more:

One man — atheist activist Philip Paulson — has been repeatedly suing the City of San Diego for over 16 years to remove the offensive symbol. Most of the rest of us recognize it as a fitting memorial to our military heroes, and a striking landmark atop one of San Diego's most prominent natural features.

Now, because one man's atheistic sensibilities were offended, the people of San Diego must suffer the loss of one of our most treasured civic landmarks.

This political correctness has gone too far. If Mr. Paulson doesn't like the cross, he doesn't have to visit the memorial. But for a federal judge to force the rest of us to conform to Paulson's delicate sensibilities isn't only a mockery of justice, it's downright undemocratic.

Category: Left & Right
 

Jay Nordlinger had a piece this week in his Impromptus column about Erping Zhang, a Chinese-American scholar, human-rights activist, and former staunch “atheist Red Guard.” One thing that struck me was his memory of the Reagan-Mondale campaign:

I was for Mondale, very pro-Democrat — because I still had Communist views.

Nordlinger notes that Zhang meets with Chinese students in America every once in a while. Many of these students, unlike Zhang, are not former Communists. Often, the students decry “Western influence” in their country.

Erping [Zhang] delivers a jolting line to them. It goes something like this: “I, too, decry Western influence on China. I think it's a very bad thing. And, at present, there is only one Western ideology that is legal in China: and that is Communism. Communism has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with China. This is an ideology born in Europe, first practiced in Russia and elsewhere. There is nothing in our traditions or history like Communism. We have a 5,000-year-old civilization, and Communism has been with us for less than 60 years. Other countries, such as Germany and Russia, have discarded it. Why shouldn't we?

“So, again, I agree with you: We must eradicate foreign influence in China. And the biggest such influence is Communism.”

And he’s right, of course. Nordlinger notes that usually leaves the students speechless. There’s more in the column — a definite must-read!

Category: Left & Right
 

And then there’s the apologia for al Qaeda’s admitted terrorist that claims that “he just wanted to be a good muslim”. (Actually, this strikes me more as something from the Looney Left masquerading under a Political Correctness banner.)

“He wanted to revive his roots which were in Islam. He wanted to be a good Muslim, a knowledgeable Muslim, who wanted to know how to implement the tenets of Islam and make sense of the society he was living in,’ said Mr Baker.

At the mosque Moussaoui would normally be accompanied by his childhood friend Xavier Jaffo. Both men would take the road to radicalism that would lead them to aspire to martyrdom.

Category: War on Terror
 

I find the attack on a Congressional Representative for daring to tell the truth to the people most interesting. (I thought Liberals were supposed to support that!)

Curt Weldon poses a real threat to the Clintons’ effort to rewrite history, aided by the NYT-WaPo axis. He has this really annoying way of telling the truth.

Among the Clintonistas trying to bring down Curt Weldon are Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, John Podesta and Senator Hillary Clinton, the Commander-in-Chief-in-Waiting herself.

Category: Left & Right
 

No, I’m not offended by immature ignorant children — even when they’re trying their best to be offensive.

I am offended by fascist liars (yes, I know I’m being repetitive and redundant) who use those they defraud (and their ignorance) for their own purposes, to try to establish their own tyrannies. Examples:

I am offended that these people attack as fascist the country that (oversimplifying only slightly) fought the fascists and defeated them in Germany and Italy and Japan. I am offended that they still pretend that “it’s all about oil” when, if it were, we would never have released control of the oil fields we held in early 1991. (Don’t these people have any brains at all? Or do they think we don’t?)
 
I am offended at the fascists’ threatening all who don’t share their warped viewpoints and violating the most basic human rights norms, of their own people as well as of everyong else, as a matter of course.

Cops beating Copts. Muslim police teach an Egyptian Christian his place in Islamic society.

I am offended by those who enforce their control and demonstrate their pretense of being based in a religion, and who demonstrate their insecurity in their own sect’s belief structure, by attempting to destroy any person or group that doesn’t share it (image above and words).

The conspirators and their suckers do not fear my offense, however. That’s because I come from a nationality and an ethnic group that has actually learned something in the past 1600 years, and doesn’t routinely express its offense in violence and destruction and murder.

(Pictures and links above from hiddentruths — hat tip to Little Green Footballs.)

And when is the last time you saw folks from other religions with signs like these?
It seems these are characteristic of only one of the world’s major religions.
 

Category: War on Terror