More than coincidentally, leftists are finding common ground with Islamists. Mostly in their feelings of inadequacy, incapability, a reactionary view of the world, and a profound sense of denial in the face of endless object lessons. Lessons that demonstrate their way, their path, is a dead end.
The two also find common ground in their response: vandalism.
Islamists seek to destroy more than western civilization, they seek to destroy modernity itself. Science and technology, art, culture, all that is not intellectually simplistic. Much as they destroy the artwork in mosques, wanting only plain white walls, an escape from the complexity and confusion of reality.
"Radical leftists" choose violence and destruction against those same targets. They cannot belong to or profit by society, so they seek to destroy it.
"Moderate" Moslems are both bullied by Islamists, and yet feel guilty that they lack their spiritual purity. They rationalize their behavior, many giving it overt sympathy, with none willing to criticize it.
"Moderate leftists" lend support to the violent, giving money, publicity, and intellectual guidance to those who throw rocks, spike trees, seek the authoritarianism of socialism, and angrily denounce that which they hate in the most vulgar of terms.
"Liberal" Moslems can neither abide the bad behavior of their fellows, nor are they willing to do anything against it. They cannot bring themselves to leave their religion, so they lead lives of denial, contorting violent and hate-filled doctrines into something more acceptable.
"Liberal" leftists would never countenance violence, embrace "peace at any price", no matter who is President, and have reached the conclusion that socialism, per se, doesn't work, so perhaps maybe socialism lite might. But nothing too dramatic. They are totally bullied by the more radical, and prefer to follow rather than lead.
To continue with the comparison. The Moslem of all stripes is outraged at merely seeing the Israeli flag; the leftist, by merely seeing the American flag. In both cases, they have been trained to want to vandalize it on sight. The leftist rationalizes this as his "patriotic duty" to "assert his first amendment rights".
Moslems are also raised to despise the symbols and institutions of America, be they McDonalds, Levis or Coca-Cola. Liberals religiously believe in attacking American symbols and institutions, such as the Boy Scouts, war memorials, military parades and even funerals. (N.B.: I would put Fred Phelps with the Moslem vandals in this circumstance, rather than the liberals).
To evidence this, note how often around the country there are news items like these: war memorial vandalized, US flag prohibited, teacher encourages students to write anti-war letters to soldiers, US military compared to Nazis, etc.
These are the leftist equivalents of car and suicide bombings, kidnappings, and roadside bombs. The only difference is the degree of violence expressed. The intent to cause hurt, harm, vandalism and destruction are the same.
The response against Islamist murder is deadly. But as yet there has been no great social sanction against such repulsive acts by the left. Their misbehavior is still treated as petty criminal lawbreaking or extraordinarily mean and impolite, and ignored. But at some point, citizens of good character will have to respond immediately to such violations.
Only with Pavlovian conditioning will the radical left learn that when they express their hate and rage at others with acts of violence against their precious symbols and possessions, they can expect equal or physically greater violence back, directed at their persons.
Posted by: Analog Roam ||
07/29/2005 14:54 Comments ||
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#4
Verrrry interesting perspective, Mr. Moose! I'd been noticing some similaraties along those lines, in a vauge sort of way, but you've done a dandy job of bringing it into focus!
Both groups say "My way or the highway" and really can't seem to understand why everyone doesn't just get up and follow along.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2005 15:35 Comments ||
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#5
Well said, I can't in my memory recall liberals being as aggressive as they are today. The blind hatred of Bush, the "peace or we'll kill you" attitude, the name calling, the public witch hunts, throwing pies in the face of conservative speakers. I didn't like the direction Clinton was taking the country, but I didn't ever behave like a spoiled child, or denounce my country and it's people, or blame every bad and evil thing in the world on Clinton. They have not gotten their way and now comes the tantrum, I for one have had enough of it. I hope to hell another conservative gets in the White House in 2008. Even Hillary is trying to distance herself from these idiots; after all, why does a rat desert a ship?
#8
The Clintons are enemies of both the GOP-RIght and their own DemoLeft - America is in a war where the endgame is whether America as we know it continues to exist, or else becomes just another Cold War/Soviet-style SSR whose independence and sovereignty from Moscow-Beijing is more propaganda than actual reality. Regardless of their PC rhetoric as alleged "centrists", the Clintons are de facto enemies of America and America's existence.
There's a big difference between excuses and arguments. For example, "I've only seen this part of âRoadhouse' 612 times" is an excuse for not mowing the lawn. "I mowed the lawn yesterday" is an argument. Stay with me here, this is an important distinction!
In the wake of the London bombings, it seems we're hearing a lot of excuses but not a lot of arguments for why we shouldn't do certain things. Take closed-circuit security cameras in public areas, for instance. I don't like the idea that much myself â it just feels icky â so I'm a bit sympathetic. But at the end of the day, opponents are offering excuses for their recalcitrance, not arguments.
Opponents say it's an intrusion into privacy. No, it's not. A policeman can watch you in a public area to his heart's content. That's why they call it a public area. It isn't any more of an infringement if they watch you with an unhidden camera than if they do with it their naked eyeballs.
Cameras won't prevent attacks, they claim. Well, who says? Doesn't it become slightly more problematic for a terrorist cell to send one of its stooges to his death if his face can be traced back to the mosque from which he came? Isn't it possible, combined with other intelligence, that authorities might figure out an area's being cased before the actual attack?
When that argument fails, they fall back on my own sentiment. "It's just icky," i.e. it will have a "chilling effect." Actually, there's very little evidence of this (has no one at the ACLU been watching any of the "caught on video" TV shows?). But there is a great deal of evidence that decent citizens become a lot more free-wheeling when they think there are no terrorists or criminals around.
Besides, is it so outrageous to think that preventing a suicide bombing might come at the expense of the folks who'll have to moderately curb their wild, freewheeling ways on the morning train to work?
Or consider New York's new policy of having the cops search the bags of passengers on New York subways. The New York Civil Liberties Union is aghast, calling it an infringement of peoples constitutional rights that will do nothing to prevent terrorism. Well, I suppose it is a very low level infraction, on the order of the tyranny of airport searches. But somehow most people still think they live in a free country when they fly to Tampa.
But it's batty to say with certainty that such searches will do nothing to prevent terrorism. Sure, it may not do enough, but it will surely do something. Presumably young Arab terrorists will have a slightly more difficult time carrying backpacks full of bombs, nails and broken glass and blowing them(selves) up at the moment of maximum damage.
There's also the complaint that such searches will fall too heavily on certain groups. Look: Outside of Israel and Russia, the number of female suicide bombers is close to zero. Should 50 percent of the scrutiny fall on women? The number of non-Muslim suicide bombers is even closer to zero. So why should police search the handbag of a Norwegian granny holding hands with her granddaughter? To round out the diversity of the statistics? Yeah. I thought that was always the reason.
Many say this will "do nothing to stop another Tim McVeigh." This is so cheap. After all, the people arguing that profiling won't catch the McVeighs of the world aren't in favor of searches at all. It's not like their preferred policy is more likely to catch white terrorists. It's just that their preferred policy is less likely to catch non-white terrorists. The upshot of their position is that it's somehow unfair that white Christian terrorists would have a slight advantage over non-white Muslim ones in a generally more secure environment. Nobody says the police are duty-bound to search only South Asians, Muslims and men. If that shifty-eyed Norwegian granny's handbag has wires coming out of it, I say "swarm!"
But the most dishonest argument one hears constantly â about security cameras, searches, profiling, etc. â is that they won't stop terrorism. Well, no one thing will stop terrorism. But to say that because no single thing will solve the problem we shouldn't do anything isn't an argument, it's an excuse. And a bad one.
A typical lefty concept - since each part of a solution will not solve the problem, by itself, then no combination of pieces can solve it, either.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2005 16:28 ||
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#1
NOOOOO comments? Ya think I post this crap on this site for fun? I wanna *REACTION* baby! It's allabout MEEEEEEEE!
I actually thought this was a pretty good explanation of the difference between privacy and ACLU silliness. Anybody?
Awwww.....Goodnight.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2005 22:16 Comments ||
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#2
I think the proposed cameras would pose a severe inconvenience to all those people that need privacy and retire immediately to the subway for solitude.
The cameras will provide a venue for viewing the talents of some talented guitarists, banjo players and one-person bands. Maybe the benefits will balance the costs.
Also the subways might not smell like urine to the same extent that they do now.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/29/2005 22:42 Comments ||
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#3
Bobby - the lack of comments is probably because most of us here agree with the piece.
That, and it was posted kind of late. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/29/2005 23:07 Comments ||
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This is the report referenced by the Belmont Club, an index developed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (yeah, them), the Fund for Peace (yeah, them too) and Foreign Policy magazine. Useful as a starting point for debate; one can argue the relative merits of each item in the index, but the overall composition makes some sense, at least to me.
The map can be viewed here. The rankings and the scoring can be viewed here. I don't agree with the status of some of the states, but again, it's a useful starting point.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/29/2005 00:32 ||
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They forgot Mass and all of the other blue states.
#2
I'm pretty sure I'm with you, 2b. The map's got this big pretentious and pointless title block on top of North America - and you can't really see much. So are the US and Canada failed states or not? And Hans Island - Greenland is covered up, too - so how about Hans? He okay?
And the US isn't on the chart, either -- Sheesh! Heaven knows with those categories, surely we're doomed... our nation is divided along lines of, um, uh, well, er, aw heck, I might as well say it, we're divided by the will to live, to survive. About half have it, about half don't. Kinda like being able to wiggle your ears or roll your tongue. These categories make it clear we should be on that chart:
Demographic Pressures (With Abortion and Same Sex we're fadin' fast) Refugees and Displaced Persons (Big Blue City steam grates) Group Grievance (Whoa! 'Nuff said, eh?) Human Flight (Lotsa big talk but, hey, they're Donks) Uneven Development (Red suburbs vs those Blue steam vents) Economic Decline (See Uneven Development) Delegitimization of State (Go ahead, take a UN vote and see) Public Services (Hmmm - lots of ways to play this one) Human Rights (Depends on the SCOTUS makeup, doesn't it?) Security Apparatus (Izzat in-country - or on overseas "assignment"?) Factionalized Elites (Definitely a Blue thingy. It's a quagmire!) External Intervention (UN, al Guardian election emails, etc)
Yep. Failed. And Doomed.
Fat Lady graphic, ya think? Or do we just wire up the ones who don't have that "will" thingy?
#3
Identifying the Islamic "states" on the map / chart, and all the fun that will entail, lol, I'll leave to others. I'm so selfish -- all I could think about was the US. There should be a column on the chart for those who don't subscribe to Jan Egeland's 7% solution. My bad. *sniff*
Just imagine how this data would go down at Kos and DU... w00t!
#4
Subjective assesments in questionable categories but hey it looks good and has enough in it to satisfy everyones biases. So I predict it will get a lot of attention.
Otherwise I would argue that lots of states should fail and its a good thing they do and I wish it would happen faster. I cite Yugoslavia as an example.
#5
Meh, I think "Subjective assesments in questionable categories but hey it looks good and has enough in it to satisfy everyones biases" pretty much covers it. There are countries that appear that wouldn't on my map and ones that I would include that they leave off. The chart is hard to read here so, Meh as I said.
#6
The chart shows Pakistan as being more stable than Afghanistan.
The main reason Afghanistan is unstable, however, is because of Pakistan's ISI.
It lists Sudan as a failed state. But it's not any more than Nazi Germany was. It's not going anywhere anytime soon no matter how much we gripe about their various genocides.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/29/2005 9:06 Comments ||
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Ironically, years ago the National Lampoon magazine did a very detailed chart of abusive nations, and why. They did a surprisingly good job of it, and did nit pick. Granted, the problem in such charts is always one of scale, a country with 20,000 political prisoners just as guilty as a country with 20. For the times, they did cover the gamut of what we could call human rights abuses; government sanctioned intolerance, bigotry, and persecution; and self-inflicted crises like corruption and starvation.
#8
Nitpicking about Iraq and Afghanistan aside, this map looks pretty accurate to be honest. Let's look at it froma business prespective. North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, and so forth are "critical," as in having going-out-of-business-sales.
Check.
Bosnia, Cuba, Burma, Venesuela, and so forth are "in danger," as in running-at-a-loss.
Check.
Russia, Iran, Angola, and so forth are "borderline," as in projections-aren't-good.
Once again, check.
USA, Canada, Mexico, Western Europe, China, Australia, Brazil, and so forth are looking basically good. Can't find any economic fault with that even if I don't like the way that, say, China is run socially.
The Belmont Club on the threat today posed by failed states, and American resolve in the face of Western inaction. This is part 2 of his essay. Money graf: "What is most striking is that action itself in the face of the threat of Failed States has become discredited. The great debate in the West today isn't over what to do, but whether it isn't better to do nothing."
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/29/2005 00:00 ||
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The comment this was taken from is great:
But of the most recent three, there was an agent provocateur, Perfidious Albion, and lately America. Their provocation? They ramped up the rate of change. Of all things, change is the most difficult thing to deal with. It makes winners and losers. As a poster on the previous thread said, the times they are a'changin'. The worse bit is that it makes winners and losers of your entire life, everything you stand for - just ask an Imam.
Which is why Al Qaeda, despite its pretensions to antiquity may be thoroughly a creature of the 21st century. The formal state is a 17th century invention. But there were other state-forms before, and maybe, after it.
The modern state, like the earlier empires, is no longer coextensive with cultural units called nations. America and radical Islam may represent two rival forms of organization based around an vision. The City on the Hill versus the Mosque in the Desert. Part of the weakness of modern Liberal Europe is that it is neither founded on ethnicity nor on principle. The sand has run out from under its foundations and it is vulnerable in consequence.
#3
"Ethnicity" nor "Culture", as far as I've read and believe, are NOT precepts of any local or Global Jihadist/Islamist State - that is, are not supp to be.
I know this was in yesterday, but I didn't feel like subscribing to Atlantic Monthly to read it. But I found a site that pulled some highlights which are actually pretty good. Long, but interesting. EFL.
...[Dennis Ross speaks] "The first time I went to complain to him about the bombing - the first set of bombings were, I guess, in April '94, in Hadera and Afula - and I'm with him, and he leans over like this and he whispers, 'You know, it's Barak. He's got this group, the OSS, in the Israeli military, and they're doing this.' And I said to him, 'Don't be ridiculous.' I said, 'You know the Israelis are not killing themselves.' This was classic Arafat, never wanting to be responsible."
Q: "So you don't think that he was actually a hysteric?"
A: "No, I think it was all an act."
...Terje Roed-Larsen was the father of the Oslo Accords and is the most visible representative of the United Nations in the Middle East.He met weekly and often every other day with Arafat for more than a decade.
Q: "What was it like when he lied to you?"
A: "He lied all the time. And he knew it. I'd say, 'Abu Ammar, cut the crap. Let's talk serious.' And then he could either talk serious or not talk serious. He'd say nonsense."
Q: "The nonsense would consist of what?"
A: " 'It's not me - it's al-Qaeda.' 'It's the Iranians.' 'It was a Lebanese ship.' 'It's the Syrians.' All that kind of stuff. Of course everybody around him knew he was behind it.
...Al-Masri remembers sitting with Arafat one night in 1988 as the Palestinian leader negotiated a formula that would allow the United States to recognize the PLO. "They gave him the formula, and he said it in a speech in Geneva, but he put in extra words, so no one could figure out what he was saying," al-Masri remembers. "The Americans said, 'No way.' So I stayed up all night with him and Dick Murphy, the assistant secretary of state, to work out what he must say. The formula was 'We totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism.' So they called a press conference, and he said everything right, except instead of 'terrorism' he said, 'We announce tourism! We announce all forms of tourism!' "
..."How long did you know that he was sick?" I ask."For the last year. Last year in September he told me he doesn't feel well. So, and he felt that something was not right, and it looks like he had the same symptoms again, but the last time he had enough immunity. Yeah, he knew."I am struck by al-Masri's use of the word "immunity," which is a word characteristically associated with aids. Rumors that Arafat died of "a shameful illness" spread quickly through the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat, who married his wife, Suha, in 1990, was often surrounded by children and was openly affectionate with some of his bodyguards. The Palestinian leadership denounced reports that Arafat was a homosexual as lies spread by Mossad, the Israeli foreign-intelligence agency. Accounts also circulated that a secret agreement had been reached between the Israelis and Arafat's heirs, stipulating that the truth about Arafat's fatal illness would not be released, the Palestinian leader would be buried in Ramallah and not in Jerusalem, and the wanted men who had accompanied him in his captivity would not be pursued by Israeli forces. "He knew that it was the same disease that he had a year ago?" I ask. Al-Masri nods his head.
...The amounts of money stolen from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people through the corrupt practices of Arafat's inner circle are so staggeringly large that they may exceed one half of the total of $7 billion in foreign aid contributed to the Palestinian Authority. The biggest thief was Arafat himself. The International Monetary Fund has conservatively estimated that from 1995 to 2000 Arafat diverted $900 million from Palestinian Authority coffers, an amount that did not include the money that he and his family siphoned off through such secondary means as no-bid contracts, kickbacks, and rake-offs. A secret report prepared by an official Palestinian Authority committee headed by Arafat's cousin concluded that in 1996 alone, $326 million, or 43 percent of the state budget, had been embezzled, and that another $94 million, or 12.5 percent of the budget, went to the president's office, where it was spent at Arafat's pe rsonal discretion. An additional 35 percent of the budget went to pay for the security services, leaving a total of $73 million, or 9.5 percent of the budget, to be spent on the needs of the population of the West Bank and Gaza. The financial resources of the PLO, which may have amounted to somewhere between one and two billion dollars, were never included in the PA budget. Arafat hid his personal stash, estimated at $1 billion to $3 billion, in more than 200 separate bank accounts around the world, the majority of which have been uncovered since his death.
...In their cities and villages Palestinians were subject to the extortion and violence of Arafat's overlapping security services, which competed among themselves for payoffs, arbitrarily arrested people and seized their land, and forced citizens to pay double or triple the price for everything from flour and gasoline to cigarettes, razor blades, and sheep feed. The fact that nearly everyone in Palestinian political life had taken something directly from Arafat's hand made it hard to criticize him; it was easier to go along...The economy of the Palestinian territories, which had enjoyed startlingly high growth rates after 1967, when it passed from Jordanian and Egyptian control into the hands of the Israelis, stagnated and then went backward. In less than a decade Yasir Arafat and his clique managed to squander not only the economic well-being but also the considerable moral capital amassed by the Palestinian people during two and a half decades of Israeli military rule. ...Young Fatah cadres in the West Bank and Gaza soon found that the corruption of their elders was matched by a complete lack of positive ideas - however farfetched or loony - about the form that a future Palestinian polity might take... What followed Arafat's return to Palestine was a decade-long thieves' banquet at which Fatah's old guard divided up the spoils of Oslo and treated ordinary Palestinians as conquered subjects.
...Mamduh Nofal is the former military commander of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the commander of the Palestinian forces during the siege of Beirut. The sign outside his office identifies him as a high-ranking official of Fatah. Nofal tells me that Arafat's strategic use of violence after Oslo began with permitting Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch terror attacks. Arafat would then crack down on those same organizations to show that he was in control. Nofal first heard Arafat give orders that led directly to violence, he says, before the riots that erupted over the excavation of the Hasmonean tunnel, near the Haram al-Sharif, in 1996. Nofal says that the impetus for the violence was the statement by the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he would not speak to Arafat directly. Arafat was furious at the slight. "I was with him in his office," Nofal recalls. "He got up and walked around the desk. He was very, very angry. Finally he calmed down a bit and he pointed to the phone on his desk. He said, 'I will make Netanyahu call me on this phone.' "
Arafat ordered demonstrators into the streets, and told them to provoke the Israelis. When violence erupted, the Israelis were blamed. "I was sitting with him again when the phone on his desk rang, and he looked at me and said, 'It's Netanyahu.' And it was him."
...The second intifada also began with the intention of provoking the Israelis and subjecting them to diplomatic pressure. Only this time Arafat went for broke. As a member of the High Security Council of Fatah, the key decision-making and organizational body that dealt with military questions at the beginning of the intifada, Nofal has firsthand knowledge of Arafat's intentions and decisions during the months before and after Camp David. "He told us, 'Now we are going to the fight, so we must be ready,' " Nofal remembers. Nofal says that when Barak did not prevent Ariel Sharon from making his controversial visit to the plaza in front of al-Aqsa, the mosque that was built on the site of the ancient Jewish temples, Arafat said, "Okay, it's time to work." ...
"And I think Saudi Arabia also played a role in Arafat's decision to keep the intifada going," Nofal says, agreeing with a similar analysis presented to me by Abd Rabbo. "Clinton put his initiative on the table on the eighteenth of December, after three months of intifada. Arafat visited Saudi Arabia. At that time the Saudi Arabian leadership told him, 'Wait, don't give this card to Clinton. Clinton is going, Bush is coming. Bush is the son of our friend. We will get more for you from him.' Then we discovered that Saudi Arabia couldn't do anything, that it is not a matter of personal issues or friendship. And Sharon succeeded very well, and put us in a corner."
...The next morning I meet with Iyad Sarraj, a human-rights activist and the director of the leading mental-health organization in Gaza. In the 1980s, during the first intifada, many of his patients were prisoners who had been tortured by the Israelis. In the 1990s the prisoners he treated were victims of torture by the Palestinian Authority's principal militia, the Preventive Security Service. When Sarraj complained about the poor state of civil liberties under President Arafat, he was jailed three times, beaten, and tortured. "Palestinians have lost the battle because of their lack of organization and because they have been captives of rhetoric and sloganeering rather than actual work," he says. "I believe that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in one way or the other is between development and underdevelopment, civilization and backwardness. Israel was established on the rule of law, on democratization, and certain principles that would advance Israel, while the Arabs and the Palestinians were waiting always for the prophet, for the rescuer, for the savior, the mahdi. Arafat came, and everyone hung their hats on him without realizing that there is a big gap between the rescuer and the actual work that needs to be done. This is where the Palestinians lost again the battle. They lost it in '48 because of their backwardness, ignorance, and lack of organization in how to confront the Zionist enemy. They lost it when they had the chance to build a state, because the PA was absolutely corrupt and disorganized."
...Dahlan is widely seen as the power behind Mahmoud Abbas's government and the paramount warlord in the Palestinian territories.When I ask him for his final verdict on Arafat's mistakes, he is openly dismissive."He managed the relationship with the U.S. the way he manages relations with the Arab countries and the Third World countries," Dahlan begins. "Second, he didn't distinguish between a personal relationship and a political one." Dahlan pauses before he completes the list. "And the third thing, which is also important, he thought he was as powerful as the Jews in the U.S. He overestimated himself. In my view, my interest lies with the U.S. My duty is how to create an interest for the U.S. with me, so that they will serve me."...
#1
Palestinians have got to be about the stupidest god damned people on the face of the earth. They beg for retaliation, insist on punishment and demand reprisal. When, I say when are they going to wake up and make a better life for themselves? Tens of thousands of them have been sitting around in refugee camps for 50 years waiting to be given a new life, or a new home or a job or something , anything for free. That isn't how it works, there are no free lunches(liberals take note here).
The jihadists cannot be reasoned with, only defeated.
Remember how shortly after September 11 Mohammed Attaâs lawyer father sounded worried in his cozy apartment? He stammered that his son did not help engineer the deaths of 3,000 Americans. According to him, the videos of the falling towers were doctored. Or maybe the wily Jews did it. Why, in fact, he had only talked to dear Mohammed Junior that very day, September 11. Surely someone other than his son was the killer taped boarding his death plane.
Apparently Mohammed el-Amir was worried of American retaliation â as if a cruise missile might shatter the very window of his upper-middle class Giza apartment on the premise that the fatherâs hatred had been passed on to the son.
He sings a rather different tune now. Mohammed el-Amir recently boasts that he would like to see more attacks like the July 7 bombings of the London subway.
Indeed, he promised to use any future fees from his interviews to fund more of such terrorist killings of the type that his now admittedly deceased son mastered. Apparently in the years since 9/11, el-Amir has lost his worry about an angry America taking out its wrath on the former Muslim Brotherhood member who sired such a monster like Atta.
Yet one wonders at what he is saying now, after the worst terrorist attack in Egyptian history at the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Egypt finally is suffering from the same terror and mayhem that its radical sons like the pampered Atta and Dr. Zawahiri unleashed on so many poorer others. The Mubaracracy may not take kindly to Attaâs father endorsing such carnage from his pleasant apartment that is incinerating those other than Jews and Westerners â and threatens to ruin the nationâs entire tourist industry.
The father of Mohammed Atta is emblematic of this crazy war, and we can learn various lessons from his sad saga.
First, for all their braggadocio, the Islamists are cowardly, fickle, and attuned to the current political pulse.
When the West is angry and liable to expel Middle Eastern zealots from its shores, strike dictators and terrorists abroad, and seems unfathomable in its intentions, the Islamists retreat. Thus a shaky al-Amir once assured us after 9/11 that his son was not capable of such mass murder.
But when we seem complacent, they brag of more killing to come. Imagine an American father giving interviews from his apartment in New York, after his son had just blown up a shrine in Mecca, with impunity promising to subsidize further such terrorist attacks. If our government allowed him to rant and rave like that in such advocacy of mass murder, then we would be no better than he.
The other lesson is that the war the Arab autocracies thought was waged against the West by their own zealots has now turned on them. The old calculus of deflecting their failures onto us by entering in an unspoken unholy agreement with the Islamists is coming to an end. George Bushâs âYou are either with us or against usâ is belatedly arriving to the Middle Eastâs illegitimate regimes.
And the governments of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other autocracies are in worse shape than we are. At least we are promoting democratic alternatives to their dictatorships, in the hopes that when such strongmen fall, there is another choice besides the jihadists. But the autocrats themselves have nowhere to go. Since they never allowed a loyal democratic opposition, there is only the unsavory choice of either liberalizing while they are in the middle of a bombing war with extremists â or the fate of the shah.
Quite simply, Islam is not in need of a reformation, but of a civil war in the Middle East, since the jihadists cannot be reasoned with, only defeated. Only with their humiliation, will come a climate of tolerance and reform, when berated and beaten-down moderates can come out of the shadows.
The challenge for the Middle East is analogous to our own prior war with Hitler who sought to redefine Western culture along some racial notion of a pure Volk long ago unspoiled by Romanizing civilization. Proving the West was not about race or some notion of an ubermenschen ruling class did not require an âinternal dialogue,â much less another religious reformation, but the complete annihilation of Nazism.
So it must be with the latest fad of radical Islamicism. Contrary to popular opinion, there has not been a single standard doctrine of hatred in the Middle East. Radical Islam is just the most recent brand of many successive pathologies, not necessarily any more embraced by a billion people than Hitlerâs Nazism was characteristic of the entire West.
In the 1940s the raging -ism in the Middle East was anti-Semitic secular fascism, copycatting Hitler and Mussolini â who seemed by 1942 ascendant and victorious.
Between the 1950s and 1970s Soviet-style atheistic Baathism and tribal Pan-Arabism were deemed the waves of the future and unstoppable.
By the 1980s Islamism was the new antidote for the old bacillus of failure and inadequacy.
Each time an -ism was defeated, it was only to be followed by another â as it always is in the absence of free markets and constitutional government.
Saddam started out as a pro-Soviet Communist puppet, then fancied himself a fascistic dictator and pan-Arabist nationalist, and ended up building mosques, always in search of the most resonant strain of hatred. Arafat was once a left-wing atheistic thug. When the Soviet Union waned, he dropped the boutique socialism, and became a South-American-style caudillo. At the end of his days, he too got religion as the Arab Street turned to fundamentalism and Hamas threatened to eat away his support.
The common theme is not the Koran, but the constant pathology of the Middle East â gender apartheid, polygamy, religious intolerance, tribalism, no freedom, a censored press, an educational system of brainwashing rather than free inquiry â that lends itself to the next cult to explain away failure and blame the West, which always looms as both whore and Madonna to the Arab Street.
Iraq has inadvertently become the battleground of a long overdue reckoning, a bellwether of the future of the Middle East. If the constitutionalists win, then the jihadists will be in retreat and there will be at last a third way between radical Islam and dictatorship.
We must now step up our efforts. At home we should no more tolerate the expression of Islamic fascism on the shores of the West than Churchill would have allowed Hitler Youth to teach Aryan global racial superiority in London while it was under the Blitz.
When the extremists are repatriated to the Middle East, and understand they are never again welcome in Europe and America, millions of others will know the reason why â and decide by their own attitudes to the killers in their midst whether they themselves wish ever again to visit, work, or be educated in the West.
If the terrorists are not isolated and ostracized at home, then any Western government would have to be suicidal to admit any more young males from the Islamic Middle East. Indeed, if the Iranian public or the Saudis, or Egyptian citizenry do not begin creating a climate hostile to radical Islam, then they de facto can only become the enemies of the United States in a war that they can only lose.
To fathom our success abroad, read what the Islamic websites â or Mohammed Attaâs own father â now say about the evil Americans and George Bush, who, they lament, have set Muslim against Muslim in Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. The foreign contagion of democracy and reform, despite the best efforts of both the mullah and the strongman, now infects the Arab Street and it seems to be driving bin Laden and Bashar Assad alike crazy.
Iraqi guardsmen are fighting al Qaedists as Afghans die in firefights with Taliban remnants. Note well that at the loci of American democratizing presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are few local Iraqis and Afghans â as there are few Turkish or Indian Muslims â who are eager for global jihad against the West. The killers instead flock from elsewhere to those new nations to stop the experiment before it spreads. Give dictatorial Pakistan or Egypt billions, and we get ever more terrorists; give the Iraqis and Afghans their freedom and their citizens are unlikely to show up in London and Madrid blowing up civilians, but rather busy at home killing jihadists.
In this Mexican standoff, the Islamists, dictators, and democratic reformers are waging a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Middle East. We have had our own similar three-way shootout in the West between fascists, Communists, and liberal republics. Backing Communists to stop fascists or helping autocrats fight Communists were stop-gap, wartime exigencies â never solutions in themselves.
The Middle East does not need a reformation in Islam as much as a war to eradicate a minority of religious fanatics who are empowered through their blackmail of dictatorships â and to do so in a way that leads to constitutional government rather than buttressing a police state. So far governments have chosen appeasement and bribery â if at times some torture when demands for investigations rise â and so time is running out for the entire region.
There are a million Muslims in Israel â the mother of all evils in the radical Islamic mind. Yet very few have turned themselves into global jihadists, and hundreds are not blowing themselves up daily in Tel Aviv, much less in London or New York. Why? Perhaps the twofold knowledge that they have rights in Israel not found in the Arab world that they donât wish to forfeit, and they are surrounded by people who would not tolerate their terrorism.
For the first time, Afghans and Iraqis have a stake in their own future â and know the United States is at last on the right side of history and intends to stay and win by their side.
#1
"If our government allowed him to rant and rave like that in such advocacy of mass murder, then we would be no better than he."
Um, Ward Churchill anyone?
You can thank the assholes at CU who hired, protected, and promoted that leftist scum bag fuck, and who STILL refuse to suspend him while he's under review for academic fraud.
"Hanoi Jane" Fonda seems to have tired of her moniker. The wilted flower child who firmly established her place in American history when she mounted a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun has decided it's time to teach a whole new generation to blame America first. If she actually goes through with her plans for a new protest movement, she may well become known as "Jihadist Jane." It has a better ring. More alliteration.
Fonda says she wants to criss-cross the nation in a bus powered by vegetable oil, advocating the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq. She's inviting the families of war veterans to ride along as props because, she says, the veterans she met while hawking her autobiography encouraged her to "break her silence."
Unfortunately, her publicists won't give the names of any veterans slated to join her tour, and the only notable encounter she's had with a veteran recently ended with her wiping that wheelchair-bound hero's saliva off her face. "I've decided I'm coming out," she said. "It's another example of the government lying to the American people in order to get us into war." She added that, "It's going to be pretty exciting." Maybe. Fonda recognizes that she carries "a lot of baggage" -- and she wasn't talking about the stuff removed by her plastic surgeon.
One way Fonda can overcome the lack of enthusiasm for her "nationwide tour," is to grant "exclusive access" to journalists who could help her tell her story. One suggestion would be to include NBC anchorman Brian Williams, who could put the tour and the war in historical perspective. After all, it was Williams' brilliant insight during a recent broadcast that revealed to the American public what they never previously knew -- that the first few American presidents were "terrorists." Another suggestion is to include former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett. Arnett, who makes his home in Baghdad, would do a great job of explaining the war and its meaning -- from the terrorists' point of view.
Another A-list guest Fonda should include is Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll. It seems Ms. Knoll likes to crash the funerals of fallen heroes and hand out bumper stickers and yard signs. Liberals started this practice a few years ago when they turned the funeral of Sen. Paul Wellstone into a foot-stompin', heart-thumpin', hand-clappin', barn-burnin', get-out-the-vote affair. But when Knoll showed up -- uninvited -- to the funeral of Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich to assure the grieving family that, "Our government is against this war," it crossed the line of decency, making her a perfect candidate to join Jihad Jane.
Finally, Fonda needs to select an exciting itinerary. Herewith, are a few suggestions:
Jane, start in the South. Southerners are naturally hospitable. Take in the D-Day Museum in New Orleans. It's full of surprises. You like the canard that "Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11." Well, the Germans didn't attack us at Pearl Harbor, but we fought them anyhow. A bit of advice if I may: Bring your own mechanic. Though the south has its fair share of farms, Cooter's Garage outlets, and NASCAR fans, no self-respecting mechanic is going to fix a broken down vegetable oil-powered bus.
Then, swing by a few sites in Texas to tell soldiers they're "fighting and dying for lies." Fort Hood -- home of the 4th Infantry Division -- might work. These soldiers that I covered for FOX News have already spent a year in Iraq -- and they are getting ready to go again! They clearly need your help because they are reenlisting at a phenomenal pace -- the unit has already exceeded its retention goals for the entire year.
The Burn Unit at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston would surely have a few of the soldiers you claim to support; perhaps they'd be interested to hear your opinions about the low value of their disfiguring sacrifices. CENTCOM, Fort Stewart, Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg, the home of our Special Forces, are all "must sees" along the way.
Finally, Jane, you'll want to finish in our nation's capital. When you get there, pick up Teddy Kennedy and Dick Durbin. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they relate their historical analogies to the boys over at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center.
Be sure to visit the graves of America's heroes at Arlington Cemetery before making your final stop at a polished granite wall on the National Mall. There, you will find inscribed the names of 58,249 heroes you spat upon when perched atop that VC gun.
Hopefully at some point during your Jihadist journey, you will bump into Sgt. Christopher Missick of the 319th Signal Battalion. While in Iraq, Missick met hundreds of good Americans through his blog, "A Line in the Sand." Home now, he and a fellow veteran are driving around the country -- fueled by conventional gasoline -- to meet some of the patriots -- his "web of support" -- who sent letters, packages and prayers. He wants to personally thank them and "meet the heart of America."
That's the kind of support the troops appreciate, not your caravan of craven critics. Ollie, you big softy, you are entirely too civil.
#1
#Sigh# My dad tried to shover her out of a ski gondola in Aspen back in the 80's but the other passangers stopped him. I know he would still be in jail but....
hat tip Lucianne
More than two years ago, my good friend from Idaho, Larry Craig, introduced a bill in the US Senate to protect law-abiding firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held responsible for the criminal actions of third parties. Fifty-five of his fellow senators, myself included, joined Senator Craig in sponsoring this common-sense legislation. Ultimately, however, the bill went down to defeat because several unrelated gun-control amendments were attached to it.
Now a new day has dawned, and with broad support, Senator Craig has reintroduced his bill -- S. 397, the ''Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act." Senators on both sides of the aisle recognize, as do the vast majority of Americans, that these ridiculous lawsuits are really all about shoving a social agenda -- firearms prohibition -- through the courts. The endgame is to use potentially bankrupting litigation to force the makers of a legal product to cease manufacture.
This attempted end run around our legislatures is regulation through litigation, plain and simple. As one attorney active in these lawsuits put it bluntly: ''You don't need a legislative majority to file a lawsuit."
By any standard, S. 397 is common-sense legislation. Let's think about it for a second but remove firearms from the equation. We'll substitute some other products. Do you believe that Ford Motor Co. should be dragged into court to be held responsible for damage to life and limb caused by drunk drivers? Do you believe that Callaway Golf should be held accountable because someone was assaulted with one of that company's Big Bertha irons? Of course you don't.
I think you'll agree that these are both ridiculous scenarios. But are they any more ridiculous than allowing someone to sue a gun company because a handgun the firm made decades ago was used to shoot someone during a convenience store robbery? I really don't think so. Maybe that's because I've been around long enough to remember a time in this country when we held the criminal who pulled the trigger responsible for his crime.
Times do change, but how did we arrive at where we are today with these predatory lawsuits? I believe that in large measure it's because the gun prohibitionists in this country have failed. They have been unable to convince the people's elected representatives that law-abiding citizens will somehow become safer if they are universally disarmed. To counter this failure, the gun-ban crowd has formed a tripartite alliance with big-city mayors who lack the will to get tough with the criminals who prowl their streets and with greedy trial lawyers who seek big paydays.
Craig and a bipartisan majority of the US Senate recognize the dangers posed by this alliance. They know that even if the firearms industry were to win every case -- which is basically what has happened to date -- victory will come at the cost of many millions of dollars in legal costs. And these are costs this relatively small industry cannot absorb.
While this legislation seeks to protect a lawful industry, it also recognizes that any firearms dealer or manufacturer who breaks the law must be held accountable for those illegal actions -- no protection is offered for such acts. Neither does the maker of a defective product get a free pass.
Senators supporting the ''Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" also recognize that should our firearms industry be driven into bankruptcy, the impact not only will harm sportsmen, hunters, and citizens who keep and bear arms for self-defense. Our military and the law enforcement community will also feel the adverse impact.
To date, 33 states have acted to block these predatory lawsuits that so clearly abuse the tort liability system. But because 17 states have failed to act, the ''Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" must be passed -- without ''poison pill" amendments designed to defeat it -- and enacted into law. The time is long overdue. Zell, I wish you were 20 yrs younger - we need you around for a long long time to come.
#1
"This attempted end run around our legislatures is regulation through litigation, plain and simple."
Sorry Zell. Logic and reason doesn't seem to work with that crowd. Try attaching a rider amendment for a National Duckies and Bunnies Day. That way everybody can go into recess feeling happy.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
