I read that Israel is giving up five prisoners including Samir Kuntar, the convicted Lebanese terrorist who received a sentence of 542 years in prison for his infamous role in the 1979 infiltration into the quiet coastal town of Nahariya where he butchered a young Israeli father, Danny Haran, in front of his four-year-old daughter, then smashed her skull against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her too. Tragically, her two-year-old sister was accidentally smothered to death while her mother tried to keep her quiet so that Kuntar would not discover them. Kuntar has now claimed that on his release he would return to terrorism.
The only problem is we are now given to understand by Israel's intelligence services that the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Regev and Goldwasser, who are the subject of the exchange, are no longer alive, whether because of their possibly serious wounds at the time of their abduction or because of torture or intentionally deficient medical care by Hezbollah. (Hezbollah has always refused all contact and any information about the two Israelis - apparently, giving comfort or closure to the families concerned is not a pressing priority for Hezbollah.)
The exchange would make both pragmatic, political and moral sense if the Israelis were to ensure that their prisoners were transferred to Hezbollah in the same state and condition as the two Israelis being received. A body for a body, a corpse for a corpse. Perhaps then in future these terrorist regimes might be better tempted to follow the Geneva Convention and take the most rudimentary care of their prisoners.
Posted on Bruce's MidEast Soundbites:
http://brucesmideastsoundbites.blogspot.com/
"Descent From Entebbe" by Bret Stephens July 15, 2008; The Wall Street Journal Pg A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121607791452752543.html
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Last Year of the Pig
We may have seen the Year of the Pig fully celebrated in accordance with the Chinese calendar for the last time. References to pigs were banned in China's television advertising in 2007, the official Year of the Pig, to prevent offending the Muslim population. In Taiwan citizens were put on notice about using 'pig' postage stamps for mailings to Muslim countries or recipients.
Janet Levy in FrontPageMagazine.com writes comprehensively of the multitudinous ways in which today's Muslims are offended and spurred to protest, and how communities around the world are accommodating this veritable plague of Muslim religious demands.
Piggy banks, those charming inducements to fiscally conservative children (or maybe "youth"), are objects many of us remember very fondly. They have now been banned in the United Kingdom as marketing gifts by certain financial institutions. Pig calendars, toys and objects are increasingly disappearing from public offices and institutions. We are on our way to becoming a 'pig free' society, echoing other, far more extreme attempts to cleanse society of offending objects and subjects (see Caesar's burning of the incomparable Royal Library of Alexandria, Hitler's Juden-Rein vision for Europe, Pol Pot's evisceration of Cambodian intellectuals and China's effective decades-long dilution of Tibetan traditions and monasteries).
Target department stores in the United States have, in specific instances, allowed their Muslim check-out employees to excuse themselves when pork products are presented at their counters. Yet these same employees were well aware of Target's product selection when they applied for their jobs.
As I understand it, Jews, Hindus and vegetarians have little interest in pork products: many exclude pork from their daily diet with the same proficiency and commitment as many Muslims. How do they operate checkouts at supermarkets, drive taxis, receive piggy banks as gifts and visit government offices replete with pig paraphernalia without protest? How have they managed for decades at our schools and universities without kosher and meatless cafeterias? Why are they not insulted by the many references to pigs in our multicultural society? Are they any less serious about their religion, any less observant and sincere in their beliefs? Of course not.
It seems, in a kind of reverse idolatry, that the Islamists have imbued the pig, in all its physical and symbolic manifestations, with a kind of mystical evilness, a negative energy of boundless proportions. It's not only the ingestion of the pig that is now taboo - it is also its very existence in any manifestation of this inverse deity from hell.
It is not yet scientifically proven that the solid molecules of pig meat can migrate from inside hermetically sealed packages onto the hands of the employees at the checkout counters. Are Target's Hindu employees unknowingly walking around with contaminated hands - are they irrevocably compromised? Will they forever be impure in the eyes of the Muslim community?
Seemingly, these offended Muslims not only want to distance themselves from pork and other disagreeable pig-issues, they are also refusing to allow non-Muslims their own beliefs, their own preferences. This imposition of personal views onto others is more clearly a (rather fascistic) political statement than a religious one. Indeed, radical Islam is becoming, in its various expressions, a far more political ideology than the private and personal religion that is typical for the average orthodox Jew, Christian or observant Hindu.
The old adage "Live and let live," an eminently civilized tenet of the Western World, is a concept that seems to have no place among the more radical Muslim communities, both inside and outside the West.
Is this because these Islamists believe that only their views have any validity, that only their religion has any value? Is it because only their god inhabits this world, or that their concern is only for their own people, religion, or domination? The Western World is bending over backwards in a multi-cultural orgy of inclusiveness to welcome all people, all sects and all religions. In particular Muslims are to be treated with exceptional sensitivity and understanding in a (vain) attempt to defuse anticipated protests.
It seems however, to be a one-sided love affair. Radical Islamists by contrast want very little to do with our world. They would impose their beliefs on us, forcing ever-increasing changes and accommodations. Yet they prefer to live and keep apart, remaining un-integrated and separate until such time as Islam becomes dominant and all non-Muslims are subverted to the overpowering will of Islam. Where is the reciprocity, the appreciation of a free, modern and democratic society? The Irish, the Vietnamese, Koreans and Russians have all integrated, have all respected us as we now respect them and their traditions. They were aghast at the tragedy of September 11th. We still await however any declarations of sympathy for the victims, any castigations for the perpetrators, from the Radical Islamists and their representatives.
Does it have to remain one-sided? Why is it that our liberal preferences have to be subverted to the will of an illiberal minority? Why does it remain highly problematic for a mini-skirted woman with a Pekinese and a bottle of scotch to hail a taxi, a Muslim taxi, at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport?
The Three Little Pigs, that traditional English story, has now been banned in a primary school in England. Another school in the United Kingdom specifically excluded stories about the talking pig "Babe" and other pig stories. These and other incidents represent, in fact, expressions of potentially self-destructive cultural hypersensitivity on behalf of Muslims. Buddhists are not catered to, neither are Orthodox Jews, Animists, Baha'is, Shintos, Hindus, vegans, nor every other ethnic, cultural or religious minority, many of whom also have strong views and delicate sensibilities. Who decided that Muslim sensitivities were deeper and stronger than all others? Perhaps the vociferousness of the complaints, perhaps the fear emanating from the many media reports of suicide bombers in New York, London and Madrid, has patently colored our motivations, our compromises and our accommodations.
It seems that we are ever more focused on healing the emotional wounds of the angry rather than formulating pragmatic practices to cope with increasingly dangerous "creeping Shariah," Islamic radicals and Jihadist coalitions. Appeasement may be defined - given the actions of many of our politicians listed above - as the rewarding of others for their bad behavior.
It is ironic that the Koran itself is replete with references to pigs, often in a particularly derogatory light where Jews are concerned. For example:
Verse 5:60: "those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil"
The 10th Century commentator Al-Tabari, referencing Verse 5:112-115, says of those who commit blasphemy that they were turned into apes and pigs. [3]
In April 2002, Sheik Tantawi, the highest ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world called the Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." [1]
Sheik Al-Sudayyis, imam at the Al-Haraam mosque, the most important in Mecca, sermonized that "Jews are the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs." [2]
If Jews are pigs, is it inconceivable to imagine a world where stories about Jews and Zionists are banned since they certainly offend much of the Muslim population? Israel already has ceased to exist on many Muslim and Arab world maps and in many of their school textbooks.
Orthodox Jews have never marched for kosher cafeterias. They privately and quietly arrange their dietary habits without voluble demands. In contrast, we in America now know that a youngster in Maine was suspended from school in early 2007 for the 'hate crime' of placing a lunch box with ham in front of Muslim students. It used to be that the label hate crime was reserved for beatings, rapes, murders and the like. No more - ham sandwiches and Danish cartoons rank in the pantheon of hate crimes with lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan and the July 2006 shootings by a Muslim at a Jewish community center in Seattle.
FeedthePig.org is an innovative new website designed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It encourages 40 million Americans age 25-34 to take control of their personal finances through a savings campaign, courtesy of Benjamin Bankes, the website mascot. Is AICPA aware of the provocative insult their website presents to some Muslims; are they prepared for future attempts by Shariah proponents to ban Benjamin from the web?
Will the Quran replace George Orwell's Animal Farm as required reading, as Janet Levy fears? What would the Super Bowl be without pork rinds? As Levy further notes in her FrontPage article, pork products include heart valves and skin grafts for burn victims, never mind $40 billion in contributions to the US GNP. Would these heart patients and burn victims be banned from Muslim communities - would Muslims refuse to do business with them? The implications would be most comedic if they weren't in fact frighteningly realistic. Sharia law or democratic law - the choice remains ours.
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
[2] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
[3] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
Published on Canada Free Press: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3656
Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/the-last-year-of-the-pig-by-leslie-j-sacks/
Published on The Investigative Project on Terrorism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/683
Janet Levy in FrontPageMagazine.com writes comprehensively of the multitudinous ways in which today's Muslims are offended and spurred to protest, and how communities around the world are accommodating this veritable plague of Muslim religious demands.
Piggy banks, those charming inducements to fiscally conservative children (or maybe "youth"), are objects many of us remember very fondly. They have now been banned in the United Kingdom as marketing gifts by certain financial institutions. Pig calendars, toys and objects are increasingly disappearing from public offices and institutions. We are on our way to becoming a 'pig free' society, echoing other, far more extreme attempts to cleanse society of offending objects and subjects (see Caesar's burning of the incomparable Royal Library of Alexandria, Hitler's Juden-Rein vision for Europe, Pol Pot's evisceration of Cambodian intellectuals and China's effective decades-long dilution of Tibetan traditions and monasteries).
Target department stores in the United States have, in specific instances, allowed their Muslim check-out employees to excuse themselves when pork products are presented at their counters. Yet these same employees were well aware of Target's product selection when they applied for their jobs.
As I understand it, Jews, Hindus and vegetarians have little interest in pork products: many exclude pork from their daily diet with the same proficiency and commitment as many Muslims. How do they operate checkouts at supermarkets, drive taxis, receive piggy banks as gifts and visit government offices replete with pig paraphernalia without protest? How have they managed for decades at our schools and universities without kosher and meatless cafeterias? Why are they not insulted by the many references to pigs in our multicultural society? Are they any less serious about their religion, any less observant and sincere in their beliefs? Of course not.
It seems, in a kind of reverse idolatry, that the Islamists have imbued the pig, in all its physical and symbolic manifestations, with a kind of mystical evilness, a negative energy of boundless proportions. It's not only the ingestion of the pig that is now taboo - it is also its very existence in any manifestation of this inverse deity from hell.
It is not yet scientifically proven that the solid molecules of pig meat can migrate from inside hermetically sealed packages onto the hands of the employees at the checkout counters. Are Target's Hindu employees unknowingly walking around with contaminated hands - are they irrevocably compromised? Will they forever be impure in the eyes of the Muslim community?
Seemingly, these offended Muslims not only want to distance themselves from pork and other disagreeable pig-issues, they are also refusing to allow non-Muslims their own beliefs, their own preferences. This imposition of personal views onto others is more clearly a (rather fascistic) political statement than a religious one. Indeed, radical Islam is becoming, in its various expressions, a far more political ideology than the private and personal religion that is typical for the average orthodox Jew, Christian or observant Hindu.
The old adage "Live and let live," an eminently civilized tenet of the Western World, is a concept that seems to have no place among the more radical Muslim communities, both inside and outside the West.
Is this because these Islamists believe that only their views have any validity, that only their religion has any value? Is it because only their god inhabits this world, or that their concern is only for their own people, religion, or domination? The Western World is bending over backwards in a multi-cultural orgy of inclusiveness to welcome all people, all sects and all religions. In particular Muslims are to be treated with exceptional sensitivity and understanding in a (vain) attempt to defuse anticipated protests.
It seems however, to be a one-sided love affair. Radical Islamists by contrast want very little to do with our world. They would impose their beliefs on us, forcing ever-increasing changes and accommodations. Yet they prefer to live and keep apart, remaining un-integrated and separate until such time as Islam becomes dominant and all non-Muslims are subverted to the overpowering will of Islam. Where is the reciprocity, the appreciation of a free, modern and democratic society? The Irish, the Vietnamese, Koreans and Russians have all integrated, have all respected us as we now respect them and their traditions. They were aghast at the tragedy of September 11th. We still await however any declarations of sympathy for the victims, any castigations for the perpetrators, from the Radical Islamists and their representatives.
Does it have to remain one-sided? Why is it that our liberal preferences have to be subverted to the will of an illiberal minority? Why does it remain highly problematic for a mini-skirted woman with a Pekinese and a bottle of scotch to hail a taxi, a Muslim taxi, at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport?
The Three Little Pigs, that traditional English story, has now been banned in a primary school in England. Another school in the United Kingdom specifically excluded stories about the talking pig "Babe" and other pig stories. These and other incidents represent, in fact, expressions of potentially self-destructive cultural hypersensitivity on behalf of Muslims. Buddhists are not catered to, neither are Orthodox Jews, Animists, Baha'is, Shintos, Hindus, vegans, nor every other ethnic, cultural or religious minority, many of whom also have strong views and delicate sensibilities. Who decided that Muslim sensitivities were deeper and stronger than all others? Perhaps the vociferousness of the complaints, perhaps the fear emanating from the many media reports of suicide bombers in New York, London and Madrid, has patently colored our motivations, our compromises and our accommodations.
It seems that we are ever more focused on healing the emotional wounds of the angry rather than formulating pragmatic practices to cope with increasingly dangerous "creeping Shariah," Islamic radicals and Jihadist coalitions. Appeasement may be defined - given the actions of many of our politicians listed above - as the rewarding of others for their bad behavior.
It is ironic that the Koran itself is replete with references to pigs, often in a particularly derogatory light where Jews are concerned. For example:
Verse 5:60: "those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil"
The 10th Century commentator Al-Tabari, referencing Verse 5:112-115, says of those who commit blasphemy that they were turned into apes and pigs. [3]
In April 2002, Sheik Tantawi, the highest ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world called the Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." [1]
Sheik Al-Sudayyis, imam at the Al-Haraam mosque, the most important in Mecca, sermonized that "Jews are the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs." [2]
If Jews are pigs, is it inconceivable to imagine a world where stories about Jews and Zionists are banned since they certainly offend much of the Muslim population? Israel already has ceased to exist on many Muslim and Arab world maps and in many of their school textbooks.
Orthodox Jews have never marched for kosher cafeterias. They privately and quietly arrange their dietary habits without voluble demands. In contrast, we in America now know that a youngster in Maine was suspended from school in early 2007 for the 'hate crime' of placing a lunch box with ham in front of Muslim students. It used to be that the label hate crime was reserved for beatings, rapes, murders and the like. No more - ham sandwiches and Danish cartoons rank in the pantheon of hate crimes with lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan and the July 2006 shootings by a Muslim at a Jewish community center in Seattle.
FeedthePig.org is an innovative new website designed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It encourages 40 million Americans age 25-34 to take control of their personal finances through a savings campaign, courtesy of Benjamin Bankes, the website mascot. Is AICPA aware of the provocative insult their website presents to some Muslims; are they prepared for future attempts by Shariah proponents to ban Benjamin from the web?
Will the Quran replace George Orwell's Animal Farm as required reading, as Janet Levy fears? What would the Super Bowl be without pork rinds? As Levy further notes in her FrontPage article, pork products include heart valves and skin grafts for burn victims, never mind $40 billion in contributions to the US GNP. Would these heart patients and burn victims be banned from Muslim communities - would Muslims refuse to do business with them? The implications would be most comedic if they weren't in fact frighteningly realistic. Sharia law or democratic law - the choice remains ours.
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
[2] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
[3] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sr&ID=SR01102#_
Published on Canada Free Press: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3656
Published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/the-last-year-of-the-pig-by-leslie-j-sacks/
Published on The Investigative Project on Terrorism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/683
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Obama's Latest Gaffe
If Obama had his way he would replace the incomparably successful cult movie "Star Wars" with "Mary Poppins," a sentiment clearly evinced by his recent video posted on his website http://www.BarackObama.com and by the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o84PE871BE
He seems determined to weaken our military as though that will appease our enemies and convert all to pacifism and universal tolerance. Were it to be so! Obama states that he will "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems" (unlike Russia), that he "will not weaponize space" (unlike the Chinese) and that "unnecessary" spending will be eliminated (unlike with Chavez, Iran and Syria).
Most worrying is his promise to "slow development of future combat systems" (which is exactly what we need to combat more dangerously asymmetrical warfare) putting at risk our modernization and our superiority. Other aspiring nations seek to match our prowess, but so far fortunately without success.
The CFIF cited new satellite technology that "allows us to pinpoint and eliminate the enemy, unmanned drones that promise amazing advances in battlefield safety and effectiveness, bunker-buster weapons that penetrate deep into the caves in which remote terrorists hide and communications systems that allow lightning-quick troop deployment and rescue missions." These technologies "ultimately protect the lives and health of our troops, just as they protect us."
This precision-guided weaponry saved not only American lives but those of all combatants.. Iraq was the least lethal military takeover of a major army and country in living history. In no small part American superiority also helped force Gorbachev's hand and contributed to ending the Cold War.
Obama seems to feel comfortable in leveraging his children's future based on his bucolic fantasies - I don't believe Michelle Obama would do likewise (she may not respect much of America as she pointedly stated but I doubt she'd wager her family's safety) and I certainly would be mightily uncomfortable going forward in this world of nuclear proliferation and increasing terrorism, if I were not able to hedge my bets, if I had to rely on the left's belief in the munificence of Ahmadinejad.
Obama has expressed willingness to meet, without any preconditions whatsoever, the autocratic leaders of Iran, North Korea and Syria, all amongst the world's most reprehensible regimes. Yet he never clarifies what he would do if the talks failed, he never seems motivated to leverage America's unrivaled strength and power to achieve his laudable goals.
Obama has not visited Iraq since January 2006 nor since the all important surge. Neither has he met with General Petraeus who was responsible for the surge, or with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Yet Democratic Senator Biden and Republican Senator John McCain have been to Iraq 10 and 8 times respectively. Is Obama so dogmatic, so stubborn and confident in his own personal theories, his own isolated judgment that he is astonishingly disinterested in the facts on the ground and in talking to the soldiers, the citizens, the commanders in Iraq? It is these people whose reality must necessarily be a crucial and truthful cog in the wheel that is now post-surge Iraq and is also at the center of America's and Al-Qaeda's primary strategies in the war.
What remains perplexing is Obama's similarity to Jimmy Carter's childlike worldview and his decimation of the military, certainly not a position I imagine the center of America will knowingly support.
Obama has stated that he will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. Will he be so kind as to first wait for Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan and other rogue nations to first disarm (weapons and research) and verify beyond any doubt? Furthermore, according to Harvard national security expert Graham Allison, if the U.S. and other governments just continue to keep doing what they are presently doing today, then more likely than not a nuclear terrorist attack in a major city is going to happen by 2014.
Obama's anti-military passion seems certain to supercede even Jimmy Carter's in undermining our military forces. He seems to be allergic to the possibility that the military may still have a role to play in the 21st Century (see Bret Stephens' incisive view on the subject in his Wall Street Journal article "There is a Military Solution to Terror"):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121244926833339577.html
And what if Al Qaeda or another well financed terrorist group or regime ever develop such nuclear weapons - do we all convert immediately to Islam or do we emigrate to Mars or other more hospitable environments? After all the radical Islamic nations have shown such admirable ability to honor agreements and to tolerate our separate and very different existences.
We would thus do far better to ensure the eternal city of Jerusalem (which literally means "Vision of Peace") remains safe and free than to follow Obama's advice if we ever want to achieve penultimate peace, for it is indeed Jerusalem that is at the center of the world, at the center of the Middle East and not Obama's temporal visions. We will need to stand unusually tall and free, bending to no one, no matter what, if we are to allow our children to inherit the wondrous freedoms and liberties we take so for granted.
It seems that Obama and the substantially left-leaning Democratic Party leaders need very much to learn the lesson outlined by Dean Acheson, that great Democratic Secretary of State who once warned that "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies."
Posted on Doc's Talk: http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2008/06/obamas-latest-gaffe.html
Posted on Weekly Blitz: http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=237
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o84PE871BE
He seems determined to weaken our military as though that will appease our enemies and convert all to pacifism and universal tolerance. Were it to be so! Obama states that he will "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems" (unlike Russia), that he "will not weaponize space" (unlike the Chinese) and that "unnecessary" spending will be eliminated (unlike with Chavez, Iran and Syria).
Most worrying is his promise to "slow development of future combat systems" (which is exactly what we need to combat more dangerously asymmetrical warfare) putting at risk our modernization and our superiority. Other aspiring nations seek to match our prowess, but so far fortunately without success.
The CFIF cited new satellite technology that "allows us to pinpoint and eliminate the enemy, unmanned drones that promise amazing advances in battlefield safety and effectiveness, bunker-buster weapons that penetrate deep into the caves in which remote terrorists hide and communications systems that allow lightning-quick troop deployment and rescue missions." These technologies "ultimately protect the lives and health of our troops, just as they protect us."
This precision-guided weaponry saved not only American lives but those of all combatants.. Iraq was the least lethal military takeover of a major army and country in living history. In no small part American superiority also helped force Gorbachev's hand and contributed to ending the Cold War.
Obama seems to feel comfortable in leveraging his children's future based on his bucolic fantasies - I don't believe Michelle Obama would do likewise (she may not respect much of America as she pointedly stated but I doubt she'd wager her family's safety) and I certainly would be mightily uncomfortable going forward in this world of nuclear proliferation and increasing terrorism, if I were not able to hedge my bets, if I had to rely on the left's belief in the munificence of Ahmadinejad.
Obama has expressed willingness to meet, without any preconditions whatsoever, the autocratic leaders of Iran, North Korea and Syria, all amongst the world's most reprehensible regimes. Yet he never clarifies what he would do if the talks failed, he never seems motivated to leverage America's unrivaled strength and power to achieve his laudable goals.
Obama has not visited Iraq since January 2006 nor since the all important surge. Neither has he met with General Petraeus who was responsible for the surge, or with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Yet Democratic Senator Biden and Republican Senator John McCain have been to Iraq 10 and 8 times respectively. Is Obama so dogmatic, so stubborn and confident in his own personal theories, his own isolated judgment that he is astonishingly disinterested in the facts on the ground and in talking to the soldiers, the citizens, the commanders in Iraq? It is these people whose reality must necessarily be a crucial and truthful cog in the wheel that is now post-surge Iraq and is also at the center of America's and Al-Qaeda's primary strategies in the war.
What remains perplexing is Obama's similarity to Jimmy Carter's childlike worldview and his decimation of the military, certainly not a position I imagine the center of America will knowingly support.
Obama has stated that he will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. Will he be so kind as to first wait for Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan and other rogue nations to first disarm (weapons and research) and verify beyond any doubt? Furthermore, according to Harvard national security expert Graham Allison, if the U.S. and other governments just continue to keep doing what they are presently doing today, then more likely than not a nuclear terrorist attack in a major city is going to happen by 2014.
Obama's anti-military passion seems certain to supercede even Jimmy Carter's in undermining our military forces. He seems to be allergic to the possibility that the military may still have a role to play in the 21st Century (see Bret Stephens' incisive view on the subject in his Wall Street Journal article "There is a Military Solution to Terror"):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121244926833339577.html
And what if Al Qaeda or another well financed terrorist group or regime ever develop such nuclear weapons - do we all convert immediately to Islam or do we emigrate to Mars or other more hospitable environments? After all the radical Islamic nations have shown such admirable ability to honor agreements and to tolerate our separate and very different existences.
We would thus do far better to ensure the eternal city of Jerusalem (which literally means "Vision of Peace") remains safe and free than to follow Obama's advice if we ever want to achieve penultimate peace, for it is indeed Jerusalem that is at the center of the world, at the center of the Middle East and not Obama's temporal visions. We will need to stand unusually tall and free, bending to no one, no matter what, if we are to allow our children to inherit the wondrous freedoms and liberties we take so for granted.
It seems that Obama and the substantially left-leaning Democratic Party leaders need very much to learn the lesson outlined by Dean Acheson, that great Democratic Secretary of State who once warned that "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies."
Posted on Doc's Talk: http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2008/06/obamas-latest-gaffe.html
Posted on Weekly Blitz: http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=237
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
ACLU's Dream Team
Just in.
The ACLU has recruited a "dream team" of more than 30 lawyers, including powerhouse Janet Reno, Ex-President Clinton's former Attorney General, to protect from conviction and execution all of the alleged 9/11 conspirators incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.
These defendants include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who many view as the mastermind of the attacks that murdered in the most monstrous way 3,000 of America's innocents of all ages, genders and political beliefs. This is the same Sheikh who has boasted of his actions, who has admitted his culpability and who has shown no remorse.
The world, apart from those who may hate or envy the United States, awaits the long-delayed carrying out of justice, the imposition of the military tribunal system and additional closure for the 3,000 families and communities of the victims.
Yet the ACLU is not at all concerned about the rights of the victims. The ACLU is not suing the government for additional protection from terrorist attacks for America’s citizens. They are not suing the Islamic nations that harbor these terrorists or the many charities and organizations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that provide effectively billions of dollars of funding for these Radical Jihadists and their support groups.
The ACLU, however is more concerned about America’s international image (as Ms. Reno states, “the United States need not abandon its principles”) and is committed to ensure the most fair, expert and powerful defense for these 9/11 conspirators. George Soros’ foundations are also considering additional support.
Just why the ACLU does not apply as well its considerable monetary and professional assets to many of America’s and the world’s gross injustices is not anywhere explained.
The genocide in Sudan is entirely ignored. Rampant Black-on-Black violence and rape in our inner cities is sidestepped.
The hostages held by FARC in Colombia’s border jungle are not an issue.
The unrivalled tragedy of hundreds of millions of disenfranchised Muslim women, treated like chattel, third-class citizens with little or no rights, does not prick the interest of the ACLU’s army of attorneys.
Tibet, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea remain more dark spots of ignored human degradation on the world map.
Excessive pollution in China, in Russia, causing epidemics of cancer and other poisonous diseases for millions of unsuspecting citizens, is clearly not the central concern of the ACLU’s laser-like agenda. Neither is the proliferation of child pornography and prostitution now sweeping the modern world, more extensive than even illicit drugs.
All these inequities and the tens of millions of G-d’s children who suffer daily, who live with endemic injustice, without the protection of law, without the basic and inalienable rights we take for granted, do not clearly deserve the delicate moral and surely incontestably ethical focus of America’s upstanding ACLU. This is the same ACLU whose charter provides for the protection of the downtrodden, the weak, the victims of injustice.
Yet the 9/11 conspirators clearly deserve the ACLU’s collective attention. These ‘alleged’ murderers volunteered for this brave and courageous holocaust. They trained and patiently waited for years in order to incinerate what they hoped would be tens of thousands of innocents arriving unsuspectingly at their normal work day in the Twin Towers, towers that included Muslims, Buddhists, African Americans, people in wheelchairs, visitors, janitors - a representation as broad as the United Nations itself.
These are the conspirators for which the ACLU feels their intense and unrivalled legal support will help ensure justice for the world, will protect the rights of the presumed innocents, will send a meaningful and important message to the universally downtrodden and further endear ourselves to all those authoritarian regimes and dictatorships that so comfortably inhabit the United Nations.
And as for the millions of our world’s citizens, still debased and dehumanized – well, they will just have to wait – the ACLU have bigger fish to fry, they have powerful political statements to make and certainly many complex agendas to fulfill.
For the many women incarcerated, often on ‘death row,’ in Pakistani, Afghani and Iranian jails, for the unique crime of insulting Islam by having allowed themselves to be victims of rape; for these female “adulterers” as judged by the “courts” divinely chauvinistic and inventive Shariah laws, we regret to inform them all that the ACLU is exceptionally busy at this time with Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, and if they could be a little more patient, a little more understanding……………….
Wall Street Journal Article on this topic: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120726400995288065.html
American Civil Rights Union article: http://www.theacru.org/acru/aclu_aiding_americas_enemies_again/
Posted on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/aridavid
The ACLU has recruited a "dream team" of more than 30 lawyers, including powerhouse Janet Reno, Ex-President Clinton's former Attorney General, to protect from conviction and execution all of the alleged 9/11 conspirators incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.
These defendants include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who many view as the mastermind of the attacks that murdered in the most monstrous way 3,000 of America's innocents of all ages, genders and political beliefs. This is the same Sheikh who has boasted of his actions, who has admitted his culpability and who has shown no remorse.
The world, apart from those who may hate or envy the United States, awaits the long-delayed carrying out of justice, the imposition of the military tribunal system and additional closure for the 3,000 families and communities of the victims.
Yet the ACLU is not at all concerned about the rights of the victims. The ACLU is not suing the government for additional protection from terrorist attacks for America’s citizens. They are not suing the Islamic nations that harbor these terrorists or the many charities and organizations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that provide effectively billions of dollars of funding for these Radical Jihadists and their support groups.
The ACLU, however is more concerned about America’s international image (as Ms. Reno states, “the United States need not abandon its principles”) and is committed to ensure the most fair, expert and powerful defense for these 9/11 conspirators. George Soros’ foundations are also considering additional support.
Just why the ACLU does not apply as well its considerable monetary and professional assets to many of America’s and the world’s gross injustices is not anywhere explained.
The genocide in Sudan is entirely ignored. Rampant Black-on-Black violence and rape in our inner cities is sidestepped.
The hostages held by FARC in Colombia’s border jungle are not an issue.
The unrivalled tragedy of hundreds of millions of disenfranchised Muslim women, treated like chattel, third-class citizens with little or no rights, does not prick the interest of the ACLU’s army of attorneys.
Tibet, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea remain more dark spots of ignored human degradation on the world map.
Excessive pollution in China, in Russia, causing epidemics of cancer and other poisonous diseases for millions of unsuspecting citizens, is clearly not the central concern of the ACLU’s laser-like agenda. Neither is the proliferation of child pornography and prostitution now sweeping the modern world, more extensive than even illicit drugs.
All these inequities and the tens of millions of G-d’s children who suffer daily, who live with endemic injustice, without the protection of law, without the basic and inalienable rights we take for granted, do not clearly deserve the delicate moral and surely incontestably ethical focus of America’s upstanding ACLU. This is the same ACLU whose charter provides for the protection of the downtrodden, the weak, the victims of injustice.
Yet the 9/11 conspirators clearly deserve the ACLU’s collective attention. These ‘alleged’ murderers volunteered for this brave and courageous holocaust. They trained and patiently waited for years in order to incinerate what they hoped would be tens of thousands of innocents arriving unsuspectingly at their normal work day in the Twin Towers, towers that included Muslims, Buddhists, African Americans, people in wheelchairs, visitors, janitors - a representation as broad as the United Nations itself.
These are the conspirators for which the ACLU feels their intense and unrivalled legal support will help ensure justice for the world, will protect the rights of the presumed innocents, will send a meaningful and important message to the universally downtrodden and further endear ourselves to all those authoritarian regimes and dictatorships that so comfortably inhabit the United Nations.
And as for the millions of our world’s citizens, still debased and dehumanized – well, they will just have to wait – the ACLU have bigger fish to fry, they have powerful political statements to make and certainly many complex agendas to fulfill.
For the many women incarcerated, often on ‘death row,’ in Pakistani, Afghani and Iranian jails, for the unique crime of insulting Islam by having allowed themselves to be victims of rape; for these female “adulterers” as judged by the “courts” divinely chauvinistic and inventive Shariah laws, we regret to inform them all that the ACLU is exceptionally busy at this time with Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, and if they could be a little more patient, a little more understanding……………….
Wall Street Journal Article on this topic: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120726400995288065.html
American Civil Rights Union article: http://www.theacru.org/acru/aclu_aiding_americas_enemies_again/
Posted on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/aridavid
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Susan Sarandon's Threat
Actress Susan Sarandon has now said she may leave the country if the chosen Republican candidate John McCain wins the office of the Presidency. My only humble retort is to suggest that if she ends up having the distinctly bad judgment to choose to not leave the country then indeed by her staying in the USA she may in turn motivate myself and others who are not enamored with Sarandon's political acumen to consider leaving ourselves. Either way I wonder how can we possibly help persuade her to convert her tentative threat into a reliable guarantee?
PS: Sarandon claims to be considering moving to Italy. Is she not aware, in her refined activist ivory tower, that the new Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi supports Bush and the war effort?
Alternatively, perhaps Sarandon should consider Nuuk, the fast-growing capital of Greenland which has a history of varied occupation (Viking exploration). The Arctic climate and night skies often lit up by the Aurora Borealis would be better suited to Sarandon's sense of escapist fantasies.
As published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/susan-sarandons-threat-by-leslie-sacks/
PS: Sarandon claims to be considering moving to Italy. Is she not aware, in her refined activist ivory tower, that the new Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi supports Bush and the war effort?
Alternatively, perhaps Sarandon should consider Nuuk, the fast-growing capital of Greenland which has a history of varied occupation (Viking exploration). The Arctic climate and night skies often lit up by the Aurora Borealis would be better suited to Sarandon's sense of escapist fantasies.
As published on The Absurd Report: http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/susan-sarandons-threat-by-leslie-sacks/
Friday, May 30, 2008
Obama - Victim of His Own Success
Had he, like Bush, Sharon and a host of other world leaders, been unable to express himself in such an inspiring way, Obama mania would not exist and America would not be in the throes of Obama’s particular brand of messianism. For if anything is true, Obama’s genius is effective communication, remarkable rhetoric and the rarest of abilities to turn a phrase in a way that makes his acolytes lightheaded. It is most likely a national census would show evidence of radically more babies being named Obama during this political season plus nine months than at any prior time.
So how Obama presents, verbally, visually and attitudinally sets him apart from every contemporary and past politician except perhaps John F. Kennedy. What also sets him apart in this unique Hollywood-ish specter of self-indulgent adoration is that he is “light” on facts, details and policies, to an extent no other major candidate in living memory has had the temerity to manifest.
Yes, Obama is a willing victim of his own outstanding success. He is so successful with his hype, his consistently articulate presentation, that he has been able to deflect any meaningful focus from his essence. Obama is seemingly so taken with his own verbal adeptness, so infatuated with his own phenomenal persuasiveness, his “swoon” factor, that he really does seem to believe he could persuade the genocidal Ahmadinejad to beat Iran’s nuclear swords into ploughshares, that he could convince arch terrorist group Hamas to live and let live, to accept an olive branch from the Israelis and recycle all the thousands of rockets, missiles and suicide bombs that are always in feverish production in the warrens of Gaza.
Obama is clearly so in love with his interactive prowess and his powers of motivation, so evident with the voters, that he sincerely believes that negotiation and compromise can indeed resolve 100% of international problems, wars and terrorism. No need for the backing of the military, for the incomparable power of our Navy, Army and Air Force – no need to speak softly and wield a big stick, a stick Khrushchev, Khadafy, Hitler and many others were in desperate need of. No – Obama will achieve with his unique vocal chords what other mere mortals and politicians needed hard power realism, toughness and indeed often loss of life to achieve.
Obama has stated that since Iran spends one one-hundredth as much on their military as does the USA, we have nothing to fear from them. Clearly he must be amongst the vast minority of Americans who cannot grasp the horrific existential and mortal danger the USA will be in when and if Iran acquires their anticipated nuclear (or even ‘dirty’) weapons. They now have delivery systems – submarines and long range missiles. They are producing the required weapons grade uranium and they are close to, by all accounts, the final weaponization required. And if Ahmadinejad promises America and Israel a Holocaust who is Obama to guarantee us otherwise?
Obama belongs to the Post-60’s era of leftist elitists suckled on a culture of emotions and feelings: all is negotiable, all is relative, evil is never black and white, war is always wrong. These mantras informed Obama’s every ideal, his every vision. To now conceive of him being a natural commander-in-chief is thus effectively a contradiction in terms. He can no more pretend to be a Churchill, an Eisenhower, a Kennedy, than he is ultimately capable of changing, with gifts and soft talk, with appeasement politics and self-defeating respect, the raison d’être that drives people like the Hamas leaders and Ahmedinejad to send their trusting children to their inglorious deaths as suicide bombers.
Perhaps it is Obama’s vanity, his overarching confidence, his preening successes having played only in the playgrounds of free and democratic America, which will ultimately be his foreign policy dénouement.
For Obama cannot see the world of the radical Islamists, of Ayman Al-Zwahiri, of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, as they indeed see themselves. He cannot contemplate the darkness of their vision, the passion of their hate, their lust for the world to come. He does not understand their vocabulary, their deceit, their comfortability with depravity and their essential differences with the West. These are all realities which do not come easy to Obama, realities seemingly beyond his ken.
Obama’s consequential dislocation is marked, on the one hand by a quintessentially sensitive ability to intuit the needs of the democratic voters and to proffer what they want beyond any practical ability to pay for and deliver those needs; and, in most serious contradiction, on the other hand, the absolute inability to ingest, understand and respond, with non-American style realism and logic, to the essence of the dangerous thoughts, plans, intensions and manipulations of our enemies. Ironically it is our enemies who seem fully adept at understanding our weaknesses as well as our strengths, and they do so with patience and a consistency that is enviable.
Obama never had to survive on the ghetto streets of Chicago, he never had to use his fists, never had to fight or be beaten. Obama learnt the civilized skills of debating whilst McCain was educated in the niceties of human depravity at the Hanoi Hilton. Obama’s outstanding skills uplifted him to the ivory tower of ideals and philosophy, where academic policies are created and lofty goals invented and embellished. International realism, Middle Eastern pragmatism and the cut and thrust of brutal and dangerous foreign policies are not part of Obama’s world, but certainly will be part of his continuing education, should he enter the White House. Obama’s success has brought with it an astounding naiveté, a purity of idealism and ultimately, what will turn out to be, an egocentric irresponsibility that has attracted adoring crowds the likes of which we have never seen. He is now even attracting endorsements from terrorist groups and leaders like vultures waiting for their kill.
And in the end the relevant voters, most of them most likely in the moderate middle, will have to choose between what makes them feel good and what will keep them safe.
Published on Weekly Blitz:
http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=214
Published on The Absurd Report:
http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/obama-victim-of-his-own-success-by-leslie-j-sacks/
Published on FamilySecurityMatters:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.291/pub_detail.asp
Links to articles on this subject matter:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121254834844844045.html
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/05/23/a_gaffe,_an_absurdity,_and_a_policy
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/05/atlas-exclusi-1.html
So how Obama presents, verbally, visually and attitudinally sets him apart from every contemporary and past politician except perhaps John F. Kennedy. What also sets him apart in this unique Hollywood-ish specter of self-indulgent adoration is that he is “light” on facts, details and policies, to an extent no other major candidate in living memory has had the temerity to manifest.
Yes, Obama is a willing victim of his own outstanding success. He is so successful with his hype, his consistently articulate presentation, that he has been able to deflect any meaningful focus from his essence. Obama is seemingly so taken with his own verbal adeptness, so infatuated with his own phenomenal persuasiveness, his “swoon” factor, that he really does seem to believe he could persuade the genocidal Ahmadinejad to beat Iran’s nuclear swords into ploughshares, that he could convince arch terrorist group Hamas to live and let live, to accept an olive branch from the Israelis and recycle all the thousands of rockets, missiles and suicide bombs that are always in feverish production in the warrens of Gaza.
Obama is clearly so in love with his interactive prowess and his powers of motivation, so evident with the voters, that he sincerely believes that negotiation and compromise can indeed resolve 100% of international problems, wars and terrorism. No need for the backing of the military, for the incomparable power of our Navy, Army and Air Force – no need to speak softly and wield a big stick, a stick Khrushchev, Khadafy, Hitler and many others were in desperate need of. No – Obama will achieve with his unique vocal chords what other mere mortals and politicians needed hard power realism, toughness and indeed often loss of life to achieve.
Obama has stated that since Iran spends one one-hundredth as much on their military as does the USA, we have nothing to fear from them. Clearly he must be amongst the vast minority of Americans who cannot grasp the horrific existential and mortal danger the USA will be in when and if Iran acquires their anticipated nuclear (or even ‘dirty’) weapons. They now have delivery systems – submarines and long range missiles. They are producing the required weapons grade uranium and they are close to, by all accounts, the final weaponization required. And if Ahmadinejad promises America and Israel a Holocaust who is Obama to guarantee us otherwise?
Obama belongs to the Post-60’s era of leftist elitists suckled on a culture of emotions and feelings: all is negotiable, all is relative, evil is never black and white, war is always wrong. These mantras informed Obama’s every ideal, his every vision. To now conceive of him being a natural commander-in-chief is thus effectively a contradiction in terms. He can no more pretend to be a Churchill, an Eisenhower, a Kennedy, than he is ultimately capable of changing, with gifts and soft talk, with appeasement politics and self-defeating respect, the raison d’être that drives people like the Hamas leaders and Ahmedinejad to send their trusting children to their inglorious deaths as suicide bombers.
Perhaps it is Obama’s vanity, his overarching confidence, his preening successes having played only in the playgrounds of free and democratic America, which will ultimately be his foreign policy dénouement.
For Obama cannot see the world of the radical Islamists, of Ayman Al-Zwahiri, of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, as they indeed see themselves. He cannot contemplate the darkness of their vision, the passion of their hate, their lust for the world to come. He does not understand their vocabulary, their deceit, their comfortability with depravity and their essential differences with the West. These are all realities which do not come easy to Obama, realities seemingly beyond his ken.
Obama’s consequential dislocation is marked, on the one hand by a quintessentially sensitive ability to intuit the needs of the democratic voters and to proffer what they want beyond any practical ability to pay for and deliver those needs; and, in most serious contradiction, on the other hand, the absolute inability to ingest, understand and respond, with non-American style realism and logic, to the essence of the dangerous thoughts, plans, intensions and manipulations of our enemies. Ironically it is our enemies who seem fully adept at understanding our weaknesses as well as our strengths, and they do so with patience and a consistency that is enviable.
Obama never had to survive on the ghetto streets of Chicago, he never had to use his fists, never had to fight or be beaten. Obama learnt the civilized skills of debating whilst McCain was educated in the niceties of human depravity at the Hanoi Hilton. Obama’s outstanding skills uplifted him to the ivory tower of ideals and philosophy, where academic policies are created and lofty goals invented and embellished. International realism, Middle Eastern pragmatism and the cut and thrust of brutal and dangerous foreign policies are not part of Obama’s world, but certainly will be part of his continuing education, should he enter the White House. Obama’s success has brought with it an astounding naiveté, a purity of idealism and ultimately, what will turn out to be, an egocentric irresponsibility that has attracted adoring crowds the likes of which we have never seen. He is now even attracting endorsements from terrorist groups and leaders like vultures waiting for their kill.
And in the end the relevant voters, most of them most likely in the moderate middle, will have to choose between what makes them feel good and what will keep them safe.
Published on Weekly Blitz:
http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=214
Published on The Absurd Report:
http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2008/obama-victim-of-his-own-success-by-leslie-j-sacks/
Published on FamilySecurityMatters:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.291/pub_detail.asp
Links to articles on this subject matter:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121254834844844045.html
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/05/23/a_gaffe,_an_absurdity,_and_a_policy
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/05/atlas-exclusi-1.html
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
"The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West" by Lee Harris
Lee Harris' book The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West and the concise review by Janet Levy summarize the conflict between America's freedoms and the fanaticism of much of Islam. Harris talks of our strengths and weaknesses and postulates that our survival depends on us becoming intolerant (and not appeasing) to the intolerance emanating from Radical Islam, on us becoming fanatical (and not passive and shamed) about our own survival. An important and incisive document.
Read Janet Levy's Review:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E88A9A17-E3E2-447A-B286-108E99EF27E6
Read Janet Levy's Review:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E88A9A17-E3E2-447A-B286-108E99EF27E6
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