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
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Obama and Hillary – The Whirling Dervishes
Obama and Hillary, that unlikely duet of dueling dervishes. Each in their own right a formidable opponent for McCain. Yet in tandem these not so democratic “co-religionists“ are highlighting each others weaknesses and blemishes, are exposing each others faults and half-truths to a previously adoring media; a media that is turning on the Clinton Machine with surprising vengeance. A media that is parting the reeds of fantasy and wish fulfillment and viewing the winding river of Obama’s life and his relationships in a more critical and dispassionate light.
Obama and Hillary have educated us anew about positional squirming, reversing tracks and political expediency. First Obama would not possibly disown his Reverend Wright under any circumstances – then, a few weeks later the esteemed pastor was tossed aside like an aging egg salad sandwich. Hillary initially presented her ‘Kumbaya’ visage, sweetness personified – now she is the pre-eminent Rottweiler, dogged, tough and accusative. The entertaining list of reversals is growing.
Had any opponent, Republican or Democrat, competed with Obama in those first heady months of hope and fervor, of everything new and fresh, of all Americans together and cleanly joined, they would have failed to breach either his message or his form. For Obama, on his orator’s pedestal, invoking the perfection of ideas, the fulfillment of our every desire, was well nigh invincible.
In the harsh light of continuing time and repetition, Obama’s gloss tarnishes and our passion moderates. Boredom creeps in and an interest in detail grows. No longer are we satisfied with enticing but bland generalities – we need information, context and solutions. And Obama is found wanting, fixed in his naive hopefulness, his optimistic new world, his unrivalled promises.
Hillary has more details, McCain has the most. Hillary is shining a harsh light on Obama’s confusing relationships (Ayres, Rezzo and Wright, et al.) and his myopic visions, on his bitter wife and his own ambiguous blackness. Yet in doing so Hillary is exposing her own overflowing ambitions, her extraordinary abilities to pander, manipulate and reinvent herself. And McCain watches in the wings as a newly peeving and irritated Obama is knocked off his white collar pedestal whilst a seemingly bloodthirsty Hillary takes no prisoners and gambles all.
It is said Hillary would, if she loses the nomination, prefer a Republican presidency, thus reserving for herself the likely 2012 slot. The Democratic Party seems unable to rally the troops, to find a common core. An astounding proportion of Hillary’s voters say they will support McCain if Obama gets in. Likewise with Obama’s supporters if Hillary is nominated, an event that would also fundamentally sour the intimate relationship of the black community with their preeminent party, the Democratic Party.
It is fascinating to contemplate, in these most unusual and exciting times, that but for these dueling dervishes McCain would likely have no chance. The long and tedious democratic nomination will wear these two democratic candidates to the bone, only to have another long bout of presidential campaigning with which to contend. And the dirty work will be largely done, the warts in full resplendent view, before McCain has to take up the cudgels.
Ordinarily nothing would have persuaded this country, tired of Bush, impatient with the war, desirous of a change, any change, to contemplate another four years of Republican leadership. Yet in the end the Republicans may indeed have Obama and Hillary to thank, that unlikely couple in perpetual mortal combat, for granting them a fair shot at the 2008 elections. An opportunity the Republicans in their disarray seem incapable of building for themselves.
Published on FamilySecurityMatters.org:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.178/pub_detail.asp
Link to article on this subject matter:
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/05/23/a_gaffe,_an_absurdity,_and_a_policy
Obama and Hillary have educated us anew about positional squirming, reversing tracks and political expediency. First Obama would not possibly disown his Reverend Wright under any circumstances – then, a few weeks later the esteemed pastor was tossed aside like an aging egg salad sandwich. Hillary initially presented her ‘Kumbaya’ visage, sweetness personified – now she is the pre-eminent Rottweiler, dogged, tough and accusative. The entertaining list of reversals is growing.
Had any opponent, Republican or Democrat, competed with Obama in those first heady months of hope and fervor, of everything new and fresh, of all Americans together and cleanly joined, they would have failed to breach either his message or his form. For Obama, on his orator’s pedestal, invoking the perfection of ideas, the fulfillment of our every desire, was well nigh invincible.
In the harsh light of continuing time and repetition, Obama’s gloss tarnishes and our passion moderates. Boredom creeps in and an interest in detail grows. No longer are we satisfied with enticing but bland generalities – we need information, context and solutions. And Obama is found wanting, fixed in his naive hopefulness, his optimistic new world, his unrivalled promises.
Hillary has more details, McCain has the most. Hillary is shining a harsh light on Obama’s confusing relationships (Ayres, Rezzo and Wright, et al.) and his myopic visions, on his bitter wife and his own ambiguous blackness. Yet in doing so Hillary is exposing her own overflowing ambitions, her extraordinary abilities to pander, manipulate and reinvent herself. And McCain watches in the wings as a newly peeving and irritated Obama is knocked off his white collar pedestal whilst a seemingly bloodthirsty Hillary takes no prisoners and gambles all.
It is said Hillary would, if she loses the nomination, prefer a Republican presidency, thus reserving for herself the likely 2012 slot. The Democratic Party seems unable to rally the troops, to find a common core. An astounding proportion of Hillary’s voters say they will support McCain if Obama gets in. Likewise with Obama’s supporters if Hillary is nominated, an event that would also fundamentally sour the intimate relationship of the black community with their preeminent party, the Democratic Party.
It is fascinating to contemplate, in these most unusual and exciting times, that but for these dueling dervishes McCain would likely have no chance. The long and tedious democratic nomination will wear these two democratic candidates to the bone, only to have another long bout of presidential campaigning with which to contend. And the dirty work will be largely done, the warts in full resplendent view, before McCain has to take up the cudgels.
Ordinarily nothing would have persuaded this country, tired of Bush, impatient with the war, desirous of a change, any change, to contemplate another four years of Republican leadership. Yet in the end the Republicans may indeed have Obama and Hillary to thank, that unlikely couple in perpetual mortal combat, for granting them a fair shot at the 2008 elections. An opportunity the Republicans in their disarray seem incapable of building for themselves.
Published on FamilySecurityMatters.org:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.178/pub_detail.asp
Link to article on this subject matter:
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/05/23/a_gaffe,_an_absurdity,_and_a_policy
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Universal War on Terror – A Centrality of Suicide Bombings
Quite simply, the most effective, attainable and inexpensive way to pop the Jihadist balloon that is the predominant form of Global Terrorism, may not be the obvious solution utilizing military and security means. This war is asymmetrical, where terrorists play by no rules, ignore all laws, all Geneva Conventions. They extend depravity and fear beyond that evidenced by even the Nazis. This Islamic Radicalism is, by its very nature and definition, limiting the efficacy of traditional military responses and is more likely to bankrupt the victims before resolution eventuates.
Suicide bombings - this is the Achilles Heel at the center of the Global Jihadist movement; this is the cancer that can and must be largely eradicated at the core of this growing scourge. Neutralize this disease and you will tear the heart out of the beast that threatens world domination and the destruction of the West and its freedoms. Until then, the Jihadists, with their Sharia law and their political fascism would in particular seek to devolve our female population back beyond the Dark Ages.
Our civilization must harness every effort to demolish this worship of death. Our society must excommunicate especially those educational media and social structures that teach and motivate children to not only deny their natural drive to live and ultimately procreate but to instead commit to these crimes against humanity, blowing themselves up in the process with as many innocents as possible.
These bombings by our impressionable young, still in our care and trust, must rank as the nadir of human depravity, as the insane extension of personal genocide, as the undermining of our history and civilization with all its evolved moralities, values and freedoms.
Dismembering oneself and others one does not and cannot know, is the antithesis of everything godly, everything sublime, all that is essential spiritual. It denies the existence of individual ethics, of a personal god, of each person's sacrosanct rights and humanness as embodied by the Old and the New Testament, by the French and American Revolutions and certainly by our Bill of Rights.
Nations must eradicate all forms of acceptance, no matter how tacit, for this crime against humanity; no matter where found, no matter how expressed. Countries that allow these evils, even passively, must be banished from every civilized community, every gathering of moral and modern nations.
Individuals and groups who submit to these suicidal doctrines, who offer support and financing for these atrocities, must be hounded wherever they hide themselves, whether in the caves of Waziristan or the hollow halls of the United Nations, whether in the warrens of Gaza or in Tehran's Majilis, whether in the Mosques of Bethlehem or the charities of Riyadh.
We, as in Biblical times, must shout out from the hilltops to the very end of our every valley, and proclaim without compromise, without dilution, exactly who these nations are, these individuals are, and enjoin all by every political, economic and social means at our disposal, to eradicate this evil. They must be labeled, they must be 'outed', they must be targeted openly and vigorously along with all their visible supporters, their invisible facilitators.
This cancer, that feeds the nihilistic beast, if denied its bloodlust, its martyrdom, its perverted Jihadist energy, will wilt and with it the heartbeat of Islamic Radicalism. By definition it cannot procreate and survive in its present form without its martyrs, its youthful supplicants desirous of heaven's 72 virgins (as yet we still await clarity on exactly what rewards are reserved for the female suicide bombers). It cannot survive Western norms, civilized limitations, the emancipation of its people, equal rights for its women. Its energy thrives off the death cult, on poisonous propaganda and this dehumanizing solution to all earthly fears, all human pain, all seething anger.
The Spanish Inquisition of 15th Century Iberia similarly thrived on the fear and the power derived from its torture chambers, from its burnings at the stake, the forced martyrdom of innocent victims and thereby the effective control of everyone else.
The civilized world can outlaw this barbarity and its every practitioner, in every nook and cranny worldwide. Every culture, every religion, every political party can ascribe to this really very fundamental advance. This simple concept, this eminently cost-effective necessity, can spark the beginning of the end of this fundamentalist fascism that threatens to keep growing, as cancers do, until we have the vision and the courage to finally inject the vaccine.
The cure is simple – it’s attainable by all. It’s not in hiding – it’s not at all complex. Stop support for suicide bombing, marginalize its adherents, its educators, its handlers; and the Jihadist fervor will dissipate, the martyrs fascination will wilt. It will go the ignoble way of communism and of fascism and of much of the rest of history’s most devastating experiments.
Published on Investigative Project on Terrorism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/654
Published on StandUpAmerica:
http://www.standupamericausa.com/?p=1388
Suicide bombings - this is the Achilles Heel at the center of the Global Jihadist movement; this is the cancer that can and must be largely eradicated at the core of this growing scourge. Neutralize this disease and you will tear the heart out of the beast that threatens world domination and the destruction of the West and its freedoms. Until then, the Jihadists, with their Sharia law and their political fascism would in particular seek to devolve our female population back beyond the Dark Ages.
Our civilization must harness every effort to demolish this worship of death. Our society must excommunicate especially those educational media and social structures that teach and motivate children to not only deny their natural drive to live and ultimately procreate but to instead commit to these crimes against humanity, blowing themselves up in the process with as many innocents as possible.
These bombings by our impressionable young, still in our care and trust, must rank as the nadir of human depravity, as the insane extension of personal genocide, as the undermining of our history and civilization with all its evolved moralities, values and freedoms.
Dismembering oneself and others one does not and cannot know, is the antithesis of everything godly, everything sublime, all that is essential spiritual. It denies the existence of individual ethics, of a personal god, of each person's sacrosanct rights and humanness as embodied by the Old and the New Testament, by the French and American Revolutions and certainly by our Bill of Rights.
Nations must eradicate all forms of acceptance, no matter how tacit, for this crime against humanity; no matter where found, no matter how expressed. Countries that allow these evils, even passively, must be banished from every civilized community, every gathering of moral and modern nations.
Individuals and groups who submit to these suicidal doctrines, who offer support and financing for these atrocities, must be hounded wherever they hide themselves, whether in the caves of Waziristan or the hollow halls of the United Nations, whether in the warrens of Gaza or in Tehran's Majilis, whether in the Mosques of Bethlehem or the charities of Riyadh.
We, as in Biblical times, must shout out from the hilltops to the very end of our every valley, and proclaim without compromise, without dilution, exactly who these nations are, these individuals are, and enjoin all by every political, economic and social means at our disposal, to eradicate this evil. They must be labeled, they must be 'outed', they must be targeted openly and vigorously along with all their visible supporters, their invisible facilitators.
This cancer, that feeds the nihilistic beast, if denied its bloodlust, its martyrdom, its perverted Jihadist energy, will wilt and with it the heartbeat of Islamic Radicalism. By definition it cannot procreate and survive in its present form without its martyrs, its youthful supplicants desirous of heaven's 72 virgins (as yet we still await clarity on exactly what rewards are reserved for the female suicide bombers). It cannot survive Western norms, civilized limitations, the emancipation of its people, equal rights for its women. Its energy thrives off the death cult, on poisonous propaganda and this dehumanizing solution to all earthly fears, all human pain, all seething anger.
The Spanish Inquisition of 15th Century Iberia similarly thrived on the fear and the power derived from its torture chambers, from its burnings at the stake, the forced martyrdom of innocent victims and thereby the effective control of everyone else.
The civilized world can outlaw this barbarity and its every practitioner, in every nook and cranny worldwide. Every culture, every religion, every political party can ascribe to this really very fundamental advance. This simple concept, this eminently cost-effective necessity, can spark the beginning of the end of this fundamentalist fascism that threatens to keep growing, as cancers do, until we have the vision and the courage to finally inject the vaccine.
The cure is simple – it’s attainable by all. It’s not in hiding – it’s not at all complex. Stop support for suicide bombing, marginalize its adherents, its educators, its handlers; and the Jihadist fervor will dissipate, the martyrs fascination will wilt. It will go the ignoble way of communism and of fascism and of much of the rest of history’s most devastating experiments.
Published on Investigative Project on Terrorism: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/654
Published on StandUpAmerica:
http://www.standupamericausa.com/?p=1388
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