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There will be at least two rallies worth being at during the upcoming Democratic Circus Convention. First, the American Victory Coalition will be hosting a rally at Pioneer Monument Park in support of our troops. It'll take place on Sunday from 10-2. Brian Ivers, Steve Ward, and my good friend Neil Dobro will be among the speakers there.
Then, Neil will be at it again on Monday at a rally at the Pepsi Center urging a united Jerusalem, and no creation of a Palestinian terror state.
Yours Truly will be speaking at the Sunday Rally. Strictly speaking, it's not a campaign event, since there are a number of 501(c)3s participating, and we have to keep it non-partisan. But it'll still be a heckuva lot of fun.
Rima Barakat Sinclair also found time to opine on Iraq during her candidacy. In the past, at the Big Tent Event on April 10, and at a subsequent Colorado Federation of Republican Women's meeting, Mrs. Barakat Sinclair has expressed admiration for the salutory effects of the regime change on Iraq's women, and the opportunities they now enjoy. She also - at a Colorado Jewish Republicans meeting in June of 2008 - expressed gratitude for the service and good works of an injured Iraqi veteran who spoke there.
However, in the chat session with Al-Arab Al-Yawm, she responded quite differently to a question from an Iraqi expatriate who had returned to the Middle East. Here's his question:
Ms. Rima ... Being an Iraqi I would like to ask you questions that have been so long in the minds of Iraqis for more than five years. Being an American, and in the vicinity of (American political kitchen) I returned to the region convinced that the US desired a return of Iraqi rights, which are still waiting, hoping for the dream of freedom. How is it that America & Britain are unable to find a solution to Iraq's security crisis, economically and socially? Was it the scheme of the freedom promised by the Iraqis that the price of the blood of thousands and thousands widowed and orphaned thousands and displaced millions? Did the U.S. administration expect the events that took place in Iraq? Are things, in a nutshell, in Iraq as expected and planned by the U.S. government, or was what has happened and is happening in Iraq not an unthinkable shock when I returned preparing to enter Iraq? If the purpose of the occupation of Iraq was to find weapons of mass destruction (across continents), then where can't America eliminate the weapons of mass destruction that kill Iraqis daily, in numbers increasing with the growing militia sources, and the processing of enough simple weapons to destroy dozens of Iraqis?
And here's her answer:
When reality contradicts propaganda and theory, logic gives you an honest answer. You have found the answer to your question yourself. What happened and is happening in Iraq does not constitute a surprise. In 1994, Dick Cheney, George Bush's current Vice-President, predicted the expected consequences for Iraq if U.S. troops entered the country. What was said then is achieved today, knowing that Mr. Cheney is still one of the foremost supporters of starting a war against Iraq. He is today also one of the most zealous advocates of waging war against Iran under the same slogan, "weapons of mass destruction" and "protecting Israel."
This amazing video shows that in 1994, Dick Cheney understood the consequences of invading Iraq: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I.
And here, Mrs. Barakat Sinclair provides a transcript in mixed Arabic and English.
No attempt to defend the invasion. No attempt to defend America's performance. An outright attack on the integrity of a sitting Vice President in a foreign newspaper. Tell-tale quotes around "weapons of mass destruction" when obliquely referring to Iran's nuclear weapons program.
In other parts of the chat session, Mrs. Barakat Sinclair is quite fulsome in her praise of America's protection of free speech and civil liberties. The Constitution completely and correctly protects Mrs. Barakat Sinclair's rights as a citizen. I leave it to the reader to judge the use she's putting them to, and her fitness for office.
More from Rima Barakat Sinclair's big adventure, the email chat session with the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yawm . The following is a translation of one of her answers to a question from a reader, and consists entirely of her own words:
We are aware that the Arab media influence on Western society is limited, and we also know that the Arab issues are not fairly covered in the western media. There are many Arab American organizations that provide activities aimed at the definition of truth and justice the Palestinian cause.
The source of activities in non-Arab countries, which were founded some 20 years ago, has remained limited within the point of view and vision of the founding members of those organizations. Most have focused their efforts in Washington DC, leaving their influence on public opinion and American media deflated.
There are several factors affecting the ability of Arabs to launch publicity campaigns to explain the issue and win the American people to their side. One of them was the lack of interest by Arab tycoons or companies in producing films or television program available for worldwide sale. This is the reverse of the actions taken by a number of wealthy Jewish supporters of Zionism like Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch. So media campaigns advocating for Arabs or Muslims in America are limited to the efforts of individuals or small enterprises that suffer most from financial difficulties and limited distribution.
The reality of a Western media hostile to Arab and Islamic issues will not change as long as Arabs are only waiting for the West to see the "right," one day, without developing an integrated effort to deliver their message. A dialogue of religions is needed, and part of the Divine message is that the powerful should have compassion for the weak.
Ideally, morality starts with tolerance of others and self-understanding. If people applied this principle in their own lives, it would solve many of their problems. What applies to individuals applies to relations between nations. But reality dictates that the strong decide what is "right." It is the duty of the victim to remind the strong that he didn't consider the effects of his unjust abuse. Therefore, it remains important that one talk with a strong knowledge of his thinking and point of view. This does not mean forgetting or abandoning the right.
The Saudi Madrid initiative has received wide and positive media coverage, especially by the one rabbi invited to the conference. And since Saudi Arabia began and will continue this initiative, it is preferable to encourage religious scholars and Islamic institutions to study and support such initiatives, instead of having the positive reaction only or participating in conferences organized to discuss Islam by non-Muslims.
Well, at least it isn't the weird paranoid theories about McCain and Obama conspiring to turn Jordan into a holding cell for Palestinians.
Note also the purpose of the interfaith activity. Some of us have been called some pretty nasty names for bringing this up. Some of us are owed an apology. None of us expects one.
On the other hand, it does have that bit in it about the Jews running the media. It might be a little more convincing if she had found some actual Jews. Maxwell, yes, but Murdoch & Black, no.
You know, one time I was in Johnstown, Pa., site of the flood, for work. I took the afternoon off and went to a local very minor league baseball game. Of course, I was wearing the yarmulke. So two guys come down, sit on either side of me, and say, "You're not from around here, are you?"
Frequently, those words, directed towards someone wearing a yarmulke are quickly followed by, "and would you please go back." In this case, it turned out to be a couple of local yiddin who worked sports for the local radio station and newspaper. They wanted to let me know about the minyan.
"So," I said, "it's true. We really do control the media."
Back then, it was funny.
UPDATE: The newspaper has been named, and it has been made clear that all the indented comments are Mrs. Barakat Sinclair's own.
Thursday night at the Jewish Republicans, we heard from Ted Kohler, the latest in three generations of Jews to serve in the US military. His grandfather was in the US Army, and his father served in the Vietnam-era US Navy. Ted himself was wounded when his tank ran over and set off a sarin-gas IED. Since his injuries haven't responded as well as the doctors would have liked, he was given an honorable medical discharge.
Ted gave a brief, military-style briefing, listing the positives and negatives of such battlefield components as the IP, the IA, the US Military, its equipment, and support. While he mentioned a number of items that any milblogger-reader would know about, such as the military's high morale and re-enlistment rate, and the growing importance of the UAV, he also emphasize a number of items that haven't gotten as much attention. For instance, Ted pointed out that the US has been increasingly effective in countering the IED as a weapon.
But one thing stuck out. He notes that the enemy was quick to exploit our "humanity and our rules of engagement." This draws attention to the basic difference between us, and the enemy we are fighting, and it's a distinction that the morally blinkered among us would like the morally lazy among us to ignore.
I asked him about the popularity of milbloggers. He said that while many of the troops, tired from a day of actually fighting of the war, didn't necessarily go home to read about it, he did, and he singled out both Michael Yon and a new milblog I hadn't heard of, Battlefield Tourist. Take a look at both.
The Canadian Association of Journalists has formally applied for standing as an intervenor at the upcoming British
Columbia Human Rights Tribunal hearings on a complaint of religious and racial discrimination against Maclean's magazine.
...
The CAJ has applied to intervene in defence of freedom of the press, freedom of expression and because journalists' interests are clearly affected, on many levels, by the proceedings. One argument the CAJ hopes to make is that human rights cases under section 7 must consider the intent of the writer in assessing published material. (emphasis added)
The problem is that they're defending him on grounds that Styen himself (and Ezra Levant before him) resoundingly and rightly reject. Author's intent doesn't matter at all: the government simply has no business regulating what its citizens may read, or what its citizens may write. Period.
When the Albertians asked Levant about his intent in his hearing, he replied that he had made his intent clear in other forums, but that for the purposes of that hearing, he wanted the Commissioner to assume the basest, most foul, most offensive motives she could allow her blinkered mind to imagine.
If only the CAJ had those, er, guts, Steyn and Levant wouldn't have had their problems to begin with.
One of the arguments for hate crimes legislation is that it will deter hate crimes. But of course, this is absurd on the face of it. The drunken gang that's headed out the door to go string up some gay student in Wyoming isn't going to stop at the door and say to themselves, like the cows in a Far Side cartoon, "Hey guys, you know, this is a hate crime..."
The goal here is that minority groups can claim special protections under the law. And the problem is that all groups aren't created equal. Jews think that they'll get protection from Nazis and Islamists, and end up being told to bug off, because the other groups push harder.
In 2002, a brick was thrown through the window of the CU Hillel House, and its sukkah had a swastika painted on it. Nope, the Boulder police, doing their best Lt. Frank Drebbin impersonation, decided that this wasn't a hate crime, nothing to see here, please move along.
On July 4, 2002, an Egyptian living in Los Angeles walked up to the El Al counter at LAX and started plugging bullets into everything in sight. Turns out he had some rather provocative Islamist literature hanging around his apartment and on his front door. Nope, wouldn't want to call this an act of terrorism or anything. Probably upset his family couldn't get a direct flight to Tel Aviv from Cairo.
Just recently in Brooklyn, an orthodox Rabbi had his yarmulke snatched off his head by a group of "youths" shouting "Allah hu-Akhbar." He chased after the gang, and one of them ended up in the middle of the street where a passing car administered its own form of rough justice. New York's finest didn't see anything odd here, just some kids who probably didn't know what "Allah hu-Akhbar" meant. This is the same mentality that would find the violation of Clean Air Colorado regulations the most offensive thing about a cross-burning.
In fact, hate crime laws are unnecessary. I've got as much to fear from someone who beats me up for my wallet as from someone who beats me up for my religion. If there are groups promoting this sort of violence, then there are already conspiracy and RICO laws on the books. And if there's a Moseley hanging around with a full-fledged political movement behind him, a little thing like a hate-crime law won't stop him. Like disarmament treaties, they only work where they're not needed.
But don't just listen to me. Watch Mark Steyn make the case, as only he can.
And then look at who's speaking in favor of the federalization of thought crimes.
He's a fighter pilot. He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs, missiles. He was long gone when they hit. What happened down there, he doesn't know.
That's unkind, because that's fighting for your nation and that's honorable. But you sort of have to care what goes on in the lives of people. ... and he never gets into those subjects.
Not many people know this, but George McGovern flew bombers over Europe in WWII, and was the main subject in Stephen Ambrose's The Wild Blue. He often spoke of the painful memory of having to drop a bomb at noontime, which ended up hitting a farmhouse where the family was likely eating lunch. He knew it was necessary to get rid of the armed bomb, but he was always disturbed by where it hit.
Later, a member of the family called into a radio show McGovern was appearing on, to let him know that the family had heard the bomb coming and escaped the house just before it hit.
I wonder what Rockefeller would have to say about that.
At the end of Across the Pacific, Humphrey Bogart, having helped to thwart a Japanese plan to attack the Panama Canal, offers up the US Army Air Force to assist any home-islanders wanting to commit hara-kiri over their failure.
Make that picture today, and not only would the plan succeed (although the enemy would either be nameless, or a fascist member of the fast-disappeaing class called, "white Europeans"), some heroic American would probably try to off the President, not for failing to stop it, but for trying to stop it.
Glenn Reynolds is proposing an X-Prize for Iraq War films, where the 1) Americans are the good guys, 2) the jihadis are the bad guys, and 3) we win, for the benefit of innocent civilians more interested in living their lives. A lot of people might contribute to such a prize, but it would seem that such a prize is unncessary - just buy a ticket.
C'mon, Glenn, whatever happened to the whole Army of Davids idea?
UPDATE: This is what happened. Outside the Wire is trying to sell 2900 DVDs to beat Redacted's box office. Heh. Still, it's a documentary. While decent on-the-spot reporting is in short supply, documentaries like this aren't going to make box-office history.
The L.A. Times runs a story today about the difficulties that the US is having in tracking and shutting down terrorist financial operations. The story leads with a number of factors impeding both our domestic and international efforts:
The U.S.-led effort to choke off financing for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is foundering because setbacks at home and abroad have undermined the Bush administration's highly touted counter-terrorism weapon, according to current and former officials and independent experts.
In some cases, extremist groups have blunted financial anti-terrorism tools by finding new ways to raise, transfer and spend their money. In other cases, the administration has stumbled over legal difficulties and interagency fighting, officials and experts say.
But the most serious problems are fractures and mistrust within the coalition of nations that the United States admits it needs to target financiers of terrorism and to stanch the flow of funding from wealthy donors to extremist causes.
Can anyone spot what's missing? Anyone? Sigh Anyone besides Lisa?
Apparently the Times doesn't think that the media's disclosure of the nature, procedures, and targets of those programs could have a deleterious effect on their effectiveness and foreign cooperation.
Moreover, the Times doesn't thing that the House Democrats' refusal to grant immunity to telecom companies who helped the government with foreign intelligence gathering could be interpreted by foreign banks and governments as a warning of might be in store for them if they, too, make the mistake of assisting the US is tracking down terrorist transactions.
And certainly, the House Democrats' refusal to renew the PAA couldn't have any effect on our ability to locate and track new targets for investigation?
No, certainly not. But we wouldn't want to question their patriotism.
Why is this a threat to national security? Because Iran is almost certainly plotting to disrupt our supply of natural gas from Mexico, And because they may well be trying to insert operatives directly into the United States.
Make no mistake, this is no humanitarian mission. This is exactly from the Soviet playbook - promise aid to establish a reason for being there. In this case, the aid amounts to a ridiculously ambitious project with little-to-no economic reason for being. Send a high-level delegation, with ministers of electricity, or whatever, providing cover for intelligence operatives. (Note that one of the delegation members is the Iranian Ambassador to Venezuela, also a likely intelligence agent.)
With completely ineffective border security, the Iranians will soon be in terrific position to start slipping agents across borders. And there aren't a whole lot of borders between Managua and El Paso.
More immediately, they may already have tried to blow up the main Mexican pipeline. Or, they may have gotten the idea from that attempt, and want to do it right this time.
If it were an oil pipeline, it might matter less. Oil is easily shipped all over the world, so there's a world market for it. Natural gas is difficult and expensive to ship across oceans, and the US has also resisted building LNG terminals. This means that there is, at best, a continental market for natural gas. And it also means that the best defense against any disruption in supply is...a good, reliable, local supply.
Mark Udall's policies leave us both more vulnerable to an attack, and more vulnerable to the effects of that attack.
Of course, the Arab countries and the UN refuse to dismantle the camps and assimilate their residents inmates precisely in order to create such scenes.
In contrast, here are the scenes from the murder scene created by Hamas, the elected government of Gaza.
Will someone please explain to me exactly why we're supposed to help broker a base of operations state for these jackals and hyenas?
In further evidence that George Bush has caused irreparable harm to US foreign policy interests by alienating our closest allies, the UK are France are now arguing over, ah, which one is our closest ally:
After decades of Anglo-French rivalry, in which France has vehemently deplored the global influence America and Britain have attained and what every president of France since Charles de Gaulle has described as "Anglo-Saxon culture," Mr. Sarkozy claimed during his visit to Washington last week that France, not Britain, is now America's best friend and partner.
Mr. Brown, who has been portrayed on both sides of the Atlantic as having distanced himself from America to avoid the charge against his predecessor, Tony Blair, that he was Mr. Bush's "poodle," fought back last night, claiming in a speech at a banquet thrown by the lord mayor of the city of London that the French president's bid to usurp Britain's traditional place alongside America would not succeed.
"It is no secret that I am a lifelong admirer of America," Mr. Brown said. And, in a thinly veiled reference to France's traditional dislike of America and its culture, he added, "I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, and I believe that our ties with America — founded on values we share — constitute our most important bilateral relationship."
He welcomed France's late conversion to the American cause and a similar newfound affection for America expressed by Chancellor Merkel of Germany in her visit to Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, over the weekend.
Behind her back, however, Gordon was heard to snap that Merkel was just tarting up to get Bush's attention.
Well, I guess that takes the attention away from Diana DeGette's decision today to vote in support of MoveOn.org, a decision that even Rep. Obey (D - Wis.) characterized as the equivalent of the Republicans not bringing Joe McCarthy to heel. (Although this September's Rockies might have managed it.)
Jim, what you choose to find offensive is a matter best left between you and your therapist. I'm not going to answer for or even discuss any right-wing fringe personal insults towards Cleland, the left-wing equivalents of which apparently pass for centrist and mainstream in the internal discourse of the Democratic party these days. In any event, blog postings or Ann Coulter weren't what prompted original Democratic puffery that made Max Cleland a byword. Losing was. This ad was:
Cleland was - and is - a politician, and attacks on a politician's campaign ads, and questions about his moral courage to confront evil, as opposed to his evident physical courage in fighting a war, are perfectly in line.
Nobody denied his heroism. Nobody disdained his military service. (And since the Left likes identity politics so much, Cleland's a hero in the Atlanta Jewish community, where my family lives. And rightly so.)
Nobody attacked his patriotism.
Right now, at this moment, the man with his life on the line isn't Max Cleland it's David Petraeus. And but for Bill Frist, he would have given his life for his country.
Over at the Washington Post's Post Global, journalist Daoud Kuttab continues to exhibit the Palestinians' debilitating tradition of hitching their wagons to increasingly toxic foreign leaders, hoping to rescue them from themselves:
Columbia University was correct to invite the Iranian president, and those opposing the invitation include individuals who do not tolerate any viewpoint other than their own, whether domestic or international. Iran is a major player in a region of strategic importance to the U.S.. American diplomats are willing to meet with their Iranian counterparts to talk about Iraq; certainly American academics and students (and hopefully the public at large, via CSPAN's television coverage) will get to hear the Iranian president’s opinions from his own mouth, rather than through the filters and spin doctors of the U.S.’s pro-Israel lobby.
Ahmadinejad is no saint; plenty of what he says reflects intolerance and can be considered hate speech. Iran’s role in the Iraq conflict can be debated, but compared to what President Bush and his administration and army have done in Iraq, Guantanamo, and in other parts of the world, I think that the Iranian president doesn't look so bad. I, for one, plan to hear what he has to say.
Assad, Nasser, Sadat, Arafat (what, you thought he was Palestinian?), Saddam, and now Ahmedinejad. Kuttab understands all too well that the real target of yesterday's propaganda wasn't the US, but the Middle East. So much for the unbridgeable Shia--Sunni divide.
Here's the translation from the original Indonesian article from the Jalal Center in Indonesia.
Sayyid Hasan Nasrullah’s Surprise
"If you, Zionists, think to attack Lebanon again, I prepare surprise for you, which will change the result of war and the future of the region."
-Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah in his speech to commemorate cease fire.
In history, Arab leaders always use hyperbolic rhetoric, rather than what they have achieved, in communicating with their people. Now, they have to acknowledge that Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah’s words should be seriously considered. Nasrallah not only avoids arrogance but also he approves with his achievements.
It occurs in what he calls as “God’s Win” in a battle with Israel last year, which is also well known as “Second Lebanon War” for Israel and “July War” for Siniora government. Israeli aggression, which is as a retaliation for its two ‘kidnapped’ soldiers (who illegally entered Lebanon border), is fought by Nasrallah with artilleries and Katyusha rockets.
After an attempt to assassinate him in an attack in his office in South Beirut fails, Nasrallah in al-Manar TV says “surprises that I promise to you will begin now. Now, you will witness the ship destroying civil infrastructures and houses burnt and drowned.”
Soon after that the ship, which has besieged Beirut, burnt. And, this incident is broadly broadcasted by televisions.
At the end of war, sophisticated modern arms are forced to accept cease fire. What they do is only demolishing but their objective is not achieved to destroy Hisbollah and kill Nasrallah.
The Arabs are happy. The Sunni Palestinians sing hymns for the Shiite militant group and Nasrallah is called as an “eagle from.“ He is leveled with Gemal Abdul Nasser and his name is mentioned in the whole region.
But this celebration is done only by the people not the leaders. Egypt, Jordan, Arab Saudi, and all American-allied dictators are surprised to see the ability of Hisbollah to defend their land and strike back.
From the perspective of America and the Arab leaders, there is more chance to make the situation in balance. And, the next war will begin from inside, through extremist Salafi infiltrated by the governments. If this plan fails, they will think another aggression, learning from their past failures and changing their tactics.
What then becomes Nasrallah’s surprise?
Once again, Ben-Elizer says, “he (Nasrallah) knows much better what he says. If he says 2000 rockets, I trust him, but I don’t know what surprise he means.” It is possibly more sophisticated arms, new navigating systems, or long -distance missiles? Perhaps. But, Nasrallah in his speech, which is broadcasted to thousands people gathered in dahiyah (South), said that the surprise will “change the result of the war and the future of the region.”
If they are foolish enough to attack again, is it possible for Nasrallah to unite Shiah and Sunni in a large scale to fight against the intervention and the invasion? Or is he able to show how a popular militant movement is able to win in its battle against a military state? Nasrallah has been able to convince the people that they have power to reject the corrupted governments, which pretend to protect national interests but what they do actually to protect their vested interests and America. And if the regimes only watch and do nothing, their people will take over the government. And, it will change the landscape of Middle East.
Whatever it is, Nasrallah’s surprise will come to the people who believe that he is only intimidating.
The Senate voted to condemn MoveOn.org's shameful ad attacking General Petraeus:
To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.
Senator Salazar voted in favor, but not before supporting the weasely Boxer Amendment. That amendment tried to link condemnation of MoveOn.org with supposed attacks on John Kerry's and Max Cleland's patriotism.
Now, I saw ads attacking Cleland's judgment, and Kerry's leadership, honesty, and honor. But not their patriotism.
But even stipulating that such attacks were made, the role of politicians and political campaigns is fundamentally different from that of the military. This is a man who has put his life on the line repeatedly for this country, and continues to do so every day. He is part of an institution that had better be defined by being apolitical. I'll wager than not one Senate Democrat in 20 has read Rick Atkinson's portrait of him, as the consumate professional, in In The Company of Soldiers.
Well aware that their political hackery can't withstand an honest report from an honorable source, their solution is to turn him into just another politician. Of course, with more than half the Democrats voting to oppose the amendment, and with Harry Reid dialy communing with them to coordinate strategy, MoveOn.org's money appears to be money well-spent.
Pemex is reporting six coordinated explosions in a large-scale act of sabotage of its eastern natural gas pipelines.
Well, you hear that, and, if you've got a brain, you think, "terrorism," or at least, "Chavez." Turns out there's evidence linking the EPR, who's claiming responsibility, to al Qaeda.
Another Pakistani document shows the links between al-Qaida and Mexico's Popular Revolutionary Army, EPR. The documents reveal that al-Qaida sees EPR as collaborators in attacks in Mexico on foreign targets – "especially those of the United States and Britain." It also says that EPR can play a key role in allowing al-Qaida operatives to enter the United States through the busiest land crossing in the world – Tijuana.
...a Saudi Arabian terrorist group linked to al- Qaeda called for strikes on oil and gas installations in Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. In May, Mexico formed a government committee to gather and share terrorism-related information with other countries.
According to the Arizon Star, "Mexico is a dangerously soft target since it has more than 17,000 miles of oil pipelines and 8,235 miles of natural gas pipelines to protect."
Why Mexico? And why now?
1) Mexico is notorious for preventing terrorists from transiting through its territory on the way to the US. This could be an indirect threat, making the Mexican government a deal it can't refuse
2) Natural gas is difficult to transport. What you get from North America, stays in North America. So hitting a natural gas pipeline is a way of hitting the American consumer.
3) That gives Chavez another chance to look magnanimous, and to allow various Massachusetts representatives to grovel in thanks when he offers heating oil to Americans
4) I doubt the terrorists would be thinking this far ahead, but we've been trying mightily to increase natural gas drilling out here. If the actual response is to divert more food to energy, it'll just mean more corn riots in Mexico City. Good if the Mexican government decides to reform its agriculture. But destabilizing nonetheless
5) Al Qaeda was going to try to hit Germany this week. Maybe they had to settle for this instead.
In a statement issued before the report's release, the human rights organization said there was no basis to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hezbollah guerrillas using civilians as shields. Israel has said it attacked civilian areas because Hezbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns.
HRW notes that Hezbollah didn't wear uniforms, fired from next-door to UN positions, and fired weapons from on top of apartment buildings, but somehow falls short of condemning these as violations of the laws of war. (I will merely note that, as a result of these violations, by law, Hezbollah forfeits all rights under the Geneva Conventions.)
Then, this:
The full report was being released Thursday at a news conference in Jerusalem. Human Rights Watch had to cancel a similar news conference in Beirut last month because of threats of Hezbollah protests. That report accused Hezbollah of firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian areas in Israel.
From lefty activist David Sirota today's Denver Post PoliticsWest site, and the Gang of Four Blog:
I will say, John, that I do think what's telling/frightening about your outlook is your assertion that winning automatically means "somebody else loses." That's called zero-sum thinking - the exact kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. We are in the middle of a civil war in Iraq - it's hard to frame the quagmire (not my words - Dick Cheney's) in the conventional terms of us "winning" and someone else "losing" because frankly, I don't hope that the Iraqis lose (while you might). I do, however, think us getting out of Iraq will hurt Osama bin Laden's cause because it's no secret that he's been using the Iraq War as a huge recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
Oh yeah, when I originally answered your question about Iraq I forgot to add that I also think us "winning" means fewer American men and women coming home in body bags or with arms and legs blown off.
This argument doesn't just border on the incoherent. It's taken up residency and is applying for an H1-B.
What he's trying to say, in his own, hyper-partisan sort of way, is that while territorial war is zero-sum, and the results of elections may be zero-sum, the result of the political process is not zero-sum, and that the war in Iraq is now essentially an exercise in Iraqi civil politics.
He then does the not-so-subtle switcheroo when he talks about us winning and "the Iraqis" losing. But in a civil war, it's perfectly ok if some Iraqis lose in order for the rest of the Iraqis to win. That's what's happened in Baquaba and Anbar. I would characterize the al-Qaeda-affiliated Iraqis (and their foreign leadership) as most definitive "losers." I would characterize Iraqi civilians who no longer have to worry about their lungs being ripped out for smoking as, "winners." (Unless Baghdad civil government imposes a single-payer health care system, then they'll be "losers," too.)
I would say that the Iraqis living near Baqubah were losers, until we arrived and helped the Iraqi Army turn them into winners. If we help to stabilize the place and give ordinary Iraqis a role in their own political life, then both we and (most) Iraqis will be "winners," and al-Qaeda will be losers.
As for Iraq as a recruitment tool for bin Laden, even if this assertion were true, it wouldn't be true where it mattered - Iraq. The fact is that the al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leadership is foreign, sent in by Syria on one border and allowed in by Saudi Arabia on another. This is because al-Qaeda has made itself so unpopular it can't get Iraqis to lead it, it can't even persuade Iraqis to fight for it. (Blackmail and coecion don't count as, "persuasion.") So if legions are flocking to bin Laden because of our involvement in Iraq, it's news to the Iraqis.
As for his history lesson, I suppose he's technically right. The only reason that Germany was able to fight itself to the brink of world domination twice in 25 years was that it had stopped fighting itself. But I think if you go back to the 1000s and 1100s, you'll find plenty of Franks fighting Germans and Franks fighting Anglo-Saxons and Anglo Normans.
I should point out that the group blog membership is balanced between left and right, so that's why this isn't a post about media bias.
Last night, the Claremont Institute, with a little help from Larry Mizel and others, and with sponsorship from ActionIsrael and Americans Against Terrorism, hosted a showing Pierre Rehov's "Suicide Killers." Inside the mind of a suicide bomber isn't necessarily a place most of us want to go. But it's a place worth touring if we're to understand why explosive one-time belts are the Palestinians' leading export.
The film goes a long way towards dispelling the myths about why teenagers - usually male teenagers - volunteer for these missions. It's because they're carefully taught. By schools, state-sponsored mullahs and broadcasts, parents, street signs. You think of it, they've got it.
It's not money. Money is mentioned only in the context of needing it to get married (more about that later). The very first on-camera personality, a hooded volunteer, explains that he's happy to go on this mission because he knows his children lack for nothing. And the fact is that, even in the West Bank, towns like Ramallah, Jenin, and Nablus have infrastructure and utilities courtesy of Israel, that citizens of other countries would kill for. So to speak. It makes the academic who prattles on about economic deprivation sound as though he's from another galaxy.
Remarkably, in Israeli prison, as at Guantanamo, the radicals hopped-up on Islam are able to have communal prayers. Since they derive their strength and their identity from their religion, it would seem that any good deprogramming effort would first take that away from them. Freedom of religion is a principle, not a fetish. After all, they're in prison, without freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom from search and seizure, you know, all the basics.
Much of this we've seen before. Rehov's most powerful and most disturbing point is that Palestinian society operates under a radical deformation of relations between the sexes.
Notions of democracy and equality, of course, threaten the status quo, where men run the place with an iron fist. One of the biggest laughs came from a clip of Saudi TV of an imam of some sort saying that "if it were my sister, and her husband, he would completely and totally oppose beating her, except in one case..." (pregnant pause) "...and that is if she did something to deserve being beaten." Another mullah explained that women's rights meant that women went out of the house naked.
Women and women's bodies are quite literally demonized. There is complete and utter inaccessability of girls to boys, and young women to young men, in a society whose average age is a hormone-flooded 16. Actually scraping together enough money to get married is hard. Having to live next door to Israeli beaches makes it harder. Pushing a button and getting 72 wives is a lot easier.
And here's where Rehov made one of his few mis-steps. The fact is, Israel isn't any more permissive than the average Western society. But when he cuts from a mullah denouncing western nudity to a beach where there's not much left to the imagination, he actually gives some credence to Islamist complaints. It's worse that the pop song they're dancing to mocks, "...God, the Blessed, we are all students." I don't want to chance to appease murderous fanatics, but I wouldn't mind changing, nonetheless.
The movie was probably about 20 minutes too long, and a little repetitive, as well. But it's well worth seeing, and dragging your friends to see, since it probably won't be showing at the multiplex any time soon.
John Andrews and Kathleen LeCrone did a great job putting this together at the last minute, and wec can only hope that the performance is repeated in other cities.
In advance of tomorrow night's screening of Suicide Killers, John Andrews & the Claremonteers took the event sponsors and one blogger out to dinner with director Pierre Rehov.
Rehov is a dual French-Israeli citizen, whose family came to France after the Algerian revolt and subsequent independence. Prior to that, they had been chased out of Spain - 500 years ago. It was his knowledge of Arabic and Arab society that let him infiltrate Jenin and other Palestinian camps for his film, "Road to Jenin," debunking the myth of the Jenin massacre.
Rehov was one of the first to expose the Mohammad Al-Dura farce, used to such great propaganda effect by Arafat and Jacques Chirac. He has a couple of other projects in the works, including one looking at the sad fate of Arab Christians at the hands of a re-energized Islamist community.
On Tuesday night, August 14, the Claremont Institute, Americans Against Terrorism, and Action Israel will sponsor a free showing of Pierre Rehov's Suicide Killers, examining the mind and motivations of the Arab world's most influential innovation of the last 500 years. It'll be shown at 7:30 at the Colorado History Museum, and Mr. Rehov himself will be on hand for a Q&A session afterwards. See the trailer, and then go to Backbone America to register, or buy the video and invite some friends over to see it.
Not exactly. Now now. Likely, not ever. And recognizing Israel was supposed to be one of the preconditions for attending President Bush's proposed Middle East railroading peace conference later this year. That requirement was the linchpin of the usually reliable Michael Oren's argument in the WSJ, where he claimed that this was not a fundamental change in the administration's Mideast policy. So, this from the AP:
Saudi Arabia will attend a Middle East peace conference proposed by President Bush for later this year, the Saudi foreign minister said Wednesday.
"We are interested in the peace conference," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
"When we get an invitation from the minister (Rice) to attend, when this takes place, we will discuss it and we will make sure that we attend" the conference, al-Faisal said.
Saudi Arabia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and its presence at a peace conference with the Jewish state would be a diplomatic breakthrough (emphasis added).
Yes, for the Saudis. I believe that we had diplomatic relations with the Japanese right up until kickoff of the Redskins-Giants game that Sunday.
It's good to see Rice holding form firm from the get-go.
Under the "More Evidence that the Bush Administration Has Ended" file, we have this report from Beitbart/AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Monday announced an an international conference this fall to include Israel, the Palestinian authority and some of their Arab neighbors to help restart Mideast peace talks and review progress in building democratic institutions.
He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would preside over the session. Bush said the conference would include representatives from Israel, the Palestinians "and their neighbors in the region" and said participants would include just those governments that support creation of a Palestinian state.
Bush also pledged increased U.S. aid to the Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas and called for the convening of a meeting of "donor" nations to consider more international aid, including the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Bush said the past few years had see "some hopeful, some dispiriting" changes in the Middle East. And he called the present time "a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice."
If I had a dime for every time I heard some Administration official over the last 20 years talk about how it's time for the Palestinians to make a choice, I could retire and blog full time. The Palestinians have have decades to have a change of heart, and have consistently made the same choice - war by some means or another.
The only evidence that anything has changed is evidence that it's changed for the worse. Hamas has turned Gaza into an Iranian client and given al Qaeda a seaport. Hezbollah is eating out Lebanon from the inside. Abbas - whose doctoral thesis consists of Holocaust denial - is being promised more money to steal, the same program that gave Gaza to Hamas in the first place.
Some will see significance in the fact that this announcement was made at the beginning of the Nine Days, a heightened period of mourning over the loss of the two Temples and the destruction of the Jewish Commonwealth by the Roman Empire. Others will just see a flight to fancy by the well-intentioned, and glee by the ill-intentioned.
Those with long memories will remember the Madrid Conference as the real beginning of the Oslo Process, bringer of death and destruction to Jews on a scale not seen since before there was an Israel. Now, we see the same self-deluding psychotic pattern, with concessions to murderers expected to produce - something. Since the criteria for participation isn't acceptance of Israel but rather acceptance of the Palestinians' desiderata, the Conference is clearly set up to repeat the pattern of pressuring Israel for actual concessions in return for more false promises from the Palestinians. The only question is what concessions will be expected to drain strength from one set of enemies, or to prop up another set of enemies.
Those of us warning of disaster should the US pack up and leave Iraq to Iran's devices have implicitly, although perhaps not explicitly, counting on the American public to hold the Democrats and weak-kneed Republicans accountable for such irresponsibility.
Don't hold your breath.
The American public won't know. And if it knows, it won't care.
Right now, today, as our soldiers fight, the AP reports massacres that didn't occur and fails to report those that do. When we've left, when our attention has turned to someplace else, someplace of critical national security importance like, say, Belize, the MSM simply won't be around to report on Iraq. In fact, they're not there to report on Iraq now, since Reuters and the AP rely almost exclusively on local Arab stringers for their writing.
With Iraq reduced to a bad memory, with Americns no longer dying in attacks, and with the Presidential election considered much more interesting (heck, with Congressional hearings into the Bush administration much more interesting), murders and massacres in Iraq will barely break the A section, much less the front page.
And when they do, the notion that an American presence might have prevented them will never be mentioned, except to chide the Administration for not getting it right from day one, by way of criticizing those who supported the war from the beginning. Even were Iraq to descend into Vietnam-like catastrophe, or Sudan-like genocide, the MSM will both blame the chaos on us and claim that there's nothing we can do to prevent it.
At least, not until Americans start dying again. Here.
