9/11 Websites

Websites of interest:

Take Back the Memorial

The NYSlimes calls this group "un-American" for being against turning the WTC Memorial site into a poltical statement that will imply we had it coming. Funny how that comes from the very ones who complain about questioning their "patriotism" every time they do something grossly damaging to the war effort!

Also, see Voices of Semptember 11.

Good clearinghouse central site.

Slavery Today

I can't stress this slavery issue enough.

See my previous post, near the end for example.

Also look here:

Almost nobody in America realizes that 27 million human beings are still enslaved today, more than at the height of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade-and tens of thousands of them reside on American soil.

Much of it is, of course, driven by islam and its teachings that condone it.

Black Africans are still being enslaved today, by arab muslims, just as they were in the days of the slave trade of old. In the Sudan, for example,

As the northern Arabs established an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship after the British relinquished control, the South rebelled with demands for representation, freedom of religious conscience, and cultural independence...

The Janjaweed, the government-backed Arab militias, are killing, slaughtering, raping, and pillaging with new vigor. Since 2003, it is estimated that 300,000-500,000 have been killed and over 2 million have been displaced. Despite the scale of the genocide, the international community continues to stand by, virtually inactive.

And of course, there are our friends, the saudis, who bring their slaves here to this country:

The two Saudis face charges of forced labor, aggravated sexual abuse, document servitude, and harboring an alien. If found guilty, they could spend the rest of their lives in prison. The government also wants to seize the couple's Al-Basheer bank account to pay their former slave $92,700 in back wages.

There follows several more examples, the other recent ones being:

In March 2005, a wife of Saudi Prince Mohamed Bin Turki Alsaud, Hana Al Jader, 39, was arrested at her home near Boston on charges of forced labor, domestic servitude, falsifying records, visa fraud, and harboring aliens. Ms. Al Jader stands accused of forcing two Indonesian women to work for her by making them believe "that if they did not perform such labor, they would suffer serious harm." If convicted, Ms. Al Jader faces up to 140 years in jail and $2.5 million in fines.

There are many other similar instances, for example, the Orlando escapades of Saudi princesses Maha al-Sudairi and Buniah al-Saud. The writer Joel Mowbray tells of twelve female domestics "trapped and abused" in the households of Saudi dignitaries or diplomats.

This is all acceptable in mohammed's teachings:

...it was out of evangelical Christian circles that abolitionism emerged in American and Britain, and no church today countenances it. While both the Old and New Testaments recognize slavery, the Gospels do not treat the institution as divinely ordained. Christianity recognized slavery as a fact of life, as part of how the world works, as indeed it did in New Testament times.

The Koran, by contrast, not only assumes the existence of slavery as a permanent fact of human existence, but regulates its practice in considerable detail, thereby endowing it with divine sanction by revealing God's detailed will for how it should be conducted....

The Koran explicitly guarantees Moslems the right to own slaves, either by purchasing them or as bounty of war [one of the "perks" of jihad, along with formally sanctioned rape -- RDS]...

In line with the racist views of Mohammed himself about his own people, the Arabs as "the nobles of all races" were exempt from enslavement. More later on the present-day consequences of this in Africa.

This makes islam an evil belief system to the core, and anyone who doesn't explicitly distance themselves from it should be considered as complicit and tainted as anyone who still proclaims their membership in the Nazi party or the KKK.

It's as simple as that.

Why do so few see this? Calling it a "religion" is no defense. What's most ironic is that the liberals who refuse to condemn islam even on these grounds are using a fake reason to "respect" islam as a religion, because in their hearts the liberals I'm sure think all religions and religious people are equally crazy and irrational -- but especially those right-wing Christians!

They must be attempting to merely appear non-bigoted, yet end up defending an intrinsically bigoted belief-system.

Curious.

Signs

A Baptist minister in Jacksonville, Florida has figured it out, putting up this sign.

A news article about the controversy explains:

The sign may be controversial, but the Rev. Gene A. Youngblood said it is researched and speaks the truth.

"Islam is evil and believes in murder," reads the sign at the entrance of First Conservative Baptist Church and the Conservative Theological Seminary on St. Augustine Road in Jacksonville. "Jesus teaches peace."

References to specific Quranic and biblical verses accompany the statement, which Youngblood said are meant to serve as a warning to society.

"I am of the opinion, based on enormous research of the Muslims' own books, that Islam is the most vile, wicked, evil danger facing the world today," Youngblood said.

Youngblood made his comments during an interview Tuesday in the Mandarin church and seminary, of which he is president. Stacked on a table before him were several hard-bound volumes of the Hadith -- the sayings of the Muslim prophet Muhammad -- two versions of the Quran and a binder containing about 1,000 pages of lecture and research notes on Islam.

Of course, the usual suspects are up in arms:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida released a statement Monday calling on religious leaders to repudiate the sign and declaring its message an example of "hate speech designed to divide our nation along religious lines."

Imam Zaid Malik, spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville, said the sign is based on ignorance about Islam.

The verse cited on the sign -- Surah 9:29 -- is taken out of context, Malik said.

The verse commands believers to "fight against those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, [even if they are] of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Out of context? Looks pretty clear to me. And it accords with history and centuries of islamic jurisprudence and theology, in both theory and practice.

But don't take my word for it, see this analysis in Britain's Spectator:

It is probably true that in every faith ordinary people will pick the parts they like best and practise those, while the scholars will work out an official version. In Islam the scholars had a particularly challenging task, given the mass of contradictory texts within the Koran. To meet this challenge they developed the rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done.

Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away from peace and towards war. For the peaceable verses of the Koran are almost all earlier, dating from Mohammed’s time in Mecca, while those which advocate war and violence are almost all later, dating from after his flight to Medina. Though jihad has a variety of meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed’s own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and torture.

From these sources the Islamic scholars developed a detailed theology dividing the world into two parts, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam, with Muslims required to change Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam either through warfare or da’wa (mission).

So the mantra ‘Islam is peace’ is almost 1,400 years out of date. It was only for about 13 years that Islam was peace and nothing but peace. From 622 onwards it became increasingly aggressive, albeit with periods of peaceful co-existence, particularly in the colonial period, when the theology of war was not dominant. For today’s radical Muslims — just as for the mediaeval jurists who developed classical Islam — it would be truer to say ‘Islam is war’. One of the most radical Islamic groups in Britain, al-Ghurabaa, stated in the wake of the two London bombings, ‘Any Muslim that denies that terror is a part of Islam is kafir.’

A kafir is an unbeliever (i.e., a non-Muslim), a term of gross insult.

They are serious about this. I've often remarked on how the cult-like islam uses the death penalty, officially, against apostates and blasphemers of the religion, meaning anyone who speaks out against its terror tactics, but I've had the sense few really believe it. However,

Mahmud Muhammad Taha argued for a distinction to be drawn between the Meccan and the Medinan sections of the Koran. He advocated a return to peaceable Meccan Islam, which he argued is applicable to today, whereas the bellicose Medinan teachings should be consigned to history. For taking this position he was tried for apostasy, found guilty and executed by the Sudanese government in 1985...

Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd, an Egyptian professor who argued similarly that the Koran and hadith should be interpreted according to the context in which they originated, was charged with apostasy, found guilty in June 1995 and ordered to separate from his wife.

We give Egypt about $2 billion in "aid" every year.

The idea of "reform" and "moderation" in islam isn't helped by recent ravings from muslim leaders, such as:

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia’s top Islamic council issued a religious edict on Friday forbidding any liberal interpretation of Islam in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

“Religious liberalism is haram (forbidden),” said a fatwa, or doctrine, issued by the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) and seen by Reuters.

“This is a reminder for Muslims to follow the religion in a correct way and not to try to deviate from the principles,” Ma’aruf Amin, chief the MUI’s Fatwa Commission, told Reuters.

I recall reading TWICE soon after 9/11, by writers who knew noting, attempting to do profiles on the islamic world to make sure our passions were kept in check and there'd be no "backlash", that the Indonesians "put the 'fun' in 'fundamentalism'!"

Then came Bali and fundamentalism didn't seem so 'fun'.

Or,

The most senior Islamic cleric in Birmingham claimed yesterday that Muslims were being unjustly blamed in the war on terrorism and that the eight suspects in the two bombing attacks on London “could have been innocent passengers”.

Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the city’s central mosque, called Tony Blair a “liar” and “unreliable witness” and questioned whether CCTV footage issued of the suspected bombers was of the perpetrators. He said that Muslims “all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al-Qa’eda”.

Mr Naseem, who was speaking after police seized Yasin Hassan Omar in Birmingham, delivered his unprompted outburst when he was invited to a press conference with West Midlands police and Birmingham city council to help calm fears of racial or religious tension after the arrest. His comments shocked senior police officers. ...

To the obvious embarrassment of council officials and police standing next to him, Mr Naseem said the Government and security services “were not to be relied upon”.

That guy was supposed to be the moderate.

Or, right here in the USA,

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — The voice of the new imam at one of the largest mosques on the East Coast rang loud from the pulpit during Friday services: “The call to reform Islam is an alien call.”

People who do not understand Islam are the ones seeking to change it, said Shaker Elsayed, the new spiritual leader at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. “Ignorance comes from outside circles who know nothing about us.”

Oh, we know quite enough now, thank you very much. At this point, what's not to understand?

But it's the familiar refrain. Getting back to imam malik complaining about Rev. Youngblood,

The same problem is with the terrorists, who are interpreting the Quran themselves and taking verses out of context, Malik said.

Malik said he is saddened by the sign but feels pity for Youngblood because he is "ignorant of the true teachings of Islam."

See how he equates Youngblood with the terrorists? Slime. The truth is, both have quite a clear view of things. And others are catching on all the time.

For example, commenter DP111 at LGF makes the following remarks, which I could not have said better myself, equating islamic ideology with slavery:

The nature of Islam is one topic that has occupied us all for sometime now. Islam not as a religion, but its reality. Is it islamosfascism, islamo-nazism, or some other totalitarian ideology? The simple fact is that, none of these definitions, as is obvious by now, are sufficient to merit an immuno-response from the West, as the West regards islam as a religion.

If one examines islam and its practices, it is more akin to slavery. Islam and those who convert to it, effectively become slaves. Islam = submission = subjugation, is not coincidence. Wherever islam dominates, slothful attitudes start to dominate. Free thinking stops, and people become mere cogs, almost children, dependent on the cleric on matters of any substance. Muslims are thus the first victims in this institution of slavery. I would therefore term Islam as the "religion of institutionalised slavery". It is no surprise that muslim countries are intellectual deserts. Free thinking can only occur in Free societies.

Some points worth considering

1. The institution of slavery, crushed the spirit of slaves. They were unable to think originally for themselves as a consequence. A striking feature of islamic societies.

2. Another striking feature of islamic societies is that they blame everyone else for their acts or predicaments.

In what may be consider as a traditional slave society, a similar situation holds. The slave has no power over the direction of his life, and no sense of responsibility to himself, the civic society or the state. This leads, quite naturally in my view, to blame others for his predicaments.

3. The subjugation of women and the view that women were simply chattels, ie slaves.

4. Runaway slaves used to be beaten, and oft executed as a lesson to other would be runaway slaves. The same punishment is koranically sanctioned for the muslim apostate. Is it mere coincidence?

The most public manifestation of our acceptance of institutionalised slavery in the West is the burqa. It is a symbol, that we as a Western society, have recognised the institutionalised slavery of women in islam, as legitimate in the West. This is absolutely absurd. Freedom and slavery are mutually incompatible. One can only expand at the expense of the other. It is a tragedy that we have allowed in, into the domain of Freedom, a society that practices slavery, and worse we give it legitimacy under the guise of multiculturalism.

So here we are, in the 21st century, right here in the domain of Freedom, and we have allowed islands of slavery to become established within this domain. This is absurd.

Freedom and slavery can never co-exist. Islam, in its practice, turns out to be the oldest totalitarian ideology of all - slavery, with just the added but genius touch, that it is divinely sanctioned by allah.

I'm tentatively putting this hypothesis, that islam is really a religion for slavery, and to garner more slaves, is the purpose of Jihad. Slave society can only exist economically, if it continues to grow at the expense of Free societies, and thus get the succour that itself, it cannot produce. We were fooled into letting Islam into the domain of Freedom. Islam avoided the radar that protects Free societies, as it cloaked itself as a religion. (The radars need to be re-programmed).

To fight the cultural and physical war against islam, one needs an identifying cause, a just cause, a righteous cause, as Baron Bodissey put it. Defence or offence on the basis of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or an amalgam of all three, will not work. All three religions are essentially pacifist, and besides, the West is essentially secular. The defeat of the last citadel of slavery on this planet, is most certainly a worthwhile, righteous and secular cause that will unite all.

It is worth remembering that Winston Churchill, as we well know, did identify islam as slavery:

"The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men." --Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

Finally, if Islam can be regarded as really slavery, then whether it is moderate or extremist, is a moot point.

I mean really, what kind of religion not only tolerates but champions slavery? One without a Universal Golden Rule, apparently.

The esteemed Daniel Pipes writes:

Ranking Saudi religious authorities endorse slavery; for example, Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan insisted recently that "Slavery is a part of Islam" and whoever wants it abolished is "an infidel."

The U.S. State Department knows about the forced servitude in Saudi households and laws exist to combat this scourge but, as Mr. Mowbray argues, it "refuses to take measures to combat it." Finally, Saudis know they can get away with nearly any misbehavior. Their embassy provides funds, letters of support, lawyers, retroactive diplomatic immunity, former U.S. ambassadors as troubleshooters, and even aircraft out of the country; it also keeps pesky witnesses away.

Given the American government's lax attitude toward the Saudis, slavery in Denver, Miami, Washington, Houston, Boston, and Orlando hardly comes as a surprise. Only when Washington more robustly represents American interests will Saudi behavior improve.

That's slavery in this country, people!!!

SLAVES!

TODAY!

IN YOUR CITY!!!

We need another Christian hero like John Brown to clean this saudi filth from our midst.

As Ann Coulter presciently said on 9/13/01,

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.

I would just add,

...and free their slaves and take away their oil.

A New Rambo

There were signs that the confrontation with commie fascism was coming to a head, at least in popular culture.

I recall how, after the election of Reagan one of my high school teachers declaring in real dismay and horror, "now there's going to be a nuclear war!" And in one history class, the majority of students were peer-pressured into agreeing that "better red than dead" made sense -- though the small number of those who disagreed were comprised, not surprisingly, of basically the top ranked students in the school, i.e. the few that actually knew something about history.

But as part of the Reagan Revolution, in the early 1980s there then came the Rambo movies!

Oh, how the left and the cultural elites denigrated them! Just jingoistic junk, so embarrassing in its patriotism and warmongering!

But guess what, they found an audience, even if they were paint-by-numbers "b" films (though the first one actually had some character to it).

Chuck Norris followed suit, with the derivative Missing in Action trilogy, as well as Invasion USA and Delta Force.

Clint Eastwood revived the Dirty Harry series with Sudden Impact, sporting an even bigger gun than before, the .44 Automag, and the tagline, "Go ahead, make my day!"

And for every WarGames, there was a Red Dawn.

Where is today's pro-USA propaganda?

I was reminded of this when on one of the oldie movie channels, Berlin Correspondent came on. It was made in 1942, about the just-prior period when the US was still neutral, and an American (the dashing Dana Andrews) was broadcasting censored news from Berlin but passing secrets by code to the Allies. And the plot thickens as he's pursued by a suspicious, autocratic Gestapo agent, who sends a fetching fraulein to gain his confidence and find his secret source because the previous bumbling nazi detective had proved comically incompetent, but it turns out she's the daughter of the man who is giving the information to Andrews, and she's inadvertantly betrayed her own father! Well that's what you get working for fascists. Luckily, the deception turns into true love, and the trio attempt an escape...

Hollywood's not making movies like that for us today.

Because they want us to lose.

Where is our John Rambo?

Grand Strategy

Some interesting comments over at Belmont Club (as usual) over this analysis by Wretchard:

Just as mobility through the application of maritime technology was the foundation of Britain's seapower, so is America's based on the ability to freely traverse the oceans -- and now the great land spaces -- of the world. Not by itself, but in consequence: by threatening the areas of weakest governance, organizations like Al Qaeda have driven those beleaguered states into the arms of the only power with means and mobility to come to their assistance. It would be the supreme irony if radical Islam's lasting contribution to history turned out to be the establishment of a global American power. Without the rise of radical Islamism and the collapse of Soviet authority in Central Asia, there would have been no case for a US presence. In a Chicago Tribune article entitled US Outflanks Kremlin, Beijing on Kyrgyz Base, correspondent Alex Rodriguez wrote:

Facing pressure from Russia and China to end America's military presence in two Central Asian states, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld won assurances Tuesday from Kyrgyzstan's new leaders that they would not shut down a U.S. base on Kyrgyz soil used for combat and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan. ...

At the start of the Afghan war, the Kremlin acquiesced to the establishment of temporary American bases in Central Asia, experts say, largely because Russian leaders fully understood the threat Islamic militants posed in the region. But Moscow has grown wary of a U.S. military presence in Central Asia, a region it wants firmly under its wing.

"In 2001, there was a sense that Russia was incapable of providing security for Central Asia," said Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Moscow. "But Russian leaders always had this nightmare scenario: What if the U.S. did not leave? What if they deceive us and stay in Central Asia for much longer than planned?"

Osama bin Laden. The uncomprehending vanguard of America.

Sweet.

The commenters have much to add.

Ray notes:

Complex systems evolve in unexpected ways, a point often made by Wretchard. Opponents of the GWOT include the thwarting of "international law" (by which is meant contraint on US action) and a move away from world government (by which is meant bureaucratic, socialist UN/EU control) as "evils" attending US policy. It would be ironic indeed if the basic structure of world government (consensual, led by the Anglosphere + Japan alliance, enforced primarily by global US power) was to emerge, and that that this world government was hostile to dictatorial, arbitrary rule; that this government sheltered consensual government, individualism, and private property rights; and that it enforced an Islamic reformation in which the messianic character of Islam was discredited through abject, sustained military defeat (much as messianic Judaism was extinguished 2000 yrs) so that the dream of the Caliphate died at last. All these things are anathema to the Left because they would represent a triumph of the Western ideal, of private property, markets, and capitalism, and dash the deluded hope of victory seemingly lost with the collapse of the USSR and rekindled by the Islamist revolt against modernity.

Dan adds,

If the dispute is between developing some sort of negotiated agreement allowing us into Waziristan and merely telling Musharraf that this is part of the deal and going in anyway (presuming we have adequate intelligence to mount the snatch), then I say we give it a little more time and effort but ultimately just go in. The Paki army and ISI may not be HAMAS, but they are surely sympathetic enough to all sorts of aspects of this OBL problem and beyond that will ultimately thwart our efforts if we rely upon their sympathy for Our cause, which couldn't really be more justified. I reiterate my point in a previous thread: yes, these local conflicts are terrible and real and promise real consequences to those in power locally, but engaging them on their own terms will surely result in a quagmire, providing fodder for polemics and denying us the victories-in-fact which will ultimately win the war. Ideological disputes are pointless when you share none of the assumptions and the goal is, essentially, zero sum. Reagan won through intimidation and war by others means. The Communist ideological victory, meanwhile, is on display throughout the arts and academy in the Western world, while its political and military existence is in the dustbin of history.

Apropos of that penultimate phrase, see the excellent current issue of City Journal (found via LGF), especially the article "America's Most Successful Communist" about those rotten old coldly calculating folk-singing subversive commies like Pete Seeger(*).

The articles on "Sin City" and "Laughing at the Left" (through the newspaper comic pages) are also very worthwile. The reviewer of the movie Sin City comments on art (and touches on why I've always felt someone like Tarantino is vastly over-rated):

A Christian by then, Tolstoy observed that when art ceases to be religious it becomes purely aesthetic and thus elitist, obsessed with innovative styles and mired in a limited content of pride, sex, and alienation. As the intellectual classes lost their Christian faith, art “ceased to be natural or even sincere and became thoroughly artificial and brain-spun.”

Now personally, I don’t think artists have to believe in God to make good art, but I do think they have to believe in Man. That is, I think the artist has to respect each individual’s internal human experience as a Thing Entire—as a soul, if you will; as a unified process of being and awareness, if you will not. The artist might believe that the inner life is sacred or he might think it’s merely worthwhile or, at the very least, he might feel it’s deserving of pity. But art can’t communicate anything of true value unless its creator feels that each person’s consciousness somehow matters. Why make art otherwise, and for whom?

But I digress.

Monty says:

We cannot simply opt out of these scenarios, even if we wished to -- our social and economic well-being depends on our vigilance.

People who complain that Iraq is a mess are completely missing the point: Iraq is a mess, but it has been a mess for a long time; it was a mess before we got there; it will be a mess after we leave (whenever that might be); but it will be less of a mess than it would have been otherwise, and it has left us in a much better strategic position. The same goes for Afghanistan, and for the Balkans, and for Haiti.

Iraq is many things to us, but in this context it is a classroom. To grouse that President Bush or the military didn't anticipate all the problems is just peurile; no military plan survives contact with the enemy. By historical standards the American military is doing extraordinarily well. And yet given the ceaseless negativism from most of the media and the political left (parts of the same whole, really), the average American has little real idea of how much strategic progress has been achieved.

Aristides rebukes Anybudee:

Anybudee: "Projecting our "empire's" power from, where? Uzbekistan?! With what legions?"

With what legions did we topple the Taliban? You drastically underestimate the implications of having American strategic assets hours away from any point on Earth.

And as fjordman and Baron Bodissey remind us, Waziristan and Saudi Arabia are the two poles of the islamic Jihad Axis.

Red River and desert rat dream about what it might be like if we revived some of the ancient warriors of the past, outfitted them with modern tech, and turned them loose in central asia as our foreign legion proxies:

UBL and 9/11 can only be seen as a disaster for the One-world Islamists.

Someone conducts a surprise attack on the USA and a new, more potent weapon is used in retaliation - this time it was manueverist warfare coupled with global mobility.

In just five weeks we had troops on the ground in Afghanistan. A month later the Taliban are no more.

Consider the strategic situation.

Alfred Thayer Mahan had a huge impact on Teddy Roosevelt and the neo-cons of his Day.

The Chinese have pursued a Mahan strategy across the Pacific.

But we are playing at a higher level. Whereas China is looking at sea lanes and controlling space, we are looking at global mobility and how to create options.

A stepping stone strategy in Asia is just as valid as it was in the Pacific. If troops have to hike 1000 miles, they might as well be on an Island in the Pacific.

The key to Central Asia is Mobility. Only the Mongols had it. China has been able to conduct raids over time, but only at a huge cost and after a long build-up.

The Mongols unhinged China via raids from Central Asia. The old routes are there and just because they would be traversed by F-15Es or B-1Bs and Air-mobile assaults, does not mean those old lines of communication don't exist.

And other options exist as well.

Russians are still being beaten up in Ulaan Batar and the Chinese are no less hated.

A Mongolian Armored Brigade or Airmobile/Airborne Battalions trained by US Advisors can be a reality in a very short time.

The Mongols combined their hardiness and good leadership with supreme mobility and top military technology that allowed them to dominate Asia. The same goes for the Sioux in the Northern Plains.

All they would need would be a way to regain mobility and to gain good military technology.

and:

The British have been downsizing it's Gurkha Regiments for years. These natives of Nepal are some of the finest soldiers in the world. It is a good bet that a Brigade or two or these veterans, or their sons, could be raised, in addition to the Mongol Combat Teams.
Special Forces A team were always a force multiplier, but now, with modern technologies...

Garrisoning large numbers of troops in Germany is not improving the defensive security of the average German. It will not be required in Iraq much longer.
Surrogates and proxies are available, we should utilize them, every where we can.

Aristides adds:

Senior Col Yao Youzhi of the AMS argued that Eurasia plays a “decisive position in global geopolitical strategies.” He claimed that the United States views North America as its base, South America as its backyard, Africa as a “broken continent that cannot be lifted up,” and Eurasia as the “serious hidden danger to global dominance.” America plans to control Eurasia by keeping Russia weak, manipulating NATO, and containing China through military alliances with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand."

The dangers of Colonel Qiao Liang's Unrestricted Warfare are the unintended consequences that can attend any ill-thought over-steps. I have read since September 11, Colonel Liang and Wang Xiangsui have been treated as heroes in China for articulating the strategy of "terrorism, narcotics trafficking, drug smuggling, environmental degradation and computer viruses as methods to defeat America."

I bet the Chinese are not as sanguine anymore. In direct contra-distinction to Al'Qaeda's hopes and China's strategic analysis, the 9/11 attacks have focused and accelerated America's strategic posture. The Giant has awoken and discovered the world needs her attention.

Every single worry the Chinese had about Operation Allied Force have come to pass, via the GWOT. In the 90's, the Chinese thought we were a Python, using our great mass to suffocate all rivals. The present claustrophobia must be overwhelming.

Aristides quotes William F. Buckley:

What is it that a people is willing to fight for? The security of home and hearth come first, and that is achieved mostly by weaponry; but weapons that seek to have their effects beyond the range of a cartridge of gunpowder do so, on battleships and airplanes, by the propellant force of oil.

If you are willing to die in order to protect your local hospital, then you must be willing to die for oil, because without oil, your hospital won't take you beyond a surgeon's scalpel, and a surgeon is helpless without illumination, which is provided (mostly) by oil.

To say that we must not fight for oil is utter cant. To fight for oil is to fight in order to maintain such sovereignty as we exercise over the natural world. Socialism plus electricity, Lenin said at the outset of the Soviet revolution, would usher in the ideal state. He was wrong about socialism but not about electricity. Electricity gives us whatever leverage we have over nature. To flit on airily about an unwillingness to fight for oil suggests an indifference to the alleviation of poverty at the next level after bread and water.

Tony observes:

Kruschev really did say "We will bury you" and we took it seriously. John F Kennedy took it to the gunslinger brink over Cuba, for good reason.

George W Bush has taken us up to that gunslinger brink again, and again won the day for Bolder than Brass America.

9/11/01 was all I needed to light 'em up, for the greater good of World. It would be for the bad guys' good as much as ours, to let them surrender, or otherwise get their suffering over with quick.

That NIGHTMARE never occurred during the Cold War, even tho every single child did Bomb Drills and every big building in America had one of those yellow signs indicating a bomb shelter.

Seems to me, not that many years ago, we took our enemies seriously.

Now it is evident that HALF of Americans would rather not pay attention, would rather ignore the Dire Wolf at the Door.

And Now, as explosions go off all around the world, half of the world's Most Powerful Nation is convinced US is the enemy.

Thank God our military, our pointy end of the spear, has taken an oath to follow the actual chain of command.

This all leads up to the money quote from Aristides

"The future battlefield will be “everywhere”—from the human mind, to the electromagnetic spectrum, to cyberspace, to outer space—and everyone will be a potential combatant, including hackers, genetic engineers, and financiers. Warfare will no longer be the sole province of nation-states and soldiers and will not be resolved only with military means. Instead, “all means” will be used to fight these wars—including trade warfare, financial warfare, terrorism, ecological warfare, computer-network attack, media warfare, drug warfare, and psychological warfare. “Extreme means” need not always be used, but victory will go to those who best combine all the resources at their disposal without regard for boundaries, restrictions, rules, laws, or taboos."

To the list of combatants I would add the blogosphere, and Wretchard's earlier post on "spontaneous organization" and information hubs is relevant here.

One of the great assets of the blogosphere is its ability to offer conceptual frameworks, ideological prisms and mental shorthands through which we can better process and understand the massive data crunch that attends the modern world. Belmont Club is such a site.

In a previous time of danger and confusion, writers like Tom Paine and Alexander Hamilton built for their countrymen just these types of frameworks, and the effect was a buttressing of their resolve and a justification of their courage.

We are also in dangerous and confusing times. But with our attention and stamina, our knowledge will continue to expand, and our conceptual arsenal will continue to grow.

The bunkers of the 21st century will be ideological, and they will be built on-line.

Indeed!

(*) note: The old commie failed. I grew up listening, over and over again, to a record of The Weavers greatest hits. I didn't know until just reading City Journal that The Weavers were a Seeger project in which he rebranded his previous band of commie subversives with a deliberately calculated simple down-home image and consciously attempted to foist Marxism on the US through insidiously infecting the popular culture via music.

The interesting thing is, I enjoyed much of the music, but it had ZERO formative social effect on me, though I played it over and over during my supposedly most-vulnerable years.

HA!

I always hated "Where have all the flowers gone." Now I know why. And "If I had me a Hammer" is referring to the commie hammer and sickle symbol, the tool of the World Worker.

Though carried by a catchy tune, Seeger's words failed to influence me.

Because in parallel, I was also raised on traditional folk and fairy tales. And the truths they carried from ancient times, surviving by darwinian selection, burned away the falsehoods implied by marx. Not to mention that I was also reading, indepently in the grade school library, every single book they had on WW2 and NORAD -- so the line they were pushing in "social studies" class (in the early 1970s) that the Russkies were not really all that bad, didn't ring true either. Instead, I grew up wishing everyone had listened to Patton and liberated Eastern Europe when we had the Bomb and the world's best army already in the theater.

I was EXTREMELY concerned that we seemed to have only Delta Daggers and Delta Darts with their unguided GENIE nuclear air-to-air missiles to try to stop the massive formations of Soviet bombers laden with Rosenberg-supplied H-bombs we expected to fly over any day.

And out of that knowledge, an implacable hatred of communism in all its forms was developed, in spite of card-carrying commie subversives like Seeger and their feeble attempts to brainwash me.

And luckily, as it turned out, my information was out of date, as apparently our school library hadn't bought any books on warfare since about 1959 or so...Imagine my pleasant surprise when I started going to bookstores when I was a little older and finding out about these wonderful new things like F-14s and F-15s coming on line...

And then Reagan was elected and I then "slept the sleep of the saved and thankful", as Sir Winston would say.

Satirical Priest

An amusing photo-essay by a sarcastic, satirical priest on same-sex "marriage," found via The Anchoress.

I might go to church more often if sermons were more like this!

I mean, any guy who starts with a photo of Jennifer Connelly must have something interesting to say.

Or should I say, has at least started out on the right foot.

(I don't agree with his reasons entirely -- mine can be found here -- but it's still on the whole a funny piece.)

Political Fractures

I've mentioned before that the Democrats seem headed for a split, especially if they keep losing elections. I don't know whether the centrists of the Mike al-Moore wing of loonies will retain the name.

But the splits are becoming apparent.

For example, look at this:

Teamsters, SEIU Decide to Bolt AFL-CIO
CHICAGO - Jolting organized labor, the Teamsters and a massive service employees' union decided Sunday to bolt the AFL-CIO, paving way for two other labor groups to sever ties in the movement's biggest schism since the 1930s.

The four dissident unions, representing nearly one-third of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members, announced they were boycotting the federation's convention that begins Monday, a step that was widely considered to be a precursor to leaving the federation.

The Dems rely on organized labor to turn out the vote. This split could be really bad news.

Also, they're laying the groundwork for a shift in policy that may leave the crazies behind, by getting to the Right of the administration on the GWOT -- which would be fantastic for everyone:

Centrist Dems Urge Military Enlargement
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Centrists who contend Democrats cannot retake the White House until voters trust the party to protect them said Sunday the Army should expand by 100,000 soldiers and that colleges should open their campuses to military recruiters.

"A Democrat has to show the toughness to govern," said Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council. "People don't doubt that Republicans will be tough."

From argued that national security and safety are threshold issues for swing voters who increasingly are trending Republican.
...
Hundreds of centrist Democrats gathered in Ohio for the annual meeting of the DLC. From and DLC President Bruce Reed argued that Democrats should be more aggressive in pushing values issues and take an unrelenting, hard-line stance against terrorism.

"No political party deserves to win unless it lays out a plan for Americans to win," said From.

This is the most sense I've heard from a Democrat in 5 years.

Not that the Republicans aren't vulnerable to split as well. McCain's writing a lot of lefty legislation, even a ridiculous toothless immigration bill with national disgrace Ted Kennedy (the competing Cornyn-Kyl bill is much better).

I could still see, for example, a Hillary-McCain ticket running against Rudi-Rice in 2008!

It's Called "Invasion"

After the recent Islamic terror-bombings of London, the so-called "moderates" came out to "condemn" the attacks, and then make clear their age-old blackmail game:

Dr Azzam Tamimi, from the Muslim Association of Britain, said the country was in real danger and that this would continue so long as British forces remained in Iraq.

“Tony Blair has to come out of his state of denial and listen to what the experts have been saying, that our involvement in Iraq is stupid.” His comments were echoed by the marketing manager for The Muslim Weekly newspaper.

Shahid Butt said he believed the threat to Britain would reduce if it pulled its troops out of Iraq. He said: “At the end of the day, these things [violent incidents] are going to happen if current British foreign policy continues. There’s a lot of rage, there’s a lot of anger in the Muslim community.

”We have got to get out of Iraq, it is the crux of the matter. I believe if Tony Blair and George Bush left Iraq and stopped propping up dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world, the threat rate to Britain would come down to nearly zero."

As LGF notes, this is basically a call for Britain to surrender it foreign policy to the whims of the terrorists.

It's the old one-two punch of good-muslim/bad-muslim.

It's the same ridiculous fiction that Sinn Fein hides behind, when it negotiates on behalf of the IRA while claiming to be clean of terrorism -- the "political" wing.

It used to be, one people used violence against you then demanded changes in foreign policy for the violence to stop, that would be considered simple blackmail and an Act of War.

When foreigners moved into your country en masse and don't assimilate because they hate your culture and consider it immoral and inferior, it used to be called an Invasion.

Today, it's called Multiculturalism.

It's even more galling to consider that this very lack of assimilation -- chosen by the invaders themselves! -- is used as the excuse for the "alienation" and "rage" of the terrorists!

According to The Telegraph, a survey found that

However, six per cent insist that the bombings were, on the contrary, fully justified.

Six per cent may seem a small proportion but in absolute numbers it amounts to about 100,000 individuals who, if not prepared to carry out terrorist acts, are ready to support those who do.

Moreover, the proportion of YouGov's respondents who, while not condoning the London attacks, have some sympathy with the feelings and motives of those who carried them out is considerably larger - 24 per cent.
...
The responses indicate that Muslim men are more likely than Muslim women to be alienated from the mainstream and that the young are more likely to be similarly alienated than the old.

Now that's odd, isn't it? The young are the ones who have had the most benefit of Western culture. Clearly, they're being raised -- brainwashed -- by purestream Islamic preachers.

Alarmingly, the survey goes on to find:

The sheer scale of Muslim alienation from British society that the survey reveals is remarkable. Although a large majority of British Muslims are more than content to make their home in this country, a significant minority are not.

For example, YouGov asked respondents how loyal they feel towards Britain. As the figures in the chart show, the great majority say they feel "very loyal" (46 per cent) or "fairly loyal" (33 per cent) but nearly one British Muslim in five, 18 per cent, feels little loyalty towards this country or none at all.

If these findings are accurate, and they probably are, well over 100,000 British Muslims feel no loyalty whatsoever towards this country.

A disloyal, alienated population in your midst that hates you is an invasion.

Equally remarkable are YouGov's findings concerning many Muslims' attitudes towards Western society and culture.

YouGov asked respondents how they feel about Western society and how, if at all, they feel Muslims should adapt to it...nearly a third of British Muslims, 32 per cent, are far more censorious, believing that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end".

Among those who hold this view, almost all go on to say that Muslims should only seek to bring about change by non-violent means but one per cent, about 16,000 individuals, declare themselves willing, possibly even eager, to embrace violence.

Even those who don't wish to use violence are STILL DANGEROUS INVADERS, because changing our culture to sharia, whether by the democracy of demographics or by violence, would still be a terrible outcome for humanity because islamic law is an evil, vile thing.

I've quoted this before, and will again, for no lesser personage than Sir Winston Churchill, likely the most important person of the 20th century, who knew a thing or two about Islam (having fought against it during the River War), declared:

Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

I mean, come on -- SLAVERY, people! It's specifically sanctioned in islam. You'd think liberals would be up in arms against it for that alone, never mind the pedophilia and rape it justifies.

(The prophet's favorite sex toy was 9 years old; thus, by his example, certain methods of child molesting are permitted by purestream islam: "It is not illegal for an adult male to 'thigh' or enjoy a young girl who is still in the age of weaning; meaning to place his male member between her thighs, and to kiss her." As for slavery, the Saudis have even been caught in this country with their slaves; also see here and here. As for rape as the allah-sanctioned perk to the jihadist against the infidel, see how it's practiced today in the muslim-overrun towns of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia, for example: "Two out of three charged with rape in Norway's capital are immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study. The number of rape cases is also rising steadily.")

That's why I don't give people who are muslims an automatic pass just because they happen to be "peaceful." Their culture as demonstrated above is an abomination, and I can only assume they condone it if they don't explicitly reject it.

If they haven't distanced themselves from this cult due to its obvious evil core tenets, I have to assume they implicitly approve. The notion that they don't know what's in their religion is nonsense; their culture openly embraces slavery and they all know it; it's just taken for granted as a social norm, but that doesn't excuse it now, does it?

Or was it ok for Hitler to murder 6 million Jews, because he thought it was right by his belief system? That's where moral relativism as a philosophy fall on its face and dissolves into the stupidity that it is.

It's just like Senator Byrd claiming his launching his early political career by joining the Ku Klux Klan was a "youthful indiscretion". Never mind that he was still in it by the age of 29 (hardly a "youth"), and was so involved in recruiting for the KKK that he was elevated to the position of Exalted Cyclops and Kleagle. His claims that he thought it was just a "social organization" stretch credulity. I'm willing to believe he was not actually racist (though there's evidence otherwise), for the sake of argument -- but then one can still have deep questions concerning his character that he'd associate with such an organization, given its overall history and aims, at all! For years! And help it!

By the way, a Republican in the Senate with that history, being elevated to Majority Leader by the Democrats, would never get the kind of pass Byrd did from the media, as Michelle Malkin explores.

But I digress.

Some are figuring out the Truth.

An unusually honest writer in Australia recognizes his assurances over the last few years that moderate muslim leaders oppose terror have been flat out wrong:

It's time we accepted the difficult truth: many of the Muslims we invite to live in Australia want to destroy us.

FOR four years, since the September 11 attacks, I've begged our Islamic leaders to drive extremists from their mosques.

For four years I've also reassured you that most Muslims here are moderate.

I've even insisted they have some moderate Muslim leaders, and last week again endorsed Sheik Fehmi Naji El-Imam of Preston mosque as a man of peace.

How eager I was to praise.
...
But was I just kidding myself? Isn't it becoming terribly clear that Islam -- at least the Islam of Australia's Arab sheiks and imams -- is hostile to our society?

Isn't it now obvious we should never have let into our country those imams who now preach hate?

Isn't the evidence that some cultures -- Muslim Arab ones -- pose more problems than their importation at this rate is worth? Isn't multiculturalism making these problems worse?

I know these are dangerous, hurtful questions. I also know many Muslims will feel deeply offended, loving this country and obeying its laws, and I wish only I heard from them far more often.

But the London bombings, perpetrated by home-grown Muslims, makes our silence on such issues not a sign of civility, but suicide.

So let me admit that the past few days have been terrible for those of us who thought we could count on Muslim leaders for real help against the Muslim extremists who threaten us.

He then goes on to detail exactly how those he thought were "moderates" came out with bizarre conspiracy theories, equivocation, and worse:

How can Muslim leaders fight terrorism, when the most moderate of them won't condemn even bin Laden, or admit that monster's self-confessed guilt?

Fehmi was not my only disappointment. I checked the IISNA site this week, and among the announcements of classes and prayers found this advice to a reader who'd asked if it was a sin to kill non-Muslims:

"In regard to non-Muslims who are at war with the Muslims and do not have a peace treaty with the Muslims or are not living under Muslim rule, then Muslims are commanded to kill them, because Allah says . . . 'Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you, and let them find harshness in you.' "

If that's advice passed on by a "moderate" Islamic group, what must the radical ones here say?

Well, we know that, too. In a Melbourne bookshop run by Omran a Herald Sun reporter this month found books being sold that command Muslims to ready for war and to hate Jews.

In Sydney last week, the Islamic Bookshop, Australia's largest of the kind, was found (again) selling similar poison near the Lakemba mosque, including a book with tips on how to blow yourself up and kill plenty.

"The form this usually takes nowadays is to wire up one's body, or a vehicle or a suitcase with explosives and then to enter among a conglomeration of the enemy and to detonate," it says.

"There is no other technique which strikes as much terror into their hearts."

Again and again we're told such things aren't typical. Apologists, too often Muslim converts with little clout among ethnic groups, claim Islam means peace. But again and again we are left feeling like dupes.

He then goes on to explain exactly how islamic leaders dupe gullible western reporters.

He then reaches the grim, honest conclusions:

Faced with such evidence whichever way I turn, what else can I think about Islam -- or Arab Islam, at least -- but that it is an enemy of our culture, our society? And I ask: How did we come to let in the extremist preachers of such a hostile creed?

Why did we let in sheiks such as the Jordanian-born Omran, who declares Islam rejects democracy and instructs Muslims to go to Iraq to fight coalition troops? Why did we let in the Egyptian-born Hilaly?

But so much that we did in the name of multiculturalism was dangerously naive.
...
The results were as predictable as they were politely ignored -- a jobless rate and imprisonment rate double that of other Australians. Gangs. Poverty. A near ghetto in Lakemba.

What an unholy recipe: First we build a vulnerable underclass of unassimilated people with a religion of rejection. Then we let loose on them imported radicals preaching a hatred of our society; teachers who instruct them in the shame of our history; and multiculturalists who pay them to keep their distance and retain their much nicer ways.

ALL this always was foolish. Now we see it was dangerous as well, since British-born Muslims bred in a similar stew of multiculturalism, ethnic enclaves and Islamist extremism, have gone to war.

This Aussie has awakened!

He follows his clear-thinking leader, Prime Minister Howard (who like Bush and Blair recently faced a tough election over Iraq -- and won), who answered a reporter's dumb question about whether the London bombing was a direct result of Iraq policy by:

PRIME MIN. HOWARD: Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

PRIME MIN. BLAIR: And I agree 100 percent with that. (Laughter.)

To elaborate on how islamic terror isn't springing from "rage" over "Iraq", see this map here.

And see this long, depressing list of terror atrocities around the world just since 9/11/2001. The common theme: perpetrated by islamists against infidels, in accord with the teachings of their prophet and the demands of their bloodthirsty demon moongod.

Just scroll down and keep scrolling as the bodycount mounts...

Lots of attacks before the Iraq invasion, and lots of attacks against people who had nothing to do with it, like Thai Buddhists.

And a list here (part 1) and here (part 2) about other islamic terror attacks on infidels from 1972 to 2001.

Just a few extremists?

UPDATE: Gates of Vienna sagely discusses the invasion angle. The prognosticating is grim.

The Times Regrets The Error

The media lies, blatantly, to us.

The Cassandra Page has documented already 36 major lies or falsifications by major news outlets just in 2005 (so far) alone, that we know about.

How much did they deceive us before the internet?

One especially egregious case concerns an op-ed the NYTimes ran, that was written by an army reserve officer.

It seems the editors decided not to only edit the piece, but to make up actual quotes from this officer, out of thin air, and to attribute feelings to him that he did not have. The result completely changed the meaning of the piece, and gave it an anti-Bush slant.

The Times, in regretting the "error", claims it just ran the wrong piece:

The Op-Ed page in some copies yesterday carried an incorrect version of an article about military recruitment. The writer, an Army reserve officer, did not say, 'Imagine my surprise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday,' nor did he characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a 'surprise tour of Iraq.' That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not. The Times regrets the error.

One wonders, why did they add this fantasy at all?

If that doesn't reveal the subconscious, reflexive bias of the paper, nothing does. That they don't admit this is even more revealing.

Readers are outraged. You can find links to their complaints and the Paper of Record's "explanation" at Powerline and LGF. If you need to register to see that, visit Bugmenot for a working username and password.

So keep that in mind when The Times prints its pro-enemy propaganda, like this piece that begins

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 23 - They just keep getting stronger.

Whose side are they on?

The other side.

The World is Better

To listen too much to the MSM, you'd think we're going to hell in a handbasket.

The fact, however, is things can only be objectively getting better, since we've finally started responding to a war that has been waged against us in secret for a very long time.

The psychotic hate of the jihadists and their twisted culture was always around us; we just didn't notice. It's a common psychological error to now assume that things have gotten worse suddenly very recently, only because everyone's talking about it now.

But to solve a problem it must first be perceived. Spotting the termites eating out your foundations didn't make them suddenly appear; it instead give you a chance to fix things before it all falls apart.

It's this way with gun accidents, for example. You'd think guns in the home, ownded by ordinary law-abiding people, were dangeroud items, because every single time a tragic mishap occurs somewhere in this big country, you hear about it because the media reports it. But many, many more people are killed or injured in more mundane ways every day, but you just don't hear about it.

Ergo, most people have a skewed perception of the relative probability of risk from owning a gun, with respect to, say, owning a backyard swimming pool or a ladder.

Have fun playing with the mortality statistics at the Centers for Disease Control to find out for yourself. Click a link under "unintentional injury" by age range for a breakdown. Firearms are involved in around 1% of the cases.

But in the meantime, reflect how things have really gotten better due to our wake-up call of 9/11, as described by Varifrank, found via The Anchoress:

In 2001, Osama bin Laden traveled the world unmolested. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a bloody iron fist. Pakistan would barely return our phone calls. Saddam tossed UN inspectors out of his country and fired Anti Aircraft weapons at NATO aircraft that were enforcing UN sponsored Sanctions. Libya openly flaunted international conventions on the spread of nuclear weapons. Syria controlled Lebanon as a colony, and Arafat called for martyrs against Israel.

In 2005, Osama can’t go anywhere outside of his close protection of tribal Waziristan, he sleeps in a different bed every night, hunted by the infidel enemy in his own Islamic countryside. He lives in constant fear for his eventual betrayal by men of his own command. His ‘circle of trust’ grows smaller every day. The Taliban now hides in the shadows of the outskirts of afghan cities, while Hilton and Sheraton build new hotels in Kabul and Bagram. Pakistan returns our phone calls, offers help when they can, stays out of the way when they cant. Three million Afghanis left their refugee camps in Pakistan to return home in Afghanistan where free secular democratic elections in which women also vote have now occurred. Saddam is now in a cell awaiting trial and quick hanging, cleaning his own underwear in the sink just above his toilet. His two hell spawn children are dead and buried courtesy of the 101st Airborne and a relative who ratted them out for the reward. Non-believers now occupy Baghdad, the third greatest city in Islam. Libya is now a popular western tourist destination, while the famously anti western Libyan leader Quadaffi now offers to go to North Korea to help convince them to give up nuclear weapons as he has done. Syrian troops have retreated from Lebanon, returning the country to a secular western parliamentary democracy. After a long painful humiliating illness, Arafat is now dead. Palestine is about to be walled off from the rest of the civilized world, despite their protests and bombings of pizza parlors.

In 2001, they killed mostly infidels. In 2005, they kill mostly other Muslims.

In 2001, In Manhattan, DC and Pennsylvania by destroying aircraft and buildings with people in them they killed 3,500. In 2005, they killed 52 with explosives on a bus in London.

In 2001 the call for bloody Jihad was heard throughout the Islamic world. In 2005, the call for freedom and western democracy is heard throughout the Islamic world.

I particularly liked this observation:

In 2001, Aceh Indonesia was a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism where westerners were unwelcome. In 2005, Due to an act of God, Aceh no longer exists.

Ooooo, that's gotta hurt...

Read it all!

Europe Waking Up?

Vaclav Klaus, "indisputably one of the most important Czech politicians of the recent era", having been Czechoslovakia's Prime Minister and now is President of the Czech Republic, is reported in the Prague Daily Monitor to have made a startling declaration:

Klaus says multiculturalism, immigration cause terrorism

Well, that about sums it up! It's true, but who would have believed it would be so clearly stated?

Klaus elaborates,

July 18 -- The excessive openness of the West to immigrants from other cultural environments facilitates attacks by radical Islamists in western countries, President Vaclav Klaus said in an interview printed Saturday in the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD).

"This [openness] is in any case a suitable soil for these things [attacks] to happen," Klaus said.

He said that multiculturalism is a tragic mistake of western civilisation for which all will pay dearly. Such openness is not the direct cause of terror, but it is terrorism's fundamental cause, Klaus said. He compared multiculturalism to the role Marx's teaching played in the crimes of communism.

He said at the same time that multiculturalism is not an explanation for the recent attacks in London. "Multiculturalism is an ideology that says that you should emigrate and to make claim to your civilisation, your group and ethnic interests" in the new countries, Klaus said.

"Mass emigration has emerged as a false ideology according to which there exists a kind of claim, a general human right to wander anywhere around the world," Klaus said.

He added that this suppresses the civil rights of the original inhabitants.

If people leave for a place, they should fully accept the place, Klaus said. He said there is a hope for remedy in that this demand is shared by more and more countries, and that the naive ideas from about 30 years ago no longer apply.

Tax Cuts Work

You wouldn't really know it from conventional wisdom, but the economy is doing really well:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Companies are more productive and more people have jobs. Corporate earnings growth is strong. And while oil prices remain near historic highs, the economy is showing great resilience. Even inflation is a non-issue.

But the news reports look for a hint of bad news wherever they can find it, as positive reporting just sticks in their craw too much. This article continues, for example:

But don't expect a huge surge in stocks.

As if they know where stocks are headed.

Factually, the S&P500 is actually near a 4-year high, but the mood doesn't seem to reflect this.

Not to mention that corporate earnings have been at all-time highs for the past 5 quarters, handily exceeding the level of earnings even at the peak of the dot-com boom. Nobody's really remarking on that, however.

How did we get here?

Bush's tax cuts work.

Look at the "deficit", that at election time was being reported as spiralling out of control; Michael Barone writes:

So the deficit—the federal budget deficit—is declining sharply, more sharply than just about anyone in mainstream media anticipated. According to figures from the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit is projected to decline from $412 billion in 2004 to $333 billion in 2005, a 19 percent decline. OMB further projects, obviously with less certitude, that it will decline to $162 billion in 2008.

If so, that will mean that George W. Bush will have more than kept his promise to cut the deficit in half in his second term. Back in February, OMB projected a 2005 deficit of $427 billion.

"The change from February's projection," writes Jonathan Weisman in the July 14 Washington Post, "is dramatic."

And that's WITH the tax cuts, and WITH the HUGE expenditures for the GWOT! Barone explains:

Why has the deficit declined so rapidly this year? The simple answer is that outlays seem to be increasing by about 7 percent but receipts seem to be increasing by about 15 percent. The Bush tax cuts, like the Reagan and Kennedy tax cuts, seem to be resulting in much more buoyant increases in receipts than the Clinton tax increases did: Just look at the numbers.

And for those who still refuse to see media bias,

The Media Research Center has issued a study showing how the mainstream press treated good economic news in the Clinton years and in the Bush years.

Unsurprisingly, there was a big difference. Good economic news in the Clinton years was presented as good economic news. Good economic news in the Bush years was presented with caveats and warnings that it might not be so good. And this even though many of the basic numbers—GDP percentage increase, unemployment percentages—were almost identical in the two presidents' re-election years of 1996 and 2004.

Here's a little anecdote that's been going aroun the net explaining our tax system. I have it on good authority that the numbers involved are actually essentially correct, and the facts are surprising:

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

* The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
* The fifth would pay $1.
* The sixth would pay $3.
* The seventh $7.
* The eighth $12.
* The ninth $18.
* The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."

So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal. So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

* The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
* The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
* The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
* The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
* The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
* The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money among all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most [apparent] benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore...

It should be noted that the ones who eat "for free" are actually getting paid welfare.

The ingrates should just be happy they aren't being paid in company scrip!

Foolish People

Lately there have been several expressions around the pro-GWOT net of despair over the continued unfathomable denial exercised by the anti-war and apparently suicidal left.

Given the excess of empirical evidence that there is indeed a religiously-motivated war being implacably waged against us by devout muslims according to the imperative for jihad in their ideology, that many still cling to blaming ourselves at this late date is baffling.

For example, see here:

You know, sometimes I honestly despair.

I listened this morning to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal - to the call-in portion of the show. I heard caller after caller after caller spouting absolute drivel until I finally had to turn it off. It actually made me angry. My hands were shaking. That bothered me because I’m not a man given to physical displays of anger.

What made me so angry was not that those callers were in possession of the facts and drew a different conclusion than I. It was that their facts were so wrong. Not just that, but they were wrong about things that any elementary-school kid who can use Google could find out. They were wrong about facts that were so easy to verify, if they had only put forth a basic amount of effort.

It was like listening to people condemning the voyage of the Queen Mary because they just knew it would fall off the edge of the world.

I hear that and I despair because I can only draw two conclusions: 1) that they have heard the facts and choose not to believe them; or 2) that they’re too damned lazy to find out the facts themselves.

How in God’s name can we ever fight a war when so many of our people can’t be bothered to make sure they have their facts straight before they condemn how we’re fighting it? I mean, how could we have posibly won World War II if so many of our population believed, for instance, that the President had engineered Pearl Harbor just to get us into the war, or believed that the Nazis were fighting solely because of Versailles?

We couldn’t have.

Read it all. It concludes,

We are going to have to turn our backs on these people. We are going to have to say plainly that they are foolish, that they are wrong, and that their unpatriotic drivel and obsession with hating our President and our nation means defeat and death and slavery. We are going to have to be blunt and plain and say that their words are as deadly to our freedoms and liberties as any car bomb or subway attack.

Dr. Sanity has looked at various psychological reasons that such defense mechanism as projection and denial would be at work.

And Prof. Victor Hanson details the defeatist "false narrative" that the left clings to, that revolves around the three key themes of moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, and the cult of multiculturalism:

These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.

These articles of faith apparently fill a deep psychological need for millions of Westerners, guilty over their privilege, free to do anything without constraints or repercussions, and convinced that their own culture has made them spectacularly rich and leisured only at the expense of others.

So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.

This is nothing new.

But why does it seem to infect so many people today? One reason must be that simply, propaganda works, by and large. Most people, apparently, don't really know what to think, as they are dimly aware that they simply don't have all the facts, and so out of a strong desire to conform, just toe the line of "acceptable opinion." Not only is it scary and difficult to face the fact of an enemy, it's also really hard to not submit to peer pressure.

Against both of those hurdles, the will to face harsh, unpleasant reality falters.

When the media provides patriotic, pro-war and pro-America movies and viewpoints, as it did in abundance during ww2, everyone appears unified.

But when they relentlessly attack, the big third or so of people in the middle can easily have doubt placed in their minds.

I recall hearing somewhere that during the American Revolution, actually only about a third of the colonists supported the long and demoralizing war (Washington lost every one of his campaigns -- until the last one). One third remained Tories and the middle third didn't really care.

But we still won.

So don't despair.

The one-third or so of us that have our facts straight and our analysis well-considered can move mountains; we're far stronger in resources than our colonial Forefather Patriots.

It would be far easier to win, and tragically at probably far lower human cost, however, if the MSM and hollywood elites were on the right side of history.

Their deadweight that we must drag along to victory will be to their eternal shame.

And in the meantime, we must just turn out backs on the Foolish People.

How We Win

The GWOT doesn't have to be some kind of Forever War.

There are certain specific objectives that, once achieved, will likely spell the end of the current "war" stage of the onging containment of the islamic ideology of jihad against the Dar al Harb -- the "House of War" -- which happens to be where you and your family live, making your children officially legitimate targets:

Al-Siba’i: The term “civilians” does not exist in Islamic religious law. Dr. Karmi is sitting here, and I am sitting here, and I’m familiar with religious law. There is no such term as “civilians” in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not....If Al-Qaeda indeed carried out this act, it is a great victory for it. It rubbed the noses of the world’s eight most powerful countries in the mud.

Is al-Sibai some crazy lunatic?

Or is he the Director of London’s Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies?

That's London, England.

He proclaimed that after the murder of 54 people by allah's assassins.

And you know what, it's indeed just a statement of fact of what mohammed's con-game criminal-enterprise preaches.

But I digress.

The money comes from Saudi Arabia, which funds the only "schools" in the most ignorant and primitive parts of the world, and thus brainwashes hordes of raw material to be murderbots according to their still-pure islamic creed.

That's the funny thing about the so-called "extreme" or "radical" wahabbi-islam coming from Saudi Arabia. That's where it all started. They're the originals. That's really just the unadulterated, unchanging, "correct" practice of islam as it was intended by its founder.

Accept no substitutes!

Safe haven and state-support is provided by the thugocracy of Iran.

So the solution is simple.

1. Cut off the oil revenue from the Saudis by seizing the oil fields. Cut the Chinese, Russians, and French in on the deal and they'll love it. Hey, that pretty much looks like the Security Council. Let the UN do something for a change and even let them run it, who cares how poorly and corruptly they do, it'll be better than having it go to the Saudis and directly to the terrorist indoctrination centers. Break "Saudi" Arabia up into some emirates. Those arrogant bandit-kings need to be shown they've outlived their usefulness and what the Western Powers installed, the Western Powers can remove. The oppressed Shia in the South wouldn't mind at all.

Rumors are that the oil fields are rigged with explosives. I don't believe it. An accident would be too big a risk. Givign all that money to pre-modern medieval nomads a good 1500 years behind us in cultural evolution was an enormous mistake, and has done them much harm as well -- much like when children of the ultra-wealthy inherit too much money and never really have to become real useful, productive adults.

2. End the evil regime in Iran. Just give the people some help. Find out what's going on here.

Despite recent crackdowns and executions — the leadup to the installation of new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — hundreds of Iranians demonstrated at Tehran University on Ganji’s behalf earlier this week. The regime’s response was remarkably vicious, even by their own low standards.
...
During the days that followed dissidents demonstrated on behalf of all political prisoners, and carried banners reading "Death to Despotism" and "Long Live Liberty." The numbers were smaller, and the regime moved in, using clubs, chains, knives, and iron knuckles. Hashem Aghajari, the well-known writer who was imprisoned for years and has paid for his bravery with the loss of a leg, was attacked by security forces with such violence that his artificial limb was separated from his body. Leaders of the Student Unity Organization — Mohammed Hashemi, Mohammed Sedeghi, and Nasser Ashjari — were rounded up and jailed. Any student found with a banner or poster was arrested, and all cellular phone communication in the University area was jammed.

And yet the protests continue, to the near-total indifference of the media of the so-called civilized world (the most notable exception being John Batchelor, whose late-night radio broadcasts have been a rare source of information on Iran). In the township of Mehabad in Kurdistan province, thousands of people demonstrated on July 11 against the murder of a Kurdish activist named Shovaneh Ghaderi. The demonstrators chanted "Death to the Islamic Republic," and "Death to Khamenei." The demonstrators were clubbed and beaten, at least one was killed, and significant numbers were arrested. On the 12th there was a work stoppage, nominally to protest the economic misery of the city, despite the torrent of petrodollars pouring into the mullahs’ coffers.

The mullahs tried to organize an attack by common criminals against the political prisoners in Karaj prison, but it was miraculously foiled.
...
As luck would have it, recent articles in the Arab press have unearthed even more evidence of Iran’s support for bin Laden and al Qaeda.

That would pretty much do it.

The only loose end to tie up is Pakistan, which provides much of the manpower to be brainwashed by the Saudi ideology, given its incredibly backward "tribal regions". It's a fake country that shouldn't exist. It was purely a creation stemming from Britain's withdrawal from the region; the name is even just an acronym, PAK standing for the ethnicities of Pashtun-Afghani-Kashmiri. If Musharraf can't tame it, split it up and take away its nukes.

Then we can put our attention where it really belongs, on China.

BEIJING (AFP) - China refused to retract statements made by a leading general that it would use nuclear weapons to repulse a US military intervention over Taiwan despite Washington's criticism of the remarks.

Look for our new ally, Australia, to play a bigger role with us in the Pacific to contain China and the islamists in Indonesia and the Phillipines.

Morally Lazy

From a comment at LGF, an excerpt from Midge Decter's essay in Terrorism: How the West Can Win

"The theory of grievances is not a misguided effort to explain or understand terrorism. Rather, it is intended to deny the application of the normal moral code to the terrorist. Driven to murder by his inability to lawfully achieve his ends in an indifferent world, he is to be beyond the bounds of ordinary moral responsibility and judgement."

"The day that no one dares or cares to name these people for what they are, accomplices in murder, is the day the democracies will truly have something to fear from terrorism. Historians looking back on us from that dark world . . . will not say, `They were too good, and innocent, and freedom-loving to protect themselves.' They will say, `They were too morally lazy to do whatever was necessary to keep their blessings alive for the rest of us.'"

If we get out of this without a nuclear strike, it will be looked on by future generations as at best "a close-run thing."

We may yet however be too lazy to survive.

Duh

The courts get it right:

WASHINGTON - A Guantanamo detainee who once was Osama bin Laden's driver can be tried by military tribunal, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, apparently clearing the way for the Pentagon to resume trials suspended when a lower court ruled the procedures unlawful.
...
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni.

More broadly it said that the 1949 Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war does not apply to al-Qaida and its members. That supports a key assertion of the Bush administration, which has faced international criticism for holding hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay without full POW protections.
...
In Friday's ruling, the three judges said the commission itself is...a competent tribunal, and that Hamdan could assert his claim to prisoner of war status at the time of his trial before a military commission.
...
The Pentagon has said it is developing charges against others, and it maintains that those not charged could be held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

Naturally, just like as is usual with enemies in wartime. This court understands this is a war.

Rushdie Speaks

Rushdie writes,

WASHINGTON (AFP) - British novelist Salman Rushdie said both India and Pakistan need to overcome a "culture" of rape that oppresses women.

"The 'culture' of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame," Rushdie wrote in an opinion column published Sunday in the New York Times.

"Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can."

Women in Pakistan are often subjected to brutal crimes such as murder, rape and being burnt with acid.
...
Rushdie also criticized India, saying the legal system should not recognize decisions by Muslim legal experts such as those from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom that deny women their rights.

"At the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom," Rushdie wrote.

It's not a fringe when it officially runs the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Extending this "Sharia" law is the goal of the islamists, and it's no fantasy.