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The real "appeasement" questions
Posted by: McQ
Dave Nalle comments on the Bush "appeasement" kerfuffle and Obama's reaction:
As Obama rides the mighty wave of enthusiasm into the Democratic nomination, I wonder why his supporters aren't more concerned about his ongoing display of what can only be described as a fatal level of naiveté and poor judgment born of inexperience which could well doom his campaign.
The latest example is his reaction to Bush's comments before the Israeli Knesset. Bush made a general comment, accusing 'some people' of naively leaning towards appeasement with terrorist regimes. Bush didn't mention the Democrats and didn't even make an oblique reference to Obama, though the media immediately jumped on the speech and turned it into an accusation against Obama. He could just as easily have been talking about the useless leaders of the European Union.
Obama could have wisely ignored the comment, or brushed it off with a comment about Bush's foolish warmongering, but instead he proved that he was as naive as Bush accused him of being by reacting in a defensive way which made it clear he assumed the comments were about him, and that he believed there were legitimate grounds for accusing him of being an appeaser. Even if Bush may have very well meant to target the Democrats or Obama with his comments, he didn't explicitly do so. Obama did that for him.
Nalle hits on what has puzzled me about the Obama reaction. Why react at all? By reacting, doesn't Obama necessarily admit to Bush's premise but argue it is false? Wouldn't the smarter political long-term move be to ignore it and not grant the premise legitimacy?
US News and World Report quotes Karl Rove about the politics of Obama's reply:
Karl Rove, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said he thinks Sen. Obama's response to Bush's remarks was "very smart politics" in the short term "meaning next Tuesday. ... Broader frame, going up to November, I'm not certain it's a smart move. If the argument is who's a better commander in chief, who's going to be tougher on foreign policy, then the answer is going to be John McCain."
The basic point to be made about "talks" is well made by, of all people, Thomas Friedman:
[T]he right question for the next president isn't whether we talk or don't talk. It's whether we have leverage or don't have leverage.
When you have leverage, talk. When you don't have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore.
So the question to be answered by Obama is, given his declaration that he will hold presidential level talks with no preconditions with terrorist regimes, what leverage will he take into them?
If, as I suspect, the answer is none, then why can't the planned talks be characterized as "appeasement", even if Bush wasn't specifically talking about Obama when he made the comment?
Appeasement and Its Discontents
Obama & Dubya.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
So spoke President’s Bush to the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish state last week. Ostensibly the president’s historical references made perfect sense for a variety of reasons. First, the state of Israel is inextricably a result of the Holocaust — a genocide that was in itself the logical consequence of an ascendant Nazi state, whose industry of death might could been circumvented by concerted action earlier in the late 1930s by the then stronger liberal democracies.
Bush was assuring the Israelis that the United States would not, in contrast to liberal democracies of the past, appease states and organizations intent on killing Jews by the millions.
Second, Bush’s warning came in a climate of fear and weariness in the West, in which calls to meet without preconditions with both Iran and Hamas — the former state whose president has forecast the impending destruction of Israel, the latter terrorist organization whose charter hinges on the end of the Jewish state — have been voiced by several public figures, most prominently in recent days by former President Carter.
Third, the warning about appeasement comes not just after, and in implied defense, of military action in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but in the case of the United States, also after the September 11 catastrophe, which itself followed a decade of bipartisan inability to confront and respond to a number of al-Qaeda serial provocations.
The speech caused outrage among Democrats who insisted that it was “appalling” and a “smear” on Barack Obama, who has advocated talks, without preconditions, with Iran, and who had been informally endorsed by a Hamas official, and who had recently fired a Middle Eastern adviser, Robert Malley, for meeting with Hamas leaders. Obama fired off the following reply:
It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack...It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel…George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.
Three questions are raised by this controversy. First: What constitutes appeasement in the 21st-century age of globalization? Second: If President Bush had wished to imply a connection with the unnamed Barack Obama, how fair would such a charge have been? Third: Has President Bush himself followed his own advice and shunned the appeasement of “with terrorists and radicals”?
Most define appeasement not by the mere willingness on occasion to negotiate with enemies (i.e., the heads of nation states rather than criminal terrorist cliques). Rather, appeasement is an overriding desire to avoid war or confrontation to such a degree so as to engage in a serial pattern of behavior that results in an accommodation of an enemy’s demands — and ultimately the inadvertent enhancement of its agendas. Key here is the caveat that there must muscular alternatives to appeasement, as was true with a rather weak 1936 Nazi Germany or a non-nuclear theocratic Iran.
Talking with an Iranian theocrat like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad per se might not necessarily constitute appeasement. But continuing such talks without preconditions that made no progress in curbing Iranian nuclear agendas, or support for Hezbollah terrorists and Shiite militias in Iraq would not only be futile, but encourage further Iranian adventurism — by the assurance that negotiations were infinite and there would be few lines in the sand and little chance of military opposition to follow. In our era, the locus classicus of appeasement is the near decade of negotiations, empty threats, and drawnout diplomacy with Slobodan Milosevic, in which with virtual impunity he butchered thousands of Croats, Kosovars, and Bosnians — until a belated bombing war forced him to capitulate.
Bush in his Knesset address may have acknowledged that expansive notion of appeasement when he elaborated on his “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” line, with the proviso of futility — namely that such talking assumed an “ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” In addition, Bush’s example — that when “Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided” — suggests that his reference to appeasement meant not just one-time talking, but delusional and persistent engagement that is oblivious to facts on the ground.
If the president also meant to include Obama among those who would engage in such appeasement, would there be any evidence for such a view? Obama himself has never been in a position of exercising executive judgments, so we have only his campaign statements from which to surmise. In this regard, we certainly know that Obama is willing to meet any and all our enemies without preconditions. During a televised debate he was asked directly whether he would agree “to meet separately, without precondition . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea,” Obama replied: “I would.”
His website amplifies that answer with the boast that “Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.” The problem here would not be in theory talking with an Iran or Syria — Sec. of Defense Gates on numerous occasions has advocated negotiations with Teheran — but in a priori signaling to tyrants such an eagerness to elevate their grievances to head-of-state diplomacy. Under what conditions, how long, and to what degree Obama would be willing to exercise non-diplomatic options when talks proved futile would adjudicate whether his preference for unconditional talks devolved from diplomacy to appeasement.
If a President Obama were to enter into multiple negotiations with Iran, and if Iran were to continue to subvert the Lebanese government and threaten Israel through its surrogate Hezbollah, and continue to develop a nuclear arsenal while promising the destruction of Israel, at what point would he be willing not merely to cease talking, but to accept that his negotiations had done more harm than good and thus required a radical change of course — and would it be in time?
Given President Bush’s admonitions about appeasement, does the president practice what he preaches?
That depends on a variety of factors such as whether enemies are nuclear or not, whom exactly we define as adversaries — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Sudan, Libya? — and to what degree our existing negotiations are proving not only futile, but emboldening our enemies by the assurance that we will neither cease diplomacy nor threaten the use of force.
Both the president and Obama, in arguing abstractly over appeasement, do not factor in such realist concerns of leverage that govern decisions to negotiate, such as exporting ten million barrels a day of scarce oil (Saudi Arabia), the possession of nuclear weapons in the hands of an unstable government (Pakistan and North Korea), or the unwillingness of American public opinion to support an armed intervention (Darfur).
In that regard, Barack Obama shows his own inexperience when he evokes past summits that a John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan conducted with the nuclear Soviets — contemporary rivalries in which escalation to nuclear annihilation was a real worry, and at the time Soviet combatants (as is true in Iraq) were not killing our own soldiers.
In short, nothing in the president’s speech was inaccurate, inflammatory, or hypocritical. Whether Barack Obama believes he was a target of the president’s rhetoric, or whether he would engage in appeasement, hinges on whether his overeagerness to talk without preconditions to the world’s thugs and rogues would persist in the face of unpleasant facts — and so make the likelihood of eventual military action more, rather than less, likely.
— Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson senior fellow in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
“Ok, We Can Agree to a Maximum Temperature of 68 Degrees In Our Homes and Apartments…”
Imagining the Negotiation
By blackhedd
By now you’ve all heard the widely-quoted line that Obama gave to 75,000 of his closest friends in Portland yesterday. Roughly, “You can’t drive your SUVs, eat what you want, and heat your homes to 72 degrees and expect other countries to just say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”
Think every word of that through very carefully. If it’s not going to happen that we’re going to be heating our homes and apartments to the temperature we choose, then why not?
Obama isn’t even President, but he’s already negotiating with other countries on our behalf.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be as concerned that the Messiah has signaled his intention to negotiate with people who have sworn to destroy our country and Israel. What he just told us is that he intends to negotiate how we drive, eat, and heat our homes with other countries. Something tells me that it’s going to be a really big winner with those bitter voters in swing states, to tell them that they’ll have to dial their thermostats down, because it’s not fair to other countries if we set them as we see fit.
One wonders what Obama hopes to get in return. To China, perhaps: “We agree to a maximum temperature of 68 degrees in our homes. You have to agree to stop buying so many automobiles from General Motors.” China’s response: “Ok, as long as we’re allowed to nationalize the factories GM is already running in our country.” Obama: “Done. Next point…”
If nothing else, he’s now made completely clear his view that the answer to the global energy problem is for Americans to net-reduce our usage of energy, even before more efficient technologies become available. To Obama, this is leadership. He may suppose that everyone else will say “if you do that, we’ll do it too.” Their actual response is more likely to be: ”Thanks for the cheaper energy, suckers.
-Francis Cianfrocca
GOP Drinking Its Bath Water
By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, at age 38 and having served less than five terms, did not leap over a dozen of his seniors to become ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee by bashing GOP leaders. But an angry Ryan last Wednesday delivered unscripted remarks on the House floor as the farm bill neared passage: "This bill is an absence of leadership. This bill shows we are not leading."
Ryan's fellow reformer, 45-year-old Jeff Flake of Arizona, in his fourth term, is less cautious about defying the leadership and has been kept off key committees. On Wednesday, he said of a $300 billion bill that raises farm subsidies and is filled with non-farm pork, "Sometimes, here in Washington, we tend to drink our own bath water and believe our own press releases."
A majority of both Senate and House Republicans voted for a bill that raises spending 44 percent above last year's, dooming chances to sustain President Bush's promised veto. GOP leaders were divided, with Bush sounding an uncertain trumpet. Today's Republican Party -- divided, drifting, demoralized -- is epitomized by the farm bill.
At the moment Congress passed the farm bill, Republican were terrified by the previous day's defeat in the Mississippi 1st Congressional District, the third straight supposedly safe Republican seat lost in special elections. Fearing a November tsunami for the Democrats, incumbent Republicans talked about following their new standard-bearer, John McCain, against pork. But that's not the way they voted last week.
George W. Bush was just as ambivalent last week. In 2002, he signed a massive farm bill. But with Democrats in control of Congress, Bush preaches the old time religion. Addressing the House Republican caucus behind closed doors at the White House May 7, he disclosed that he would veto the farm bill, then implied it was all right if members "voted their districts" -- that is, if the "aggies" supported the bill. This message was pressed on his colleagues by Rep. Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee.
Nevertheless, would the party's leadership in Congress push hard enough to produce enough votes to sustain a veto? There was never any hope in the Senate, where Republican Leader Mitch McConnell not only supported the farm bill but earmarked a tax provision benefiting horse farms in his state of Kentucky. But in the House, Republican Leader John Boehner always has been anti-pork, even if passive about exhorting other Republicans to follow his example.
On May 9, Flake sent Boehner a candid letter: "We need more than individual members of the Republican leadership to state their opposition to the bill. We need the leadership to use its good offices to explain the importance of sustaining the president's veto as opposed to advising members to 'vote their districts.'"
Boehner, waiting four days before responding, last Tuesday rejected the "vote their districts" escape for House Republicans: "I believe they should also vote their consciences, and cast their votes in a manner consistent with the small government principles upon which our party was founded." Boehner took the floor Wednesday to speak against the bill.
But nobody cracked the party whip. On the contrary, Minority Whip Roy Blunt voted for the bill. So did Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, who was seen whipping votes for passage. House Republicans voted 100 to 91 to approve the bill (with only 15 Democrats in opposition), assuring an overriden veto. Similarly, in the Senate, Republicans voted 35 to 13 for the bill, and the only Democrats opposing it were Rhode Island's two senators.
That did not conclude the dismal Republican performance for the week, as lawmakers raced out Thursday for their usual long weekend. Seventeen pork-minded Republican senators gave the Democratic leadership necessary support to waive from the farm bill the brand new ban of earmarks on a bill that had cleared both houses. Thirty-two craven Republican House members voted for upper-bracket tax increases to finance new veterans benefits. They all return to work this week to encounter a new comprehensive reform introduced by Paul Ryan on health care, Social Security and taxes -- titled "A Roadmap for American's Future." If anybody needs a roadmap, it's Ryan's colleagues.
A perfect example of why the approval rating for Congress is in the single digits
The "culture of corruption" knows no party
"Jimmy Carter without the rabbits"
qazwiniobama.jpg
On May 14 Barack Obama held a private meeting at Macomb Community College with Hassan Qazwini. Qazwini is the leader of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Debbie Schlussel describes Qazwini as Hezbollah's most important imam and agent in America.
Obama's meeting with Qazwini came to light because of a brief report in the Detroit Free Press (with the photo above) deriving from Qazwini and his mosque. The Obama campaign has not itself posted any news account or press release regarding the meeting on its Obama News page. A Google News search on "Obama Qazwini" shows that news of the meeting has essentially remained a closely guarded secret.
The Free Press account states that the two discussed the presidential election, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Iraq war, according to Qazwini. Schlussel asks why "this open anti-Semite and supporter of Israel's annihilation" was afforded the privilege of discussing "the Arab-Israeli conflict" in a private one-on-one meeting with Obama. Perhaps they were discussing what Obama referred to as the "legitimate claims" of Hamas and Hezbollah in his chat with David Brooks.
Schlussel has followed Qazwini's career for the past 10 years, decrying President Bush's meetings with Qazwini during the 2000 presidential campaign as well as in connection with the formulation of his faith-based initiative. Schlussel reports:
Qazwini is very open about his support for Palestinian homicide bombings, HAMAS, and Hezbollah. And he's a good friend of Hezbollah spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah--the man who issued the fatwa to Hezbollah terrorists to murder over 300 U.S. Marines and U.S. Embassy civilians in cold blood. Qazwini's mosque has held rallies and celebrations in support of Hezbollah, and many of Hezbollah's biggest money-launderers and agents in America are his congregants.
When I went undercover to his mosque in 1998, he and others welcomed Nation of Islam chief racist Louis Farrakhan as "our dear brother" and "a freedom fighter." Qazwini applauded Farrakhan's anti-Semitic statements saying that Jews were the "forces of Satan" and that there needed to be a "jihad" on the American people.
Schlussel has more on her 1998 undercover visit to Qazwini's mosque at the time of Farrakhan's visit in her October 2001 post.
Did I say "bad translation"...? I was pretty sure I said "lie".
Dhimmi dhimmi dhimmi- you're really good at suspending any rational thought to bolster Israels enemies. There have been numerous statements since stating the same thing, but yeah, Iran are just good guys being picked on by the imperialist US
Yeah, I'm sure HAMAS has a beef with Israel, and I'm sure it's justified
Your controlling thought- Israel is guilty forever and des reves whatever Hamas does to them, no matter how heinous.
If a native American came to your house- he had a legitimate beef with the white man , no ? and raped you would you just say " right on my brother, I deserved that?
Despite the fact that you'd enjoy it immensely, it's a ridiculous stance
You justify any action against Israel because of your self loathing hatred
Hamas cease fire- !!! you're such a fkn idiot
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: A review essay
By Robert Kaplan
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History
Edited by Andrew G. Bostom
Amherst, N. Y. : Prometheus Books, 2008
Were Jews living in Islamic societies victims of antisemitism? If so, to what extent? How did conditions for Jews in the Moslem East compare with those in Christian Europe? Is Islam intrinsically antisemitic? Are today's Moslems more antisemitic than those of the past and if so, why? These questions have been the subject of vigorous discussion over the past few decades.
Andrew Bostom's new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, brings massive evidence to show that Jews suffered greatly in Moslem societies due to an antisemitism intrinsic to the Moslem religion. In this he goes against the commonly held belief that Jews under Islam suffered relatively little for being Jewish and that Islam itself is relatively tolerant, ideas put forward by the philosophes of the Enlightenment as part of their battle with the Catholic Church, by Jewish historians who contrasted a mythical Muslim past with their own lachrymose conception of the history of their own people in Christian Europe and by contemporary historians of Islam, many of whom tend to view Moslem antisemitism through rose-colored glasses.
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism is a large collection of a broad range of readings from a paragraph to several pages in length, smoothly joined together by Bostom's own writing. Included are the portions of Islamic scriptures relating to Jews, writing of Moslem scholars, preachers and rulers, writing of Jews who lived in Moslem societies and the reports of Jewish and gentile visitors to Moslem societies as well as writing of Western scholars who have studied various aspects of the experience of Jews in Islam.
The fact that Bostom's is a collection of direct quotations allows it to convey emotional tone far better than the usual scholarly writing where the author's impartial academic voice predominates. Travelers, diplomats and alien residents over the centuries have expressed emotions of sympathy, indignation and compassion regarding the situation of the Jews of Islam which academic authors are reluctant to employ. From their writing we learn telling details of the Jewish condition. For example a Christian traveler in Persia describes a Jew (who by Moslem law has no right of self defense) pleading with a Moslem who is beating his son to beat him instead.
A broad survey, Bostom's book informs readers about an area of history unfamiliar to most. Whereas readers will know of many cases of persecution of Jews in Christendom (the Crusades, the expulsion of the Jews from England, France, various German states and Spain, the Inquisition, the Chmielnicki massacres, the Kishinev pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair and so on), few will be able to point to similar occurrences in the history of Jews under Islam. Bostom fills in the canvas of such events.
One might have heard of the 1839 forced conversion of the Jews of Meshed, Iran (one of the four examples of Muslim persecution of Jews mentioned in the approximately one half page devoted to the subject in the Encyclopaedia Judaica's 72 page article on "anti-Semitism") but know nothing of the 4,000 Jews killed in Moslem riots in Grenada in 1066, the 6,000 Jews massacred in Fez in 1033, the hundreds of Jews slaughtered in Muslim Cordoba between 1010 and 1015, the Almohad depredations of Jews and Christians in Spain and North Africa between 1130 and 1232, the 1834 pogrom in Safed where raging mobs killed hundreds of Jews, the 1888 massacres of Jews in Isfahan and Shiraz Iran, the oppressive conditions imposed on Jews in Hamadan Iran in 1892, the 1910 pogrom in Shiraz, the pillage of the ghetto of Fez Morocco in 1912, the pillage and destruction of the Casablanca ghetto in 1907, the 1679 expulsion of 10,000 Jews of Yemen to the unlivably hot and dry Plain of Tihami from which only 1,000 returned alive in 1680.
One might have heard of the 1941 pogrom in Iraq but be unaware of the 1291 pogroms in Baghdad and its environs.
Readers will be familiar with the Koran's description of Jews as descendants of apes and pigs but probably not be aware of numerous other ugly and antagonistic references to Jews in Islam's sacred writing: that Jews are the greatest enemies of Islam, that Jews are associated with Satan, the Jews killed Mohammad, that the Jews falsified their sacred books in order to expunge all references to Mohammad and more.
One might know that under Islam's rules dhimmis (Christians and Jews) are not allowed to ride horses but be unfamiliar with numerous other restrictions, limitations, humiliations, indignities and abuses they prescribe: the poll tax (jizyah) required from each dhimmi and paid in a manner calculated to demean the payer, the dress codes that enforce on dhimmis undignified attire, the compulsory wearing of a colored patch of cloth to identify the wearer as a Jewish or Christian dihmmi, the requirement to address Moslems with honorific terms, the denial of the right of self defense against attack by a Moslem and more.
It is fairly well known that before Israeli rule of the Old City of Jerusalem it was common for Jews coming to pray at the Western Wall to be pelted with stones by Moslems. From Bostom's book one learns that throwing stones at Jews was common throughout the history of Islam, as was spitting upon them, hitting them, and pulling their beards.
Bostom's book is part of an ongoing debate about the comparative situation of Jews under the crescent and the cross. In this debate Bostom is in sharp disagreement with Bernard Lewis, the well known and much quoted authority on the history of Islam. Lewis has written:
"On the whole, in contrast to Christian anti-Semitism, the Moslem attitude toward non Moslems [including Jews] is not one of hate or fear or envy but simply contempt."
"Jews of Christendom suffered incomparably greater persecution [than the Jews of Islam]. Persecution, that is to say violent and active repression was rare and atypical. Jews and Christians [dhimmis] under Moslem rule were not normally called upon to suffer martyrdom for their faith."
"They [the Jews] were not often obliged to make the choice which confronted Muslims and Jews in reconquered Spain, between exile apostasy and death."
How is it that Lewis and Bostom evaluate Islamic antisemitism and the experience of Jews living in Muslim societies so differently, given the fact that though they might disagree on a few particular points of fact, the body of information they begin with is essentially the same?
Bostom's picture of Moslem antisemitism is much more somber than Lewis's. One source of difference lies in the fact that compared with Lewis's his writing includes considerably more detail of the anti-Jewish elements in Islamic religion, culture and history. By quoting the words of Jews who lived under the Muslims and non-Moslems visiting their lands, Bostom's text conveys emotions of sympathy and indignation regarding the oppressed condition of Jews which Lewis's academic, non-emotional style largely omits.
The structure of Lewis's and Bostom's arguments are also quite different. Employing a genetic approach, Bostom shows that Islam's holy books, the Koran, the hadith and the sira all have sharply negative things to say about Jews, that these have been emphasized and reinforced by Moslem thinkers, jurists and preachers throughout the history of Islam, and that the attitudes and ideas engendered by them have directly influenced the actions of Moslem rulers, clergy and mobs both in their oppression of Jews as dhimmis and their aggressive excesses against Jews which have included pogroms, forced conversion, pillage and expulsion. The status of dhimmi to which Jews and Christians are relegated under Islamic law is one entailing serious suffering and indignity in the best of circumstances. Frequently circumstances were far from the best.
Lewis puts Islam's record regarding Jews in a favorable light mainly with the generalizations he makes rather than the particular facts he marshals. These generalizations, which crumble under the slightest scrutiny, are of four general types. One holds that the least onerous version of Moslem oppression is typical of Moslem practice [Lewis writes "dhimmitude was a minor inconvenience Jews learned to live with ...under Muslim rule the status of dhimmi was long accepted with gratitude by Jews." In making this improbable claim he gives no evidence or explanation. Could he mean that the Jews were grateful for not being killed?]
A second type of generalization claims that the worst of the behavior of Christians towards Jews was the norm. ["Jews of Christendom suffered incomparably greater persecution (than Jews of Islam). Persecution (under Islam), that is to say violent and active repression was rare and atypical. Jews and Christians (dhimmis) under Moslem rule were not normally called upon to suffer martyrdom for their faith. ...They (the Jews) were not often obliged to make the choice which confronted Muslims and Jews in reconqured Spain, between apostasy and death." Besides employing a peculiarly narrow definition of "oppression" which excludes all disabilities of dhimmitude, Lewis implies that Jews in Christendom were often obliged to suffer martyrdom for their faith or make a choice "between apostasy and death" -- both of which are simply untrue.]
A third variety of generalization employed by Lewis claims that Muslim abuses are far less bad than the worst imaginable abuses by non-Moslems.["Dhimmitude involves some rights...and is surely better that no rights at all. It is certainly preferable to the kind of situation that prevails in many states at the present time where minorities and for that matter where the majority enjoy no civil or human rights." Offering no evidence or examples, Lewis writes as if there is any place on Earth where the majority of residents have "no rights at all."]
A fourth type of generalization ascribes to "human nature" rather than Islam, with no basis of evidence, the unattractive characteristics exhibited by Moslems [After describing the intense anti-Semitism in the Arab world today Lewis tacks on the generalization that "No people is immune from the universal disease of ethnic or social hostility and the Arabs are no exception. Obviously Arabs are as liable (my italics) as Germans, Russians or Jews or anyone else to develop hostilities against other peoples; and their history and literature bear ample witness to this." Lewis's suggestion that hatred is a trait shared by all peoples equally -- Germans, Russians and Jews, Britons, Italians, Canadians, Australians -- as if raging mobs, as familiar in the annals of Moslem history as to today's television viewers, are typical of all peoples; as if hate filled speeches by clerics are common in all religions; as if survey statistics of harbored hatred are not vastly higher among Moslems than among others; as if Moslem converts to Christianity do not regularly report their revulsion at the hatred which saturates the Moslem religion with which they were familiar. Replace Moslems with Danes, British, Russians Jews, Brazilians, Japanese or whoever and imagine, if you can, raging mobs rioting and killing over a newspaper cartoon.]
In addition to his generalizations Lewis employs clever reasoning to arrive at conclusions that are at least semantically if not in substance favorable to Islam. To reach the conclusion that Moslems were not until recently "anti-Semites" he begins by stating that
"anti-Semitism" [has] "hitherto been regarded as a specifically Christian disease - a certain attitude to Jews arising from the gospel narratives of the foundation of the Christian faith"
and goes on to say
"...anti-Semitism [is] a hatred which is unique in its persistence, its universality, its profundity and above all its theological and psychological origins.... In what follows the term anti-Semitism will be limited to ...that special and peculiar hatred of Jews which has its origins in the role assigned to Jews in certain Christian writing and beliefs concerning the genesis of their faith, and which has found modern expression in such works as the Protocols and similar portrayals of a universal Jewish plot against both God and mankind. In this special sense anti-Semitism did not exist in the traditional Moslem world."
Does this mean there was not hatred of Jews in the traditional Moslem world? Not at all. Lewis writes regarding Arabs during World War II:
"the Nazi war against the Jews won enthusiastic support ...Hatred was deep and violent, and expressed in the strongest language, but it was still in the main traditional rather than anti-Semitic in its terms."
Does this mean the emotion driving the plundering, expulsions, forced conversions and slaughter of Jews in the "traditional Moslem world" was not hatred? Although an unwary reader might get the impression that the answers to these questions is "yes" a reading of Lewis's words and a moment of thought should make it clear that the answer to both is "no."
How does Lewis reach the conclusion that anti-Semitism is unknown to classical Islam? He defines "anti-Semitism" as hatred of Jews according to Christian doctrine, not simply hatred of Jews. In doing so he distorts the ordinary meaning of "antisemitism" which in contemporary English means hatred of Jews.
There is a natural tendency for readers engaged with a text of history to seek a distillation of the author's conclusions set off from the mass of details of his work. The reader feels gratitude toward the author who summarizes his conclusions and hands them to him, so to speak, on a silver platter. Bernard Lewis is such an author. Unfortunately his conclusions are quite disconnected and even contrary to the details of his writing.
This said, Lewis's writing about Muslim and Jews should not be dismissed. Key to his thinking is the idea, which seems reasonable enough, that in recent years Arab Moslem hatred of Jews has become especially widespread and intense. Lewis holds that in the past Moslems scorned Jews as dhimmis but that now they hate and fear them in the manner of the worst of the Jew haters in the Christian West. In this context Lewis's writing about Jews and Moslems can be understood as an appeal to what he calls "the Arab intelligentsia" to bring forth an Emile Zola who will raise his voice against anti-Semitism as the French Zola [Lewis supposes] did at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and turn back Muslims from a headlong rush toward the kind of Jew hatred that came to dominate German minds in the Nazi era. Seen in this light Lewis's writing about Jews in Islam is a call on Moslems to return to their better selves, to their old ways in which Jews were dhimmis worthy of scorn, but not devils worthy of destruction.
Lewis dates the turning of Arab Muslims from the old ways when Jews were scorned as dhimmis to a new white hot Jew hatred in which Jews are seen as devils to the Suez campaign of 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967. He explains this new Arab antisemitism as resulting from Israel's overwhelming military victories against Arab armed forces. According to traditional Arab thinking Jews are cowardly dhimmis, not fighters. Yet they had crushed Arab armies. The only explanation, Arabs came to believe, was that Israel must have benefited from a world-wide Jewish conspiracy of the kind put forward in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Although Lewis's dating of the Moslem/Arab turn toward white hot hatred of Jews would seem to be correct, his explanation is partial at best.
If the 1956 Suez campaign was a military defeat for Egypt, it was a political defeat for France and massive political defeat for Great Britain at the hands of the United States, both of which would have profound and long lasting effects. The Suez campaign was the outcome of a scheme Great Britain, France and Israel planned and executed without informing the United States. The plan called for Israel to attack Egypt and for France and Britain to demand an end to the fighting, quickly bring in troops to separate the two sides and thereby regain control of the Suez Canal. Israel aimed at gaining the use of the Canal allowed it by international law but denied it by Egypt. France and Great Britain aimed at regaining control of the Canal which Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, had taken from them. The American response to the French, British and Israeli scheme was immediate and furious. President Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded that France, Britain and Israel desist immediately (which they did). The Soviets, then in the process of crushing the Hungarian uprising, threatened to rain atomic bombs on Paris, London and Tel Aviv.
For France the Suez debacle had the effect of greasing the skids of its negotiations with Germany which until then had been dragging. The outcome of these negotiations was the Treaty of Rome which produced the European Economic Community, precursor to the European Union, and the enduring partnership of France and Germany. For Great Britain it marked the beginning of its turn away from its "special relationship" with the United States and towards partnership with France and Germany in the enterprise of transforming Europe into a single political entity.
If for Britain, joining the EEC and the European project was a great transformation, for France the project of creating a "united states of Europe" in partnership with Germany was one of resuming an undertaking begun in the 1920s but stymied at the time by the opposition of Germany which, while favoring the creation of single political entity of Europe, preferred to accomplish the deed by itself. Only with its defeat in 1945 did Germany give up its ambition of unifying Europe on its own and view the project as a joint one in which leadership would be shared with France.
Since the end of the eighteenth century one element of all projects to unify Europe -- Napoleon's, Kaiser Wilhelm II's and Hitler's -- was to form an alliance with the Arab Moslems against the leading naval/commercial power. The post-World War II European project which produced the EEC and the EU has been no different. Now, though, instead of Great Britain being the target of a united Europe allied with Arab Muslims as it had been in the time of Napoleon, Wilhelm II, and Hitler, Britain's foreign policy elite decided that it should be part of that united Europe.
The post-World II alliance of "Europe" and Arab Moslems is known as "Eurabia." Promoting it has been one of the main activities of the European Union and its leading members. As in the past the Europe-Arab alliance is seen by its "European" promoters as a means of attacking the world's leading naval/commercial power which now happens to be the United States. An important weapon in this attack is propaganda promoting hatred of Israel and the United States. Such propaganda is directed from within the foreign ministries of the European states and distributed through media which are still mainly national. An innovation of recent times is that the European Union itself, operating through a broad range of well-funded of educational, academic, cultural and political projects, is a major promoter of anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda.
Lewis recognizes the influence of European propaganda directed towards Arab Moslems has had in the past in promoting hatred of Jews. "Nazi Germany," writes Lewis, "from 1933 to 1945 devoted considerable effort to wooing Arab opinion. These efforts were very successful at the political and strategic levels in mobilizing Arab support against the common enemies, the Western democracies and the Jews." Similarly an understanding of Arab hatred of Jews and Israel in the Cold War period must give considerable weight, as Lewis does, to the role of Soviet propaganda. Yet neither Bostom nor Lewis mention the role since the 1960s of European propaganda promoting the EU's Eurabia project and influencing Europeans, Middle Easterners and others to hate Israel and the United States.
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism provides a broad history of the darker side of the Jewish experience in the lands of Islam and the ideas and beliefs which guided Moslem attitudes towards Jews. In this the book brings to light a little known and largely misunderstood area of history and provides an important corrective to the skewed interpretation common among scholars of Islam who, for whatever reason, feel they must put a positive spin on what is essentially negative history.
Today's Moslem/Arab hatred of Jews and Israel is not adequately explained as either a product of traditional Moslem anti-Semitism which Bostom has documented or Bernard Lewis's New Moslem anti-Semitism which takes as its foundational text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A proper understanding of the sources of Arab/Moslem attitudes today must take into account recent European influence in molding Middle Eastern minds as it did in the Nazi and Cold War periods which themselves were similar in this regard to the eras of Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Operation Mosul: Over 1000 captured
posted at 3:03 pm on May 17, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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The Iraqi Army has just started its operation in Mosul to break al-Qaeda’s last stronghold in the western provinces, and from all indications, they appear to be succeeding. Reuters reports that Iraq has captured over 1,000 gunmen in the city and its environs, and many more have taken advantage of an amnesty offer:
Iraqi forces have detained more than 1,000 suspects in an offensive aimed at crushing al-Qaida in northern Iraq, the military commander of the operation said on Saturday.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki returned to Baghdad on Saturday after spending several days in the city of Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province to supervise the crackdown.
Many gunmen from Sunni Islamist al-Qaida have regrouped in Nineveh after being pushed out of other areas. The U.S. military said Mosul is al-Qaida’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq. …
Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari said scores of militants had already handed over their guns.
“We are committed to the amnesty and have reassured them there will be no judicial pursuit against them,” he said, adding the government would soon make public the compensation available for different kinds of weapons handed in.
Nouri al-Maliki has gotten his troops off to a good start. We’ll keep an eye on this story and keep up with its developments. A victory here could spell the end of AQI and deliver a bitter defeat to Osama bin Laden.
I guess you're not aware that there have been talks going on with all those "axis" countries you mention for years
There have been back channel talks with Iran as well as publicized meetings
We " ignored " North Korea " LOL. If only that was true. Instead, Clinton and Albright had the genius idea of giving them the material they needed to produce nuclear weapons after they " promised " they wouldn't use it for that purpose
YOu are right , however, when you point out the stupidity of some Americans- your post is living proof
Your argument is based on a false premise and then compounds your idiocy by not knowing recent history
What exactly would you have done to prevent Iran's nuclear program? Do you really think they could have been talked out of it Neville?
Funny how the same figure, used during the Clinton era, was completely valid and was symbolic of the best economy ever.
Now it's all hype and a symptom of a coming depression
You deny that the Hamas charter calls for the elimination of the state of Israel?
You deny the ceding of land back to the Pals?
All facts that can't be questioned except by those blinded by hatred of Israel ( and by extension themselves )
The only puppet like actions here are you repeated mouthing of the stance taken by any enemy of Israel- no matter how ridiculous
Yeah, Iran doesn't want to destroy Israel, it was just a bad translation
Pathetic
You actually think Obama wants to end the " corprocracy "
LMAO
He's a pol, just like all the rest
You really think someone who hangs out with the likes of Resko is a "new breed " of pol?
What other than blind faith do you have to justify that?
Just like him being a consensus maker when he's done nothing to reach across the aisle while he's been in the Senate
You're buying into the hype and the packaging- just like the "corpocracy" has trained you to do
The attempt to paint MCCain as a Bush clone are laughable
He's long been a maverick among the Reps
In contrast to Barry's empty words about reaching across the aisle- he's had a long history of actualy doing so and there is actual legislature to show for it
Were the Reps happy with campaign finance reform?
The bipartisan gang of 14 compromise on judicial appointments?
Barry has NEVER reached across the aisle
He should be careful what he wishes for
He's in way over his head on foreign policy matters- as his recent gaffes have shown
McCain is much more experienced on the issue and should pummel him in that debate
He's much worse in debate situations where he has to think on his feet and can't rely on lofty rhetoric
He and Shrillary had no policy differences and she still came off as more competent in the debates on foreign policy
McCain has been actively involved in the area for decades and will make him look like the lightweight he is
This week when a Congressional resolution came up for a vote merely offering "condolences and sympathy" to the people of Myanmar affected by the recent deadly cyclone, Ron Paul, the doting grandfather, the millionaire, was the only member of the entire House of Representatives to vote "No."
The Myanmar resolution, like all those goofy pieces of symbolic legislation, would...
... have done absolutely nothing for the stricken millions. Not even provided one paper towel. It's a cheap publicity trick that elected legislators waste countless hours on each session.
Such worthless resolutions don't even get much publicity anymore. And, to put it in blunt political terms, exactly how strong is the Myanmarese vote around here anyway?
So Paul's symbolic stand against symbolic silliness looks good.
But then along come the sharp-eyed folks over at Radaronline.com, specifically Nick Curran, who finds out Paul's stand against symbolic silliness when it comes to Asians whose huts and hovels were erased by a cyclone is not quite so principled, and that Paul is a whole lot more enthused about dumb statements of sentiment when the silliness is closer to home.
Come to find out that Paul has voted in favor of similar empty resolutions to congratulate the University of Kansas football team for a swell season and winning the 2008 FedEx Orange Bowl, to laud the Louisiana State football team for, golly, winning the 2007 Bowl Championship Series and to celebrate the New York Giants for their come-from-behind victory in Super Bowl XLII.
Seriously, what Texas congressman near Houston wouldn't want to get on the official Congressional record wishing all the best to every one of the good folks up in New York City?
Wait till the Houston Texans find out about that one. Or, worse for Paul, some Dallas fans.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Glib response, but it points out the futility of the moral equivalence that people make
Point fo fact is that the Hamas charter has the elimination of Israel as a main goal
YOu can parse translations of the same goal coming from Iran, but the bottom line is that Israel has made concessions in an attempt to " buy peace with land " and would recognize and coexist with a Pal state, while Hamas will never do the same
Obama stumbles on Iraq, Afghanistan
posted at 9:41 am on May 14, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Barack Obama spent yesterday trying not to think of West Virginia, making an appearance instead in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where Obama won the primary in February. He also forgot a couple of facts about Iraq and Afghanistan, making two large factual errors and setting off a dispute between his campaign and ABC News. Unfortunately, their rebuttals raised even more questions about Obama’s grasp on facts in the wars (via Memeorandum):
Obama posited — incorrectly — that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan — forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don’t speak Arabic.
“We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan,” Obama said. ….
No sooner did Obama realize his mistake — and correct himself — but he immediately made another.
“We need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan, people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists,” he said.
So far, so good.
“But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they’re not in Afghanistan,” Obama said.
Iraq has many problems, but encouraging farmers to grow food instead of opium poppies isn’t one of them. In Iraq, oil fields not poppy fields are a major source of U.S. technical assistance.
This report generated immediate push-back from the Obama camp, which ABC included in an update. They insist that the US needs Arabic translators in Afghanistan to deal with foreign fighters, while noting that the US has indeed sent ag experts to Iraq to rebuild the environment for the Marsh Arabs — and those could be used in Afghanistan instead.
David Wright responds by noting a couple of other points that seem to escape Camp Obama. One, the only people speaking Arabic in Afghanistan are the people shooting at NATO troops. The people whom we want to engage to rebuild Afghanistan don’t speak Arabic. Second, the US usually uses locals as translators, so we didn’t rob Peter to pay Paul in translators by invading Iraq, despite Obama’s spurious claims.
And Obama’s analysis of the agricultural challenges of moving Afghanistan from poppies to peapods is dead wrong. Afghans grow poppies because they lack two critical prerequisites to rely on any other crop: security and infrastructure. In order to make enough money to survive non-growing seasons, Afghans would have to have massive refrigeration and transportation infrastructure improvements. How does a farmer make money when crops can’t get to market fast enough to keep them from spoiling? Perishables such as fruit and vegetables require refrigeration, which requires electricity, and so on. Opium doesn’t spoil, and it can be stored indefinitely under any conditions to be used as a cash substitute outside of growing season.
The Afghans need to establish the proper infrastructure first before massively committing to acceptable crops, and they need to start with reliable roads. However, they cannot even do that until the security situation improves, as the constant attacks by the Taliban and al-Qaeda make it impossible to build the necessary roads, electrical distribution, and refrigeration systems the Afghans require. What would agricultural experts do in Afghanistan while those issues remain unresolved?
Obama’s rhetoric calls into question whether he has any real knowledge of the issues in either Iraq or Afghanistan in any depth beyond that of the latest MoveOn talking points.
If Maliki lost, what did al-Sadr win?
Posted by: McQ
The WSJ deals with the truce which has been agreed upon between the government of Iraq and the Mahdi Army.
Initial press reports have suggested the battle has mostly come out a draw. But a 14-point "truce" between the government and the Mahdists (brokered last week by Iran) suggests otherwise. Among other details reported in the press, the agreement requires the Mahdi Army to abandon its heavy and medium weapons, end its shelling of Baghdad's Green Zone, shut down its kangaroo courts and recognize the authority of Iraqi law. In exchange, the government seems to have promised mainly that it would not arrest lower-level militia members.
A draw? A draw, at least where I come from, doesn't have one side imposing restrictions on the other side. This is dictating terms with the caveat that if they're violated, the destruction of the other side will continue as it was before.
IOW, this "truce" says to the Mahdi Army, accept these conditions and stick with them or well give you no choice at all.
The editorial hits on another important point that those who like to claim that Maliki is an Iranian pawn seem to consistently miss:
The truce suggests, instead, that Iran has grudgingly come to respect Mr. Maliki as a serious opponent. Having invested itself so heavily in Mr. Sadr's success, Tehran had little reason to suddenly lend its diplomatic offices unless it felt the Mahdi Army was on the verge of defeat. Last week's truce may have postponed that moment, but there's little doubt Mr. Sadr's movement has suffered an embarrassing defeat.
Pawns don't start conflicts which work against their master's plans. As the WSJ points out, Iran had invested its interests in Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Iran, as it has discovered, backed the wrong horse. We're now supposed to believe that Maliki will now suddenly cozy up to the country which had, directly, been threatening his leadership.
The last point to be made addresses the "no progress in Iraq" crowd, the group best known for their blinders and goal-post shifting:
However fitfully it began, the Basra campaign is a sign that Iraqis are in fact "standing up" for their own security. It is also a personal vindication for Mr. Maliki, who recognized to his credit that his government had to have a monopoly on violence in Shiite neighborhoods as much as in Sunni enclaves.
In the last year we were told first that the surge was a military failure, and later that it was a military success but that Iraq's political class had not lived up to its end of the bargain. In fact, just as surge supporters said, the Iraqis have become more confident and effective the more they have become convinced that the U.S. was not going to cut and run.
The ISF controls the streets of Basra and Sadr City. Iraq is beginning to do exactly what the detractors have said they must do. And, as the editorial points out, they're doing it because they know we'll stay and back them. The claim was that they wouldn't begin to do this until we left.
That claim, like many others, seems to have been proven false.
The Tea Boy
By Lee Smith
The other day the Obama campaign distanced itself from Robert Malley for his dealings with Hamas. Never mind the disingenuousness of a campaign that up until the day before yesterday when he was fired from the campaign said Malley was not with the campaign, even though a New York Times defense in his behalf said he was with the campaign. What is manifestly clear however is that Obama and his banished adviser/non-adviser share the same worldview. Consider this passage from a press release expressing his “support” for Lebanon.
It's time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.
Yes, the problem with Lebanon is not the militia backed by Damascus and Tehran that who have squared off against almost every US ally in the Middle East. No, in the Obama worldview, the issue is about “the corrupt patronage system.” What is more corrupt than the issues that instigated the current crisis: Hezbollah's efforts to, a, build a state within a state and, b, undermine the sovereignty of the Lebanese government? And what is a more unfair distribution of services than an armed party at the service of foreign parties?
Obama's language is derived from those corners of the left that claim Hezbollah is only interested in winning the Shia a larger share of the political process. Never mind the guns, it's essentially a social welfare movement, with schools and clinics! – and its own foreign policy, intelligence services and terror apparatus, used at the regional, international and now domestic level. But the solution, says, Obama, channeling the man he fired for talking to Hamas, is diplomacy.
Abu Kais over at From Beirut to the Beltway has a takedown of the half-term Senator from Ilinois' statement on Lebanon that is a must read.
Oh the time we wasted by fighting Hizbullah all those years with rockets, invasions of their homes and shutting down their media outlets. If only we had engaged them and their masters in diplomacy, instead of just sitting with them around discussion tables, welcoming them into our parliament, and letting them veto cabinet decisions. If only Obama had shared his wisdom with us before, back when he was rallying with some of our former friends at pro-Palestinian rallies in Chicago.
As Tony Badran wrote me this morning: “I think Obama's statement is counterproductive in that it will be read by Syria as confirming their hope that there might be a chance with an Obama presidency to get back Lebanon.
“And so, there's a good possibility that the first thing the Syrians will do in 2009 is to coordinate Hezbollah launching an attack on Israel. Syria would then present its services promising to 'deal' with the situation. Obama would be pressed by the foreign policy luminaries to send a delegation to 'negotiate' with Syria, the way many were urging President Bush to do in 2006, but he wisely resisted. Simultaneously, Syria would push a return to a peace process with Israel, and presto, the rules of the 1990s, which the Syrians have been desperately seeking after, are reinstated, whereby Syria would be able to pursue proxy war and a peace process simultaneously while restoring its control on Lebanon, which is the primary objective.”
The number of Western journalists, academics and policymakers who have bartered their minds and souls in the political bazaars of the Middle East for blandishments real and imagined is too mind-numbing to contemplate. Like tourists in the souq, they are too flattered by the hospitality to suppose that the man who stands in between them and the beautiful chessboard they want to take home with has already exacted his price just by seating them. And how would you like your tea, President Obama?
Posted by Tony Badran at May 11, 2008 10:10 AM
Comments
Shame on the Obama campaign for acting in a Hilary-Clinton-esque way, distancing themselves from a smart, respected, sober foreign policy analyst who does great work for a smart, respected institution, the International Crisis Group, because - like any relevant analyst group, they've had him talk to relevant actors to better understand them, including, yes, Hamas.
Shame on them for not standing up to fundamentally shallow, bullying punks, and standing behind their people.
Hey, hero, solutions proposed by “leftists” for “diplomacy” hope to not have tens or hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fed into a meat grinder known as civil war, where as “solutions” proposed by people like yourself - never directly - involve similar tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths. Yeah, us crazy leftists and our lack of enthusiasm for starting civil wars on the backs of other people's sons and daughters. Boy, what a shameless dislike of massive, civilization-wrecking violence!
Or maybe you've got the magic plan to “disarm” Hizballah with neither negotiations nor an enormous military campaign that kills football fields full of innocent Lebanese. Let's hear it! Maybe you'll call Hizballah a lot of nasty names, and then they'll dissapear! Looking forward to it.
In big concession, militia agrees to let Iraqi troops into Sadr City
By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD — Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.
In return, Sadr's Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government's agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of "medium and heavy weaponry."
The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that's home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. On Friday, 15 people were killed and 112 were injured in fighting, officials at the neighborhoods two major hospitals said.
It also would be a startling turnaround in fortunes for Maliki, who'd been widely criticized for picking a fight with Sadr's forces, first in the southern port city of Basra and then in Sadr City.
Members of Maliki's Dawa Party and the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq met with Sadr officials on Thursday and Friday to come up with a 14-point agreement to end the weeks of fighting, which has hindered the flow of food and water into Sadr City. The agreement was then passed to Sadr and Maliki for final approval, said Baha al Araji, a Sadrist legislator.
Hundreds of people have been killed and hundreds have been wounded in the fighting, which included frequent U.S. airstrikes. At least 8,500 people have been driven from their homes, and thousands of others have been forced to stay inside, too frightened to flee.
A government supporter said the Sadrists were brought to the table by the anger of Sadr City residents. On Thursday, the Iraqi military ordered Sadr City residents to evacuate in apparent preparation for a major offensive push.
"It is not the government who pressured the Sadrists into entering this agreement," said Ali al Adeeb, a leading member of the Dawa party. "It is the pressure from the people inside Sadr City and from their own people that will make them act more responsibly."
Like many things in Iraq, the precise effect of the agreement won't be known immediately. Sadr officials long have claimed that their militia has no heavy weaponry, and Sadr has condemned those with such munitions.
Sadr supporter Araji, however, said the agreement specifically barred American forces from entering Sadr City.
"The Iraqi forces, not the American forces, can come into Sadr City and search for weapons," Araji said. "We don't have big weapons, and we want this to stop."
The Mahdi Army, and the Sadr movement in general, has been losing support in the past two months in the face of a government offensive intended to force the militia from its controlling positions in Basra and Sadr City.
In Basra, a city known for culture and music, Shiite extremists had taken control in late 2005 and began shutting down music stories and forcing women to cover themselves.
But after initially resisting Maliki's offensive, the Sadrists ceded their areas, and the change in atmosphere has been palpable. An annual poetry festival, al Mirbed, resumed for the first time in three years, with male and female folk dancers performing in public and poets spouting their verses.
The city isn't free of Sadr influences, however, though the Iraqi army seems ready to quell any resurgence. Sadrists resumed prayer services on Friday for the first time since late March, but as the imam spouted anti-government rhetoric, Iraqi soldiers converged on the mosque and the Sadrists ran, witnesses said.
Iraqi officials, including Adeeb, said that Iran, which U.S. officials have accused of supporting the Shiite militias, was "aware" and "supportive" of the agreement. Adeeb made two trips to Iran to meet with Iranian officials to stem the militia violence in Iraq.
A sacking long overdue
We've written a few times about Robert Malley, an adviser to the Obama campaign who, like several other of his advisers, oozes hostility towards Israel and sympathy for its enemies. The Obama campaign has now sacked Malley after Malley disclosed that he has held meetings with one of those enemies, Hamas. Malley, in fact, has been in regular contact with Hamas, and has never concealed that fact.
As Ed Lasky notes, in the past the Obama campaign has attempted to downplay Malley's role, stating that he is "one of hundreds of people who have sent in advice to the campaign." However, media sources like the Washington Post and Newsweek have refused to buy this claim, placing Malley on relatively short lists of Obama foreign policy advisers.
It's now clear that the Obama campaign was being disingenuous. After all, you can't sack someone who is merely sending you emails.
Stem Cells 2.0 [Yuval Levin]
Last November, two teams of scientists announced they had successfully “reprogrammed” adult cells to function like embryonic stem cells without the need for embryos. The advent of these new induced pluripotent stem (or iPS) cells raised the prospect of a truly win-win conclusion to the stem cell debate, in which the scientists can study the pluripotent cells they deem most promising, but without techniques that raise ethical concerns. The immediate response among the political advocates of embryonic stem cell research in Washington was to deny the importance of the work, to insist that embryo-destructive research would continue to be needed, and to keep pushing for taxpayer funding of the use of newly destroyed embryos in research. In the meantime, however, these new iPS cells have begun to take over the field, because they are not only free of ethical concerns, but also far easier and cheaper to derive and use.
This new article in Nature Reports: Stem Cells offers a sense of how excited stem cell scientists are about this work, and how quickly it is moving forward. A few snippets:
The fact that making iPS cells does not pose the technical and ethical challenges of working with eggs or embryos is drawing large numbers of researchers into the field and speeding up reprogramming research. "This is definitely the hot thing right now," says Melina Fan, executive director of Addgene
…
"Biologically there's no difference" between murine iPS and ES cells, says Jaenisch. Both can generate all the tissues in a mouse. Human iPS cells have not been as rigorously demonstrated to be quasi-equivalent to ES cells, and they won't be, because doing so would require generating human babies or foetuses. Such experimentation is irrelevant anyway, says Douglas Melton, director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who has derived multiple human ES cell lines. "Nobody's trying to make people."
…
The enthusiasm with which the highest-tier ES cell scientists have turned to reprogramming speaks volumes.
…
The ten-year head start human ES cells got on human iPS cells has effectively shrunk to zero, says [stem cell pioneer James] Thomson
…
With the ethical clouds hanging over those procedures lifting, anxieties about funding are receding. A cadre of talented young investigators trained on ES cells and ready to surpass their mentors is chafing at the bit.
…
No one doubts that iPS cells will eventually be generated from the cells of individuals with known medical history. That was the main advantage claimed for somatic cell nuclear transfer [cloning], a technically and ethically challenging procedure that has yet to be achieved in humans. For generating person-matched cells, iPS cells may be not only easier to use but perhaps superior, as they would share both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA with the original patient, whereas cells derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer carry only the same nuclear DNA.
The politicians will have to catch up eventually.
05/09 10:30 AM
Help me, Senator Obama, I've fallen and I can't get up
We noted last month that a Hamas spokesman expressed a preference for Barack Obama over John McCain for president of the United States. Today Obama none too subtly asserted that John McCain had "lost his bearings" by noting this preference last month in a call with bloggers. McCain advisor Mark Salter comments:
First, let us be clear about the nature of Senator Obama's attack today: He used the words "losing his bearings" intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning.
We have all become familiar with Senator Obama's new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is.
It is important to focus on what Senator Obama is attempting to do here: He is trying desperately to delegitimize the discussion of issues that raise legitimate questions about his judgment and preparedness to be President of the United States.
Through their actions and words, Senator Obama and his supporters have made clear that ANY criticism on ANY issue -- from his desire to raise taxes on millions of small investors to his radical plans to sit down face-to-face with Iranian President Ahmadinejad – constitute negative, personal attacks.
Senator Obama is hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race.
Senator Obama has good reason to think this plan will succeed, as serious journalists have written of the need for "de-tox" to cure "swooning" over Senator Obama, and others have admitted to losing their objectivity while with him on the campaign trail.
Today, Senator Obama is complaining about comments John McCain made about a senior Hamas advisor stating that Hamas would welcome Senator Obama's election as president. Indeed, on April 13th, senior Hamas political advisor Ahmed Yousef said, "We don't mind – actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance."
The McCain campaign has never suggested that Senator Obama supports Hamas' agenda, but it is more than fair to raise this quote about Senator Obama because it speaks to the policy implications of his judgment.
Just today, the president of Iran, whom Senator Obama wants to meet with unconditionally, called the state of Israel a "stinking corpse." Iran is the paymaster and state sponsor of Hamas.
In his victory speech this week, Senator Obama stated that "wisdom" is meeting with our enemies, including Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro. John McCain couldn't disagree more. Rather than giving tyrants and dictators the prestige of meeting with an American president, John McCain will instead meet with the champions of human freedom around the world and opposition leaders fighting for liberty .
We understand why Senator Obama doesn't want to engage in a debate over leadership and judgment with John McCain, but the American people demand that debate take place.
These are serious times that call for a serious debate on the profound issues facing our future. John McCain is ready for that debate and we hope Senator Obama will one day get serious and join it.
Salter's comment nails one of Obama's rhetorical weapons of choice to fend off criticism. I'm sure we'll have an occasion or two to return to Salter's analysis in the coming days.
Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party
Despite all the math counting her out, Hillary Clinton fervently remains in the race to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. She has become the Democratic Party's psycho ex-girlfriend, and she's not going away without a restraining order.
It's 2:31 AM. The Democratic Party is sleeping peacefully when it hears its phone buzz on the night stand. It rolls over and sees "Hillary" on the caller ID. It pauses briefly, considering pushing "END" and not dealing with this shit tonight. The thought is appealing but the Democratic Party knows that if it doesn't take this call, another one is only minutes away.
DEMS: ...Hello?
Hillary: Hey baby.
DEMS: C'mon Hillary. Enough with this.
Hillary: Don't you get it? You NEED me.
DEMS: No, I don't. It was fun while it lasted but I'm with Barack now. I made my choice, it's done.
Hillary: You can't really mean that. How can you say that after all the good times we had?
DEMS: To be honest, I started hanging out with you because Bill's pretty awesome.
Hillary: But I'm just like Bill!
DEMS: No, you're not. Bill is charismatic, inspiring, and gets me really good weed.
Hillary: Fuck you. You're elitist!
DEMS: I'm going back to sleep.
Hillary: No, no, wait. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Listen... there's still got to be a chance. Remember when people told George W it was all over. When the numbers were against him?
DEMS: Yeah but...
Hillary: Remember?! And remember how everyone said America didn't really want to be with George W? But they stuck it out anyway?
DEMS: Yeah and they're really fucked up now, Hillary.
Hillary: But WE'LL make it work. Forget Barack, baby. Just take me back and we can forget this ever happened.
DEMS: Look, I think you're a really good Senator... let's just keep it that way, OK?
Hillary: ...I'll see you at the convention.
DEMS: No! Hillary I told you...
CLICK
DEMS: Dammit. Crazy bitch.
Good Steph, thanks for asking
Doggies are doing great. Don't know is I told ya we got another one- a wire haired fox terrier- my wife felt she needed a lap dog.
Came across a very good dog food- Orijen. They use no grains- the theory is that grains aren't a natural food for dogs. Just different proteins and fruits and veggies and herbs. The dogs really like it and seem to be doing well
Hope you and yours have been well
The populist Clinton promises to take on OPEC
Posted by: McQ
Great populist rhetoric, but I'd love to know how she plans to "go right at OPEC".
"We're going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they're going to produce and what price they're going to put it at," she told a crowd at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.
"That's not a market. That's a monopoly," she said, saying she'd use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.
She claims she'd use our "anti-trust law", but I don't see that as having any effect on a cartel who would not find any difficulty selling its product elsewhere if we decide to make it difficult to sell it here. And, frankly, it shows a pretty significant ignorance (or she assumes a level of ignorance by voters) of how world markets work - cartel or no cartel.
Secondly, I'm not sure what the WTO can do to a cartel which essentially has functioned under its "watchful eye" for decades. Again, the cartel has all the cards and the WTO, when it gets down to brass tacks, has no real power.
But it certainly is fun stuff to spout when you really don't have any idea of how to have actually have an effect on gasoline prices (well except the obvious - drill, drill, drill, exploit, expolit, exploit) and your sole "plan" is to sell the vapor-ware of 'alternative fuels' and "windfall profits taxes" which will drive the price of gas even higher.
Change the Teamsters can believe in, part 2
The Teamsters union has had a long and storied relationship with the Mafia. To take just one vivid example, consider the case of Anthony Senter. Senter was the Mafia hit man who arranged a deal with a Teamsters local for a pension after he was convicted of being a member of a mob hit squad in New York City that committed 25 murders and dismembered most of the victims.
Senter's attempt to secure a pension from his friends at the Teamsters was disrupted in 1994 by the Independent Review Board. The IRB is the body created by a 1989 consent decree to monitor the Teamsters for corruption. Since 1999 the Teamsters has sought to have the consent decree dissolved. The Department of Justice has not thought that such a good idea. The Teamsters would like new leadership at the Department of Justice with a better attitude.
In 1989 the Teamsters entered into the consent decree with the government. The decree was entered into before, and signed by, Judge David Edelstein of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The consent decree resolved the government's prosecution of the Teamsters for racketeering.
Certain provisions of the decree were enforced by a permanent injunction. The injunction ordered the Teamsters to refrain from racketeering activity (as defined under federal law) and from knowingly associating with the Mafia. The consent decree also provided for the creation of the three-member IRB in 1992. The jurisdiction of the IRB is limited to the prevention of corruption, including bribery, embezzlement, extortion, loan sharking, and other serious violations of federal law, or control and influence of the Teamsters by the Mafia.
Today's page-one Wall Street Journal story shines a spotlight on the Teamsters' endorsement of Barack Obama. According to the Journal, Obama advised the Teamsters prior to its endorsement of him that he supported dissolving the permanent injunction to which the Teamsters agreed in 1989 and under which it has been operating ever since. Dissolution of the consent decree would require judicial blessing, but if the government were to seek dissolution of the decree, it would be highly likely to secure it.
Taking a leaf from the Clinton scandal management playbook, the Obama campaign dismisses the Journal story as old news. Even it it is old news, the Journal story provides the detail and attention that the story richly deserves.
In 2002, the left-wing Nation magazine frankly condemned Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa's goal of eliminating federal oversight of the Teamsers as "a bad idea." It still is. Are the corruption and exploitation of the Teamsters no longer a serious threat? Someone really should ask Barack Obama why not.
The Nation article notes that in May 2002 the IRB permanently barred from the union two of Hoffa's closest associates (William Hogan Jr., president of Chicago's Joint Council 25, and Dane Passo, Hoffa's former Midwest campaign manager and special assistant). According to the article, they were disciplined for trying over an extended period of time to force the Las Vegas local to permit a mob-linked labor broker (of which Hogan's brother was vice president) to provide low-wage, nonunion workers for convention setup work, thus threatening to undermine the Teamsters contract and displace union members.
Some Democrats recently sought the impeachment of an attorney general for politicizing justice by the firing of eight United States Attorneys. Many Democrats joined in driving the attorney general from office on the charge. I believe the charge was bogus in the case of Alberto Gonzales. But Democrats are now about to nominate a presidential candidate who is engaged in something that looks very much like the genuine article.
JOHN adds: Barack Obama, old-fashioned corrupt pol! Well, of course, a lot of those corrupt Democratic pols got elected.
Posted by Scott at 7:15 PM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
Democratic Point Man on Colombia Caught Dealing With FARC
Not only were the FARC terrorists of Colombia hoping that Barack Obama would win the presidential election but the terrorists were also communicating with US Democrats on the sly.
The Democrat's point man on Colombia and free trade opponent has been secretly communicating with the FARC terrorists of southern Colombia. This was disclosed in documents found on the computer of dead FARC leader Raul Reyes who was killed during a raid earlier this month.
The Wall Street Journal reported today:
The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.) (pictured), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia's elected and popular government.
Mr. McGovern's press office says the Congressman is merely working at the behest of families whose relatives are held as FARC kidnap hostages. However, his go-between's letters reveal more than routine intervention. The intervenor with the FARC is James C. Jones, who the Congressman's office says is a "development expert and a former consultant to the United Nations." Accounts of Mr. Jones's exchanges with the FARC appeared in Colombia's Semana magazine on March 15. This Mr. Jones should not be confused with the former Congressman and ambassador to Mexico of the same name from Oklahoma.
"Receive my warm greetings, as always, from Washington," Mr. Jones began in a letter to the rebels last fall. "The big news is that I spoke for several hours with the Democratic Congressman James McGovern. In the meeting we had the opportunity to exchange some ideas that will be, I believe, of interest to the FARC-EP [popular army]."
Mr. Jones added that "a fundamental problem is that the FARC does not have, strategically, a spokesman that can communicate directly with persons of influence in my country like Mr. McGovern." Semana reports that in the documents Mr. Jones "rules himself out as the spokesman but offers himself as a 'bridge' of communication between the FARC and the congressman." Semana says when it spoke with Mr. Jones, he verified the letter and explained that "he made the offer because the guerrillas need interlocutors if they want to achieve peace and that it is a mistake to isolate them."
But communications among FARC rebels suggest the goal was to isolate Colombia's government. A letter that Reyes wrote to top FARC commander Manuel Marulanda on October 26 reads: "According to [Jones's] viewpoint, [President Álvaro] Uribe is increasingly discredited in the U.S. . . He believes that the safe haven [for the rebels] in the counties can be had for reasons mentioned. Congressional Democrats have invited him to Washington to talk about the Colombian crisis in which the principal theme is the swap."
Congressman McGovern sent a letter to the FARC Terrorists thanking them for their efforts earlier in the year even though FARC is listed as a terrorist organization by the US government.
The documents in Semana magazine discussed further links between US Democrats and the FARC terrorists:
Another discusses an apparent effort by U.S. Democrats to have celebrated novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez mediate talks with the insurgents — possibly with former President Clinton's involvement.
There is no evidence the FARC ever obtained surface-to-air missiles, however. Attempts to reach Clinton and Garcia Marquez were unsuccessful.
The captured FARC documents also named Democrat Barack Obama.
The FARC Terrorists were hoping and expecting that Barack Obama would win the US elections in November because he was most aligned with the Colombian Marxist group.
Interpol Confirms Authenticity Of Raul Reyes's Computer Files
BAD NEWS FOR HUGO CHAVEZ AND US DEMOCRATS--
Instapundit reported the news from El Universal:
The information found in the computers of the deceased leader of the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Raúl Reyes, was not manipulated by Colombian authorities, according to an Interpol's report to be released next May 15, as disclosed by Bogota El Tiempo daily newspaper.
The Colombian National Ministry of Defense reported last month that authorities had seized 30 pounds of uranium that belonged to FARC after the terror leader's computers were seized.
Seized uranium belonging to FARC terrorists. (RCN-TV and Miami Herald)
But, the fact that the information has now been confirmed as authentic is horrible news for Colombia's FARC supporting neighbors and US Democrats.
Here is a partial list of what Colombian investigators found on the FARC terror leader's computer:
-- FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
-- Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
-- Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
-- Uranium purchasing records
-- Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
-- Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
-- Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
-- Information that led to the discovery of 60 pounds of uranium
-- Letter to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
-- Meetings with "gringos" about Barack Obama
-- Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
-- FARC funding Correa's campaign
-- Cuban links to FARC
-- Links to US Democrats
-- $480,000 of FARC cash in Costa Rican safe house
-- $100,000 to President Correa's campaign for election
...And, more.
LOL, does it hang to the right or left?
Nevermind- for you it HAS to be left
LMAO Off the scale on the irony meter
I guess no mirrors in the Pegbot household
No pots and kettles either
Too funny
The Legislative Capture of the Limited Government Movement
Posted by: Jon Henke
As Fred Thompson often said, Republicans went to Washington to drain the swamp, and they ended up partnering with the alligators. Robert Novak has the latest sordid details.
Operating outside public view, the House Democratic majority is taking extraordinary steps to maintain spending as usual while awaiting a Democrat as president. Remarkably, the supine House Republican minority hardly resists and even collaborates with its supposed adversaries.
There has been little or no public Republican protest over seizure of the appropriating process by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her clique. [...] All Republican leaders voted against [a bill to expand medicaid spending], but their vaunted whip operation was dormant. With a rare opportunity to go on record against entitlements, House Republicans voted 128 to 62 for spending.
[...]
House Republicans had another chance last Thursday to demonstrate interest in restoring anti-waste credentials [by voting for Jeff Flakes proposal to limit direct farm payments]. ... The state of the GOP is indicated by the fact that the 104 to 86 vote by Republicans was seen as progress, while Flake's proposal failed. ... Another motion to lower farm subsidies, by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, was pending Thursday afternoon when the House adjourned for its usual long weekend of fundraising, politicking and recreation. Unchanged in Nancy Pelosi's House is bipartisan devotion to the three-day week.
Congressional Republicans are in the tank for the status quo. All I'm hearing from Congressional Republican is...
* "Please, sir, can I have another earmark?"
* "Please, sir, can I have another term?"
Reelecting these guys is like sending Norm Peterson to lead an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They're whipped by Democrats and by the public choice incentives. There's just no significant ambition to limit government. More importantly, they have no ideas for how to limit the size of government.
To some extent, that's a failure of the existing Republican leadership. But it's more of a failure of the larger Limited Government movement that has been captured by Washington, DC. We've developed an entrenched bureaucracy devoted more to sustaining and propagating itself than to actually limiting government.
In Iraq, a storm before the calm
By Michael Yon
Monday, May 5th 2008, 4:00 AM
April saw 49 U.S. casualties in Iraq, the highest total in seven months. Does this mean, as some insist, that the enormous progress we have made since the start of the military surge is being lost?
As one who has spent nearly two years with American soldiers and Marines and British Army troops in Iraq - having returned from my last trip a month ago - here's my short answer: no.
We are taking more casualties now, just as we did in the first part of 2007, because we have taken up the next crucial challenge of this war: confronting the Shia militias.
In early 2007, under the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, we began to wage an effective counterinsurgency campaign against the reign of terror Al Qaeda in Iraq had established over much of the midsection of the country. That campaign, which moved many of our troops off of big centralized bases and out into small neighborhood outposts, carried real risks.
In every one of the first eight months of 2007, we lost more soldiers than we had the previous year. Only as the campaign bore fruit - in the form of Iraqi citizens working with American soldiers on a daily basis, helping uncover terrorist hideouts together - did the casualty numbers begin to improve.
Now we are helping the Iraqis deal with a much different problem: the Shia militias, the most well-known of which is "Jaysh al-Mahdi," known as JAM, largely controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr.
To comprehend our strategy here, we need to understand the goals of these militias, which pundits, politicians and the press all too often gloss over. Al Qaeda's aim was to destroy Iraq in civil war. Allegedly devout Muslims, the terrorist savages were willing to rape, murder and pillage their own people just as long as they could catch America in the middle. One reason Al Qaeda in Iraq can regenerate so quickly, despite being hated by most Iraqis, is that, armed with generous funding from outside Iraq, they mostly recruit young men and boys from Iraqi street gangs, giving them money, guns and drugs.
In contrast, JAM and the other Shia militias do not want to destroy Iraq; they want power in the new Iraq. They did not, for the most part, start out as criminal gangs, but as self-defense organizations protecting Shia neighborhoods from the chaos of post-invasion Iraq, including Al Qaeda.
Because the militias are strong, well-organized and long had deep support among the population, and because their goal is political power, not random destruction, some have argued that we should have nothing to do with taking them on. They predict a bloody and futile campaign that would make us once again enemies of the Iraqi people rather than their defenders.
These critics miss a crucial on-the-ground reality: Virtually all insurgencies, however noble their original purpose, eventually degenerate into criminal organizations, classic Mafia-like protection rackets, especially as they achieve their original goals.
With Al Qaeda mostly wiped out of Baghdad, the militias that once defended Shia neighborhoods now prey on them. In Basra to the south, where al Qaeda always feared to tread, the situation is even worse. Practically speaking, that city has been ruled by an uneasy coalition of rival Shia gangs for years.
The great victory of the past year and a half has been the decision of Sunni citizens to turn against Sunni outlaws. Now, neither we nor the Iraqi government can maintain our credibility with the Sunni if the Shia militias are allowed to remain outside the law.
The militias, unlike Al Qaeda, are not insane; we can negotiate with them. But we and the Iraqi government can only capitalize on the shifting sentiments of the Shia neighborhoods if we first demonstrate that we and the government - not the gangs - control the streets.
That means, for the next few months, expect more blood, casualties and grim images of war. This may lead to a shift in the political debate inside the United States and more calls for rapid withdrawal. But on the ground in Iraq, it's a sign of progress.
Yon is an independent reporter and blogger (michaelyon-online.com). His new book is "Moment of Truth in Iraq."By Michael Yon
Change the Teamsters can believe in
I find this Wall Street Journal story by Brody Mullins and Kris Maher shocking: "Obama says Teamsters need less oversight." Mullins and Maher report:
Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.
Obama holds himself out as a new kind of politician who refuses to play the old games. This story should blow Obama's pretense up several times over.
An Enemy on the Run
In Afghanistan, the Challenge Beyond al-Qaeda
JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.
"Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here," says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: "We're not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They've shifted here to facilitation and support."
You hear the same story farther north from the officers who oversee the provinces along the Pakistan border. A survey conducted last November and December in Nuristan, once an al-Qaeda stronghold, found that the group barely registered as a security concern among the population.
The enemy in these eastern provinces is a loose amalgam of insurgent groups, mostly linked to traditional warlords. It's not the Taliban, much less al-Qaeda. "I don't use the word 'Taliban,' " says Alison Blosser, a State Department political adviser to the military commanders here in the sector known as Regional Command East. "In RC East we have a number of disparate groups. Command and control are not linked up. The young men will fight for whoever is paying the highest rate."
The picture appears much the same in RC South, where British and Canadian troops have faced some of the toughest battles of the war. Members of the British-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand province describe an insurgency that is tied to the opium mafia -- hardly a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism.
Traveling to the British headquarters in Lashkar Gah in a low-flying Lynx helicopter, you fly over mile after mile of poppy fields -- and hundreds of Afghan men in turbans and baggy trousers out harvesting the resin that will be turned into opium. British military officers and diplomats describe the core problems in their sector as bad governance, corruption and lack of economic development, not a resurgent al-Qaeda or Taliban.
Terrorist attacks such as last week's assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai demonstrate that insurgents are still able to create havoc. Indeed, the statistics gathered by the NATO-led coalition show that civilian and military casualties are up this year. That instability undermines the good work of the development projects. But commanders say it's spasmodic violence, rather than a sustained and coordinated campaign by a tightly knit al-Qaeda.
Traveling in Iraq this year, I've heard similar accounts of al-Qaeda's demise there. That stems from two factors: the revolt by Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda's brutal intimidation and the relentless hunt for its operatives by U.S. Special Forces. As the flow of human and technical intelligence improves and the United States learns to fuse it for quick use by soldiers on the ground, the anti-terrorist rollback accelerates.
The al-Qaeda menace hasn't disappeared, but it has moved -- to Pakistan. The latest State Department terrorism report, issued last week, says the group "has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas."
This evidence from the field suggests two conclusions:
First, al-Qaeda isn't a permanent boogeyman; it's losing ground in Iraq and Afghanistan because of U.S. counterinsurgency tactics, especially the alliances we have built with tribal leaders and the aggressive use of Special Forces to capture or kill its operatives. These anti-terrorist operations require special skills -- but they shouldn't require a big, semi-permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq or Afghanistan. Local security forces can handle a growing share of responsibility -- perhaps ineptly, as in Basra a few weeks ago or in Kabul last weekend, but that's their problem.
Second, the essential mission in combating al-Qaeda now is to adopt in Pakistan the tactics that are working in Iraq and Afghanistan. This means alliances with tribal warlords to bring economic development to the isolated mountain valleys of the FATA region in exchange for their help in security. And it means joint operations involving U.S. and Pakistani special forces to chase al-Qaeda militants as they retreat deeper into the mountains.
The solution isn't to send a large number of U.S. soldiers into Pakistan -- indeed, that could actually make the situation worse -- but to send the right ones, with the right skills.
The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.
Are Global Warmists Pulling a Cool Fast One?
By Marc Sheppard
Mounting evidence of lower temperature trends despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels is becoming a real problem for the greenhouse gas crowd. And reports that the cooling appears to follow a period of dormant solar activity aren't likely to ease their anxieties.
Indeed, without an immediate alarmist course correction, years of "the science is settled" campaigning could prove for naught, as prolonged temperature dips decimate the primary anthropogenic argument. After all, Lord Gore has shouted the IPCC's proclamation of a 0.3°C warming over the next decade from virtually every rooftop. Given new data projecting the contrary, he and his green hordes will need to find a way to not only explain the error, but keep the AGW dream alive.
And perhaps they have.
On April 21st, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that an impending phase shift in a natural climate event would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, noting that:
"The shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with its widespread Pacific Ocean temperature changes, will have significant implications for global climate. It can affect Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, marine ecosystems and global land temperature patterns."
Well aware of the impact the news might have on the green-deity IPCC's warming predictions, the JPL was quick to add that "Sea level rise and global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases can be strongly affected by large natural climate phenomenon such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation." JPL oceanographer and climate scientist Josh Willis explained:
"The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate. In fact, these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it."
Just 10 days later, the results of a model study on another phenomenon, this time affecting the North Atlantic, were published in the journal Nature [PDF]. Dr Noel Keenlyside et al, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, reported that the "conveyor belt" of southern warm water known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation is entering a weak cycle. As weak MOC cycles -- which can last as many as 80 years -- are associated with cooler North Atlantic temperatures, particularly around Europe and North America, the team expects global surface temperatures to decrease over the next decade. Oddly, a similar pattern between the 1940s and 1970s may explain the cooling of global average temperatures during that period, so assuming only the "next decade" seems an arbitrary call.
Nonetheless, the German scientists felt compelled to explain their evident heresy against the church of the IPCC:
"Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming."
In case "temporarily offset" proved too vague to the green brigade, Keenlyside clarified when explaining to Bloomberg News:
"If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us. There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''
And for the benefit of those still concerned, his associate Mojib Latif, a professor at the Leibniz Institute, spelled it out in no uncertain terms:
"Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won't be as bad as previously thought."
It certainly appeared to be merely a typical cover your green ass move
The Very Model of a Modern Solar Minimum
According to UK's Telegraph the report stemmed from "initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades," and readers were reminded that:
"The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998."
Of course, solar activity is also essentially ignored by IPCC models, and it too saw an apex in 1998. Isn't it interesting how, not unlike insects scampering from light exposed by a stone overturned, greenies struggle desperately to avoid directly confronting the power of the Sun?
Last year, Britain's Hadley Centre, whose decadal models actually do incorporate sea surface temperatures as well as projected changes in the Sun's output and the effects of previous volcanic eruptions, predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998." Still, they stood solidly behind the IPCC by predicting that "Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 deg C warmer than 2004."
Then, this past January, the Centre predicted 2008 would be the coolest since 2000, this time based upon the "strong La Niña in the tropical Pacific Ocean" exclusively. Mysteriously, they completely ignored recent news at the time that solar activity had all but come to a stop -- a factor supposedly included in their modeling.
But last week, rather than disputing the Leibniz Institute oceans-behavior-only model that suggests not only Hadley, but the IPCC itself erred, the Centre's Richard Wood stated:
"We've always known that the climate varies naturally from year to year and decade to decade. We expect man-made global warming to be superimposed on those natural variations; and this kind of research is important to make sure we don't get distracted from the longer term changes that will happen in the climate (as a result of greenhouse gas emissions)."
Seemingly taking a bullet for the green team, Wood ‘fessed up to last year's bad prediction when he told reporters that "natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period."
Pretty slick -- by jumping aboard the new model's bandwagon, Wood managed to again ignore the Solar factor (Cycle 24 is delayed) while extending the bogus it's-part-nature-but-mostly-mankind safety-net his group's models had strung by almost 10 years.
On the other hand, in addition to casting great doubt upon his own group's models, Wood's admission bolstered the doubt that Leibniz's would already cast upon those of the IPCC. And Wood notwithstanding, as Dr. Roger Pelke Jr. pointed out in his April 30th Prometheus post after reviewing the Nature piece:
"If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun. This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy."
Obviously, capitulating now meant accepting the risk of jeopardizing whatever credibility all previous and future climate models may hold. Bad move -- or chess move?
Does Anybody Really Know What Climate Is?
Prior to its official release, Keenlyside expressed concerns that his report might be taken the "wrong way." The good doctor even attempted to trivialize dissenters by invoking the name of a favorite eco-boogieman when he lamely lamented "I hope it doesn't become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics." And just in case his and his colleagues' tepid reaffirmations of their AGW pledges fell short of the green mark, reinforcements were immediately dispatched.
Not surprisingly, the alarmist shills at the BBC wrote that the up and down projections "did not come as a surprise to climate scientists." No, according to these insufferables, only the ill-informed public ever believed that "the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon."
The New York Times rolled out Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, CO. Tremberth told them that "the global climate will continue to be influenced in any particular decade by a mix of natural variability and the building greenhouse effect" and that "a cool phase does not mean the overall theory of dangerous human-driven warming is flawed."
And then added what appears to be the latest greenie talking point:
"Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way."
Is anyone else noticing a trend developing here, beyond the "we never said that warming patterns would be steady" shuffle? Each explanation, whether by Willis, Keenlyside and Latif, Wood, or Trenberth implies that some climate forces natural are more formidable than those anthropogenic. This is yet another precarious admission, indeed - one unlikely to be made were the alternative not somehow more damaging to their cause.
Now consider this -- it remains an alarmist imperative to disassociate falling global temperatures and speculation of a possible impending "little ice age" with the yellow dwarf star we orbit in general and the late start of Solar Cycle 24 specifically. For indeed, if we are moving into another solar minimum cycle and global temperatures continue to plummet while atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, attendance at Al Gore's Scare-Story-Slide-Shows would quickly drop to close friends and family only. And with boat loads of very bad wealth-redistribution "climate change" legislation to pass in coming the years, a sympathetically alarmed press and populace remain essential during that time.
So what better way to buy time than to cloud the obvious solar connection by sacrificing their argument against a less threatening naturally occurring force? And then attributing that force to occasional periods of cooling by collectively admitting to its mitigating impact upon AGW forces? Especially when this little gambit allows them to continue reaping the benefits - for years to come - of the lie that an unchecked anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect threatens to literally destroy us all.
Just not quite as fast as they originally thought.
So then, are the greenies simply playing defense, as they have led many to believe - or is it we who are being played?
O’Rourke gives a different kind of commencement speech
posted at 10:27 am on May 4, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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As commencements go, the Augsburg ceremony we attended yesterday didn’t insult our intelligence too badly. Oh, sure, we heard the plea to save the world by buying fair-trade coffee, but that came from the valedictorian — er, sorry, the representative — who earned her right to bloviate at the graduation through her hard work and volunteerism. The featured speaker, Dr. Jack Weatherford, gave a truly interesting and inspiring address, much more apolitical than anyone had a right to expect, and the Augsburg choir delivered a wonderful set of spirituals.
Still, I would have paid money to hear P.J. O’Rourke deliver the commencement address he envisions in today’s LA Times. Instead of the usual demands to change the world through activism, O’Rourke tells students that they will do far more good by engaging in commerce and channeling their efforts towards productivity rather than demonstrations:
Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you’ll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That’s $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?
Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”
Get a pair of bolt cutters and liberate that tree.
Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway — the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?
So make your contribution by getting rich. Don’t be an idealist.
O’Rourke also gives a rather tidy Biblical repudiation of populism. He points out the text of the Tenth Commandment, which instructs people not to covet their neighbor’s assets, and says that it is rather singular within the Decalogue:
Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And, right at the end of it we read, “Don’t envy your buddy because he has an ox or a donkey.” Why did that make the top 10? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, include jealousy about livestock?
Well, think about how important this commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own.
And of course, the most amusing part of O’Rourke’s “speech” is that the very people in which the community has invested the best education are the same people most in need of this reminder. Too many of them, including the starry-eyed fair-trade-coffee advocate, believe that they know the morally righteous individuals that markets should favor, and want to distort markets as much as possible to deliver what they see as the just result. Fair-trade coffee at least gives a market-based solution, which is why it’s more amusing than objectionable, but many will demand top-down government control of markets, run by enlightened college graduates such as themselves, to remove any individual choice in markets.
O’Rourke offers an analogy sure to resonate with college students everywhere. Just because he eats all the slices of a Domino’s pizza, it doesn’t force others in the room to eat the box. It just means that more pizzas will be bought, which leads to more commerce, more jobs, and better economies. O’Rourke might not get invited to the next party, but hungrier people do not have to eat the box.
America has proven O’Rourke correct, and not just America, either. Nations that protect property rights and individual liberty do not have massive famines and genocidal starvation. Nations which attempt the kind of ends-focused top-down government control of property and markets wind up with terrible poverty, epidemic starvation, and misery on a massive scale. Unfortunately, most college graduates these days don’t learn about those truths until well after they have separated themselves from Academia.
Newest leftist anti-Hillary meme: She said “god bless” rich people!
posted at 5:45 pm on May 3, 2008 by Allahpundit
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It’s the liberal version of the outrage over Wright’s “god damn America” comment: Hillary doesn’t actually have warm feelings towards the upper class, does she? I’m guessing no, that she used this phrase in the same way that an atheist like the big A has used it many times on this very site, as a way of saying that there’s nothing wrong with something. She was being challenged by O’Reilly for wanting to raise taxes on the top bracket; this was her way of reassuring him that she’s not a socialist with some sort of grudge against wealth per se. Fast forward to AOL blogger Tom Christopher on a conference call with her campaign team the next day:
First of all, Senator Clinton has been reaching out to blue-collar voters, most recently commuting to work with and pumping gas with a steel worker yesterday or the day before, but then on The O’Reilly Factor last night, she said, and I quote, “Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue to the next generation.” I think that that begs the question, is she trying to have it both ways…like, who is she really going to look out for?
“[T]he statement was clearly a wink to affluent voters,” writes Christopher, “a way of saying, ‘Sure, I want to help working stiffs, but don’t worry, I won’t hurt us rich folks too badly.’” Heaven forfend. The best part, though? Instead of dismissing the question as idiotic or pointing to the many, many other liberals worth tens of millions of dollars who don’t consider themselves “elitists” by virtue of that fact — Arianna and Mikey Moore are just two who pop to mind — Clinton aide Howard Wolfson actually lied through his teeth by insisting that Her Majesty had actually said “god blessed” us, transforming the statement from a normative into a merely descriptive observation.
Got all that? No? Doesn’t matter. Just watch the clip and file this away for the next time the left stamps its feet about insufficient attention to policy and “substance” in the media’s campaign coverage.
LMAO
How odd then that no such surpluses have been generated under the "robust" Bush economy, what with both inflation and unemployment at comparable lows (your statements right?) and the DJI and S&P indices hitting record highs.
You really must not be paying attention- very scary since this IS an investing site
The indexes have been basically treading water. Compare that to the meteoric rise in the Naz due to the liquidity fueled internet/dotcom bubble
Now you're going to deny that that bubble actually occurred? Or that it was the capital gains from those profits that were the sole reason that Clinton had a surplus during his time in office
The Q's topped out at around 120 in 2000- it's around 53 now