Remember the Bush Doctrine?

Does President Bush? It seems to mean that in the case of Lebanon, it says that the US should be fighting the Lebanese government for harboring Hezbollah--listed as a terrorist organization by the US government--rather than helping to prop it up. From Wikipedia:

Initial formulation: No distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them

The term "Bush Doctrine" initially referred to the policy formulation stated by President Bush immediately after the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attack that the U.S. would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". The immediate application of this policy was the invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001. Although the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan offered to hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden if they were shown proof that he was responsible for September 11 attacks and also offered to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan where he would be tried under Islamic law, their refusal to extradite him to the U.S. with no preconditions was considered justification for invasion. This policy implies that any nation that does not take a pro-active stance against terrorism would be seen as supporting it. On September 20, 2001, in a televised address to a joint session of Congress, Bush summed up this policy with the words, "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Avi Bell on Human Rights Watch's Pro-Hezbollah Kenneth Roth

From a letter to the editor published July 31, 2006 in the New York Sun:

Sadly, Mr. Roth engages in ad hominem attacks, distorts my positions and drags in red herrings, rather than address directly my observations of Human Rights Watch's bias.

In his letter, Mr. Roth demonstrates a lack of the very qualities of objectivity, nonpartisanship and careful investigation that he claims characterize HRW. He further misleads readers about legal standards and he makes a slew of new political anti-Israel charges even as his organization's website acknowledges that HRW has not yet investigated the facts.

For example, Mr. Roth charges Israel with illegality in an "attack on Srifa village (10 houses destroyed, as many as 42 civilians killed)." Yet, Mr. Roth provides us with no additional detail about the target beyond this damage. I found an AP report filed by Nasser Nasser that acknowledged that "[a]fter the first [Israeli] strikes, Hezbollah fighters carrying walkie-talkies rushed for cover whenever Israeli warplanes or pilotless aircraft appeared." How many Hezbollah fighters were there? How many arms depots? Where were the targets located? In some of the houses? Mr. Roth doesn't deign to tell us; perhaps he doesn't even know. Similarly, Mr. Roth charges that Israel "attack[ed] a vehicle of villagers fleeing Marwaheen (16 civilians killed, including many children)." Yet, HRW's own press release on the subject acknowledged Israel's claim that the target of the attacks was "an area near the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon, used as launching grounds for missiles fired by Hezbollah terror organization at Israel" and that "further investigation" was needed. Is there new information that permits Mr. Roth to charge that Israel illegally targeted civilians? If yes, where is it? The inescapable conclusion is that Mr. Roth has simply dramatized HRW's original statement to fit his extra-legal faith in Israeli guilt.

Notwithstanding Mr. Roth's protestations, the laws of war clearly permit attacking targets for their predicted contribution to the military effort, even in the face of certain civilian harm. The laws of war permit Israeli attacks on military targets located in residential areas unless the collateral damage to civilians is expected to be excessive in comparison to the military advantage. Every innocent death in war is a tragedy, but not every tragedy is a war crime by the attacker. Calling me ignorant does not change this law, even when the name-caller is Mr. Roth.

By contrast, there is no legal defense for Hezbollah hiding its fighters and weaponry in residential areas, mosques and near U.N. positions — just as there is no defense for Lebanon providing Hezbollah with safe harbor, Syria and Iran for arming Hezbollah, or Hezbollah for targeting civilian areas throughout the Israeli north, destroying Israeli property without military justification, holding hostages, engaging in collective punishment, carrying out ethnically motivated murders, and holding POW's incommunicado.

Even as Mr. Roth clutches at the lone HRW document that focuses on Hezbollah crimes, nearly all HRW documents released since the onset of fighting on July 12 — like the HRW Q&A guide I criticized — focus their very partisan criticisms on Israel. HRW's and Mr. Roth's near-silence on Hezbollah's, Lebanon's, Syria's and Iran's crimes and obsessive accusations about Israel even in the absence of evidence of crimes speak volumes about Mr. Roth's and his organization's patently political, non-legal and nonobjective agenda.

Juan Williams on Bill Cosby

From the Washington Post:

Recently Bill Cosby has once again run up against these critics. In 2004, on the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Cosby took on that culture of failure in a speech that was a true successor to W.E.B. DuBois's 1903 declaration that breaking the color line of segregation would be the main historical challenge for 20th-century America. In a nation where it is getting tougher and tougher to afford a house, health insurance and a college education -- in other words, to attain solid middle-class status -- Cosby decried the excuses for opting out of the competition altogether.

Cosby said that the quarter of black Americans still living in poverty are failing to hold up their end of a deal with history when they don't take advantage of the opportunities created by the Supreme Court's Brown decision and the sacrifices of civil rights leaders from Martin Luther King Jr. to Thurgood Marshall and Malcolm X. Those leaders in the 1950s and '60s opened doors by winning passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and fair housing laws. Their triumphs led to the nationwide rise in black political power on school boards and in city halls and Congress.

Taken as a whole, that era of stunning breakthroughs set the stage for black people, disproportionately poor and ill-educated because of a history of slavery and segregation, to reach new heights -- freed from the weight of government-sanctioned segregation. It also created a national model of social activism to advance the rights of women, Hispanics, gays and others.

Cosby asked the chilling question: "What good is Brown " and all the victories of the civil rights era if nobody wants them? A generation after those major civil rights victories, black America is experiencing alarming dropout rates, shocking numbers of children born to single mothers and a frightening acceptance of criminal behavior that has too many black people filling up the jails. Where is the focus on taking advantage of new opportunities to advance and to close the racial gap in educational and economic achievement?

Incredibly, Cosby's critics don't see the desperate need to pull a generational fire alarm to warn people about a culture of failure that is sabotaging any chance for black people in poverty to move up and help their children reach the security of economic and educational achievement. Not one mainstream civil rights group picked up on his call for marches and protests against bad parenting, drug dealers, hate-filled rap music and failing schools.

Human Rights Watch is "Irrelevant or Immoral"

Says Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, writing in The New York Sun:

It is no accident that Human Rights Watch gets it wrong or has a habit of rushing to judgment as it did in Jenin and as it did in Qana. If one sees military activity by Israel in a vacuum, ignoring the threats to its security and existence, ignoring the intentions and growing capabilities of its enemies, ignoring the cynical actions of its foes which seek either to hurt Israel and its citizens on the ground or to make Israel look bad in the eyes of the world, then, of course, Israel will look like the neighborhood bully and will be accused of all kinds of things.

I would therefore recommend that Human Rights Watch be viewed for what it is, at least when it comes to the great struggle in the Middle East that may determine not only the future of the State of Israel but of mankind itself: as irrelevant or immoral.

(ht ngo-monitor.org)

Thinking the Unthinkable: Is Nuclear War with Iran Inevitable?

This is the question on many minds, after the Israel-Hezbollah warmup excercise that some see as a parallel to the Spanish Civil War run-through prior to World War II. Given the difficulties Israel faced with a dug-in enemy as stubborn as the Japanese, and the fact that Iran was willing to lose millions in trench warfare with Iraq, the West may in the end resort to precisely the same technology used to defeat Tojo's Kamikazes in the Second World War--the Atom Bomb...

Let's hope not.

Victor Davis Hanson on Pro-Hezbollah Journalists

From VDH's Private Papers:

The globalized media is absolutely discredited after the coverage of Lebanon . Reuters has destroyed its reputation, gained from 150 years of world reporting, by releasing doctored pictures and tolerating staged photo-ops. Almost all the Western media outlets failed to distinguish Lebanese civilian from military casualties — as if the Hezbollah terrorists they never filmed and never interviewed never died.

Indeed, thanks to the unprofessional reporters abroad, and their disingenuous chiefs back home, the world never saw the killers who sent the rockets nor many of their civilian victims on the ground in Israel . Nor did the reporters apprise their audience of the different landscapes in which they worked: candor in Israel might win loud disagreement; truth in Lebanon meant death. It would be as if Reuters, AP, or the New York Times embedded its reporters within the Waffen SS, beaming daily reports back home about the great morale and noble suffering of the Wehrmacht as it advanced into the snowy Ardennes.

Amir Taheri: Arabs Rejecting Hezbollah

Apparently, Arabs are more anti-Hezbollah than the New York Times or CNN, according to the Jerusalem Post:

Finally, there is good news thanks to a fourth trend that can be spotted in the writings of a dozen or so Arab journalists and, more convincingly, in letters written to the editor in Arab, and in some cases, Iranian newspapers. Here, there is little sympathy for Hizbullah, which is regarded as a band of adventurers controlled by Iran. One Iraqi writer described Hizbullah as "a virus that is threatening the life of the Lebanese nation." A Saudi columnist sees the war triggered by Hizbullah as "a catastrophe" for Lebanon and Arabs in general.

A letter-to-the editor published in the Iranian daily Aftab-Yazd criticizes Teheran's support for Hizbullah as "a misguided endorsement of a group that prevents Lebanon from building a modern society."

There is no doubt that, with help from the Western media, Hizbullah has won the information battle in Europe and North America. In the Arab world, however, the Party of God is not enjoying the same free ride as it has in the West. Many Arabs appear to have decided to break with the herd mentality. And that may well be the only good news to come out of the latest war.

A Cultural Pilgrimmage to Upstate New York

Someone I know and I just got back from a cultural pilgrimmage to upstate New York. It began on the shores of beautiful Lake Otsego, called "Glimmerglass" by James Fenimore Cooper, at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival, where we attended a wonderful production of Leos Janacek's Jenufa, title role sung by Maria Kanyova, conducted by Stewart Robertson, directed by Jonathan Miller. It was just terrific. Singing, production, orchestra, staging were all just right. Rural Moravia became rural America, the sets and costumes were something out of Thomas Hart Benton (or Grove City, PA). Incredibly, even with tickets at $41 (a bargain), there were lots of empty seats, possibly because the New York Times didn't review this production--maybe because it is heading to the New York City Opera. A "Must-See". I think it has a few more performances to go before the season ends. You can check for tickets here.

Then, it was a short drive to Catskill, New York, to see the home and studio of Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole, known as Cedar Grove. Run by the Greene County Historical Society, with hourly tours costing only $7, it was a fascinating glimpse into 19th Century American arts and life. Thomas Cole painted some his most famous canvases right in the house, before his in-laws (he lived with his wife's family) built him a studio. He died young, at 47. The home stayed in the Cole family until the 1980s, and only opened as a museum in 2001. Our expert guide, named David Herman, explained the irony that Cole's newest studio, built two years before he died, as an outbuilding on the property, was torn down at a time when you could buy a Thomas Cole masterpiece for $5,000. Well, he's famous again, and there are plans to rebuild on the original foundations.

The place was packed with tourists, including some from as far away as Japan, though when our tour guide asked, there were no representatives from New York City, where Cole made his name. Another "Must-See."

Across the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, spanning the Hudson River, sits Olana, home of Frederick Church, another Hudson River School master. Perched on a hilltop, with a fantastic view of the Catskills and Hudson River Valley, this castle-like pile, in a Victorian Persian-Turkish fantasy style--was closed to the public, for a year. The folks at Cedar Grove said it was either for fire protection or air conditioning (or both). Unlike Thomas Cole's home, this pretentious castle is owned by the State of New York, and had signs announcing massive funding from places like the National Endowment for the Humanities. We were there on a weekday--and saw no evidence of any work actually being done, no construction noise, no trucks moving. Nothing. Your tax dollars at work. Still, the grounds are impressive, with landscaping by New York Central Park designer Calvert Vaux. And the view is worth the trip up the hill. Ovwerall, I prefer Cedar Grove for its air of personal charm, and the terrific guides.

Call Northside 777

Michael Tracey's role in the Jon Benet Ramsey case reminds one of Henry Hathaway's classic 1948 noir journalistic procedural Call Northside 777, starring Jimmy Stewart. One crusading reporter frees a man wrongly convicted of murder. Well, I guess newspapers don't seem to have crusading reporters anymore. But there do seem to be crusading journalism professors like Tracey. Heck of a story...

A Nicer Place to Stay in Grove City, PA

In all fairness to Grove City, there was a nice B&B, where we moved after one night at the Super 8 Motel. It's called Terra Nova House.

Harold Evans v. the Islamists

Mr. Tina Brown and former Times of London editor Harold Evans takes on Islamists--as well their enablers in the media and "civil rights" organizations--in the Guardian's opinion pages (ht Instapundit):

There can be no security without freedom - but no freedom without security.

Of course, it is true that as well as the accident of the De Menezes tragedy, anti-terrorism measures have resulted in a number of notorious affronts to human rights. There is absolutely no justification for Abu Ghraib, nor for long-term detention without due process; but these shocking events, all properly exposed by a vigilant press, have led to prosecutions of the perpetrators. That is the way a free society works.

An editor at an international conference I attended recently said blame for the murders of journalists in Iraq - most of them Iraqi - is all because President Bush won't accept the Geneva conventions. I am not going to defend Bush's stubborn and stupid unilateralism on a whole range of issues, but it totally misunderstands the nature of terrorism today to think the Geneva convention, courts of law, or the "foreign policy" the Islamic organisations dislike, even remotely enter the thinking of Osama and his motley bombers.

The civil rights lobbies are working from a passé play book. They are blind to the lethal nature of the new Salafist totalitarianism. They won't recognize that we are facing an irrationalist movement immune to compromise and dedicated to achieve its ends of controlling every aspect of daily life, every process of the mind, through indiscriminate mass slaughter. It is a culture obsessed with death, a culture that despises women, a culture devoted to mad hatreds not just of Americans and Jews everywhere, but of Muslims anywhere who embrace a less totalitarian, less radical, more humane view of Islam. These Muslims are to be murdered, and have been in their thousands, along with "the pigs of Jews, the monkeys of Christians" and all the "dirty infidels".

Nor is the repellent language of hate limited to recognized terrorist groups like al-Qaida, Hizbullah and Hamas. It is in the school textbooks in Palestine and in the schools of our "ally", Saudi Arabia. They promised to clean them up but a recent Washington Post investigation showed the books still tell the young they have a religious obligation to wage jihad against not only Christians and Jews but also Muslims who do not follow the xenophobic Wahabi doctrine.

The Salafist movement was under-rated and misunderstood and the reaction to it has been confused. As always, the right is triggerhappy and hostile to free expression; as always, the left never wants to do anything that would hazard its self-righteous sense of moral purity.

These are historic fault lines. The right tolerated fascism in the thirties, the left Soviet Communism in the fifties. Of course these two earlier totalitarian movements were different in nature and our response when it came was not always well judged - the tendency is to think first of the excesses of the right typified by the witch hunts of the odious McCarthy, but we should remember, too, that the Democratic party in the immediate postwar years of Henry Wallace would have abandoned Europe just as the left in the eighties would have left Europe at the mercy of the new Soviet missiles.

The apologists for the Islamo-fascists - an accurate term - leave millions around the world exposed to a less obvious but more insidious barbarism.

Michael Tracey & the Joan Benet Ramsey Case

The Rocky Mountain News reports that the latest twist in the Ramsey case came about due to an email exchange between University of Colorado Journalism professor Michael Tracey and John Mark Karr, who was arrested in Thailand as a suspect in the case. Tracey had produced a documentary about the murder, and became convinced of the Ramsey family's innocence.

Strange thing is that I met Tracey when he was working on his 1998 book, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING--all about PBS. It seems just a little ironic that a British professor expert in educational television should be at the center of the biggest tabloid murder story covered by world media. Still, it's a heck of a story...

You can buy his PBS book from Amazon.com, here:

German Documentary on Islamism Shows Hitler with Mufti of Jerusalem

(ht LGF & Justify This)

Bernard Lewis on the Meaning of August 22nd

From the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal:

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.

A Strange Coincidence...

We were visiting cousins of someone I know in Grove City. There, on the wall of the dining room, was this picture by Marin County artist Millicent Tomkins. We had a very similar picture in our home when I was growing up, because the artist was married to a medical school classmate of my father. It was strange to see a picture from your home, in someone else's. No, he didn't know the artist, he just liked the picture, which had been a gift. I told him the meaning of the saxophone (Gordon's), cello (Tanya's), and viola (Lesley's). That's what they really looked like in their Mill Valley living room, when we would visit her at home, some 30-40 years ago...

You can see some current paintings by Millicent Tomkins online, here.

J. Howard Pew in Bronze at Dusk, Grove City College, Grove City, PA

The Worst Hotel I Ever Stayed In

Now, I've been around the world once, and to Central Asia and back another time. I've stayed in a Russian student dormitory, and Indian faculty dormitory, and hotels in India, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Romania, Turkey, Russia and the Ukraine. But the worst hotel I've ever stayed in was right here in the good old USA--the Super 8 in Grove City, PA.

Apparently, it does its business among Ontario residents who shop at the outlet mall in order to save on sales tax (no sales tax on clothes in PA, 25% in Ontario). So, all the motels fill up on weekends. Including this one.

What was so bad?

Price: $114 per night.

The Room: We arrived and there was no toilet paper. Went down to the front desk to get some. Came up to find that not only was the bed unchanged and sheets dirty--ther were crumbs in the bed...

Went down again for new sheets, the first set didn't fit. Another trip. This set wasn't clean either, stained with bodily fluids. Finally, third trip, got some clean but un-pressed sheets. Beggars can't be choosers. No glasses in the bathroom for tooth-brushing. And the mirror covered in spit from the last guest. Oy!

Well, the desk clerk said they'd take care of it the next morning. They gave me 1/2 off--still outrageous, honestly, I had to change my sheets three times and be grossed out at least that often. (Doesn't the Super 8 chain have inspectors, to protect their brand reputation?)

Of course, the room smelled of cigarette smoke. You can read more about it, from other dissatisfied customers here, at TripAdvisor.

PS: Hint to Ontario shoppers, there's another Outlet Mall in Erie that doesn't advertise on TV, so it is not as crowded--and closer to Canada. So, you can skip a visit to Grove City...

Shteyngart

I've been in an email discussion with a literary Russian immigrant friend about Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debuatante's Handbook.

What can I say? I like them a lot. No, they are not perfect. Yes, there is too much raunchy sex. Yes, there are some stupid scences, and he doesn't always know where he is going. BUT, overall, there is an intelligence, a sensitivity and a seriousness underlying the work. He's young, and will no doubt get better as he gets older. I wasn't surprised to read that Shteyngart studied international relations at Oberlin, nor that his senior thesis was on Gerogia, Moldova and Tajikistan. It's evident in his books that he knows what he's writing about. Not every novelist does.

And, I knew some Americans who were in Prague in the 80s--and they were just like Gary Shteyngart characters.

You can buy the books by clicking on the boxes above.

Daniel Pipes: A Kremlinologist of Jihad

One more name for Will Marshall, whom he probably knows but didn't mention, is the son of Cold War Kremlinologist Richard Pipes--Daniel Pipes. His November 2001 article on fighting militant Islam without bias from City Journal is relevant today:

What must Americans do to protect themselves from Islamists while safeguarding the civil rights of law-abiding Muslims? The first and most straightforward thing is not to allow any more Islamists into the country. Each Islamist who enters the United States, whether as a visitor or an immigrant, is one more enemy on the home front. Officials need to scrutinize the speech, associations, and activities of potential visitors or immigrants for any signs of Islamist allegiances and keep out anyone they suspect of such ties. Some civil libertarian purists will howl, as they once did over similar legislation designed to keep out Marxist-Leninists. But this is simply a matter of national self-protection.

Laws already on the books allow for such a policy, though excercising them these days is extremely difficult, requiring the direct involvement of the secretary of state (see "It's Time to Plug Our Leaky Borders"). Though written decades before Islamism appeared on the U.S. scene, for example, the 1952 McCarren-Walter Act permits the exclusion of anyone seeking to overthrow the U.S. government. Other regulations would keep out people suspected of terrorism or of committing other acts with "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences." U.S. officials need greater leeway to enforce these laws.

Keeping Islamists out of the country is an obvious first step, but it will be equally important to watch closely Islamists already living here as citizens or residents. Unfortunately, this means all Muslims must face heightened scrutiny. For the inescapable and painful fact is that, while anyone might become a fascist or communist, only Muslims find Islamism tempting. And if it is true that most Muslims aren't Islamists, it is no less true that all Islamists are Muslims. Muslims can expect that police searching for suspects after any new terrorist attack will not spend much time checking out churches, synagogues, or Hindu temples but will concentrate on mosques. Guards at government buildings will more likely question pedestrians who appear Middle Eastern or wear headscarves.

Because such measures have an admittedly prejudicial quality, authorities in the past have shown great reluctance to take them, an attitude Islamists and their apologists have reinforced, seeking to stifle any attempt to single out Muslims for scrutiny. When Muslims have committed crimes, officials have even bent over backward to disassociate their motives from militant Islam. For example, the Lebanese cabdriver who fired at a van full of Orthodox Jewish boys on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, leaving one child dead, had a well-documented fury at Israel and Jews—but the FBI ascribed his motive to "road rage." Only after a persistent campaign by the murdered boy's mother did the FBI finally classify the attack as "the crimes of a terrorist," almost seven years after the killing. Reluctance to come to terms with militant Islam might have been understandable before September 11—but no longer.

Heightened scrutiny of Muslims has become de rigueur at the nation's airports and must remain so. Airline security personnel used to look hard at Arabs and Muslims, but that was before the relevant lobbies raised so much fuss about "airline profiling" as a form of discrimination that the airlines effectively abandoned the practice. The absence of such a commonsense policy meant that 19 Muslim Arab hijackers could board four separate flights on September 11 with ease.

Greater scrutiny of Muslims also means watching out for Islamist "sleepers"—individuals who go quietly about their business until, one day, they receive the call from their controllers and spring into action as part of a terrorist operation. The four teams of September 11 hijackers show how deep deception can go. As one investigator, noting the length of time the 19 terrorists spent in the United States, explained, "These weren't people coming over the border just to attack quickly. . . . They cultivated friends, and blended into American society to further their ability to strike." Stopping sleepers before they are activated and strike will require greater vigilance at the nation's borders, good intelligence, and citizen watchfulness.

Resident Muslim aliens who reveal themselves to be Islamist should be immediately expelled from the country before they have a chance to act. Citizen Islamists will have to be watched very closely and without cease.

Even as the nation monitors the Muslim world within its borders more closely for signs of Islamism, it must continue, of course, to protect the civil rights of law-abiding American Muslims. Political leaders should regularly and publicly distinguish between Islam, the religion of Muslims, and Islamism, the totalitarian ideology. In addition, they should do everything in their power to make sure that individual Muslims, mosques, and other legal institutions continue to enjoy the full protection of the law. A time of crisis doesn't change the presumption of innocence at the core of our legal system. Police should provide extra protection for Muslims to prevent acts of vandalism against their property or their persons.

Thankfully, some American Muslims (and Arab-Americans, most of whom actually are Christian) understand that by accepting some personal inconvenience—and even, let's be honest, some degree of humiliation—they are helping to protect both the country and themselves. Tarek E. Masoud, a Yale graduate student, shows a good sense that many of his elders seem to lack: "How many thousands of lives would have been saved if people like me had been inconvenienced with having our bags searched and being made to answer questions?" he asks. "People say profiling makes them feel like criminals. It does—I know this firsthand. But would that I had been made to feel like a criminal a thousand times over than to live to see the grisly handiwork of real criminals in New York and Washington."

A third key task will be to combat the totalitarian ideology of militant Islam. That means isolating such noisy and vicious Islamist institutions as the American Muslim Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Politicians, the press, corporations, voluntary organizations, and society as a whole—all must shun these groups and grant them not a shred of legitimacy. Tax authorities and law enforcement should watch them like hawks, much as they watch the Teamsters.

Fighting Islamist ideology will also require shutting down Internet sites that promote Islamist violence, recruit new members to the terrorist campaign against the West, and raise money for militant Islamic causes ("Donate money for the military Jihad," exhorts one such website). The federal government began to take action even before September 11, closing InfoCom, a Dallas-based host for many Islamist organizations, some of them funneling money to militant Islamic groups abroad.

Essential, too, in the struggle against Islamist ideology will be reaching out to moderate non-Islamist Muslims for help. These are the people unfairly tarred by Islamist excesses, after all, and so are eager to stop this extremist movement. Bringing them on board has several advantages: they can provide valuable advice, they can penetrate clandestine Islamist organizations, and their involvement in the effort against Islamism blunts the inevitable charges of "Islamophobia."

Further, experts on Islam and Muslims—academics, journalists, religious figures, and government officials—must be held to account for their views. For too long now, they have apologized for Islamism rather than interpreted it honestly. As such, they bear some responsibility for the unpreparedness that led to September's horror. The press and other media need to show greater objectivity in covering Islam. In the past, they have shamefully covered up for it. The recent PBS documentary Islam: Empire of Faith is a case in point, offering, as the Wall Street Journal sharply put it, an "uncritical adoration of Islam, more appropriate to a tract for true believers than a documentary purporting to give the American public a balanced account." Islamists in New York City celebrated the destruction on September 11 at their mosques, but journalists refused to report the story for fear of offending Muslims, effectively concealing this important information from the U.S. public.

Taking these three steps—keeping Islamists out, watching them within the nation's borders without violating the civil liberties of American Muslims, and delegitimating extremists—permits Americans to be fair toward the moderate majority of Muslims while fighting militant Islam. It will be a difficult balancing act, demanding sensitivity without succumbing to political correctness. But it is both essential and achievable.

Mohamed Sifaoui v. Islamism

I read Mohamed Sifaoui's INSIDE AL QAEDA a while ago, and was reminded of it again by Will Marshall's call for more "Kremlinologists" of Jihad. Certainly Mohamed Sifaoui is as much of an expert as anyone alive--and I hope Will Marshall reads this book. Here's an excerpt from the foreword:

I am an Algerian Muslim by birth, and a journalist by profession. Like everyone else in Algeria, I had lived with teh scourge of Islamist terrorism for a decade before the western world discovered the horror of 11 September 2001. Like may of my fellow Algerians, I have lost many people close to me, both family and firends. Such traumas have left indelible marks which will never heal.

In Algeria we have lived through this turmoil without the sympathy of the international community. To put it bluntly, the West didn't really care about terrorism until it came knocking at its own door I have never experienced the solidarity shown by the Europeans towards the Americans, for example, in the aftermath of the attacks on Washington and New York. On 11 September, I understoot something very important: no matter what anyone says, and despite the views that continually get repeated, in the West, the life of an Algerian isn't valued as highly as the life of an American, and a Rwandan life isn't worth as much as a European one.

Nonetheless, realizing this has not stopped me carrying on my fight against Islamism, since I do not want to see it strike France and thereaten the security of the coutnry which has welcomed me, and which has become mine. I have neer given up the fight, even though there are certain sectors of public opinion here in France which continue tolook the other way, and make a distinction between 'moderate' Islamism and 'radical' fundamentalism, often excusing en passant the crimes committed in the name of this form of fascism all around the world, not least in Algeria. Along with thousands of others worldwide, I have continued to denounce Islamism as the ideology which feeds a despicable form of terrorism, and which threatens whole societies from the Philippines to Chechnya, and from the Near East to the Horn of Africa. All the while, bomb attacks continue with terrible regularity.

To buy INSIDE AL QAEDA, click here:

Robert Spencer

Will Marshall asked for more "Kremlinologists" of Jihad. Here's one with his own blog: Robert Spencer:

Q: Why should I believe what you say about Islam?
RS: Because I draw no conclusions of myself, and I do not ask anyone to take anything on my word. Pick up any of my books, and you will see that they are made up largely of quotations from Islamic jihadists and the traditional Islamic sources to which they appeal to justify violence and terrorism. I am only shedding light on what these sources say.

It is amusing to me that some people like to focus on my credentials, when I have never made a secret of the fact that most of what I know about Islam comes from personal study. It is easier for them to talk about degrees than to find any inaccuracy in my work. Yet I present the work not on the basis of my credentials, but on the basis of the evidence I bring forth; evaluate it for yourself. As this site has shown, I am always open to new information.

Q: Why have you studied Islam for so long?
RS: It has been an enduring fascination. Since childhood I have had an interest in the Muslim world, from which my family comes. When I was very young my grandparents would tell me stories about their life there, and I always heard them with great interest. When I met Muslim students as a college undergraduate I began reading and studying the Qur'an in earnest. That led to in-depth forays into tafsir (interpretations of the Qur'an), hadith (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad), and much more about Islamic theology and law. While working on my master's thesis, which dealt not with Islam but (in part) with some early Christian heretical groups, I began to study early Islamic history, since some of these groups ended up in Arabia and may have influenced Muhammad. In the intervening years I continued these studies of Islamic theology, history, and law out of personal interest.

This led to my consulting privately with some individuals and groups about Islam, but I had never intended to do such work publicly. However, after 9/11 I was asked to write Islam Unveiled in order to correct some of the misapprehensions about Islam that were widespread at that time.

Q: I've read that you are secretly a Catholic and have a religious agenda.
RS: Yes, I have been so intent on keeping this a secret that I co-wrote a book called Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics. Here again, people like to imagine that a Christian cannot write accurately about Islam, but they cannot point to any inaccuracy in my work. Nor is there any religious agenda here. I envision Jihad Watch as an opportunity for all the actual and potential victims of jihad violence and oppression -- Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secular Muslims, atheists, whatever -- to join together to defend universal human rights. There are many things about which we all disagree, but at this point we need to unite simply in order to survive. We can sort out our disagreements later.

At this point the people most active, in various ways, in the work of Jihad Watch are a Catholic, a Jew, and an atheist. If we weren't so busy trying to awaken the Western world to the threat of violent jihad, we could walk into a bar and...(fill in your own punchline).

Q: I've read that you are a member of Opus Dei.
RS: Uh, sorry, no.

Q: I've read that you are actually Jewish.
RS: Again, no. Jihadists commonly label all their opponents as Jews. They don't seem to realize that they have offended more groups than just one. I am honored to be able to stand with Jews and others in defense of human rights against the totalitarian, supremacist jihad ideology.

Q: I've read that you are actually a Maoist.
RS: Strike three.

Lying BBC Reporter Caught by Blogger

(ht LGF) Here.

Shimon Peres: Israel Won

Hard to believe, but Shimon Peres may be right, given the tone of Nora Boustany's Lebanese jokebook (scroll down). Here's the report from Ha'aretz:

"They (Hezbollah) thought they will bring Israel on our knees. I don't say it's easy but we withstood it and we feel that we went out of it militarily in a good shape and politically in an even better one," Peres, in Atlanta to raise humanitarian funds for northern Israel, told a news conference.

He said he still supported Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, adding that now was not the time for internal conflicts in Israel.

He also that the UN cease-fire resolution was an important achievement because it had been reached with the full support of the moderate Arab states, and also because Russia joined the vote against transferring weapons to Hezbollah.

Will Marshall on Confronting Jihad

The head of the Progessive Policy Institute takes on the Jihadist menace:

Some foreign policy analysts dismiss the severity of the jihadist threat, which they believe the White House has exaggerated for political reasons.

That's a big mistake. Although the ranks of hardcore terrorists may be small, the number of Islamist sympathizers, theorists, enablers, and potential recruits appears to be growing. Saudi Arabia has been particularly active in building the infrastructure that supports extremism, recycling oil revenues to the tune of $75 billion over the last two decades to spread Wahhabi fundamentalism around the world.

Instead of minimizing the jihadist threat, Americans should study the jihadist ideology. We need the equivalent of the Cold War's Kremlinologists -- jihadologists who can help U.S. policymakers understand what motivates extremism and devise better strategies for diminishing its appeal to Muslims wherever they live.

Bush's "war on terror" has focused too narrowly on terrorists' means rather than their ideas. Reza Aslan, an American Muslim, argues in With All Our Might that the president seems oblivious to the context from which jihadist extremism springs. The movement arises from a civil war raging within Islam. It pits reformers seeking an accommodation with modernity against fundamentalists determined to rid Islam of all modern and corrupting ideas.

"The simple truth is that the United States has a national security interest in the outcome of the Islamic Reformation currently under way throughout the Muslim world," Aslan writes. "It must therefore do whatever it can to tip the balance of power away from the extremists and back to the massive yet voiceless majority who are as much victims of jihadism as is the West."

Yet Bush's excessively militarized response to terrorism and his reductive, good-versus-evil rhetoric has played into the jihadists' strategy of framing their struggle as an irreconcilable conflict between Islam and the "crusader" West.
"The simple truth is that the United States has a national security interest in the outcome of the Islamic Reformation currently under way throughout the Muslim world," Aslan writes. "It must therefore do whatever it can to tip the balance of power away from the extremists and back to the massive yet voiceless majority who are as much victims of jihadism as is the West."

Yet Bush's excessively militarized response to terrorism and his reductive, good-versus-evil rhetoric has played into the jihadists' strategy of framing their struggle as an irreconcilable conflict between Islam and the "crusader" West.

The United States needs a smarter strategy for undercutting the ideological appeal of the global jihad. For starters, we need to rally the world's democracies to a stouter defense of their liberal ideas. We should challenge the international community to strengthen norms against killing civilians and impose meaningful penalties on states that don't comply with tough new anti-terror conventions. We should join the International Criminal Court and seek indictments against Osama bin Laden and other terror chiefs for crimes against humanity. It's time for a real zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism, not one that makes exceptions for "resistance to occupation."

DLC: What Next in Lebanon?

The Democratic Leadership Council has some ideas on next steps for Lebanon:

If the international community wants Israel to stop short of removing the terrorist threat, then the international community needs to:

(1) Make it clear it repudiates the rejectionist claim that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish State and condemns terrorism against Israel just as it does terrorism against any other state. Europeans in particular have long advanced an implicit and unique exception for anti-Israeli terrorists on grounds that they have a "right to resistance" against Israeli occupation of territories obtained since 1967. But both Hamas and Hezbollah are operating from territories Israeli has unilaterally abandoned; and both explicitly reject Israel's existence within boundaries established in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. This is about Israeli sovereignty, not Israeli occupations, and terrorist acts against Israel should be opposed just as strongly as terrorist acts against, say, France.

(2) Find a way to enforce the long-standing UN mandate that Hezbollah be disarmed. The revival of Lebanon after its long civil war was based in part on the idea that Hezbollah would disband its militias and pursue its goals through peaceful political activity. It has indeed become part of the Lebanese political system, but also maintains the strongest military force in the country, thanks to massive infusions of Iranian money, training and weaponry. If UN Security Council members don't want Israel to destroy Hezbollah's military arm, they must commit themselves to do it themselves, by deploying a real international force in southern Lebanon that can prevent future attacks on Israel once the current fighting is over.

(3) Intensify pressure against Hamas to recognize Israel and reject terrorism if it wants to be regarded as a legitimate governing party. Like Hezbollah, Hamas faces a choice between terrorism or democratic politics; it cannot have it both ways. To their credit, Palestine's European paymasters supported U.S. efforts to cut off subsidies to the Palestinian Authority until such time as Hamas abandoned its rejectionist policies and terrorist tactics. But Hamas has abundantly confirmed its status as a Jihadist terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel, in both actions and rhetoric (such as The Washington Post op-ed last week by the Palestinian Authority prime minister pledging continued attacks on Israeli civilians until such time as Israel dealt with the "core 1948 issues," meaning the existence of a Jewish State). Hamas needs to be taken at its word and treated accordingly.

(4) Isolate and sanction Iran and Syria until such time as they stop serving as staging grounds and paymasters for rejectionist terrorism. The case for international action against Iran was overwhelming even before last week's events, given Tehran's serial defiance of global non-proliferation policies. Its deep complicity in the attacks on Israel -- Iran heavily finances and supplies Hezbollah, and also recently began channeling aid to Hamas, after a conference confirming Iran's determination to wipe Israel off the map -- makes such action urgent. Emboldened by international tolerance, and also by the preoccupation of the United States with Iraq, Iran is clearly pressing ahead with an agenda to destabilize the Middle East and establish itself as the dominant regional power. Iran's chief ally in the region, Syria, was nicely positioned to help in this flanking tactic, given its long support for Hamas and its residual interests in controlling Lebanon.

Both Tehran and Damascus have become clear threats to regional and world peace, and must be isolated and sanctioned, not appeased. Weapons transfers to terrorist groups must stop. Terrorist headquarters must be shut down. Those who fear Israeli military action against either regime need to supply an alternative way to rein in these rogue states. And Russia and China must finally understand that if they want to be great powers in a post-Cold War world, they must abandon their Cold War habit of aiding and abetting anti-western tyrants in Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang.

And that's really the bottom line about how the United States should guide the international community in this crisis: deal with the problems if you don't want Israel to deal with them on their own terms, as it must. The administration should dispatch Secretary of State Condi Rice to the region to lead diplomatic efforts aimed at disarming Hezbollah, reining in Hamas, and imposing real sanctions on Iran and Syria for their complicity in terrorism.

The reality right now is that the fight against jihadism has entered a new and even more dangerous phase. If the United States aggressively pursues a multilateral, anti-jihadist strategy in this case or others, then we will be in a better position to not only serve as a peacemaker in the Middle East, but to reprise America's Cold War leadership in creating a collective security system that can thwart terrorists and tyrants alike.

Bernard Henri-Levy v. Hezbollah

This NY Times website Q&A with the French philosopher was sent to me by a friend in New York:

Q. 1. Why do you only paint your story from the point of view of Israelis? Why do you assume that Hezbollah is an organization that is not wanted by the people of Lebanon, if they provide services, have elected representatives, and are the only ones able to defend their country?
— Cornelius Diamond, La Jolla, Calif.

A. Three questions in one, dear Cornelius. First, why the Israeli viewpoint? Because only the other viewpoint is seen and I do not like conformism, much less injustice. In other words, it's okay to criticize Israel and debate the strategy adopted by the military command, which is not necessarily the right one. But-a little equity, please — let one begin by listening to what Israelis say and looking at what they are enduring: that's what I did in this reporting. Next: Isn't Hezbollah "wanted by the people of Lebanon"? Don't they "provide services" and "have elected representatives"? Yes, of course, there is no dispute about this, but since when would that be contradictory with the fact of being totalitarians and even perfect fascists? Wasn't Hitler — even though it's not comparable — democratically elected? Didn't Mussolini provide the Italian people every possible service? Indeed, isn't that in a general way the precise definition of fascist populism? Things get complicated with your third question and the idea that the people of Hezbollah are "the only ones able to defend their country." I hope you are joking! For in truth Hezbollah has been bleeding Lebanon and has literally taken it hostage and taken its own people hostage, turning them into human shields with mind-boggling cynicism — a bizarre way to "defend" a country.

Public Domain Images

Over the weekend, we visited with Professor David Dailey at Slippery Rock Universtiy in Pennsylvania. A professor of computer science, Dr. Dailey has a build one of the largest collection of public domain images, which he scanned into a database for public use. It's clip art on a massive scale, and you can browse the collection here. I liked this one of a Bactrian camel, a souvenir of our time in Central Asia...

Nora Boustany's Lebanese Jokebook

From today's Washington Post:

As one joke has it, residents fleeing the Shiite suburbs of Beirut were flashing the victory sign -- to indicate that only two buildings were still left standing.

It was followed by excited speculation that real estate values in the poor neighborhood of Ain al-Rummaneh, a crowded cluster of aging buildings overlooking the southern suburbs, had shot up by 50 percent. Why? It now has a sea view.

People are petrified of honoring their dental appointments out of fear they may have bridgework done, goes another favorite. So contagious have these stories been that in one refugee center, Marwa Saad, 15, whose family was driven out by fierce fighting near the southern market town of Nabatiyeh, did not dare utter a word without covering her mouthful of braces.

"Everyone keeps teasing me; they bully me to keep my mouth shut so we don't get hit by Israeli jets," she said about her friends, giggling with her hand to her mouth.

Another story has Haifa Wehbe, the curvaceous bombshell of Lebanese music videos, dispatched by the Hezbollah leadership to Israel to conduct negotiations. She returns pregnant. When confronted about her condition, the anecdote goes, Wehbe insisted she was only trying to help: "I thought I would get you another small hostage."

Some jokes target the Syrians for causing the crisis by allowing arms to flow to Hezbollah and pressuring the Lebanese government to let the group keep its arms. One joke says the Israelis cannot aim at the Syrian inhabitants of Homs. Why? Because the Israelis only have smart bombs.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is also the butt of some humor. The elderly women of the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh regard Nasrallah as their new idol and sex symbol, goes one line, because he has taken them back 40 years.

Another joke extols Nasrallah, saying he is now worthy of a statue since he managed to put the entire Shiite Muslim community, with its high rate of illiteracy, in schools.

Julie Burchill on BBC Anti-Semitism

From Haaretz:

Personally, I'd far prefer the Jews to be angry, aggressive and alive than meek, mild and dead - and that's what makes me and a minority like me feel so much like strangers in our own country, now more than ever. I've always loved being a hack, but now even that feels weird, as though I'm living among a bunch of snatched-body zombies who look like journalists but believe and say the most inhuman, evil things.

When Mel Gibson was picked up for drunk-driving recently, he was reported to have screamed at the police officer, whom he believed to be Jewish, "Fucking Jews! The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." His subsequent excuse was that he has "battled the disease of alcoholism for all my adult life." The British media are notorious for our love of the hard stuff; is that going to be our excuse too, I wonder, when large numbers of us are finally bang to rights for peddling the same loathsome lie?

British Reveal Al Qaeda Links to Airline Bombing Plot

According to The Guardian:

A brother of two of the 24 suspects seized by detectives investigating a plot to bomb up to 12 planes was seized in Pakistan shortly before police launched their raids, it emerged last night.
The arrest of Rashid Rauf in the border area with Afghanistan was a trigger that led investigators to start an immediate pre-emptive operation with officers fearing the alleged cells were ready to strike.

Pakistani officials claimed last night that Mr Rauf had links with al-Qaida. "We arrested him from the border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with British authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain," said the interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao.

The foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri, said Mr Rauf had been monitored for some time before his arrest.

Mr Rauf's uncle was murdered in Birmingham in April 2002 and as part of the murder hunt it is understood that Mr Rauf's home in St Margaret's Road in the city was searched.

Mr Rauf's arrest was one of seven made by Pakistani authorities in recent days, and is understood to have included one other Briton. Mr Rauf's two brothers were arrested in Birmingham on Thursday. There were reports last night that Mr Rauf provided the link between the plot's planners and the British Muslims alleged to have been preparing to carry out the attacks.

It also emerged yesterday that at least one suspect arrested in Walthamstow, east London, regularly attended camps run by Tablighi Jamaat, an organisation which the Americans believe has been used as a recruiting ground for al-Qaida. Martyrdom tapes and other items were found in the search of the 29 properties where arrests were made on Thursday.

Roger L. Simon: Rudy Giuliani, Now!

Andrew Sullivan on Israel & Lebanon

Andrew Sullivan quotes a letter from a Lebanese Christian praising Israelis and then adds this:

Our strongest weapons in this war are our values. Yes, military force is important and necessary. But our values are what will win in the long run — because they reflect a deeper truth about human dignity than the poisonous doctrines of distorted religious certitude and bigotry. That's why we must never — never — tolerate torture of prisoners; that's why we should never sacrifice the rule of law; that's why we should never give civilian politicians a "get-out-of-jail-free" card for war crimes. And that's why we should support Israel now, more than ever. She is not perfect. But her enemies are in a different category of morality. The difference between collateral civilian casualties and civilian casualties as the entire purpose of war is the difference between an embattled civilization and barbarism. Yes, there are grays in the Middle East. But this isn't one of them.

Have American Networks Shown This Footage?

I think it says it all about the horrible anti-Israel atrocity propaganda campaign. BTW, has the Red Cross done anything to discipline "Green Helmet" or its Lebanese affiliates for this? I just can't believe that official Red Cross guidelines allow manhandling corpses for PR like this video shows. WARNING: If you are squeamish, skip this video clip.(ht Michelle Malkin)

My Cousin Blogs From Israel...

At Savtadotty.

Andrew McCarthy: Bush's Democratization Project Abets Terrorism

Wonder how long he'll be able to keep his position with the Bush administration-friendly Foundation for the Defense of Democracies after publishing this in National Review Online?:

The administration, which initially refused even to acknowledge that what’s occurring is a war, now appears to have widened the lens a smidge. There is indeed a war. But, mind you, it only, only involves Israel and Hezbollah.

It certainly does not involve us — the enemy whom Hezbollah has sworn for a quarter century to defeat — because then we’d have to forfeit that Honest Broker title and all the gushing love from the fabled Arab Street that comes with it (between choruses of “Death to America”).

It certainly does not involve Iran and Syria, because then we’d have to do something about governments that facilitate terror organizations — and, by the way, since we lawyers are so fond of precedent, the marvelous track-record of this ostrich approach can be found by reviewing Clinton v. Taliban (1996-2001) and Clinton v. Palestinian Authority (1993-2001).

And, most of all, it certainly does not involve our dear friend, Lebanon, because then we’d have to admit that the Democracy Project — the utopian copestone of counterterrorism policy in the second Bush term — does not, in fact, counter terrorism. Over the long haul, its prospects are dubious. In the short term, it abets terrorism.

Michelle Malkin Says to Read This Book

Michelle Malkin says Annie Jacobsen predicted today's airport bomb scare. You can buy TERROR IN THE SKIES by clicking here:

Christopher Hitchens on the Failure of the Left

From The Atlantic:

It is perfectly true that most Americans were somewhat indifferent to the outside world as it was before September 11, and also highly ignorant of it—a point on which the self-blaming faction insists. While attention was elsewhere, a deadly and irreconcilable enemy was laying plans and training recruits. This enemy—unless we are to flatter him by crediting his own propaganda—cares no more for the wretched of the West Bank than did Saddam Hussein when he announced that the road to Palestine and Jerusalem led through Kuwait and Kurdistan. But a lethal and remorseless foe is a troubling thing in more than one way. Not only may he wish you harm; he may force you to think and to act. And these responsibilities—because thinking and acting are responsibilities—may be disconcerting. The ancient Greeks were so impressed and terrified by the Furies that they re-baptized them the Eumenides—"the Kindly Ones"—the better to adjust to them. Members of the left, along with the far larger number of squishy "progressives," have grossly failed to live up to their responsibility to think; rather, they are merely reacting, substituting tired slogans for thought. The majority of those "progressives" who take comfort from Stone and Chomsky are not committed, militant anti-imperialists or anti-capitalists. Nothing so muscular. They are of the sort who, discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

I believe I can prove this by means of a brief rhetorical experiment. It runs as follows. Very well, I will stipulate that September 11 was revenge for past American crimes. Specifically, and with supporting detail, I will agree that it was revenge for the crime of past indifference to, and collusion with, the Taliban. May we now agree to cancel this crime by removing from the Taliban the power of enslavement that it exerts over Afghans, and which it hopes to extend? Dead silence from progressives. Couldn't we talk about the ozone layer instead? In other words, all the learned and conscientious objections, as well as all the silly or sinister ones, boil down to this: Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government. (The words "our own" should of course be appropriately ironized, with the necessary quotation marks.) To do so would be a betrayal of the Cherokees.

Some part of this is at least intelligible. My daughter goes to school just across the river from the Pentagon; her good-hearted teachers proposed an "Amity Walk" for children of all nations, to culminate at the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on Massachusetts Avenue. The event would demonstrate that children had no quarrel with anybody. It would not stress the fact that a death squad had just hit a target a few hundred yards away, and would have liked to crash another planeload of hostages anywhere in downtown Washington, and was thwarted in this only by civilians willing to use desperate force. But I had my own reasons, which were no less internationalist, for opposing anything so dismal, and for keeping my child away from anything so inane. I didn't like General Westmoreland or Colonel North or General Pinochet, and I have said more about this than some people. (I did not, like Oliver Stone, become rich or famous by romancing Camelot or by making an unwatchable three-hour movie showing Nixon's and Kissinger's human and vulnerable sides.) I detest General Sharon, and have done so for many years. My face is set against religious and racial demagogues. I believe I know an enemy when I see one. My chief concern when faced with such an antagonist is not that there will be "over-reaction" on the part of those who will fight the adversary—which seems to be the only thing about the recent attacks and the civilized world's response to them that makes the left anxious.

At his best, Noam Chomsky used to insist that there was a distinction to be drawn between state crimes and insurgent crimes, or between the violence of the emperor and the violence of the pirate. The Taliban-bin Laden alliance is a horrific and novel blend of the two. It employs the methods of the anarchist and the rebel in one declension, being surreptitious and covert and relying on the drama of the individual "martyr." But it also draws on the support of police and military and financial systems, and on the base indulgence of certain established and well-funded religious and theocratic leaderships. It throws acid in the faces of unveiled women. It destroys and burns museums and libraries. (Do we need to submit to our own guilt to "understand" this?) It is an elemental challenge, still terrifying even when one appreciates the appalling fact that its program of medieval stultification cannot actually be realized but will nevertheless be fought for. How contemptible it is, and how lowering to the spirit, that America's liberals should have cried so loudly before they had even been hurt, and that they should have been able to be so stoic only when ignoring the cries of others.

Incident at Dulles

This morning, at around 7am, we received a call from a friend at Dulles Airport checking-in for his BA flight to London. What is going on? he wanted to know. There was pandemonium, rumors, and he had to turn in all his shaving cream, toothpaste, gels, lotions, and so forth. It cost me $80! he complained. (He's so well-groomed that he sometimes gets upgraded to Business Class for free). No one had told him what it was about, other than a terrorist threat. So we turned on the TV. And we called him back to explain. Meanwhile, he'd been videotaped by the local TV news dumping his personal care products.

Have the British caught all the plotters? or are some still at large, possibly in the USA?

Despite reassurances from Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Company this morning, we are not completely reassured...

(More background on this story at MichelleMalkin.com and DebbieSchlussel.com.)

America Must Fight Harder

Says Steven M. Warshawsky in The American Thinker, responding to the National Review's Stanley Kurtz:

The truth is, to date, we have not made any effort to destroy the forces of militant Islam. We have only engaged in limited conventional actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and (supposedly) covert ops worldwide. That’s it. We haven’t mobilized the American people for war. We haven’t destroyed Iran and Syria. We haven’t closed radical mosques or shut down the jihadist propaganda networks. We haven’t conducted targeted assassinations of jihadi leaders across the globe. We haven’t made it clear to the terrorists and their supporters that they cannot win and that they will die.

How can Kurtz be so sure the enemy cannot be defeated? We haven’t even tried.

Yes, Kurtz is right in that a much broader war will be required to defeat militant Islam. And, yes, Kurtz would have been right to question whether the United States and Europe have the political will to engage in this fight. I have my own doubts on this score. But to believe that militant Islam “cannot be defeated” is ridiculous—and only weakens whatever resolve we still have to kill them before they kill us.

The ugly truth about existential warfare—and that is what we are engaged in with militant Islam—is that the only way to win an existential conflict is to kill as many of the enemy population as possible and to destroy as much of its society as possible.

This is precisely what we (and our allies) did to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War Two. The reason these two enemies were defeated and pacified is because literally millions of their young men were killed, and their societies were brutally battered into physical and psychological submission. Just because we no longer have the stomach for this type of warfare, for bloodletting on this massive scale, doesn’t mean it is not an effective strategy for winning wars. Indeed, it is the only strategy. It certainly is the jihadists’ strategy, only limited by their lack of military capability.

How quickly we have forgotten 9/11. How blithely we assume that an even more devastating attack could never happen. A nuclear bomb in New York City or one of our other great metropolitan areas could inflict more casualties than we suffered in World War Two. This is what we should be fighting to prevent. We should not be fighting for elections in Iraq.

Today, our excessive compunction about killing the enemy, and about having our own soldiers die in combat, is the real reason the gloomy scenario described by Kurtz may come to pass. For “peace” is not an option. Even if we do not fight the jihadists, they will keep attacking us, and keep trying to kill as many Americans, Jews, and westerners as possible. Kurtz surely is right on that point. But the answer is to fight harder, not resign ourselves to an even deadlier future.

Night Watch

In order not to be subjected to the anti-Israel atrocity propaganda that fills the nightly airwaves here, I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Finally got around to seeing Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor), Timur Bekmambetov's strikingly energetic adaptation of Sergey Lukyanenko's science-fiction thriller about the struggle to keep one's humanity during battle.

The battle in this case is an eternal struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness, represented respectively by a Soviet-style city electric company bureaucrat and his team on one side, and some "cool" private-sector types--videogame, pop-music, butchers in a marketplace--on the other. They fight for the souls of the "Others"--people with special gifts. Oh yes, the Dark ones are vampires. And there is a Truce which gets violated all the time, too. Day Watch and Night Watch patrol the truce. Think Checkpoint Charlie with vampires.

At first, I thought the picture seemed too crude and noisy, just a videogame imitation Hollywood blockbuster. But it stuck with me, I thought about it a lot--with all the talk of the truce in Lebanon making it seem relevant. In the end, it seemed to me there was a symbolic level that the picture was operating on that made it the super-blockbuster of the year in Moscow. It has something to do with the collapse of Communism--because the revolution, in Leninist terminology, devoured its children.

The Vampirism is a trope, symbol, that goes deeper than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (seen on a TV clip). It has something to do with the famous Russian Character and Russian Soul--maybe even Gogol's dead souls. The Day Watch and Night Watch are symbolic too.

But of what? The Cold War? The Clash of Civilizations? Stay tuned, since part two of the trilogy has been completed in Russia, and will soon be coming to a theatre or DVD store near you...

Portrait of Jennie

This is a wonderful film about the relationship between art and life. Joseph Cotten plays an unsuccessful painter, whose commercial landscapes just don't sell. While visiting galleries, one of the owners encourages him to paint portraits. On the way home, he runs into "Jennie" in Central Park. She's his muse, his inspiration, and his love. His imaginary friend encourages him to take greater and greater chances, eventually resulting in a masterpiece that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cotten character passes through three stages of artistic development--commercial, political, and personal. Each phase is more difficult, but as he progresses he confronts and overcomes his fears. His talent makes the imaginary real.

Ethel Barrymore is the elderly art dealer who shares the secret of artistry with him. Holden's performance is terrific. Jennifer Jones plays the muse.

The 1948 film was directed by William Dieterle, and it is extremely arty, as well as psychological. Almost an artistic film noir.

I give it five stars--for art lovers. If you are not interested in art, or the interior struggles of artistic souls, you may not like it at all...

The Foreigner's Gift by Fouad Ajami

Just read a good review in the Washington Post Book World of Fouad Ajami's latest book, about the American war in Iraq.

It reminded me that I read the book as soon as a friend in New York mentioned that it had been published. Thanks to Amazon's free shipping promotion, it came in 2 days and I read it in another couple of days. It's pretty sobering. And he knows what he's talking about.

I sat in on a few seminars from Professor Ajami at SAIS, and found him to be fascinating as well as very outspoken. A real intellectual, of the old school. Very cultured. Also, not doctrinaire in the least. He's brilliant and open-minded. He's consulted with Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and President Chirac of France. So the charges of neo-conservatism ought to be taken in context. I think of him as a brilliant and independent thinker, representing the best of Levantine civilization.

Unfortunately, he asked me not to quote what he said in class, saying that he works very hard to write very carefully. So, I respected that request...Too bad. He actually has some very strong opinions, and states them bluntly. But not on paper, it appears.

This new book is as allusive and elliptical as one might have expected from a writer who chooses his words with exceptional care. Call it a Shi'ite caution, I think I learned that cultural characteristic in his seminar.

Still, if you are willing to read carefully between the lines, Ajami has a clear message: America gave Iraq a gift with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But how Iraq takes that gift, especially given a history of sectarian tensions, in a state previously ruled by a strongman with a whip and a bag of money (from oil revenues), is up for grabs.

The best part of this book are protraits of various Iraqi personalities. They really come alive as fully rounded human beings, not the cardboard cutouts of so many reports. These colorful and enigmatic characters--including Ahmad Chalabi, among others--reminded me a little of Gogol's Dead Souls.

In sum, Ajami has performed a great service by humanizing a conflict that is often portrayed in terms of dry political rhetoric.

Read it carefully--at least twice...

Anti-Semites for Ned Lamont

That's the bottom-line of this Lanny Davis op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman:

• "Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby" (by "rim," posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

• "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).

• On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

• "Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife's name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover" (by "gerrylong," posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).

• "Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot" (by "greenskeeper," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

And these are some of the nicer examples.

Given Ned Lamont's former membership in an apparently restricted Greenwich country club, his endorsement by Al Sharpton, and the "blackface" mockery of Lieberman, it's not surprising that Lanny Davis has finally noticed something very disturbing about some Ned Lamont supporters...

The State of Russian-Israeli Relations

An analysis by Robert O. Freedman, from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Russia has a number of interests in Israel. First, on the economic front, there is extensive trade which crossed the $500 million mark in 1995 (although it would later dip because of Russia's 1998 economic crisis), making Israel Russia's second leading trade partner in the Middle East after Turkey. Second, on the diplomatic front, a close relationship with Israel enables Russia to play, or appear to play, a major role in the Arab-Israeli peace process. Third, with almost 1,000,000 Russian-speaking Jews now living in Israel, Israel has the largest Russian-speaking diaspora outside the former Soviet Union, and this has led to very significant ties in the areas of cultural exchange and tourism. The fourth major interest is a military-technical one as the Russian military-industrial complex has expressed increasing interest in co-producing military aircraft with Israel, especially since many of the workers in Israel's aircraft industry are former citizens of the Soviet Union with experience in the Soviet military-industrial complex.

From the Israeli point of view, there are four central interests in relations with Russia. The first is to maintain the steady flow of immigration, which has provided Israel with a large number of scientists and engineers. The second is to prevent the export of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials to Israel's Middle East enemies, including Libya, Iran, and Iraq. The third goal is to develop trade relations with Russia, which supplies Israel with such products as uncut diamonds, metals, and timber. Russia is also the site of numerous joint enterprises begun by Israelis who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union. Finally, Israel hopes for at least an even-handed Russian diplomatic position in the Middle East and, if possible, Russian influence on its erstwhile ally, Syria, to be more flexible in reaching a peace agreement with Israel.

Several months after Barak's election, Putin became Russia's prime minister and quickly became deeply involved in the war against Chechnya -- a development that was to positively affect Russian-Israeli relations. While Putin was not to be responsive on the issue of arms to Iran, he was far more forthcoming in denouncing anti-Semitism than Yeltsin was (although he did not go as far as some Russian Jewish leaders wanted).

The issue of greatest importance to the relationship, at least from the Russian point of view, was Israeli support for Russian actions in Chechnya, with one Russian official stating that "Israel helps us break the Western information blockade of Russia over Chechnya." Israel also helped Russia by sending medical supplies to the victims of the Moscow apartment house bombings, claimed by Putin to have been perpetrated by the Chechens, and also gave medical treatment to wounded Russian soldiers.

Israeli help to Moscow over Chechnya was to pay diplomatic dividends when the Al-Aksa intifada broke out in late September 2000, when Putin took a very different position than did Primakov during similar crises in the 1996-1999 period. Unlike the Russian position under Primakov, Putin's Russia was not only evenhanded, he even seemed to tilt toward Israel as the crisis developed. Thus, then Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergei Ivanov, who was later promoted to defense minister, linked the violence on the West Bank and Gaza to the Taliban's increased activities in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and to extremist activity in Chechnya, a position also espoused by Putin's adviser, Sergei Yastrzhembsky. The Russian Duma, unlike its anti-Israel and anti-Semitic predecessor that went out of office in December 1999, voted to blame not Israel but "extremist forces" for the escalation of the conflict.

Despite Putin's shift to an evenhanded position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and Russia's important diplomatic, economic, and military ties with Israel, there are countervailing pressures in Moscow preventing too close a Russian-Israeli alignment. These include:

Pro-Arab elements in Russia's Foreign Ministry and in the increasingly influential secret police who hope to restore the close ties Moscow had in the Arab world in Soviet times.

Anti-Semitic forces who are also anti-Israel. They are primarily found in Russia's communist party and among Russia's ultra-nationalist politicians.

Russia's arms sales agency, Rosoboronoexport. The new arms sales agency has been given a high priority in Putin's efforts to revitalize the Russian economy. Indeed, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has stated that the proceeds from the arms sales are to be invested in the development of new technologies for the economy. What makes this problematic for Israel is that Russian arms sales to Iran, an enemy of Israel, are already a matter of major concern. Should these be followed by arms sales to Syria (assuming Saudi Arabia is willing to pay for the arms -- a possibility if the intifada escalates and draws in Syrian forces), a deterioration in Russian-Israeli relations could well result. The situation would worsen even more if the UN sanctions on Iraq were lifted, or if Russia decided to break them unilaterally (both unlikely prospects at the current time), because in the past Moscow had been a major weapons supplier to Baghdad.

Russia's Muslim community. Approximately 20 percent of the Russian population, they are still rather quiescent politically. Nonetheless, the Russian leadership must take their views into consideration, given the dangers of radical Islam not only in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus and the Russian Federation, but also in Central Asia.

Little Green Footballs 1, Reuters Less Than Zero

Congratulations to Little Green Footballs on exposing Reuters' anti-Israel photo fraud.This episode raises a question for investors and businesspeople: If you can't trust their mideast coverage, can you trust Reuters' financial reporting?

WSJ: Who are the Real War Criminals?

Orde F. Kittrie, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that under international law Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria are clearly guilty of war crimes--not Israel:

At Qana, Israeli aircraft fired toward a building to stop Hezbollah from shooting rockets at its cities. The aircraft did not deliberately target civilians; but Hezbollah rockets are targeted at civilians, a clear war crime. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland last week called on Hezbollah to stop its "cowardly blending" among women and children: "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this." If Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians in Qana as "human shields," then Hezbollah, not Israel, is legally responsible for their deaths.

If Israel was mistaken and Hezbollah was not firing from or hiding amongst these civilians, the legality of its action is assessed by the proportionality test. Because the test is vague, there have been few, if any, cases since World War II in which a soldier, commander or country has been convicted of violating it. In the absence of guidance from the courts, determining whether Israel's military has failed the proportionality test depends on an assessment of what civilian casualties it expected, what its overall military goals are, the context in which the country is operating, and how the international community has in practice balanced civilian risk against military goals.

Israel did not expect civilian casualties; it warned civilians to leave Qana, and Israel's official investigation has concluded its military attacked based on "information that the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists." The law of war recognizes that mistakes are inevitable, and does not criminalize soldiers who seek in good faith seek to avoid them.

Israel's overall military goal is to survive attacks by enemies determined to annihilate it. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has stated: "Israel . . . is an aggressive, illegal and illegitimate entity, which has no future. . . . Its destiny is manifested in our motto: 'Death to Israel.' " Thus Israel is attempting to prevent Hezbollah from using its 10,000 remaining rockets, and to implement the requirement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 that Hezbollah be disarmed.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Iran--which provides this terrorist group with arms, direction and over $100 million a year--are in continual violation of international law. Their calls for Israel's destruction violate the international genocide treaty's prohibition of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." Iran's effort to develop a nuclear arsenal that could obliterate Israel, or deter its responses to future Hezbollah attacks, violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iranian (and Syrian) support for Hezbollah violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, requiring states to "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts." Hezbollah began the armed conflict with rocket attacks on Israeli towns and the abduction of Israeli soldiers: unprovoked acts of war violating an internationally recognized border.

Israel is acting in self-defense and avoided killing civilians, even giving advance notice by phone to the occupants of homes targeted for attack as Hezbollah hideouts. While Hezbollah deliberately maximizes harm to Israeli and Lebanese civilians, Israel puts its soldiers at risk to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties.

The track record of many of Israel's most powerful accusers--including China, Russia and the European Union--is not nearly as good at balancing civilian risk against military goals.

China killed hundreds of peaceful Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989. It has for five decades occupied Tibet, slaughtering tens of thousands; and it vows to invade Taiwan if it declares independence. Neither the Tiananmen protesters nor Tibet nor Taiwan has ever threatened to "wipe China off the map."

Russia has fought since 1994 to suppress Chechnya's independence movement. Out of a Chechen population of one million, as many as 200,000 have been killed as Russia has leveled the capital city of Grozny. Chechen rebels pose no threat to "wipe Russia off the map." All of the leading EU countries actively participated in NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. The military goal was to stop Yugoslavia from oppressing its Kosovar minority. NATO bombs and missiles hit Yugoslav bridges, power plants and a television station, killing hundreds of civilians. Yugoslavia posed no threat to the existence of any of the EU countries that bombed it.

Compared with how China, Russia, and the EU have dealt with non-existential threats--and despite the law-flouting behavior of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria--Israel's responses to the threats to its existence have been remarkably restrained rather than disproportionately violent.

David & Goliath: Antigua v USA

Paul Blustein reports for the Washington Post:

WASHINGTON - Locked in a federal prison in the Nevada desert, tortured by the distant lights of the Las Vegas Strip, Jay Cohen couldn't stop thinking about getting even with the government that had put him away - and his revenge fantasy had a unique twist.

U.S. prosecutors put Cohen behind bars in 2002 for running an Internet gambling site in the Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda. Not long before the prison gates clanged shut, he had learned that the federal crackdown on online betting might violate global trade rules.

So he got Antigua and Barbuda to instigate a complaint at the World Trade Organization. "It kind of helped keep my spirits up," he said.

Fast forward: Antigua and Barbuda, population 69,000, is winning. The case has become an embarrassment to Washington, one that could result in economic pain. It isn't quite over, but the world's only superpower may have to capitulate to a country whose entire population could easily fit into the Rose Bowl.

Never has such a tiny nation brought a WTO complaint against the United States, which is one reason the dispute has implications well beyond the issue of gambling.

Ha'aretz:Israel is Winning...

According to Shmuel Rosner:

During their meeting on Monday, Peres spent most of the time relaying the following message to the Secretary of State: We are winning. Peres gave Rice details of the numbers of rockets captured, launchers destroyed and Hezbollah fighters killed.

The Security Council is meant to meet today to discuss the makeup of the multinational force that will be deployed to the region, but a key state, one meant to lead the others, announced on Monday it intended to boycott the meeting - unless it has a last minute change of heart. France believes that a cease-fire must first be agreed to and only then a political arrangement can follow.

The U.S. would like to see the order reversed. Bush, sources in Washington say, would like to emerge from the Lebanon crisis a winner. In the absence of an unequivocal victory over Hezbollah, only a convincing political settlement, backed by tough conditions, can provide the goods.

If Israel's leadership is astounded by the Bush administration's support, the American public's backing is also impressive. In a Gallup Poll a few days ago, 80 percent of the respondents said that Israel's action in Lebanon was justified. Only one in 10 Americans thinks otherwise. These support figures are equal to those of the Israeli public.

Victor David Hanson on the Israel-Hezbollah War

From VDH Private Papers (ht LGF):

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.

Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could confuse political judgments.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and it is even more baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians....

...It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel .

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.

NY Post: Osama Bin Laden's Son Joins Hezbollah

One thing about war, it is terrible, but brings sublime clarity to the question:

"Whose side are you on?"