Uzbekistan evicts United States Air Base

According to Yahoo! News, Uzbekistan is kicking the US military out of the country in the next 180 days.

This news has provided inspiration--it's been six years since I published my last book--and a title for something I'm working on now, based on my Fulbright experience teaching in Uzbekistan.

Working title: WHO LOST CENTRAL ASIA?

IMHO, There's plenty of blame to go around . . .

The Daily Ablution

Scott Burgess's The Daily Ablution exposed a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Dilpazier Aslam, who reported on the London bombings for The Guardian. Since that fact was published by Burgess, the reporter was fired. In the aftermath, Alsam threatened to take the Guardian to court. (Hat tip to Tom Gross)

Real Life Space Drama

I can't stop thinking about those astronauts in the Space Shuttle. If it were me, I wouldn't get back in that thing, I'd demand they send up a nice, safe Russian Soyuz capsule to take me home. It's what they were using for the International Space Station while the shuttle problems were being fixed the first time. Old, clunky, but so far, reliable...

War Between Democracies

Matthew White has posted this great list of War Between Democracies, beginning in the 5th century BC and running up to the present day, as a rebuttal to the claim that no two democracies have gone to war against each other. They have, they do, and they will...

August Recess

It's the time of year when Congress goes on holiday, and so do we. Blogging may be sporadic for a little while...

British Soldiers Face War Crimes Charges in Iraq

Reuters reports three British soldiers will be tried as war criminals for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

Canadian Islamists Apologize to Daniel Pipes

For personal attacks that compared Pipes to Hitler:

On June 10, the CIC published an apology and retraction: 'The Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Valiante apologize without reservation and retract remarks in the column that suggest that Dr. Daniel Pipes is a follower of Hitler or that he uses the tactics of Hitler or that he wants to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence.' The CIC also sent funds to cover my legal expenses and made a donation in my honor to a Canadian charity.

The CIC's action is, to the best of my knowledge, without precedent.

Of course, Canadian libel laws are stricter than American ones . . .

How the US Nurtured Islamist Terror

Rachel Bronson's article in The National Interest explains that America is being bitten by our own dog, that Islamist terrorists--as well as political Islam--are the beneficiaries of decades of American patronage:

The confluence of U.S.-Saudi anti-communist interests manifested itself most obviously in Afghanistan, where the United States and Saudi Arabia spent no less then $3 billion each, channeling assistance to armed anti-American Islamic fundamentalists. But the shared anti-communism embedded in the U.S.-Saudi partnership, and the proselytizing it spawned, was not limited to Afghanistan; it stretched from Somalia, Sudan and Chad to Pakistan and beyond. Countries where the U.S.-Saudi partnership was strongest are areas where today the Islamist threat is particularly vexing. After September 11, both Somalia and Sudan were considered likely targets in any American operation to eliminate terrorism.

Other American allies, such as Egypt, Tunisia and Israel, supported indigenous Islamic movements in order to counter local nationalist opponents, many of whom were Soviet backed. In turn, the same leaders who underwrote local Islamist groups in the 1970s and 1980s later used their very presence to justify a resistance toward democratization.

In contrast to the support Islamist groups received in America-friendly countries in the Middle East, religious organizations suffered a crueler fate in Soviet-supported countries. The Syrian regime exterminated 20,000 citizens in 1982 for being associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Saddam Hussein's Iraq massacred religious leaders, especially among the Shi'a population. Egypt provides the best example of how Cold War ideological struggles shaped today's politico-religious landscape. While receiving Soviet aid, Gamal Abdel Nasser persecuted the Muslim Brotherhood. American-supported Anwar Sadat, on the other hand, heavily backed the Brotherhood in order to counter local Nasserite opposition.

The politicization of Islam is thus a direct outgrowth of the Middle East's Cold War experience. Given this history, it should come as no surprise that in today's post-Cold War Middle East, the major constituency-based organizations in the Arab world that are best placed to organize politically are Islamist ones.

Brave New World

On the way up to Glimmerglass, we listened to Peter Firth's books-on-tape version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I had read it in High School, or maybe college, as a science fiction book about the Utopian--or rather, Dystopian--Future. But hearing it read aloud, for some eight hours, as a middle-aged person, it seemed to have another meaning as a social satire of England's chattering classes. It wasn't about the future. It was about now. And laughing out loud funny in parts, smiling most of the rest of the time--until the sudden end of his savage. I had thought of Huxley mostly as a 60s hippie, Timothy Leary, Indian mysticism type (we went on a family pilgrimmage to his home in Ojai when I was young), so this was a fresh perspective. Plus, it seems almost everything in the book has come to pass in this age of Prozac and cloning--even the "hatcheries"...

Celebrating Bastille Day at Glimmerglass

Can't say enough good things about the Glimmerglass Opera. We just got back from a Bastille Day weekend getaway, thoroughly enjoyed three French operas: Lucie de Lammermoor, Donizetti's classic sung in French; Le Portrait de Manon, by Massenet; and Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. All three were superb. All the singers were excellent. And the music and staging were good, too. The setting is lovely late Otsego, Glimmerglass State Park, a stone's throw from James Fenimore Cooper's final resting place in Cooperstown, NY. This time we stayed in Sharon Springs, a Jewish Ghost Town, filled with crumbling wooden hotels and lodging houses, set in a hollow smelling of sulfur from the spa waters that bubble up. On the hill is the hulk of Adler's Hotel, where former NYC Mayor Ed Koch once worked as a busboy. The few guests still remaining appear to be elderly Russian immigrants, walking and talking, sitting outside their rented cottages, little dachas that reminded us, too, of our time spent in Russia...

A Touching Tribute to London Attack's American Victim

Tamara Jones has a very nice obituary for Minh Matsushita, the first identified American victim of July 7th's London bomb attacks. He was a Vietnamese refugee, raised in the Bronx, who had worked as an adventure tour guide before settling down to a desk job in the City with an internet company.

LONDON -- Minh Matsushita was a man forever in motion, an adventure always in progress. His passport was a pocket-size accordion of pages bearing faded stamps and mysterious visas.

Even as his boyhood friends from the Bronx settled down, got married, pursued careers and started families, the 37-year-old Matsushita just kept reinventing himself. He might be a beach bum in San Diego one year and a tech geek in Manhattan the next. You could find him snorkeling in Australia, or hiking across minefields in Cambodia.

Dude, what are you doing?, friends would remember asking time and again, when he would alight between trips on someone's back porch to drink through the night and tell his tales. Minh always smiled, shrugged and gave the cavalier answer his buddies came to think of as his personal motto:

"No worries, man."

For the past 18 months, Matsushita had been living out the dream of the perpetual wanderer, exploring remote corners of the world as a tour guide for an Australia-based agency called Intrepid Travel. Leading tourists on treks through the jungles and paddies of Southeast Asia, he also found for the first time in his life something more than adventure.

He fell in love.

As Instapundit says, read the whole thing.

Happy Bastille Day!

Another good day to celebrate Freedom.


...And the link between the French and American Revolutions, personified by the Marquis de Lafayette.

After persuading the French to give George Washington the gift of freedom for the United States, where he was present at Yorktown with General Rochambeau for the British surrender (In this picture, Rochambeau is pointing, giving orders to the troops, while Washington looks on, Lafayette over his shoulder),

Lafayette returned to France. There, on July 14, 1789 he led his troops--many of whom had served with him in the American Revolution, and were known to the French as "the Americans"--in storming the infamous French prison. (This might be seen as America's first attempt at "regime change.") He also worked with Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of the Rights of Man. After trying to save Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from the guillotine, he fled the Revolution, only to be thrown into an Austrian dungeon, where he was kept prisoner.

After the Revolution, Lafayette presented two keys from the Bastille as gifts to the first American President, with these words: "Give me leave, my dear General to present you with a picture of the Bastille, just as it looked a few days after I had ordered its demolition,- with the main key of the fortress of despotism. It is a tribute, which I owe, as a son to my adoptive father, as an Aide - de - Camp to my General, as a Missionary of liberty to its Patriarch." To cement the Franco-American relationship, Lafayette and Washington established the Sons of the Cincinnati, an organization that still has branches in France and the United States.

One key to the Bastille hangs in the hallway at Mount Vernon.

The other is in the collection of the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia.
You can read the story of the two Bastille keys in this article.

About Last Night: Another Great Newshour Interview...

Last night Ray Suarez took on General John Vines, who actually admitted that he plans to lose the Iraq war.

Here is his surrender declaration:

So the idea that we are going to win an insurgency, we are going to defeat the insurgency, the coalition, and then give freedom to the Iraqi people does not track. Freedom can't be given to someone; it must be taken, and so they have to take that.

"This man is a complete idiot," the person sitting next to me turned and said. I agree. And kudos to Jim Lehrer and Ray Suarez for smoking him out of his cave, so the American people can see what is going on with our military leadership.

For those who don't know American history, we can start at the beginning: The French military, under General Rochambeau, presented freedom as a gift to George Washington in the American Revolution--General Cornwallis originally wanted to present his sword to the French, whose fleet and armies defeated him at Yorktown. We Americans couldn't "take" freedom without the French.

Abraham Lincoln presented freedom to the slaves in the Civil War. Slaves couldn't "take it" without the Union Army.

In more recent times, America (with a great deal of help from the USSR and Great Britain) presented freedom as a gift to Germany, Japan, Italy and the nations of Western Europe. They didn't "take it," either.

So why expect from the Iraqis what we didn't expect from ourselves or others?

Unless and until the enemy is decisively defeated, the Iraqi people will not enjoy freedom. As FDR noted, one of the most important freedoms is "Freedom from Fear."

For without civil order--while chaos, anarchy, and violence reign--democracy is impossible.

Why Do They Hate Us? (Continued)

James Taranto, in OpinionJournal's Best of the Web Today explains the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh: "This had nothing to do with Israeli 'occupation' of 'Palestinian lands,' America's 'unilateral invasion' of Iraq, 'torture' of prisoners at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, the widening 'income gap,' or any of the other litany of complaints that the terror apologists trot out. Islamist terrorism arises from religious fanaticism and hatred, plain and simple."

Life Sentence for Ali Al-Timimi in Virginia Jihad Trial

Jerry Markon's Washington Post story today is headlined, Muslim Lecturer Sentenced To Life:

A man convicted for what he said -- words that prosecutors said incited his followers to train for violent jihad against the United States -- had a few more things to say yesterday in a federal courtroom in Alexandria before he was sentenced to life in prison.

Ali Al-Timimi, a prominent Muslim spiritual leader, delivered an impassioned statement in which he asserted his innocence, read the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and said his religious beliefs do not recognize "secular law." He then compared himself to the Greek philosopher Socrates, who was sentenced to death for corrupting the young and dishonoring the gods of Athens.

"I will not admit guilt nor seek the court's mercy," Timimi told a courtroom crowded with his supporters and prosecutors. "Socrates was mercifully given a cup of hemlock. I was handed a life sentence."

As U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema pronounced the life sentence, Timimi nodded slightly. The judge then revoked his bond, and Timimi walked slowly away in the custody of U.S. marshals, smiling and waving at supporters in the emotionally charged courtroom.

The article notes in passing that the unrepentant Al-Timimi was born and raised in the Washington, DC area. He is an American citizen, which makes me believe that Jim Hoagland's op-ed today may be merely wishful thinking, particularly this statement:

Why has the United States not been attacked since Sept. 11? It's not simply because we are fighting terrorists in Iraq. The terrorists cannot have found the water -- the Muslim American community -- easy to swim in or to use for their malignant long-term purposes.

The Al-Timimi case shows that there is indeed American water for terrorists to swim in.

Ambassador Seymour Maxwell Finger, 90

His passing was noted by a respectful obituary in today's New York Times. I knew of him because of this study :

The author or editor of many books, Mr. Finger wrote "American Jewry During the Holocaust" (1984), published by the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust. The report of the commission, of which Mr. Finger was research director, concluded that the major Jewish organizations in the United States had not done all they could to save victims of the Holocaust, still a controversial position at the time of publication. The chairman of the commission was former Justice Arthur J. Goldberg of the Supreme Court.

Blair's Four Point Anti-Terrorism Program

According to CNN, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has outlined the following anti-terrorist priorities for the British government:

*Begin the process of consultation on planned counter-terrorism legislation within the next couple of weeks, with a priority being measures to combat the incitement and instigation of terrorism.

*Look urgently at how to strengthen the process for excluding from the UK those who incite hatred, and make it easier to deport such people.

*Start discussions immediately with Muslim leaders on combating 'the perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam' which lay behind the attacks.

*Talk to other nations on how to mobilize the 'moderate and true voice of Islam.'

Tony Blankley: "Know Thy Enemy"

Writing in the Washington Times, Newt Gingrich's former PR guru analyzes responses to the London bombings:

There were other examples of political correctness gone mad. I saw a senior British law enforcement official on Thursday making the explicit point that the words Islam and terrorist do not belong in the same sentence. Yesterday, the head of the Scotland Yard press briefers finished his factual account of various details with the statement that extremists and criminals did these acts, and no one should 'stigmatize any community with these acts.'

But, of course, no one was, nor should be, stigmatizing 'any community'. On the other hand, while some very large percentage of the two million Muslims living in Britain are law abiding, it is also the case that a hundred percent of the 'extremists and criminals' so far identified by Scotland Yard who attacked London were Islamic -- or more to the point 'Islamist.'

The danger manifestly comes from those Muslims -- either born or converted -- who believe in the armed jihadist policy of terror attacks.

Political correctness started out as an externally applied pressure placed by academic elites on regular people not to say certain things which were judged improper. But it has become a more dangerous phenomenon now. Government, law enforcement, military officials and many regular citizens are beginning to internalize the politically correct mentality. If government officials, the media and increasing elements of the public actually begin to believe that there is no relationship between Islam as currently practiced by some percentage of the Moslem population and the mortal threat of terrorism -- then it will be hard if not impossible to mount an effective defense.

The first lesson of war is to know thy enemy. While we should never put people in that category who don't fit, it is suicidal to refuse to acknowledge the accurate nature of the enemy.

Al Qaeda's Pakistani Connection

B Raman writes:

If one had been doing this systematically, one would have noticed that Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has been co-ordinating the activities of the IIF since 2003 due to the disruption in the command and control of the Al Qaeda.

Three persons arrested by the Pakistani authorities in March,2003, in connection with the attack on USS Cole in October,2000, had told them during the interrogation that since the Western intelligence agencies were keeping a close watch on the suspected Arab members of the Al Qaeda, bin Laden had asked the LET to recruit Pakistani volunteers for suicide missions to be undertaken by the Al Qaeda and that the LET had already placed 12 Pakistani volunteers for suicide missions at the disposal of the Al Qaeda.

Barcelona in Spain, Lisbon in Portugal and Luton and Leeds in the UK have become important centres for the recruitment of volunteers for jihadi terrorism and for the collection of funds.

Apart from the LET and the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan has also set up a presence in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities of West Europe.

After the Madrid blasts of March,2004, the largest number of terrorist suspects detained for questioning by the Western intelligence agencies were of Moroccan and Pakistani origin. The security experts of the European Union (EU) had drawn attention to this disturbing development in a report submitted to the EU Paliament in October,2004.

Pakistani volunteers from the UK have been going to Iraq to join the Al Qaeda there headed by Abu Musab-al-Zarqawi.

In terrorism analysis, you don't get a continuous, unbroken chain of evidence. You get just bits and pieces. You painstakingly collect them, put them together and see what they imply. Many in the UK knew that it was likely to be the next target of jihadi terrorism.

They have no reasons to be surprised that the attack, when it materialised, came from people of Pakistani origin and not from Arabs. They are now puzzled as to how the terrorists managed to procure the reportedly high-grade explosives, which they had used on July 7.

They must have either procured them locally or got them from outside. If they got them from outside, how did they smuggle them in? Did they use a diplomatic bag?

If so, of which country?

Crescat Sententia

I found this interesting blog, called Crescat Sententia, via a posting on Registan.net by Amanda Butler. It's worth a look, especially if you are legally inclined (it seems to be written by lawyers, or law students)...