Haim Harari on the War on Terror

My father emailed this analysis by an Israeli physicist, and it seemed interesting enough to share:

In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hizbullah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.

In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbullah, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them collaborate beautifully.

It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism. It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.

Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.

Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have worked in China.

I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn.

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.