Andrew McCarthy on President Obama's National Defense University Speech

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/349313/obama-s-cynical-war-speech

Significantly, he is also right in saying that the extremists’ ideology induces them to believe “Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West.” But then comes two plus two equals five: According to Obama, that ideology must “of course” be a “lie” because “the United States is not at war with Islam.”
If I am an aggressor and I punch you in the nose, we are in a fight, even if you weren’t looking for a fight. The fight does not end just because you insist you’re not in a fight. The fight ends because you lose. Your ostentatious display of not having a quarrel with me does not convince me to stop hitting you — although it may convince me to keep hitting you.
Islamic supremacism is not based on a lie. It is based on a truth. That truth has nothing to do with the United States — although it has grave consequences for us.
This is elucidated by the jihadist atrocity in Britain just the day before Obama’s speech. Even after all the mass murders we’ve seen over the last two decades, this one was shocking in its barbarity. After killing and mutilating a British soldier, one of the jihadists, blood still soaking his hands, proudly looked into a camera and proclaimed, “We are forced by the Koran, in Sura al-Tawba, through many ayah in the Koran, we must fight them as they fight us.”
Sura al-Tawba is the Koran’s ninth chapter, home to what are known as the verses of the sword. Time after time, Muslims are instructed to slaughter their enemies. “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them.” “Fight those who do not believe in Allah” until they submit to the law of Islam. “Fight . . . the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness.” On it goes.
Naturally, most Western media reports omitted any mention of the jihadists’ explanation of their doctrine and its easily verifiable scriptural underpinnings — just as Obama, in his speech, eschewed any mention of the Koran in describing the “larger cause” for which “extremists” fight. But though the supremacist’s construction is not the only viable interpretation of Islam, it is a genuine, literal one.
What’s more, Chapter Nine is one of the last chapters of the Koran (which is not organized chronologically). To the extent it seems in contradiction with more benign earlier verses, reputable scholars logically teach that what comes last abrogates what came before — i.e., the aggressor Islam controls. It is not for nothing that authentically moderate Muslims have a hard time discrediting the extremists.
Islamic supremacism teaches that Muslims are under a divine injunction to fight non-Muslims, including by violent jihad, until all the world submits to sharia (the path), Allah’s blueprint for the perfect human society. It is true that of the world’s hundreds of millions of Islamic supremacists, only a small percentage (though still a high number in absolute terms) are “extreme” enough to engage in violence. Yet all of them share the violent jihadists’ goals, and they endorse the violence itself in many, if not most, instances.
As we should have understood long before 9/11, the enemy is at war with us regardless of whether we deem ourselves at war with them. They don’t care whether we consider ourselves “at war with Islam”; what makes it a war is that they construe Islam to dictate jihad against us.
That is not a “lie.” It is a belief that Islam means what its scriptures say. That belief is not refuted by pretending that the scriptures do not exist. No more than the war ends by pretending it is not happening. Two plus two is not five. War ends in victory or defeat. Failing to defend oneself is not peace; it is surrender.

RubinReports on Obama's National Defense University Speech

RubinReports

Yet clearly Obama has no notion—or will not admit to one—of what that “common ideology” might be, except for a misunderstanding, which presumably his outreach will correct, about American intentions.

In fact, though, in the sense that they speak of it, the United States is at war with Islam, the revolutionary sort of Islam of course. To help any country resist radical political Islam is, in their eyes, opposition to proper Islam. Perhaps this is why the Obama Administration seeks to help turn other countries toward Islamist regimes.

Of course, the United States is not at war with Muslims but not only al-Qaida but Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the Taliban and dozens of other groups, ideologues, and militants know that America is their enemy. No matter what Obama does he will not persuade them and their millions of supporters that the United States is their ally. Even though Obama has often actually made America their ally.

It would be like helping Communism in the Cold War to take over countries in order to show that America is not at war with the Russian people, or to do the same with Nazism to show that America is not at war with the German people, or to help Gamal Abdel Nasser or Saddam Hussein to take over the Middle East to prove America is not at war with the Arab or Muslim people.  

A more accurate picture is offered by a Saudi writer in al-Sharq al-Awsat:

"The most acute [aspect of] the problem is that Obama is laying down the systematic groundwork for the development of extremism and sectarian violence that will make us miss the Al-Qaeda of George W. Bush's era, while deluding himself that he eliminated Al-Qaeda when he killed Osama bin Laden!"

Mark Steyn on Britain's Shameful Response to Woolwich Massacre

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/349308/print

This passivity set the tone for what followed. In London as in Boston, the politico-media class immediately lapsed into the pneumatic multiculti Tourette's that seems to be a chronic side effect of excess diversity-celebrating: No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam. The BBC's Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as be "of Muslim appearance," but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there's anything "of Muslim appearance" about a guy waving a machete and saying "Allahu akbar." A man is on TV dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing "by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you," yet it's the BBC reporter who's apologizing for "causing offence." To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby's horrific end was "not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam...There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act."

How does he know? He doesn't seem the most likely Koranic scholar. Appearing on David Letterman's show a while back, Cameron was unable to translate into English the words "Magna Carta,"which has quite a bit to do with that "British way of life" he's so keen on. But apparently it's because he's been up to his neck in suras and hadiths every night sweating for Sharia 101. So has Scotland Yard's deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, who reassured us after the London Tube bombings that "Islam and terrorism don't go together," and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, telling NPR listeners after 19 Muslims were arrested for plotting to behead the Canadian prime minister: "You know, in Islam, if you kill one person you kill everybody," he said in a somewhat loose paraphrase of Koran 5:32 that manages to leave out some important loopholes. "It's a very peaceful religion."
That's why it fits so harmoniously into famously peaceful societies like, say, Sweden. For the last week Stockholm has been ablaze every night with hundreds of burning cars set alight by "youths." Any particular kind of "youth"? The Swedish prime minister declined to identify them any more precisely than as "hooligans." But don't worry: The "hooligans" and "youths" and men of no Muslim appearance whatsoever can never win because, as David Cameron ringingly declared, "they can never beat the values we hold dear, the belief in freedom, in democracy, in free speech, in our British values, Western values.' Actually, they've already gone quite a way toward eroding free speech, as both prime ministers demonstrate. The short version of what happened in Woolwich is that two Muslims butchered a British soldier in the name of Islam and helpfully explained, "The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day." But what do they know? They're only Muslims, not Diversity Outreach Coordinators. So the BBC, in its so-called "Key Points," declined to mention the "Allahu akbar" bit or the I-word at all: Allah who? Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don't have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you're lucky, it's not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it's all so "mundane," in Simon Jenkins's word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the "Satanic Verses"; decides it's not worth the trouble. . . . But don't worry, they'll never defeat our "free speech" and our "way of life"
One in ten Britons under 25 is now Muslim. That number will increase, through immigration, disparate birth rates, and conversions like those of the Woolwich killers, British-born and -bred. Metternich liked to say the Balkans began in the Landstrasse, in southeast Vienna. Today, the Dar al-Islam begins in Wellington Street, in southeast London. That's a "betrayal" all right, but not of Islam.

Denial is still a river in Londonistan | Melanie Phillips

Published in: Melanie's blog<br />
One of most difficult things to get across in this increasingly desperate argument is that there is within the Islamic world a continuum of aggressive or unacceptable views which emanate from the religion – a continuum which extends from prejudice and bigotry at one end to terrorism at the other -- that makes atrocities such as the one in Woolwich yesterday all but inevitable. While most at the merely bigoted end will neither support nor take part in terrorism, the noxious views they accept and promulgate create the lethal sea in which terrorism swims.

The result of the refusal to acknowledge this religious continuum is to undermine those Muslims who do most earnestly want to reform their religion. While the British and American victims of the jihad obdurately refuse to identify it as a religious issue, reformist Muslims haven’t got a leg to stand on in trying to make the case to their own community.

Today, I was contacted by someone from a Muslim family whose name is known to me but whose identity I will protect. His message in response to the Woolwich atrocity is so important, and so heartfelt and anguished, that I reproduce it here.

‘Confronting the Causes of Religion-Motivated Terrorism.

  ‘I'm from a Muslim family background, and I needed to write down my thoughts on this terrible and traumatic event. I feel that it raises points that would be appropriate for the excellent articles that you publish.

  ‘The overwhelming majority of Muslims here and throughout the world will be as horrified as anyone by the terrible events in Woolwich. Furthermore, I am certain that the overwhelming majority of Muslim organisations, imams and community leaders would describe the actions of the men concerned to be evil and un-Islamic. The accepted consensus among most scholars is that when you live in a non-Islamic country (where you are allowed live and practice your religion in peace), you are forbidden to make war on the people of that country.

  ‘That being said, surely it’s time for Muslims everywhere to confront some of the extreme views held within their communities and face up to the fact that such views may act as stepping-stones for some ignorant and impressionable people who go on to carry out atrocious acts of violence.

  ‘It is a fact that far too many Muslim scholars promote and far too many Muslims believe, interpretations of Islam that are anything but moderate. For example, that non-Muslims are morally and spiritually ‘inferior’ beings to Muslims or that in an ideal ‘Islamic’ society, the death penalty should apply for a Muslim who leaves Islam, for anyone who insults the Prophet, has sex outside of marriage or takes part in an homosexual act.

   ‘Whilst I’m not suggesting that any significant number of the Muslims holding such views would ever commit or even condone the events we saw in Woolwich, I am suggesting that if someone already believes such interpretations of Islam then it would be easier for them to believe that it’s morally acceptable to behead an off-duty soldier in the street.

  ‘As we have seen in the various media exposés, extreme views such as those outlined above are being promoted, often with impunity, in mosques, madrassas, faith schools and Islamic student societies throughout Britain. The result of this, as numerous polls have demonstrated, is that an unacceptably high minority of British Muslims support extreme and illiberal interpretations of Islam. For example, a poll carried out by Policy Exchange suggested that over a third of young British Muslims believe that the death penalty should apply for apostasy.

  ‘In every other aspect of our society, an ‘extremist’ is defined by both their actions and their personally held views. It is perfectly reasonable to label a racist a ‘racist’, whether or not they carry out illegal acts or promote law-breaking. For some reason, however, such rational logic isn’t generally applied when it comes to describing members of religious groups.

   ‘It seems that any Muslim who states that they support obeying the laws of the land is defined by default as ‘moderate’ without regard to whether he or she might hold some views that are very extreme and unpleasant indeed. However, a large section of our media and institutions appear to only label a Muslim as an ‘extremist’ if he or she breaks the law or incites others to do so.

  ‘This is illogical and irrational. The time has come for Muslim organisations, scholars, imams and lay-people to stand up and state unequivocally that interpretations such as those outlined above are unacceptable and should never be promoted, here or abroad. They should go further and distance themselves from anyone who promotes those views.

   ‘What’s more, politicians, the media and all of us should ask questions of any person who refuses to condemn such bigotry and ostracise them, just as we do with someone who refuses to condemn racism. Universities must ban Islamic societies that promote hateful views, and any mosque, madrassa or Islamic faith school that promotes extreme, illiberal interpretations of Islam should be closed down and the management prosecuted.

  ‘Stating that non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims or that people should be killed for leaving a religion or having gay sex is simple hate speech, whether or not the speaker believes that it is ordained by Allah. The fact that hate speech is illegal under English law recognises the fact that hateful speech can sometimes promote hateful action. Surely it’s time for the people who promote the views outlined above are treated as the criminals they are.

    ‘Most importantly, the time has come for our media, politicians and anti-fascist organisations to expose, name and shame any Muslim organisation, mosque, imam, scholar or spokesperson who refuses to condemn and distance themselves from the unacceptable interpretations of Islam that are far-too-often promoted without challenge in Britain today.’

The Prime Minister has spoken of the Woolwich killers ‘betraying’ Islam. But in refusing to acknowledge the true religious nature of such terrorism, it is surely he who is betraying reformist Muslims everywhere.

Melanie Phillips on Woolwich Beheading

Stiff competition for Most Fatuous Reaction award | Melanie Phillips

But worthy contenders as all these are for this prestigious award, I have decided that two further notable contributions tie in equal first place. In a statement described by the Spectator as ‘sensitive and calm’ the Prime Minister, David Cameron, told the nation that the Woolwich attack ‘was also a betrayal of Islam’ ,’ there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act’ and the fault lay ‘solely and purely with the sickening individuals who carried out this appalling attack’.

In similar vein the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said:

‘It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam but it is also equally wrong to try to draw any link between this murder and British foreign policy or the actions of British forces who are risking their lives abroad for the sake of freedom. The fault lies wholly and exclusively in the warped and deluded mindset of the people who did it.’

So to the Prime Minister and the Mayor, there was nothing to connect the Woolwich atrocity to Islam at all.  But on his little video rant, one of the killers drew explicitly on the Koran as the inspiration for his attack:

‘Surat at-Tawba through...many, many ayat throughout the Qur’an that...we must fight them as they fight us...’

which refers to a number of exhortations to ‘fight the unbelievers and ‘kill the polythesists wherever you find them’ and other such stuff in similar vein..

Nothing to do with Islam? It’s as absurd as saying the Inquisition had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, or the Holocaust had nothing to do with Nazism but these things were just the product of a few warped and deluded individuals.  

If indeed such terrorism is noting to do with Islam, why is it justified by the Islamic high establishment? As the liberal Egyptian thinker Tarek Heggy wrote last year:

 ‘The cornerstone of the theory, which is the essence of Islamic thinking, is that humans must not set the rules governing relations between people, but that these can only be set by the Almighty. To this day, not a single leader of any movement of political Islam has reconsidered the idea of hakemeya [the Islamist view of man-made laws] introduced by Sayed Qutb in his famous treatise, “Signposts Along the Road” … Thus the Islamist has a constant problem with man-made constitutional and legal rules.…

‘Certainly the leaderships of most schools of political Islam refuse to describe the suicide attacks launched by Muslim fanatics against civilians as terrorist attacks. Certainly too none of them consider Osama bin Laden a terrorist. Indeed, most hold him in high regard…’

What’s bizarre is that jihadis are treated as genuine Muslim spokesmen -- see the way broadcasters were giving one of them air-time yesterday -- but when it comes to analysing an Islamic terror attack, that very same political and media establishment falls over itself to agree with those extremists that its perpetrators are not real Muslims at all.

Sun Woolwich Horror Coverage

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/

Daily Mail Woolwich Terror Attack Coverage

Daily Telegraph: Woolwich Beheading Time-Line

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10075134/Woolwich-attack-soldier-terror-live.html

Main Justice: Magistrate Judge Alan Kay Approved Fox Reporter's Government Surveillance

http://www.mainjustice.com/2013/05/21/james-rosen-criminal-leak-investigation-was-disclosed-18-months-ago-hidden-in-court-records/print/ According to Mary Jacoby's Main Justice article, Judge Royce Lambreth ruled that the government did not have to notify Rosen or Fox that a search warrant had been issued... Judge Kay's online biography:

Magistrate Judge Kay was appointed a United States Magistrate Judge in September 1991. He is a graduate of George Washington University, receiving a B.A. in 1957 and a J.D. from its National Law Center in 1959. Magistrate Judge Kay clerked for U.S. District Court Judges Alexander Holtzoff and William B. Jones. He was an attorney with the Public Defender Service and served in the U.S. Attorney's Office. From 1967 until his appointment, he was in private practice in the District of Columbia.

(Source: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/dcd/kay)

Mark Steyn on the Tsarnaevs

Jihad Abhors a Vacuum 

The Washington Post covered much of the Tsarnaev narrative under the headline "A Faded Portrait of an Immigrant's American Dream." The story is about what you'd expect from the headline but the "faded portrait" is fascinating — a photograph of the family before they came to America: young Mr. and Mrs. Tsarnaev with baby Tamerlan, and Uncle Muhamad with a Tom Selleck moustache and Soviet military uniform. If you only know Ma Tsarnaeva from her post-Boston press conferences as a head-scarfed harpie glorying in her sons' martyrdom and boasting that she'll be shrieking "Allahu akbar!" when the Great Satan takes her out too, the "faded portrait" is well worth your time: Back then, just before the U.S.S.R. fell apart, the jihadist crone looked like a mildly pastier version of an Eighties rock chick — a passable Dagestan doppelgänger for Joan Jett, with spiky black hair and kohl-ringed eyes. She loves rock 'n' roll, so put another ruble in the jukebox, baby!

Then she came to America and, after a decade in Cambridge, Mass., returned to her native land as a jihadist cliché — pro-sharia, pro-terrorist, pro-martyrdom, pro-slaughter. She arrived here as Joan Jett, and went back all black heart.

The Tsarnaevs were a mixed marriage. Pop was Chechen, Mom was Dagestani, from the Z-list stan on Chechnya's borders. But there's really no such thing as a "Dagestani." Dagestan is a wild mountain-man version of Cambridge, celebrating diversity until it hurts. Its population includes Azerbaijanis, whom you've heard of, because they're from the stan that thinks it's a jan. The rest of the guys are — stan well back — Avars, Dargins, Kumyks, Laks, Rutuls, Aghuls, Nogais, Tsakhurs, and Tabasarans. Oh, and Lezgians, a mountain tribe of fearsome female warriors high on fermented yak's milk. I'm making that last bit up, but for a moment you weren't sure, were you? Dagestan has everything except Dagestanis. They're all in Ingushetia, maybe.

For the last decade, I've been lectured by the nuancey-boys on how one can't generalize about Islam, and especially about Islam in the West: There are as many fascinating differences between Mirpuri Pakistanis in Yorkshire and Algerian Berbers in Clichy-sous-Bois as there are between Nogais and Lezgians in Dagestan. No doubt. But, whatever their particular inheritance, many young Muslims in the West come to embrace a pan-Islamic identity. The Tsarnaev boys, for example, fell under the influence of an "Australian sheikh." That's to say, a sheikh born in Sydney. While back in the Caucasus in 2012, Tamerlan is rumored to have met William Plotnikov, a Toronto jihadist whose Siberian parents are such assimilated Canadians they winter as Florida snowbirds. When they came back, they found a note from William saying he'd gone to France for Ramadan. And thence east, to his rendezvous with the virgins.

Like the photographs of Mrs. Tsarnaeva then and now, these are stories of dis-assimilation, of secularized Easterners who in the vacuum of Western multiculturalism search for identity and find a one-stop shop in Islamic imperialism.

RubinReports on Turkey's Terrorist Tendencies...

RubinReports

And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective? 'Will he continue to follow advice from Erdogan which has already proven to be wrong  because it is based on the interests of a Turkish Islamist regime seeking to promote Sunni Islamism and Turkish influence in the region?

Obama’s expressed hope of creating a Syria that is “a source of stability, not extremism” is very dangerous because he might well hope that but it is not a realistic goal. And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective?  

[Incidentally. the U.S. government has apologized to Israel for U.S. officials confirming to the New York Times that a ground attack within Syria earlier this month was staged by Israel. Publicly stating this information forced Syria (and Hizballah and Iran) to officially threaten Israel with retaliation, thus endangering Israel.] 

Now, too, Iran, Russia, and Hizballah are stepping up support for Assad. It is clear that Russia will block tougher action in the UN Security Council.  It is also stepping up arms shipments to Assad. If Russia provides Syria with advanced anti-aircraft missiles these could be used to shoot down any U.S. planes that tries to enforce a no-fly zone. Yet Obama doesn't have the credibility or leverage with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who from every indication holds him in contempt as a weakling, to stop Moscow from showing that it is the stronger, more reliable ally. Hizballah has up to 5,000 fighters inside Syria now, though they have been mainly employed in holding territory vital for Assad's survival.

The rebels will not win without a lot of U.S. help. This civil war is becoming an international test of wills in which Obama--for reasons that are not unreasonable--doesn't want to fight. Yet does that mean the United States will accept a humiliating defeat at the hands of Tehran and Moscow? Fortunately, while the rebels cannot win, they also are likely to hold much of Syria. In other words, Assad can't put down the rebellion either. But the result will be: stalemate; continued war for two years or more; tens of thousands of more deaths.

One day there will be congressional investigations on how U.S. policy armed terrorist and even, albeit unintentionally, al-Qaida groups. It will be too late.  The situation in Syria makes the Iran-Contra affair--U.S. involvement during the Reagan Administration in supplying arms to pro-American Nicaraguan rebels--look like a picnic.

The situation is getting very dangerous and with a "friend" like Erdogan it is clear that Obama’s policy toward Syria, Iran, the advance of revolutionary Islamism, and the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” is in serious trouble.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Wall Street Journal on Stopping Terrorist Immigrants

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324767004578486931383069840.html

The Tsarnaev brothers are emblematic of the divided loyalties of our times—and they are not the only ones. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani national, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived the American dream: He arrived on a student visa, married an American citizen, graduated from college, worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a junior financial analyst for a cosmetics company in Connecticut, became a naturalized citizen at the age of 30 and then, a year later, in 2010, tried to blow up as many of his fellow citizens as possible in a failed car bombing in New York's Times Square.

Prior to sentencing, the judge asked Mr. Shahzad about the oath of allegiance he had taken, in which he did "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen." The defendant replied: "I sweared [sic], but I didn't mean it." He then expressed his regret about the failure of his plot and added that he would gladly have sacrificed a thousand lives in the service of Allah. He concluded by predicting the downfall of his new homeland... The naturalized citizen swears to "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic…bear true faith and allegiance to the same…[and] bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law." Naturalized citizens tie their own destiny to the destiny of this society, not their former one, for better or worse. So the potential bomber takes an oath to defend the Constitution and the U.S. against all enemies, while committed in his heart to a radically different political order.

The challenge that this would-be bomber poses for us is not to change our foreign policy or improve economic conditions in the Muslim world. We already do that. The challenge is to uncover the deceit of such phony citizens..."I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion: so help me God." Those closing words of the Oath of Allegiance are now etched indelibly in my memory. But as I said them, I thought of the Tsarnaev brothers, whose mental reservations about America grew to the point that they were prepared to sow murder and mayhem.

Immigration reform that does not make it harder for such people to settle in the U.S. would be, to say the least, very incomplete. 

Althouse: IRS Scandal May Mean GOP Took Dive in 2012 Election...

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-didnt-romney-why-didnt-republicans.html

Robert Spencer on Islam v Islamism

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/05/islam-vs-islamism-again.html

Moderate Islam is a solution that does not exist, and can only be a solution if it could be successfully invented. Calling upon Muslims to renounce the aspects of their theology that violate basic human rights will never be effective if we do not acknowledge that those aspects exist -- and that requires talking about Islam. As I said in that National Review article: "Andy is wrong in his claim that I have ever said that any form of Islam is 'the only Islam,' but the fact is that throughout its history, and in all its theological, legal, and sectarian manifestations, Islam has always been supremacist and political. Acknowledging that is simply acknowledging reality. Pro-Western Muslim reformers have to start there. In Christian history, the Protestant reformers did not pretend that Church doctrine was other than what it was. They confronted and refuted portions of that doctrine. But Andy seems to expect contemporary Islamic reformers to succeed by pretending that Islam is not what its authoritative texts teach and what it always has been historically. He says that he does not see 'what purpose is served' by telling Islamic reformers that 'Islam is incorrigibly supremacist and political.' But if it is supremacist and political, whether 'incorrigibly' or not, then sincere reformers have to start there in order to fix it. Wishful thinking and self-deception are not reform. Ultimately those doctrines can be combatted only by actually combatting them."

I stand by that.

NY Times Blog (but not newspaper) Coverage of Save New York Public Library Rally

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/opponents-plan-rally-against-new-york-public-library-plan/?smid=pl-share

Barry Rubin on Benghazi's Tragic Importance

There is something terribly and tragically and importantly symbolic about the Benghazi attack that may be lost in the tidal wave of details about what happened on September 11, 2012, in an incident where four American officials were murdered in a terrorist attack. This point stands at the heart of everything that has happened in American society and intellectual life during the last decade.

And that point is this:

America was attacked once again on that September 11, attacked by al-Qaida in an attempt to destroy the United States—as ridiculous as that goal might seem. Yet the U.S. government blamed the attack on America itself.

...

The truth is, however, extremely simple: The United States faces a revolutionary Islamist movement that will neither go away nor moderate itself. To understand this movement and its ideology, how it is and is not rooted in Islam, its weaknesses and divisions, the forces willing to help combat it, and ways to devise strategies to battle it is the prime international need for the moment.

It is as necessary to do these things for revolutionary Islamism today as it was to do the same things regarding Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s; and for Communism in the 1940s and 1950s.

...

And finally what could be more symbolic than the hiring of Islamist terrorists to guard the consulate, men who deserted or even turned their guns against the Americans there? It is truly symbolic because the Obama Administration has turned to Islamists—in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Syria, and elsewhere--in the belief that they are best suited to guard U.S. interests in the Middle East.

In discussing the Benghazi affair none of these broader issues should be forgotten. It was not merely an order for the American rescue forces to “stand down” but for the United States to bow down.

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-benghazi-issue-is-overwhelmingly.html

Peter Van Buren on Benghazi Hearings

We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren

RubinReports on Syria

RubinReports

There is no good alternative. The Christians, Druze, Alawites, and even some of the urban Sunni middle and upper classes want Assad to win because they are afraid of the Islamists. Yet in strategic terms the weakening of Tehran and Hizballah by Assad's fall is by a small margin better for U.S. interests. The official Free Syrian Army and the handpicked exile leadership--headed by a mild version of a Muslim Brotherhood supporter long resident in Texas--are of no real importance on the ground though their doings fill the Western news.

This is the mess now faced by the Obama Administration. It could have been avoided if the president had understood from the start that he should have supported moderate, not Islamist forces. using covert operations and even helping local warlords and pious Syrian traditionalist  forces.  Instead, before the civil war broke out he first backed the radical regime in Syria, America’s enemy and Iran's client state, and then only when the revolt made that stance impossible he switched to the rebels, empowering the opposition Islamists every step of the way.

But then he didn’t want to do what his predecessors would have done. Curiously, Obama believed that Islamist rule is good because it would moderate the radicals, deter terrorists from attacking America, and make enemies into friends. In Syria today there is no good choice. No matter which side wins—the Syrian regime as part of the Iranian bloc of Shia Islamists or the rebels as part of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc of Sunni Islamists—the winners will be radical Islamists. In fact, if Assad creates a fortress in the Alawite region of the northwest stretching down to Damascus, it will be both varieties of Islamists simultaneously.

It is a tragedy. I remember when I met a Syrian democratic dissident about three years ago and as he was leaving to return home he asked me, "Do you think there will ever be real democracy in Syria?" I choked up because I didn't want to lie to him. He saw my expression and said sadly, "Well, perhaps in my childrens' time." 

For a while, hope sprung up that the country might undergo a transformation. The conservative periphery rose up against the centers of power that had so long oppressed it. These people were pious Sunni Muslims angry at decades of a regime that was a combination of secularist dictatorship and Alawite (supposedly Shia Muslim) ethnic domination. They might have found a relatively moderate leadership, as happened in Iraq.

Yet that just didn't happen. The West failed to get behind potential leaders; the Islamists were better organized and more willing to sacrifice their lives. It could well be argued that if anyone has to win it should be the rebels since that would be a devastating defeat for Iran and Hizballah, because also the Sunni Islamist bloc lacks a patron to finance an aggressive anti-Western, anti-Israel program and to supply arms for it. But can one be enthusiastic about those who want to impose a new dictatorship, carry out ethnic massacres, include al-Qaida, and might even use nerve gas to make propaganda?

Sadly, the truth is that there are Islamists all the way down.

Rally to Save the New York Public Library

> PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
>
> Dear friend -
>
> Take action to save the 42nd Street Library and stop the Central Library Plan! We have received multiple reports that the historic seven-story book stacks in the 42nd Street Research Library have now been emptied. Removing the books is a prelude to the planned demolition of the stacks later this year or early in 2014.
>
> There are two things you can do:
>
> RALLY MAY 8TH AT THE 42ND STREET LIBRARY
>
> Join us for a rally on Wednesday, May 8th, during the quarterly meeting of the New York Public Library Trustees. The rally will begin at 3:30 PM in front of the 42nd Street Library facing 5th Avenue. The rally will start promptly! We want to have a strong presence as the Trustees enter the building for their meeting. If you can't make it at 3:30, join us after work at 5 PM to greet the Trustees on their way out. The rally is being cosponsored by our friends at Citizens Defending Libraries.
>
> To promote the rally, we have been leafleting outside the 42nd Street Library daily. Join us from Noon to 1 PM this coming Monday (May 6) and Tuesday (May 7). We will have plenty of flyers, and also have signs to hold.
>
> HELP PROMOTE OUR NEW WEBSITE
>
> Second, please help spread the word about our new website:
> www.savenypl.org
> Publicize our site via social media, via twitter, via linking from your blog, via plain old-fashioned word-of-mouth. If you have friends who you think might be concerned about preserving the integrity of the 42nd Street Research Library, our website is an easy way to introduce them to the issue.
>
>
> TALKING POINTS
>
> The Central Library Plan, at enormous cost to New York City and its taxpayers, would irreparably damage the 42nd Street Research Library – one of the world’s great reference libraries and a historic landmark. The NYPL plans to demolish the Library’s historic seven-story book stacks, install a circulating library in their stead, and displace 1.5 million books to central New Jersey. The new circulating library would be a reduced-size replacement for the Mid-Manhattan Library (at 40th and 5th Avenue) and SIBL (Science, Industry and Business Library, at 34th and Madison), which would both be sold.
>
> • The plan will cost $350 million (probably more), of which $150 million will come from New York City taxpayers.
> • The plan will jam patrons of the circulating library into a space one-third the size of the existing Mid-Manhattan Library and SIBL.
> • The plan will threaten the 42nd Street Library’s role as one of the world’s great research libraries, and threaten the architectural integrity of the landmarked 42nd Street building.
> • The plan does not take into consideration more efficient and less destructive alternatives, such as combining SIBL and the Mid-Manhattan into a rehabilitated and expanded building on the Mid-Manhattan site.
>
> Underlying our concerns is the extraordinarily closed process through which the Library administration has made its decisions. Despite the fact that the 42nd Street building is owned by the City and is one of our most iconic structures, the plan was formulated with minimal public notification and no public input. The $150 million which the City has earmarked towards the project was awarded without any oversight by the City Council and with no public hearings. If alternatives have been seriously considered they have never been disclosed, and no cost-benefit analysis or detailed budget has ever been presented to the public.
>
> It has become increasingly apparent that the CLP is part of a larger effort by New York City’s public library systems to shrink their capacity and sell off valuable real estate, which started with the controversial sale in 2008 of the beloved Donnell Library to real estate developers.
>
> For more information or to join our low-volume email list, see www.savenypl.org
>
> Thank you!
>
> The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
> 232 East 11th Street
> New York, NY 10003
> www.savenypl.org
> info@savenypl.org

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Eric Schmidt on the Importance of Teachers in the Digital Classroom

Thank you Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, for saying this about teachers in the Q&A for The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business at the New America Foundation on May 3rd. Video link: http://youtu.be/kEmwIo6xNZQ.

 "The role of the teacher becomes more important when there's infinite information, not less. So, you would conclude from reading our book that we believe that teachers, and particularly human teachers, and judgement, are more important in the presence of all this information, and that we are delighted that all of these tools and techniques and so forth will get there. The best scenario by far is an empowered teacher, an excited student, and an infinite amount of information...(on YouTube clip at 54:10-54:55).