skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Israel in Peril - Rick Santorum
President Obama’s immoral Middle East policy goes beyond directly pressuring Israel; see how he has treated other allies and enemies in the region. President Obama told Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak he had to leave office but he has coddled Syria, rewarding that rogue state with a U.S. ambassadorship George W. Bush pulled years ago. Going further, despite Syria’s much more brutal crackdown on its own people, President Obama has yet to call for Syria’s leader, Bashar Assad, to leave power. The confusion to most of us — but not to our or Israel’s enemies — is precisely this: Mubarak was an ally, and the key leader in Egypt responsible for maintaining peace with Israel. Assad is an enemy, heading up one of the chief state sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East. President Obama opposed the ally and sided with the enemy.
Israel has long enjoyed the support of the United States. Our mutual ties have been historical, cultural, religious, and strategic. Today those ties have been put in more doubt than at any other time in the history of our relationship. Israel hasn’t changed, the United States has. But the United States, a large and powerful country, is not in danger of disappearing. The same cannot be said of Israel and it is to our shame that we have increased that risk for the Jewish state. One can only hope this dangerous turn in our foreign policy will change. In the meantime, it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, “I support Israel.”
Massacre in Pakistan: A Teachable Moment for the West - Barry Rubin
–The main cause of terrorism is not America (or Israel, or any other country) killing terrorists but revolutionary Islamism’s attempts to seize state power or attempts of those revolutionary Islamists (and their allies) already in power (see Iran, Syria, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and perhaps soon the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?) to overthrow neighbors.
–These policemen were targets not because they were oppressive instruments of capitalism or imperialism but because the revolutionaries want to destroy order so they can operate in a situation of anarchy which they hope to replace with their own rule.
...
–Until Western leaders understand the above principles, their policies will not only fail, they will be counterproductive for the interests of both their own countries and millions of Muslims, who do not want to be ruled by revolutionary Islamism.
Now here’s an interesting question. Suppose the above list of propositions was submitted to leading politicians, policymakers, journalists, and academic experts. How many of these points would they accept as obvious and how many totally reject? If this list were given to average people, how many of these points would they say that they’ve never heard expressed by their mass media or leaders?
Why Bin Laden Lost - Brendan Greeley
This is the lesson of the past 10 years, and one Osama bin Laden, a man animated by a grandiose vision of restoring a 7th century Muslim empire, never grasped. The most successful organizing principle the world has ever known is a simple guarantee that we can buy and do things that have no point greater than the satisfaction of our own happiness.
...
What I'd like to be able to say to myself, 10 years younger, is that Osama bin Laden will lose because nobody actually wants to live in a cave. Even bin Laden didn't want to live in a cave. As Bloomberg News reported, in Abbottabad he sent runners out for equal amounts of Coke and Pepsi, for Nestlé milk and the good-quality shampoos. The societies that make these things do not turn up their noses at the consumer and his whims, the needs that lack any justification larger than the personal.
A Warning From London, A Speech In Berlin - John Hinderaker
Wilders is more or less an outcast in Europe. As one with reservations about certain types of immigration, he is routinely classified as a "far right" politician, although by American standards he would probably be a liberal. He currently faces criminal prosecution in his native Netherlands for suggesting that the ongoing Islamization of that country is a bad thing. Wilders is a thoughtful opponent of Islam and defender of Western freedom, as his Berlin speech reveals. You really should read it all, but here are some excerpts:
Germany's national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity, is being threatened by the political ideology of Islam. In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words: "A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism." Today, another specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of Islam. This danger, too, is political. Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think: Islam is mainly a political ideology. ...
[T]he renowned Oxford historian J.M. Roberts wrote in 1985: "Although we carelessly speak of Islam as a 'religion'; that word carries many overtones of the special history of western Europe. The Muslim is primarily a member of a community, the follower of a certain way, an adherent to a system of law, rather than someone holding particular theological views." The Flemish Professor Urbain Vermeulen, the former president of the European Union of Arabists and Islamicists, too, points out that "Islam is primarily a legal system, a law," rather than a religion. ...
These are not just statements by opponents of Islam. Islamic scholars say the same thing. ... Abul Ala Maududi, the influential 20th century Pakistani Islamic thinker, wrote - I quote, emphasizing that these are not my words but those of a leading Islamic scholar - "Islam is not merely a religious creed [but] a revolutionary ideology and jihad refers to that revolutionary struggle ... to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth, which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam." ...
After Muhammad's death, based upon his words and deeds, Islam developed Sharia, an elaborate legal system which justified the repressive governance of the world by divine right - including rules for jihad and for the absolute control of believers and non-believers. Sharia is the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, among other Islamic states. It is also central to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which in article 24 of its Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, proclaims that "all rights and freedoms are subject to the Islamic Sharia." The OIC is not a religious institution; it is a political body. It constitutes the largest voting block in the United Nations and writes reports on so-called "Islamophobia" in Western Countries which accuse us of human rights violations. To speak in biblical terms: They look for a speck in our eye, but deny the beam in their own.
