Those who do not understand the past . . .

Posted on 11 July 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

A charismatic young leader, supported by a coalition of intellectual elitists on the one hand and a dependent underclass on the other, has gained control of the country. With each month that passes, the leader and his court reveal themselves to be more hostile to the interests of the middle class. Vast new spending bills are introduced to fund an extension of government power. New taxes of all kinds, the extension of old taxes to cover a broader array of goods and services, the introduction of stealth taxes and special emergency levies, the borrowing of vast sums of money: all of these excesses deeply disturb the public, especially the middle class who are asked to bear all the burdens, even as the abuses are cheered on by an foolish elite and an acquiescent underclass.

As if this were not enough, our young monarch has decided to conduct foreign policy in a suspiciously conciliatory manner toward declared enemies of the nation. Regimes with a history of supporting violence against the interests of the country are suddenly courted as if they were long-time friends. Organizations driven by ideological and religious extremism are “engaged” as if no stigma attached to their past and continuing conduct. Emissaries are dispatched to the most unlikely of foreign capitals to negotiate a policy of appeasement and conciliation.

Along with this, there is the troubling sense that the young prince’s values are alarmingly out of line with the moral and cultural views shared by most of the public. There are reports of lavish expenditures for entertainment, pilgrimages from the capital carried on at public expense, questionable advancement of favorites. There is the suspicion that, when he is not in public view, the young leader is indifferent at best to the deeply held opinions on faith, family, and patriotism that the public holds dear. Many would go further, believing that, when not on show, he and his consort mock these ideals.

Barack Obama? No, Charles I of England.

As any student of history can tell you, that’s not a happy comparison to make: Charles I‘s recklessness and arrogance ultimately drove him into a fight with Parliament, sparking a pair of civil wars that ended with his execution for high treason. Of course, a similar end to Barack Obama’s presidency is vanishingly unlikely—but as today’s Rasmussen tracking poll shows the Presidential Approval Index standing at -7% (30% of voters strongly approve of his performance, while 37% strongly disapprove), it seems clear that the president’s Charles-like path in office so far is having an analogous effect on his personal popularity and political capital. This suggests that he would do well to embrace the bipartisanship he once promised (back in those days before he could dismiss political disagreements with a curt “I won”) and moderate his policies, unless he wants to face the modern American political substitute for civil war—a popular revolt at the polls in the next election. Increasing numbers of people would agree with Jeffrey Folks that there’s good reason:

Today the power of the political elite in Washington far exceeds that of the court of Charles I, and we are in even greater danger of losing our liberties. John Milton was the great spokesman for the opposition during the days of Charles I, and Milton knew well enough what a tyrant was. “A tyrant,” he wrote, “is he who regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction.” Could there be any better characterization of the actions of the present administration in Washington?

Will the blood of martyrs water a new tree of liberty in Iran?

Posted on 25 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

We may only hope and pray so, because a river of blood is flowing in the streets of Tehran that could water a whole forest. The Anchoress has a good roundup, as usual—check it out, and follow the links. The Iranian regime has literally declared war on the opposition, sending the militia out to beat women to death, murder unarmed protestors with axes, and throw people off bridges. An Iranian woman told CNN,

This was exactly a massacre. You should stop this. You should help the people of Iran who demand freedom. . . .

In the previous days they are killing students with axes, they put the axe through the heart of young men, and it’s so devastating I don’t know how to describe it.

This is horrific, this is genocide, this is a massacre, this is Hitler. And you people should stop it. It’s time to act.

Another Iranian writes,

I am writing to beg for your attention and assistance in any way possible. An innocent, peaceful, historic momentum, unprecedented in recent history, has come alive in our world that is being brutally put down with violence, lies, and dirty politics for power and riches. You, no matter where you are, have been inflicted by the evil nature of this current going round in our globe.

My brothers and sisters, come together in any way you can. Join the arms of our innocent people whose blood is being shed for peace and human rights which you may be blessed with elsewhere. Our hands are stretched out, reaching out for your support from outside. We are confronting a formidable power as ancient and infectious as hatred, tyranny, intolerance, prejudice and racism. We need your help. . . .

We as a nation are pleading desperately to the world that we MUST not recognize this regime legitimate. We need to use all our strength and unity to pressure it to leave the office before our voice is shut down.

In response to such impassioned pleas, our president boldly decided that since the mullahs hadn’t accepted his invitation to the weenie roast, he’d rescind the invitation.

. . . !

Of course, as Mark Steyn notes, Barack Obama does have a timing problem:

he chose as a matter of policy to legitimize the Iranian regime at the very moment they chose to delegitimize themselves—first, by stealing the election to an unprecedented degree and, then, by killing people who objected to them doing so.

That’s awfully bad timing, and one sympathizes, as one would if Nixon had gone to China a week before Tiananmen Square. But the fact is it’s happened and adjusting to that reality makes more sense than banking on being able to re-legitimize Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.

What really strikes me about this whole bloody, evil vortex—the swirling firestorm of the nihilistic will to power clashing with the desire of a people to be free, a mad dream of some Islamic Nietzsche—is that people are being murdered, shot off rooftops, for shouting “God is great!” (“Allahu akbar!”). A regime ostensibly founded on religion—but more accurately, on the religio-tribal identity that is Shi’ism—has had its true power-mad heart exposed; it’s starting to look like its own religion is turning against it, and like the mullahs will sacrifice even Islam for the sake of power. Perhaps that’s just a fanciful thought, but it’s how things look to me.

It’s important to remember, though, that if Springsteen’s right and “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” then Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are still the freest ones in this whole fight. They’re free to do anything, because if they lose this battle, nothing else matters; they and their supporters literally have no other options but victory or death. The leaders of the opposition can always go into exile, but the likes of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei have nowhere else to go. As such, Spengler is right: this is an extremely complex and dangerous situation, and it’s impossible to predict what will happen next. As he points out, the real wildcard in all this is Israel; the Netanyahu government had best be considering their next move verycarefully, because the consequences, for good or ill, could be beyond reckoning.

Still, in all this, Robert Kaplan is right to say that there is great reason for hope—and that this is all happening as a consequence of our intervention in Iraq (which is why, incidentally, his fellow Atlantic contributor Jeffrey Goldberg was wrong to portray that intervention as a mistake; it was, rather, a calculated risk):

It is crucial that we reflect on an original goal of regime change in Iraq. Anyone who supported the war must have known that toppling Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab—whether it resulted in stable democracy, benign dictatorship or sheer chaos—would strengthen the Shiite hand in the region. This was not seen as necessarily bad. The Sept. 11 terrorists had emanated from the rebellious sub-states of the sclerotic Sunni dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose arrogance and aversion to reform had to be allayed by readjusting the regional balance of power in favor of Shiite Iran. It was hoped that Iran would undergo its own upheaval were Iraq to change. Had the occupation of Iraq been carried out in a more competent manner, this scenario might have unfolded faster and more transparently. Nevertheless, it is happening. And not only is Iran in the throes of democratic upheaval, but Egypt and Saudi Arabia have both been quietly reforming apace.

On Barack Obama’s (mis)handling of Iran

Posted on 25 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | 2 Comments

The president is to be commended for giving HuffPo’s Nico Pitney the high sign before yesterday’s press conference so that Pitney would be primed to pass along this question from an Iranian dissident:

Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of—of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

As Paul Mirengoff points out, Pitney is also to be commended for hitting the president with that question:

What a terrific question—a query that not one in a thousand American journalists could be expected to match—and kudos to Pitney for selecting it. The question elegantly but pointedly (1) refutes the suggestion of Obama’s apologists that the president helps the protesters by remaining above the fray while (2) reminding Obama that he cannot really remain above the fray in any event because he must eventually accept the election of Ahmadinejad by dealing with him as planned or reject that fraudulently reached outcome by changing his course.

However, as Mirengoff continues, the president is not to be commended for his response to that question:

The president could only bob and weave. He responded that the U.S. did not have observers on the ground and therefore could not know whether the election was legitimate. But the U.S. knows that the candidates were pre-screened by the regime, making the election inherently illegitimate.

He responded further that it is up to the Iranian people, not the U.S., to view the election as legitimate or not. But a portion, and probably very large portion, of the Iranian people has already decided that the election is not legitimate; yet the “result” will stand and Ahmadinejad will serve another term. Thus, the ball is now in the Obama administration’s court to treat the election as legitimate, by dealing with Ahmadinejad even as he represses his own people, or to demur.

The question thus stands unanswered by Obama, though it answers itself: if Obama treats Ahmadinejad as the legitimate leader of Iran in the absence of significant changes in conditions there, that would indeed constitute a betrayal of what the demonstrators are working to achieve.

It doesn’t help that even as he finally offered a strong statement against the mullahs’ treatment of Iranian protestors, he still wanted to have them over for hot dogs (and negotiate with their terrorists).

This is the most unrealistic sort of political “realism” imaginable. Michael Rubin lays out the reasons why:

1. The command and control over any military nuclear program would be in the hands of the Office of the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the same groups who are now facing down the Iranian people. In other words, we share a common adversary with the Iranian people. We need to recognize that. The problem has never been the Iranian people—they indeed are far more moderate than their government. We should do nothing to antagonize them (which is why all the talk among some realists of outreach to the Mujahedin a-Khalq or playing an ethnic strategy is wrong, hamfisted, and counterproductive). We need to focus on how to counter and neutralize our common adversary.

2. Realism is about maximizing U.S. interests. Preserving an enemy regime is not realism. It is simply stupid. We should not be throwing a lifeline to the Islamic Republic, the fall of which would enable Iran to emerge as a force for moderation in the region, and allow the Iranian people to take their rightful place among nations.

A few links on Iran

Posted on 23 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

On The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez posted a brief interview with Daniel Pipes, director of theMiddle East Forum and a Fellow of the Hoover Institution, on the current situation in Iran. As always, Pipes has some interesting things to say, including his statement that “the startling events in Iran in the week since the election have transformed [Mir Hossein] Mousavi from a hack Islamist politician into the unlikely symbol of dreams for a more secular and free Iran,” and his judgment that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have been seriously weakened by the protests. (Bernard-Henri Lévy agrees.) Perhaps his most interesting comment, though, is his concluding observation:

I am taken aback by the nearly complete absence of Islam in the discussion. One hears about democracy, freedom, and justice, all of which do play a role, but the key issue is the Iranian population’s repudiation of the Islamist ideology that has dominated its lives for the past 30 years. Should the regime in Tehran be shaken by current challenges, this will likely have profound implications for the global career of radical Islam.

This dovetails with what I’ve heard from other sources (as do the comments by Jared Cohen which I noted last week) that disillusionment with Islam is widespread in Iran, especially among younger Iranians; I would imagine that if the regime were in fact to collapse, what would remain would still be a Muslim country, but a rather exhausted one (perhaps analogous to Europe after the end of the religious wars of the 17th century).

As regards the president’s tepid response to the protests in Iran, Michael Ledeen posted the following:

I’ve received what purports to be a statement from Mousavi’s Office in Tehran. Like everyone else covering the revolution, I get a lot of material that can’t be authenticated, and one must always take such material with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, the person who sent this to me is undoubtedly in touch with the Mousavi people on the ground, that much is certain. His information has been proven reliable throughout this period. So while the following open letter carefully puts distance between the author(s) and Mousavi himself, I am quite sure that at a minimum it accurately reflects the state of mind of the Mousavi people.

The letter expresses strong displeasure with Barack Obama:

In the name of the Iranian people, we want you to know that when you recently made the statement “Achmadinejad or Mousavi? Two of a kind,” we consider this as a grave and deep insult, not just to Mr. Mousavi but especially against the judgment of the Iranian people, against our moral conviction and intelligence, especially those of the young generation that comprises a population of 31 million.

It is a specially grave insult for those who are now fighting for democracy and freedom, and an unwarranted gift and even praise for Mr. Khamenei, whose security forces are now killing peaceful Iranians in the streets of every major city in the country.

Your statement misled the people of the world. It was no doubt inspired by your hope for dialogue with this regime, but you cannot possibly believe in promises from a regime that lies to its own people and then kills them when they demand the promises be kept.

By such statements, your administration and you discourage the Iranian people, who believe and trust in the values of democracy and freedom. We are pleased to see that you have condemned the regime’s murderous violence, and we look forward to stronger support for the rightful struggle of the Iranian people against the actions of a regime that is your enemy as well as ours.

Ledeen’s post includes several other important things as well, including an excerpt from a speech Mousavi made yesterday. Meanwhile, the inimitable Rich Lowry posted on The Corner imagining how President Obama might have handled several other touchy international situations throughout history, including the Nazi air assault on London:

Any time a city is bombed for 57 straight nights, we take notice. That is something that interests us. We hope all national air forces involved in this dismaying conflict behave responsibly.

Fortunately, British PM Gordon Brown is taking up the slack; leaving the field free for him might be the nicest thing the Obama administration has done for the British government yet (not that there’s any competition for that particular honor).

“We are with others, including the whole of the European Union unanimously today, in condemning the use of violence, in condemning media suppression,” Brown said in Brussels after an EU summit.

“It is for Iran now to show the world that the elections have been fair . . . that the repression and the brutality that we have seen in these last few days is not something that is going to be repeated.

“We want Iran to be part of the international community and not to be isolated. But it is for Iran to prove . . . that they can respect these basic rights,” he said. . . .

During his rant, Ayatollah Khamenei called Britain “the most treacherous” enemy of Iran.

The Iranians have set their sights on Britain because they know they have a cream puff in the White House. Britain poses problems because it can push for EU trade sanctions against Iran.

Brown didn’t roll over when the ayatollah attacked. He hit back. On Friday, Brown’s Foreign Office summoned the Iranian ambassador and sharply critiqued Iranian attacks on Britain and the election process.

After demonstrating weakness, an embarrassed Obama administration slowly and reluctantly has ramped up its criticism of the tyrannical regime in Iran. . . .

Given the opportunity to simply support democracy, Obama decided to take a pass.

The unanswered question is why Barack Obama has been determined to coddle this crazed regime in Tehran.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and the one here is considerable; as Jeffrey Goldberg points out, fear of Iran has largely outweighed the hostility of Sunni Arab governments toward Israel, creating the possibility of a Sunni-Israeli alliance. At the very least, as I noted late last year, those Arab governments would dearly love for Israel to take down Iran and its proxies before Iran has the chance to come after them. How this will all play out, I don’t know (certainly, it isn’t as if we have a long history of things breaking right in modern southern/southwestern Asia), but at least there’s the possibility of good things happening.

Update: At least something convinced President Obama to take a stand against the Iranian government and its use of violence against its own people; I don’t know if it was the killings, the poll numbers, or what, but whatever the case, it’s welcome.

The wikification of U.S. intelligence

Posted on 22 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

This is highly encouraging:

The key, of course (as the video notes) is not the existence of Intellipedia but rather a shift in mindset among our various intelligence agencies—a shift which has yet to occur—from the fiefdom/guildhall-type thinking that has long prevailed to a truly wikified approach to the production of intelligence. This will be difficult for them, but as Marc Ambinder points out, the potential rewards of such a shift are high:

Rasmussen proposes a new production method called “transparent review” that would remove the walls between collaboration and agency vetting. On the same “page,” it would allow different agencies to revise and review the Wiki in question, and then, if they approved of the substance, endorse it, right there on the page. Or, if they differed, they’d be given the space, right there on the page, to explain why. The beauty of this construct is that the dynamism of the intelligence analytical product is kept but the totality of the product becomes authoritative. Dissent is still allowed; consensus is not necessarily encouraged.

The terrible beauty of freedom

Posted on 18 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

What’s happening in Iran in response to the fraudulent election is nothing short of awe-inspiring. This may be the revolution, and if so, it indeed will not be televised (though the early phases were), but it will be tweeted. The Anchoress comments,

You can feel the pulse. It is a human force for freedom that is pressing, pressing against restraints; fully aware of the danger, it yearns, pressing forward, still. It is a terrible beauty.

Read her post; she has some great comments and, as usual, a terrific roundup of key links on the state of things in Iran. We can be proud of Twitter, and of the people who came up with it and maintain it; we can be grateful that they were willing to reschedule their maintenance to inconvenience Americans instead of the Iranians who are tweeting for their lives, their freedom, and their sacred honor. And we can pray (hard!) for those Iranians, that God would protect them and honor their prayers, that he would work a miracle through them and give them freedom.

Unfortunately, our president hasn’t covered himself with glory in this instance; he seems to think that to “stand strongly with [a] universal principle” is enough, that if he just does that, he doesn’t have to stand with the Iranian people. Don Surber put it well, I think, when he wrote,

As an American, I am embarrassed that a couple of computer geeks who came up with a social network have more brass than my holier-than-thou president. Words, deeds. Odd that Twitter does deeds while the commander-in-chief does words.

Just an observation.

Fortunately, as the Anchoress notes, a 27-year-old Condoleezza Rice appointee at the State Department, Jared Cohen, took up some of the president’s slack when he asked Twitter to postpone their scheduled maintenance. Cohen’s an interesting chap, having spent a fair bit of time wandering around the Islamic world before going to work at Foggy Bottom; in 2007 he told the New Yorker,

“They make alcohol in their bathtubs and their sinks,” Cohen said. “And the drug use—it’s really no different from a frat party. You have to pinch yourself and remind yourself that you’re in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian young people are one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They just don’t know who to gravitate around, so young people gravitate around each other.”

Watch out for this guy—he has a very bright future—and be grateful that God put someone in his job at State who knows and cares about the people of Iran, especially since his new boss doesn’t know them and doesn’t seem to care very much. Never mind that, because Barack Obama’s not at the wheel here—he’s on the sidelines, a spectator, pretty much irrelevant; history’s happening somewhere else today. Pray for the people of Iran; pray that God brings the walls down. And pray that when that happens, and the reactions of our government start to matter again, that then they do the right thing.

Is Iran about to blow?

Posted on 14 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

There’s a very good chance of it—check out Michael J. Totten’s excellent roundup for the details. I know a few folks over there, and I can testify to the truth of what he and others are saying: among people 40 and under (which is to say, those who’ve spent at least their whole adult life under the Khomeinist regime) there is no trust of the government whatsoever, only pent-up rage and frustration. Indeed, so great is the disenchantment with their Islamist rulers that there’s a widely-held sentiment that “Islam is not the solution, it is the problem.” It really is entirely possible that in stealing this election for Ahmadinejad, Ali Khamenei and the mullahs have taken that one step too far that will blow the entire country open, and themselves clean out of power (and quite possibly out of other things as well, like breathing).

Which is why our government’s reaction—essentially, “The election was stolen, but we’ll work with the Ahmadinejad government anyway”—was so mind-numbingly stupid. You’ll notice I said “our government,” not “the Obama administration,” and there’s good reason for that; I think Barack Obama’s instincts on Iran are atrocious, and I’m sure he’s not helping matters, but I have no real faith that anyone else would be doing any better. . . . Well, John McCain mightbe if he had the chance, because he’s stubborn enough that he might actually be able to make foreign policy independent of the bureaucrats in the State Department, but I’m not at all sure of that; and the folks at State have a deeply-entrenched mindset that says “work with the government that’s in place, no matter what.” I’m not sure if it’s a reaction against US involvement in the Ngo assassination and the Allende coup or what, but our government is ridiculously good at ignoring potentially pro-US opposition movements in favor of continuing to deal with anti-US tyrants. (And don’t give me Iraq—it took us three presidents, a decade and a half, two invasions, a major terrorist attack and a minor-league cold war to decide we really couldn’t live with Saddam Hussein after all.) I truly hope we wise up this time; there’s an oppressed nation out there that could really use our help, and a government we’d be far better off without.

Memo to the President: the British are a proud people, too

Posted on 13 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

and you might want to start treating them like it; which means stop dissing them by doing things like transferring Islamic militants to Bermuda without discussing it with the British government when Great Britain is responsible for Bermuda’s security and foreign relations. Needless to say, the British Foreign Office is furious at our government—again. These are potentially dangerous folks (which is why the Obama administration barred them from re-entering the US) who trained in Tora Bora; they aren’t the kind of folks you just dump on your neighbor’s lawn without bothering to consult them (at least if you care at all what your neighbor thinks of you).

When Barack Obama promised to make America popular around the world, he should have added a phrase: “except with our allies—they can go hang.”

Links to think about

Posted on 8 June 200922 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

When I heard the news about the murder of George Tiller, one of the first writers to whom I looked for reaction was the Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, but at that point, she hadn’t gotten around to writing about it. On Thursday, though, she posted a superb piece as the daily article on the First Things website entitled “Tiller, Long, Bonhoeffer, and Assassination”; it’s an excellent piece of theological and moral reflection, and well worth your time to read. I particularly appreciate this piece of wisdom:

Why should we care about some dumb hick named William Long, who was only a soldier and not a hero abortionist? And why should his assassin’s name or religion matter? Because William Long was as entitled to the life he had, as was George Tiller. And Long’s death, at the hands of a man who used his religion to justify his actions, is the ultimate reminder of why Christians cannot emulate Bonhoeffer, for all his brilliance, or Tiller’s murderer: When we start thinking that we know the heart and mind of God so well that we may decide who lives and who dies, we slip into a mode of Antichrist.

The Pauline paradox “when I am weak, then I am strong” carries a flipside: “When I am strong, then I am weak.” Relativism is dangerous because we can too easily slip into the belief that we so well comprehend God’s will that we can confuse our own will for God’s, and thereby do terrible damage to one another. God’s rain falls on “the just and the unjust,” and it is one of the challenges of the life of faith that we must leave to God the rendering of his Justice.

The duty of a Christian—and it is a difficult duty—is to remain in the present moment that we might be alert to the promptings of the Holy Spirit (“continuing instant” in gratitude and prayer) while also taking the long view of things. This requires trust that however things look of a moment or a day, God is present and working: Nothing is static, everything is in a constant state of flux, all of it churning forward so that “in the fullness of time” Christ may restore all things to himself. What is left? Well, prayer, which is the most subversive of powers; it is a self-renewing weapon that cannot be wrested from us, and it cannot be over-employed.

Also of importance on this subject is Michelle Malkin’s reflection on the differing reactions to those two attacks from the media and the White House, “Climate of hate, world of double standards”:

Why the silence? Politically and religiously-motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase “lone shooter” is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild—think convicted Jeep Jihadi Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter—but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence. . . .

The truth is that the “climate of hate” doesn’t have just one hemisphere. But you won’t hear the Council on American Islamic Relations acknowledging the national security risks of jihadi infiltrators who despise our military and have plotted against our troops from within the ranks—including convicted fragging killerHasan Akbar and terror plotters Ali Mohamed, Jeffrey Battle, and Semi Osman. . . .

Is it too much to ask the media cartographers in charge of mapping the “climate of hate” to do their jobs with both eyes open?

On Thursday, I posted a link to Robert Spencer’s demolition of the president’s Cairo speech, but he’s not the only one doing serious analysis and coming away worried; Toby Harnden of the Telegraph is another. Harnden highlights “Barack Obama’s 10 mistakes in Cairo” and concludes,

There’s been lots of breathless commentary today about the “historic” moment and the power of Obama’s oratory. In time, however, the speech will probably be remembered, at best, for its high-flown aspirations rather than the achievements it laid the foundations for. Or, at worst, for the naive and flawed approach it foretold.

Also well worth reading is the online symposium on the Cairo speech that National Reviewpulled together; the contributors raise a number of serious issues, but also offer some strong positive comments. I was particularly struck by the contribution from Mansoor Ijaz, identified as “a New York financier of Pakistani ancestry [who] jointly authored a ceasefire plan between Muslim militants and Indian security forces in Kashmir in 2000”; Ijaz begins by praising aspects of the speech as “brilliant” and “just right,” but then says this:

Where he failed in Cairo was to delineate the overarching fact that Islam’s troubles lie within. It is not that America is not at war with Islam. It is that Islam is at war within itself—to identify what this religion and system of beliefs is in the modern age. Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian sidekick Ayman Al Zawahiri want to take us all back to the Stone Age because they have nothing better to offer their followers than hate-filled preaching. Why didn’t Obama say that?

Islam’s worst enemies are within it. . . .

In fact, the most glaring truth is that Islam’s mobsters fear the West has it right: that we have perfected a system of life that Islam’s holy scriptures urged Muslims to learn and practice, but over the centuries increasingly did not. And having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize the West and to try and bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate, or house.

And finally, for a different perspective on the state of the nation and on the international situation than we’re getting from DC, check out what Sarah Palin had to say on Saturday in her speech in Auburn, NY.

I especially appreciate this line, given our current president’s apparent belief that the best way to conduct foreign policy is to apologize for America to all the people who’ve hurt us for being the kind of people they want to hurt:

We never need to fear that though we’re not a perfect nation, that we must apologize for being proud of ourselves.

Thanks, Governor. We needed that.

Category Archives: International relations