Obama's first 48: Do you feel safer yet?

Barack Obama has been president for all of 48 hours, and I already feel less safe. In one of his first official acts as president, Obama ordered the detention facility at Guantanamo closed "within a year", and officially outlawed any "enhanced interrogation" techniques that fall outside of the U.S. Army Field Manual. In a signing ceremony attended by all the usual liberal suspects, the new president said that we would confront global violence without sacrificing "our values or our ideals".  After years of criticizing the Bush Administration, Obama and the Democrats will now have a chance to do it "their way". Democrats, of course, have always put a premium on high minded ideals -- preferring things to look good, sound good and feel good -- even if they don't work well (or at all) in practice.   The notion of fighting a war against a brutal enemy -- that decapitates its prisoners and seeks to wipe us from the face of the earth -- with the high ideals of our democratic laws and rules is both naive and dangerous. It reflects the fact that most on the left have never seen the fight against Islamic extremism as a real war, but rather as a difficult issue that can be dealt with through diplomacy, so-called "soft power" and conventional law enforcement techniques. In this upside down view of the world, Miranda rights, Habeus corpus and all other protections for terrorist detainees makes perfect sense.

The immediate result of closing Guantanamo is that it will now fall on the U.S. justice system to figure out what to do with the 250 detainees that remain there. For many on the left, this presents something of an academic question; there is a common narrative among opponents of Guantanamo that those imprisoned there are mostly innocent sheep herders and others caught up in the net of American power, and thus unjustly held without trial. Nothing could be further than the truth: the majority of prisoners at Guantanamo are hardened killers who if released will take up terrorism against us again, and present a real and pressing threat to the United States.

Obama's move to close Guantanamo comes as no surprise, of course, having been a central theme of his campaign. In fact, Obama has been on record as favoring a conventional legal remedy for terrorists ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in Boumediene v Bush that Guantanamo terrorists should be granted access to the U.S. courts:

“I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday”.

Now, as president, Obama is acting to put his view of "terrorist rights" into effect.  In ruling that interrogation techniques be limited to the U.S. Army Field Manual, which limits questioning to "please" and "thank you" kind of questions, Obama has effectively tied the hands of CIA and other interrogators who seek vital intelligence about Al Qaeda and other terrorists in the field. Unlike the salons of Paris, London or now Washington, D.C., the CIA and U.S. military operate in the real world, where innocent lives may depend on extracting information from evil doers intent on destroying us.

But that apparently doesn't matter to Obama, who with a swipe of his pen, has decided that he and the other liberals now in charge of our national security apparatus know more about security than does the current head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, who has testified repeatedly in front of Congress that enhanced interrogation techniques are critically important to our security. Rather than study the issue from the inside and take some time to make the right decision on this important issue, Obama has placed politics over public safety in unilaterally disarming our intelligence officials as a grand act of political theater.

The left believes that some quid pro quo will exist between us and our enemies; that somehow us living up to our ideals will make a difference with those who seek our destruction and are willing to go to any lengths to ensure it. It is hard to believe that smart people can be so naive as to the real nature of the threats arrayed against us.

I've said many times that the left lives in a fantasy world of their own making, and this is further proof that with the Democrats in charge we will be in greater danger because of it.

Jihadists' goal: 'Destroy US from within'

Documents uncovered in a raid on the Holy Land Foundation, subject of the recent terrorism trial in Texas, reveal the intention and strategy of Islamizing the United States, even if it takes a hundred years. Linked below is an electronic copy of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991," shown in the original Arabic with English Translation. Consider, for example, Item 4 on the page numbered as Page 7 of 18 (but designated page 21 in the Adobe Reader for this PDF). Muslims are to understand that

their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes...

This candid self-indictment by the jihadists is worth sharing with those who think that Muslims are like any other group of immigrants and will assimilate, or with that a Mosque is no different than any other church, just like the Methodists on the next block.

Link to PDF: Muslim Brotherhood Intentions 1991

Clueless celebrities vs. leaders & heroes

Americans need to think and talk more about the timeless principles of leadership, principles that also apply equally well to citizenshipand simple person-hood. How desperately those principles are needed everyday, and how sadly lacking.

Too many "leaders" today are merely celebrities, with no notion of integrity and no commitment to God's goodness. Little wonder that people feel cheated and seek ever anew for some "leader" who could restore good government, but instead the media imposes on us yet another clueless, self-serving celebrity. The risk to our republic is immense.

Then, too, because people are taught that those shallow, unprincipled weaklings must be idolized, people have little chance to learn about genuine goodness. In place of valid heroes, representing by their example the principles and godliness we each need to emulate, the media adulate these false "leaders" and people's moral integrity and civic responsibility erode ever further.

This year, on this blog, let's proclaim the true values that we need in our leaders and in ourselves.

We are all Israelis now

For those now condemning Israel's decision to confront and destroy Hamas, I suggest reading Ron Rosenbaum.  Rosenbaum, who wrote the book "Explaining Hitler", has written a compelling piece entitled Some differences between Hamas and the Nazi Party.   Rosenbaum doesn't mince words -- arguing in effect that Hamas represents a bigger threat to Jews than even the Nazis did: The Hamas founding covenant explicitly calls for the extermination of all Jews. Hitler never made total extermination an official plank of the the Nazi party platform. (see Holocaust scholar Omar Bartov’s article in the February 2, 2004 issue of The New Republic. 7th article of the founding Hamas covenanat which cites the Hadith (saying of the prophet). Here is a translation of the Hadith ina deeply disturbing summary of Hamas’ exterminationist anti-semitismby the Brown University scholar Andrew Bostom:

“The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985). 

In other words, Hamas is not committed merely to the political goal of expelling Jews from the land of Israel but to what they believe is a sacred religious goal of exterminating all Jews everywhere behind every tree in creation. (I’m not pinning any hopes on “the Gharqad tree”). I’d suggest those who deceive themselves into believing Hamas is just another Palestinian rights group, maybe a little on the extreme side, read the whole Bostom article. The exterminationist anti-semitism of Hamas is more excessive than Hitler’s.

Many might take issue with Rosenbaum's position by noting that Hitler actually killed millions of Jews at the head of a mighty industrial Nazi machine, and that Hamas has done comparatively little to carry out its genocidal ambitions.  But in this day of WMD and nuclear technology, it is important to give a disproportionate weight to intent: one suicide bomber with sarin gas or a nuclear bomb, and Article 7 of the Hamas covenant could be realized in an instant.

Nonetheless, Israel has (again) come under terrible fire from the left for it's "disproportionate response" to Hamas and the "poor people of Gaza" -- citing the fact that many Palestinian civilians have been killed and wounded. Of course, it is Hamas' strategy to put women and children in the path of the Israeli attack, so that civilians will be killed. Hamas knows that on the left, nothing Israel ever does in right, and that media pictures of civilian destruction is certain to bring condemnation from the UN, the EU and the other Palestinian apologists. Its so predictable -- and to Israel's credit, they have not been intimidated by it.

Nor should they be. Let's put this into perspective: suppose Al Qaeda -- a group with a sworn objective to destroy the United States and kill every last infidel in the West -- had developed a settlement over the U.S.-Mexico border and was lobbing missiles into San Diego on a daily basis, terrorizing the civilian population and killing and wounding American citizens.

Is there any chance in a million years that the United States would not wipe those settlements off the face of the earth to protect American lives?

Of course not. But because the much of the world wallows in anti-semitism and has fallen in love with the "Palestinian cause" there is a double standard at work. When Israel acts to defend itself, the world protests. No other nation would live under such a threat. But that doesn't matter -- because Israel never gets the benefit of the doubt.

In the end, we should be grateful that Israel has the courage to do what needs to be done. If they are successful here, they will destroy Hamas and free the Palestinian people to pursue statehood under a peaceful two-state system. That's the only future for the Palestinian people that makes sense. Israel is doing them a favor.

Let's hope that Israel is successful, and that this is but a precursor to them taking on (and taking out) the real 800 pound gorilla in the region: a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. This is a threat that Europe and a post-Iraq America have failed to face up to. Israel can't afford to be so cavalier.

We are all Israelis now.

Islam's ancient inferiority complex

As I read history, the supposed flowering of Islamic civilization a thousand years ago was not an indigenous Muslim phenomenon. Such advances as they achieved were owing to the Dhimmis (compliant infidels) who had been captured and enslaved during the Jihads from 637 AD onwards. It was the Jews, Christians and the Persians who were the managers, bankers, and scientists that enriched the Islamic civilization of that time. But eventually, the Dhimmis died out and their children converted to Islam to avoid the second class status of Dhimmitude: and progress stopped. Higher “education” in Islam is much as it was in medieval Europe. Islamic scholars stroll around in their robes with their disciples in tow. Any inquiry is considered an effrontery to the authority of the professor and is not received kindly. The subject matter is the Islamic trilogy with no end to the theological debate.

Even today, young men in black hoods and AK 47’s patrol Middle East campuses to assure nothing “counter to Islam” is on campus! It gives new meaning to the term “hostile learning environment”, a concept used by progressive professors in the United States to sue students who ask disagreeable questions.

In Islam, Mohammed is considered the final prophet, and it is believed there is no reason to study anything else. No one dares admit that running a 21st Century society on 7th Century aphorisms is problematic.

Islamics compensate for the backwardness of every Islamic society on earth by contempt for and feelings of superiority over all non-believers. The only way Islamics can validate these feelings is to destroy the civilized world, to roll the standard of living back a 1000 years and to force submission to Islam.

Thus, the mythical flowering Islamic Civilization of yore was really theft and deception. What else would you like to reach out and understand or dialog about?