Obama to Arabs: We Are Weak

We will listen first.

I listened on 9/11, pally.

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Obama: Let the Terrorists Win One For a Change

Apparently the only way that Barack Obama can figure out to keep Palestinian terrorists from launching bombs on Israel is to give it to them.

Advised by every realist foreign policy adviser who has been on Meet the Press in the last 50 years to let the Palestinians have East Jerusalem, Obama has drawn on his vast experience as an executive to give it away while the giving's good.

Why does anyone think this is a good plan? Because it was drawn up by the King of Saudi Arbia? He's not in control of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbullah ... is he? If he's in control of Al Qaeda Hamas, and Hezbullah, then we have no business talking to him until he's in Gitmo. If he's not in total control of Al Qaeda Hamas, and Hezbullah, then he can't be sure that the terrorists won't use East Jerusalem as a close-in base from which to attack Israel.

The radical Islamists have sworn to the destruction of Israel. This looks like it brings them a step closer, and all they have to do is stop shooting rockets long enough to move the launchers to the Palestinian side of Jerusalem.

w/t the amazing Gateway Pundit.

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Without Preconditions

Ace quotes the Obama web site as saying that Obama "supports direct, Presidential-level talks with Iran without preconditions".

The problem is not, and has never been, meeting with our enemies, friends, or neutral countries.

The problem is not, and has never been, meeting at the appointee level without preconditions.

The problem is not, and has never been, meeting with our foes at the Presidential level.

The problem is meeting at the Presidential level without preconditions. Obama always tries to weasel, putting forth the straw man argument that Henry Kissinger supports meeting without preconditions, but fails to mention that he supports that only at the surrogate level.

The Obama campaign is fond of noting that the Bush Administration has met with Iran, so it's OK if Obama and Ahmadinejad do. But they fail to note that it is not President Bush himself, but lower-level officials, who attend the meeting.

I don't think we should meet with Iran at all, unless it's to accept their unconditional surrender. You don't negotiate with terrorists.

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Barack Obama Is a Muslim?

Obama denies being a Muslim. Who says Barack Obama is a Muslim? Who has any proof that Barack Obama is a Muslim?

What kind of Muslim is Obama, if Barack Obama is a Muslim? That's an important question, if the goal is finding out if Barack Obama is a Muslim. If we knew the kind of Muslim Barack Obama were, then we would certainly know for certain that without any doubt Barack Obama is a Muslim.

If Barack Obama is a Muslim, then so is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad.

From the evidence we have, it is not clear that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Barack Obama has never been proved to be a Muslim, and Barack Obama denies being a Muslim.

I think everyone who says Barack Obama is a Muslim should reconsider whether Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Oh, yeah, Barack Obama sucks.

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Groups for Obama to Join ... or Not.

Barack Obama resigned his membership in Trinity United Church of Christ. Frank J wonders what groups he will leave next. Clearly some of his associations in the past have served him well at the time, but now are perhaps not generating the kind of support he'll need if he's going to defeat the Bob Barr in November. So I wonder what other groups he will now join?

• Not MENSA (too populist)
• Not Mothers Against Drunk Driving (too divisive)
• He will not join Code Pink (too hawkish)
• Will now boycott Pizza Hut (for not enough grease on their pizza)
• Will join La Raza, because he likes the sound of reuniting
  
• Will resign from the Senate for limiting their membership to 50
  
• Will join U.S. Government because even though they're not spending enough, he can Change that
  
• Will denounce the Red Cross for being too political
  
• Will join the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), because they're just nice people

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Hillary Would Retaliate Against Iran [Updated]

[Update, 5 May 08 1541: Apparently, the site to which I linked as a "pacifist dhimmi" objects to the label. Consider it retracted, because I really don't have any investment in the charge. However, it appears that while I was distracted I have become a "pro-Clinton site" and the seminal case of "Clinton Losing Anger Syndrome". Regular readers may find that somewhat humorous. Readers who are irregular should read the caramely goodness that is my written voice more frequently, because they would learn of my disapproval of all of the candidates this year, and as regular readers they wouldn't be so prone to be pacifist dhimmis.][typos fixed, too.]
So the pacifist dhimmis and Iranians are up in arms over Hillary Clinton's assertion that she would unleash the nuclear dogs of war on Iran if they first launched a nuclear strike against Israel.

If Iran's nuclear program is only for peaceful uses, then they will never have a nuclear bomb. If they never have a nuclear bomb, they will never use one against Israel or anyone else.

Nuclear bombs are very difficult to fake.

So is the willingness to defend an ally. Hillary shows it. Obama does not.

Easy solution to Iran's problem: don't launch a nuclear strike against Israel. If you do, you won't be around to regret it.

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Saying No to the Banker

Obama was asked about boycotting the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing. Earlier he'd called for the President to boycott the ceremonies, but now he hedges his bets, since he learned that Chicago was trying to host and upcoming Games. After a circuitous discourse about who knows what, he said:

We have to take a stronger stance. We have to take a stronger stance and it's got to be more consistent over time. Let me make one last point about China: It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong, all right? And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China.

Shorter: "No". While saying it was important to take a stand, he refused to even take a symbolic one.

So Obama will not ruffle Chinese feathers by personally boycotting Olympics. What does that say, by extension, about his ability to stand up to those people who have endorsed his campaign or bankrolled it? And even if those who have donated to it could be characterized as "the little guys", which they cannot, how can he ever do anything that is unpopular, as a leader often, or even usually, must?
[tiny edits]

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Unlimited Government

We decided as part of the Civil War that there was a hard limit on the freedom of the individual: we cannot sell ourselves into slavery. Similarly, there is a hard limit on the sovereign public, that no matter how great the majority it cannot dictate certain things to the minority.

Among the things the majority cannot dictate are its religion, its opinion, and whether or not a person may own and carry a gun.

And yet the government schools try, to varying degree of effort and success, to do all three.

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Torture, again? Yawn.

The Washington Post is aghast that the President should assert the power, in time of war, not to allow the use of torture to defend us against foreign enemies. They point to a declassied memo, the text of which they may or may not have in full, justifying such methods as do not "shock the conscience".

There's a problem with that, of course, in that consciences differ.

But neither was the author of the memo writing a tutorial.

No sane person likes torture. No patriot wants to see his country defeated. So if we can avoid techniques which "shock the conscience", as the memo insists we must, we can avoid both torture and defeat.

And that is everyone's goal.

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When Anti-Semites Come to Dinner

Rafael Medoff at NRO notes that the State Department purposefully watered down a report on human rights abuses, especially in China, North Korea, and:

Now it is the Palestinian Authority’s turn to benefit from the State Department’s excessive generosity. On March 13, State released an 84-page report [PDF] on “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism.” While describing anti-Semitic incidents in various countries around the world, the report was oddly reticent when it came to the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

Searching the report, I could find scarce mention of Palestine, and yet by all accounts this is the region of the world in which enmity for Jews and Israel is at its sharpest. Could this possibly be part of an effort to appease Mahmoud Abbas, in preparation for his May visit to the White House? After all, Abbas is not just a noted Jew-hater, he got a Soviet Phd in Jew hating.

President Bush wants to achieve something in his final days in office: peace in Palestine. To achieve that goal, he appears willing to overlook not only past sins, but current ones as well. For instance, in the wake of the murder of eight rabbinical students, Israeli group Palestinian Media Watch says that the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper (under Mahmoud Abbas' control)

... describes the murderer of eight yeshiva students in Jerusalem as a "groom" and his burial as his "wedding celebration." The story in Mahmoud Abbas's Al Hayat Al Jadida goes on to evoke the neighborhood Jabal Mukaber's "week of anticipation... preparing themselves for the wedding procession."

The term "wedding" is the expression commonly used in PA society, and in PA schoolbooks as well, to describe the death of Shahids - Martyrs for Allah. According to Islamic tradition, they will wed the 72 Dark- Eyed Maidens (Virgins) of Paradise. [emphasis PMW]

Until, and not before, the PLO. Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority renounce acts of violence by civilians against civilians to achieve political ends, and acknowledge Israel's right to exist, they should not be allowed to set foot on American soil, and a fortiori, should not receive the public relations benefit from being seen hugging and shaking hands with the President of these United States.

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President Remains Commander in Chief

President Bush wielded the power of the veto pen over the bill that would have limited the CIA to using the same interrogation techniques used by Army interrogators.

This was a courageous and correct veto on the part of President Bush, but not just for the reasons he gave.

(Redstate.com reader rbdwiggins gives the text, linked above for the President's veto of H.R. 2082, the "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008." This is cross-posted there.)

Those interested can follow here for the text of the bill itself, thomas.gov being notorious for URL-shifting.]

The future adults at the Talking Points Memo (w/t) are apopleptic, crying "Impeach! Impeach!" -- or perhaps it was just once, as it's hard to tell in that echo chamber.

The President was clear in his reasons for the veto:

The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us prevent a number of attacks. The program helped us stop a plot to strike a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, and a plot to crash passenger planes into Heathrow Airport or buildings in downtown London. And it has helped us understand al Qaida's structure and financing and communications and logistics. Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland.

The main reason this program has been effective is that it allows the CIA to use specialized interrogation procedures to question a small number of the most dangerous terrorists under careful supervision. The bill Congress sent me would deprive the CIA of the authority to use these safe and lawful techniques. Instead, it would restrict the CIA's range of acceptable interrogation methods to those provided in the Army Field Manual. The procedures in this manual were designed for use by soldiers questioning lawful combatants captured on the battlefield. They were not intended for intelligence professionals trained to question hardened terrorists.

On has to wonder: if the CIA is limited to the same techniques as the Army, would there be any need for the CIA to interrogate? And once the front-line soldiers and officers interrogate an enemy combatant, having published our interrogation techniques in the Army Field Manual the enemy combatant would know what to expect and be ready for it, even if the CIA's questioners were more hightly skilled.

From a pure political calculation, some on the right who oppose non-standard interrogation (NSI) will be disheartened by this news. But they are missing a key point: this veto gives John McCain distance from President Bush, which he can exploit with independent voters, on an issue which is probably not as important to the war on terror as it's made out to be.

Because whether or not we use NSI or even full-on torture on detainees is not as important in the overall fight against them as is keeping our playbook hidden from the enemy. This bill would have exposed our methods to our foes, and if only for that reason deserved a veto.

But in the event that some madman was ready to explode a nuclear bomb in a major U.S. city, would we want to keep that information a secret? Or would we rather use every technique known to man to stop it?

Obviously we don't use non-standard interrogation on every detainee; that's why it's non-standard. But like our own nuclear arsenal, these techniques should be available to us, in all their horror.

Congressional Democrats know these things, but are shamefully demagoguing them just to score partisan political points.

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The Cheerleaders of Hate

You want hate crime? This is a hate crime. Palestinians cheer a massacre at a Jewish school. Eight students were killed, 35 others injured. The gunman, a Muslim and supporter of Hamas, was killed by a an off-duty Israeli Army officer who lived nearby.

The jihadist hate group Hamas probably planned the attack, and certainly praised it afterward. This is their modus operandi: stir up hatred and praise terrorism, lob bombs at the Israelis, and then become outraged when they retaliate on poor widdle Hamas. It's possible that Hamas didn't actually get involved in the attack until it was clear that it was popular with the Palestinians, at which time they opportunistically and cynically claimed credit.

Like the attack at Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in 2007, there was a Jewish hero. Unlike Professor Librescu, trapped in a gun-free zone, this hero was armed and stopped the killer dead.

Now that's a cause for celebration.

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Taking a Break

Due to heavy time commitments, I'm taking a break from heavy political and philosophical blogging. I'll still post quick comments here, but no proper essays unless something really rips my toga.

I wish I had time to devote to the foolhardy decision by Columbia to allow Iran's head waiter Ahmadinejad to propagandize them. It's bad enough that having the U.N. on our soil forces us to entertain our enemies, but to give him a platform is just silly. It's a fine example of lunactivism, since it's the logical extension of the idea that people won't hate us if we just listen to them. They have to do it for consistency with their ideals, but they don't realize how it makes them look: complicit with his goals of destroying Israel and the US.

When full blogging resumes, look for comments in places such as IMAO, Redstate, The Minority Report, and the other blogs I troll.

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The Next President

• Must be willing to finish the job in Iraq, and not by quitting
• Must not gain office promising bread (or bandages) from the public trough
• Must understand the importance the nation as an institution, guarding against the encroaching power of transnationalism and the United Nations
• Must understand the importance of the State as an institution, guarding against the encroaching power of nationalism and the Federal government
• Must understand that the Internet doesn't belong to anybody, even though parts of it do, and must not seek to control it
• Must be willing to confront the media, or at least present his side of things once in a while
• Must know that Global Warming is just the latest liberal doomsday fad
• Must support the right to keep and bear arms
• Must clean house in the bureaucracy, starting with anyone in an appointed position not of his party
• Must be willing to enforce our borders

That's not too much to ask, is it?

It is? I was afraid of that.

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How Far Will We Go?

My recent post (In Case You've Forgotten) demanded defeating and utterly discrediting Islamofascism, ending with

The questions of how far we go to defeat them, and with which of our own ideals we will temporarily part to do so, I leave to another day.

I suppose it is a bit of an open question whether we need to temporarily set aside any of our ideals. Things temporarily set aside have a way of becoming lost, of course.

But in an odd twist on the ad hominem buteo gallus argument, what sacrifice will those of us not on the front lines make to preserve our own liberties? Who will demand, despite all reason and human history, both freedom and peace without the sacrifice of blood in their pursuit?

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote "You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. But don't ever count on having both at once." Conversely, as Franklin is quoted, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". But how do we decide whether a liberty is essential or the safety temporary? In an age in which transnational jihadists and hyperthyroidal governments may use instant global telecommunications and the infrastructure of civilization against one another and us, how can we know whether the freedom we seek from the latter will compromise the peace we desire from the former?

In short, how far will we go to defeat Islamofascism?

Many say that there is no peace without freedom and justice, that an occupied or enslaved people is not at peace. But Heinlein and I use "peace" in its classical meaning, as the absence of war. A conquered people is at peace, having surrendered their essential liberties to an invader. And it is this conquered peace which the Islamofascists desire -- over us.

In I Know My Rights, we saw that there are many kinds of rights, but those rights are at once layers of protection for and mere shadows of more fundamental ideals. For instance, the right to travel, assemble, and speak are both practical requirements needed to ensure our ability to control our own governance and a necessary consequence of the ideal of personal sovereignty: we own ourselves. No person should own another, and if a group can control where a person comes and goes or says when he gets there, the group would have effective ownership of the individual.

I do not mean to imply that the rights of travel, assembly or speech are limited solely to issues of sovereignty, nor that sovereignty can be maintained by their exercise alone. Ideals are in the end dependent on the maintenance and defense of all rights. American ideals include

• Personal Sovereignty - we own ourselves, and not each other
  
• The Golden Rule - Treat others as you would have them treat you
• Nondescrimination - neither the government, nor increasingly an individual, should discriminate between individuals based on their group membership
• Majority rule - this one smacks the other ideals around
• The Rule of Law
• Honor in War
  
• There are many others, but I have to move on.
  

But rights are not the ideals they shadow, and it may be possible to emphasize some of the layers of protection over others for a time. Rather than be foolishly consistent and insist on winning all battles, a wise general knows that sometimes losing a battle can win a war.

We find the use of nuclear weapons repugnant, because it violates our ideal of Honor in War -- civilians should be excluded from military threat. Yet we know that the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the end of the Second World War in the Pacific. It was an example of a terrible cost to be paid, stepping back from pursuit of some of our ideals in order to defeat a threat to all of them.

Similarly, if a child has been abducted or a bomb threat issued, we either grudgingly or willingly consent to a search of our vehicle, home, or person. Some might stand on principle and refuse to be searched without reading a bench warrant, and to them my only comment would be "consistent fool". Yet at some point the Amber Alerts and Terror Threat Levels may elicit the measured response to the baying of an imaginary wolf.

Ideals are as much or more a part of culture as art, language, or religion. Americans, for instance, have an innate cultural insistence on freedom generally and to our cherished liberties specifically. In fact, I would go so far as to define culture as a shared set of ideals. I don't think it's trading too much in ambiguity to say then that if a culture is a group with shared ideals, preserving the culture will necessitate preserving the ideals.

While charges of theocracy and dictatorship abound, the real and perhaps more ominous trend in the last several decades is toward populism and rule by opinion poll - the tyranny of the majority. It is therefore counterintuitive that our elected officials would take a break from their prostrated supplication to refuse pursuit of cultural ideals held by even the slimmest majority. And if an ideal is not held by the majority, is it our ideal?

So there is a line to draw somewhere between the situation on one hand in which we are sure the threat is real enough and the rights we are surrendering will come back to us, and on the other that the threat is too ephemeral to fear and the rights to fragile to lose. Heinlein's peace and Franklin's security require the citizen to be vigilant against his own government, but just as mindful of the threat posed by outsiders. There is in the end no magic formula for deciding when liberty should be ceded, except that we do it only when we must, and as little as we can. Let the soldier not doubt that he is defending a free country.

But that free country has enemies, and those enemies need to be treated as such. We must not delude ourselves into thinking that those who do not share our ideals mean us no harm. They do mean us harm, and when we find measures to defeat them which impinge only theoretically on our liberty, we should ignore the theory and destroy the enemy.

When conditions return to their natural order, we may then stand on our shared ideals and demand either our liberty, or the head of him who dares violate it.

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SusieQ, Where Are You?

Andrew Sullivan (via Ramesh Pannuru (via IMAO)) has fallen for a Moby attack, it looks to me. SusieQ doesn't have an overtly Republican or conservative name, like "JoeBibleThumper" or "NukeTheWhales", but that's about the only Moby Point she missed in the FrontPageMag comment Sullivan reposted.

I was very reluctant to write this letter because it is so negative, but I've reached the point in which I can no longer stay silent. With your last column, I've decided to stop reading WorldNetDaily. That fact probably means nothing to you since I've never been able to support you financially. But it means something to me. For over eight years I have faithfully read WND every day. I trusted you. I believed you.

I've never read WorldNetDaily, as far as I can remember, so I don't know if SusieQ is a commenter there. It's possible she could have been a long-term reader there, but if so it's very unlikely, given her later points, that she were ever anything but a troll. In fact, the entire comment has markings of having been cut and pasted from earlier work.

To suggest that the press coverage of Abu Ghraib and the reduction of "interrogation" has caused us to "lose" (support for) the war is nonsense. We are losing in Iraq because we haven't defined the enemy and we aren't there to "win." What would winning look like, anyway? This undeclared "war" was never meant to be "won," but to secure a large American presence in Iraq. And why do you and all of the other so-called "conservative" news media ignore the president of Iraq's statement that they are ready for us to leave?

I'm not sure why SusieQ brought up Abu Ghraib and interrogation except as a red herring, since neither were mentioned in the article to which she responded. That is also one sign that the letter is paste-work. Playing on the ambiguity between losing support for the war and losing the war, she then presumes that we are losing in Iraq, even though she cannot even define "winning". With no definition for winning, she can no more claim defeat than victory.

But she follows that with the signature liberal tactic: the argument by adjective and scare quote. With the phrase "This undeclared 'war'", she seeks to label the war illegitimate. Like all failures to establish premises properly, it serves only to annoy. Unfortunately, we are not even rewarded with the pleasure of a reasoned point, because she uses her time to declare (without support) that the war in Iraq was intended to "secure a large American presence" in Iraq. This, despite the universal support by every human being, and even among Congress, for an eventual US withdrawal from that country.

The classic loaded question "Why do you [and all others] ignore..." would be better used if it were factual. Iraqi President Nouri Al-Maliki said the Iraqis can keep the country secure if the US were to leave "any time they want". Clearly he is expressing confidence born of hope, not of reason, and is readying his people for resolve in the event that our Congress forces a withdrawal, and telling the terrorists not to expect the sheep to be shorn willingly. From that well-known Bush mouthpiece CBS News on Al-Maliki:

"We need time and effort, particularly since the political process is facing security, economic and services pressures, as well as regional and international interference," he told reporters at a Baghdad press conference, without giving a timeframe.

Maliki is not claiming that the Iraqis are "ready for us to leave", but rather, that they would get by if we did. However, if we take Mr. Maliki's words at face value and give them the interpretation SusieQ does, we're winning. Either SusieQ doesn't believe al-Maliki is correct, or she understands that victory in Iraq is in fact achieving conditions such that we can leave.

You and others who claim to stand for conservative Christians have gone down that terrible road of endorsing deception, violence and fiscal irresponsibility to justify the actions of a president (whom I voted for twice) who is not only out of touch with his country, but close to becoming our first dictator.

Disregard the last clause for a moment. Is any more evidence needed before that clause to show that whatever SusieQ is, a conservative she is not? Irrespective of any particular policy position, she displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the conservative world view. The tone is all wrong. Conservative Christians do not look to FrontPageMag or "conservative media" for someone to stand for them, nor do pundits who claim to "stand for" conservative Christians last out the week. Conservatives stand for ideas, not movements or constituent groups. But she says that those who support the war in Iraq do so from loyalty to President Bush, a mistake no conservative would make.

The code words continue with "deception", implicitly allying herself with Joe Wilson and the BushLied™ No-WMD subculture. Decrying "violence" in defense of freedom is drawing equivalence between military action and terrorism. And she then adds "fiscal irresponsibility", which is an exercise in question-begging: things are fiscally irresponsible if they are not important enough for the amount of funds they require versus the amount available. But she is trying to show that the war is not important, so to do so by claiming it's irresponsible is circular.

And if Mr. Bush is close to becoming our first dictator, his tactics to achieve it are really awful.

Now the drumbeats are calling for us to "take care of" Iran next. Hitler had his scapegoat in the Jews and Bush has his in the Muslims. And my fellow Christians are happily following him down a terrible path laced with lies, torture, violence and genocide. After it is all over and the dust has cleared, what will we do when they tell the world that the Christians are now the enemy? Haven't we learned anything from history? When we condemn and entire group of people for the actions of a few, we are no better than those who have turned away from God.

Out comes the Hitler card. The sheer historical ignorance, and the naivety of those who have never lived under true totalitarianism, never ceases to amaze. Even without that, however, there are several differences between the "scapegoats": the Jews never flew airplanes into German skyscrapers, never called for Germany's destruction, never said they wanted to create a Jewish nation out of the whole world, and never blew themselves up at bus stops to get on the news. They were, relatively speaking, innocent. President Bush has never called for any action against Muslims as a group, but instead always carefully and zealously distinguishes between radical Islamic terrorists and ordinary Muslims. The two situations are in wholly dissimilar.

You and the others who support the evolution of our political process into essentially a one-party system are guilty of contributing to the destruction of our beloved republic. I am so sorry that you of all people bought into this madness. I really used to enjoy reading WND, but now I've deleted it from my database because you have become like the rest of the people who claim to follow Jesus: You lust for war, violence, torture and injustice. You will say anything to justify these things, which you know go against the teachings of Jesus. Which Jesus supports these things? Not the Jesus I follow, and I have been a Bible-believing traditional conservative Christian for 24 years. Go ahead and rationalize it all you want. We all have to answer to God for our actions, and I will no longer stand with my fellow Christians and endorse this insanity because after four years, I have come to the conclusion that we were deceived right from the start."

There is a vast difference between opposing a particular party (e.g. the Democrats) because of the policies they espouse, even (hypothetically) desiring the total destruction of that party on the one hand, and desiring a one-party system on the other. To expect that the Democrats will fall so far out of favor that they are forced to disband when they are currently the majority party in two houses of Congress is a bit silly, but to believe that anyone is actively planning such an outcome is really nutty. However, should that unlikely fantasy ever materialize, it takes another leap of imagination to believe that Republicans would either seek or achieve one-party rule thereafter.

As for the charges that the WND folks (and the rest of the people who claim to follow Jesus) are bloodthirsty warmongers, I can only say that I don't know anyone like that. Many Christians do recognize, however, that there is evil in the world which must be stopped, and that there may be some evils better dispatched with force of arms than by prayer and fasting. And they know, at bottom, that even though America is a great place to be a Christian, to expect the non-Christians among us to accept faith as our only defense wanders down a theocratic road I would rather leave untrammeled.

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Crazy

The international dialogue over Islamofascism reminds me of arguing with an abusive or crazy person.

The bully can go on long tirades about who knows what, but will react with outrage if questioned, "Is the trash in the street really arranged to give you personal messages from God?" The tables are turned, and the true victim is accused of verbally abusing the crazy bully, being small-minded, and all manner of intolerance.

And here's the thing: the nutcase really believes he's been unjustly attacked.

The response to non-Muslims who decry Islamic aggression is similarly disproportionate.

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This will hurt me more than it hurts you

If we need an example of truth being in the mind of the believer, perhaps that qualifies. A child about to get his backside warmed knows it can't possibly be the case that his Dad will be harmed in any way by the event. And yet, every parent who has performed the ceremony knows that the sense of failure, of inflicting pain on a loved one, and even the sting on the hand are all things to be avoided whenever possible.

But sometimes physical pain is necessary. Some children don't need it, and that may be why some parents get the silly idea that spanking children is wrong. Or rather, I would say that of course it's wrong, but it's just less wrong than allowing them experience their first pain as their last, or to grow up to be sociopaths who never learned they have to obey the rules.

There is a human tendency to secretly believe that we ourselves are fit and intended to rule the world (why else are we us and not someone else?) When a child looks you in the eye and says, "You ain't the boss of me!", it's time to let them know what, as they say, is what.

Sometimes children grow up without ever being disciplined, without ever learning that no, they aren't intended to rule the world. These adult children struggle to fit in to civilized society. They need a lot of correction, usually by an institution designed for such, or by the end of a rope. In extrema, they find a following of others, who transfer their own uncorrected desire to rule the world to one leader, or to one movement.

And so it is with radical Islam.

While anthropomorphism is always a tricky business, I think the parallel between religious movements and individuals is striking. Some religions may have quirky ideas, but for the most part they don't hurt anyone, break things, or leave the park messy. But this one does.

Despite the Big Lie inherent in cries of "Zionism!", Judaism has learned, through a really long struggle, that it cannot force people to adopt itself. Christianity started out knowing that, then kind of forgot it for a thousand years or so, but now has learned the lesson. While after 9/11 some people, I hope snarkily, suggested forced conversion to Christianity as some kind of solution, I think Christianity as a whole has returned to its forceless roots once and for all.

Other religions operate in the world of ideas, and don't seek to spread by force. And there are some Islamic sects, perhaps including the majority of Muslims, who don't run around blowing themselves up to spread the word.

Those are some of the reasons we don't want to spank Islam as a whole for the sake of its most radical practitioners. But most importantly, we know something that the child only vaguely comprehends: disciplining Islam will in fact cause pain for Western Civilization. We know it, and those who call for disciplining the child with physical force are shouted down as abusers. The child sees only a weak authority, unable to assert itself for lack of moral conviction.

But rather than weakness, our hesitancy to lump all of Islam together comes from the core of our culture: we believe that lumping people together is wrong. It would be something of a refutation of our ideals to persecute a religion in general for the actions of a minority of its adherents.

But Islam grew up with the ability to force its will on non-believers, and includes in its sacred text instructions on how to make second-class people out of them. The voices crying out "Death to America" and such aren't merely expressing some religious ideal, but laying out the grand strategy. America, as symbol of Western Civilization, must die.

Just as the Muslim Saddam Hussein paid $25K to the families of suicide bombers. Pakistani ministers of parliament are now saying that suicide bombing is justified.

If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?

You start by realizing that you weren't born to rule the world.

But it isn't Islamic nations that are the problem, it's Islam. No, it's that faction of Islam, the noisiest one, that desires to spread itself by force which needs to be told that it has to share. It won't listen to reason, to compassion, or to restraint. Violent Islam will only listen to blood, the blood of its adherents, spilled in massive amounts by people explicitly doing so because they will not be assimilated. Only then will it learn, its power-hungry mullahs forced to teach tolerance alongside proselytism.

Islam needs the spanking it never got as a child.

Probably the same folks who consider all physical punishment to be immoral will disagree with me, and say that attacking the violence of Islam with our own violence will only make things worse. Well, we've tried ignoring them, and it still got worse. We've tried giving them what they demand, and they wanted more. We've tried standing them in a corner, and where did that get us?

We have been fooled into believing that religions deserve special protection, because the religions we've been used to seeing promote civilized behavior. But in Islam we find a child with a "struggle": should it throw a tantrum and demand its own way, or should it listen to its parents and play nicely? We'd like not to have to resort to spanking, but for this kid, I think it's going to be necessary. I only hope we gather the fortitude to do what will need to be done.

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Just Say No to Mixed Vegetables!

Apparently the moral philosophers of Al Kaiduh cannot abide cohabitating vegetables.

Avert your eyes! Have you no shame? There are children present.

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Winning the Last War

It's not a new observation: military men fight each new conflict using the tactics and principles that they learned fighting the most recent few. It often takes a while before the new situation presented in the latest conflict becomes clear, and even longer before they get permission to abandon losting tactics, and eventually hit upon a strategy that will be successful. This process takes even longer for the folks back home.

The approach of military men is dictated by years of convincing superiors that the old tactics from Generation A no longer work, and training themselves to believe that a certain method will be needed in Gen B of warfighting. But wars are never the same, and the previous war fought with Gen A tactics, and the subsequent peace, teaches the enemy how to overcome Gen A tactics as well as those in use in prior conflicts. The enemy believes that his own cause is best served through fighting, and that some new set of tactics (and the ones our side never successfully countered during the Gen A war) will be more successful.

But the Last War Syndrome also affects civilian decision-makers, and civilians generally, perhaps even more than the soldier. The military man has as one of his top aim continuing to breathe, along with the compatible goal of defeating the enemies of his country. To those ends he is highly devoted, and highly motivated toward success. The particular method he chooses and policy he follows to stay alive while faithfully serviing his country are of secondary importance.

The civilian, on the other hand, is at least one step removed from personal danger, allowing elegant theories about root causes to trump the evidence of the senses. In particular, those with neither career nor skin on the line can demand that tactics and strategy conform to a theory of human action with no connection to reality. Those whose decisions actually affect the conduct of the war have motivation more like the military man's: being wrong can be deadly, and will certainly have a negative career impact.

So lest I be accused of reverse-chickenhawking, let me be clear: in the fight against Jihad, we all have skin to lose, this is nothing like Desert Storm or Viet Nam nor any other conflict, and it's a good thing that the civilians in charge are listening to the people with the most to lose should their collective plans go awry.

But to the civilians in Califongress, reared in communes and inculcated with the prism of Viet Nam, multiculturalism, and giving peace a chance, only the last war matters.

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