Diana West takes on the prevailing willful blindness about the threat we face, and the war that dare not speak its name. "Military on the Mall," from the Washington Times:
There's no war on "terror" any more than there's a war on car bombs. Neither term describes what animates the terrorists — drivers of car bombs, wearers of explosive vests, or wielders of butcher-blades. Invariably, it is Islam and the murderous, expansionist ideology of jihad that drives that extreme fringe you read about to the point of unspeakable violence. And by the way, that's some fringe; according to Daniel Pipes' famous estimate, it includes 10 percent of the Muslim world — 100 million-plus people.Which takes me back to the original idea of what there is to achieve by writing about those central, retrograde aspects of Islam that clash with Western society — namely, the precepts of jihad and dhimmitude, and the dictates of sharia law. Clarity is the goal. We are unlikely to witness a security-lite inauguration four years — or eight or 12 years — hence if we remain confused about the ideology that animates our foes. And we are unlikely to ward off the spread of jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law the world over — including the U.S.A. — if we know nothing about it, or, worse, know only apologetics about it. Infinitely more pleasant, they are also misleading.
But apologetics are what we get. Take the reading list that Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, our new commander in Iraq, has given senior staff. It whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito. No Bat Ye'or; no Ibn Warraq; no Robert Spencer; no Daniel Pipes; no Paul Fregosi; no Oriana Fallaci; not even any Bernard Lewis. Ignorance before September 11 was bad enough; perpetuating that ignorance is inexcusable.
Because not learning about it, not talking about it doesn't make the threat of violent Islam go away. I found it wickedly ironic that around the time the Website Islam Online claimed Fox television decided "to remove some stereotypical aspects about American Muslims" from its terrorism series "24" — whose hero, after defusing the terrorist threat from Bosnia, South America, Germany, and corporate America, now battles honest-to-goodness Muslim terrorists — real-life news broke about the vicious murders of a Coptic Christian family whose bound and gagged bodies, slit throats and stab wounds on a Coptic cross tattoo immediately raised fears that the crime may have been Islamic in nature, a slaying of "infidels" — in Jersey City. Around the time the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was charging Fox with perpetuating terrorist stereotypes, stereotypical terrorism may well have been taking place.
Fox spokesman Scott Grogan, meanwhile, has told me there have been no changes made to the series "to date." He revealed nothing of the network's meeting with CAIR, three of whose officials, Robert Spencer reminds on frontpagemag.com, have been arrested on terror-related charges. Mr. Spencer learned from an "informed source" that "24" will "feature an American Muslim character that CAIR would find more to their liking." Cause for celebration? Michael Meunier, president of the U.S. Copts Association, told me a disconcerting tale of being invited, vetted (three pre-interviews), and scheduled to appear with Fox's Greta van Susteren to discuss the Copt slayings — before being canceled immediately after his lengthy radio interview with Michael Reagan. Did Mr. Meunier say the "wrong" thing? Is America now the land of the "wrong" thing to say? If we grow too accustomed to missiles on the Mall, the answer may be truly terrifying.
I'm amazed, to this day, how "Onward Muslim Soldiers" did not make General Vines' reading list.
What a ridiculous reading list, certainly nothing to alert troops to ideology and aims of the Enemy!
Of course violence continues in Iraq and around the World acording to dictates of Islam.
' 19 yr old Tariq Al Daour has been charged with Racially Aggravated Assault in attacks on Jewish people in Stamford Hill area of North London'BBC
Bet he wasn't persuaded to do this by reading a Boy Scouts Manual, eh...
Want to know why Islam is not mentioned or dealt with honestly? Consider that mainstream news is corporate media, and is interlocked with or owned by corporations that do business with Muslim countries, in particular Saudi Arabia.
consider the close familial and friendly relations between Bush and the Saudi Royals, and that it is the Saudi's oil (and the money of the West) that funds Muslim mosques, propaganda and organizations like CAIR.
Money can buy a lot of stuff, including the loyalty and conscience of supposedly Christian Conservatives like Bush, his corporate supporters and the RNC.
Prince Bandar at Crawford with George.
Affectionately known in the Bush family as
Bandar Bush
And Jihad Watchers, watch and wonder. I don't, we are being taken for a ride.
The Reading List of General Vines deserves further detailed study. There are two books by Esposito. There is one by Karen Armstrong, whom, one would have thought, is by now regarded as a complete buffoon. There is something about "Islam for Dummies." There is a book by the jejune Sandra Mackey on Iraq, when either the Letters of Gertude Bell (those from Baghdad up to 1927, when she killed herself), or Philip Ireland's book published in 1939 would have helped -- and best of all would have been the essay on Iraq by the native of Baghdad, Elie Kedourie, published in "Islam in the Modern World."
Nothing by Lewis. Nothing by Kedourie. Nothing by J. B. Kelly, not even that essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies" that, while it dates in the section on the Soviet threat, does not date as a description of the misperception of Saudi Ararbia. The spirit of ARAMCO propagandists still lives.
What is good about the Reading List is that it is so bad, so truly bad, that eyebrows should be raised all over Washington. Who compiled this list? Who carefully allowed in, as the single soop, the Naipaul, but left out the Lewis, the Kedourie, the Kelly. Who left out any serious essays on the nature of Islam, on Jihad? How are the Infidel soldiers supposed to comprehend the hostiltiy that is felt towards them, even though they are only there to "rebuild" Iraq. For if they cannot understand that hostility -- which is in every textbook, every mosque, every madrasa, every Arab satellite channel, every Qur'an and copy of the Hadith and every life of Muhammad, they will be eternally confused, and confusion, incomprehension, or miscomprehension, leads to demoralization.
Here is an example of a little colloquy reported by NPR Correspondent Deborah Amos this morning. She was reporting from Basra. She interviewed a man, asking him as follows:
Amos: "Do you want foreign troops to leave?"
Iraqi: "Would you want your country to be occupied?" (Iraqis, she said, and soldiers know, tend to reply to questions cannily, warily, with questions of their own, and almost never give a straight answer to anything).
When Amos then presses him if he wants the Americans to leave, he answers:
"Yes, I do. But not before they fix everything, and stop terrorism."
How nice. I hate you, and I want you to leave. But first you have to "stop terrorism" and, oh by the way, "fix everything."
That kind of attitude will not be understood by reading Karen Armstrong, who describes Muhammad as the man who "brought peace" to the Arabian Peninsula. It will not be understood by reading John Esposito, author of "Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality" (we know which he chose), a man who in previous editions of his books does not give more than a single mention of the word "Jihad" and has never treated of the dhimmi.
How can American officers figure out why the Christians are being terrorized, if they know nothing about the 1350 year history of Jihad-conquest and of the imposition of dhimmitude? How?
How can American officers understand what is going on if the inculcated hostility toward them is not understood?
The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD. It was about Islam, its tenets, its nature, the attitudes and atmospherics it engenders. It was an intelligence failure that continues as long as we prate about how everyone wants freedom (nonsense), that "democracy" will lessen the threat in the MIddle East (double-nonsense), that the best way to limit a threat based entirely on the classic ideology of Islam is to say nothing, to learn nothing, to hint at nothing, about Islam itself.
Supposedly, the "faculty at Yale" and people at the "Foreign Service Institute" were responsible for this list. Let's find out something more about precisely who was involved in the selection of the final group of eight books. What are their names? What are their own ibnterests?
Note to Hollywood: it is time for movies and television stories, not about Muslim terrorists, but about those who are apologists for Islam, and who are determined to keep certain truths from getting out, in very high places indeed. One need not be of a conspiratorial frame of mind to see that with such a Reading List, something is very amiss -- and very high up.
This has to be thoroughly investigated.
I have to give West a Gold Star!!
A Woman who has Balls!!
Yes she Sees that our FREEDOM is being taken by our fear of the PC crowd??
Time to Stand Up to the PC crowd to stop this lose of our Freedom!!
this is what the PC crowd will do to US??
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RUSSIA_BESLAN_PROTEST?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Jan 21, 6:16 AM EST
Parents of Russian Massacre Victims Protest
By SERGEI VENYAVSKY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) -- About 100 distraught parents and grandparents of children who were killed in a school massacre last year blocked a key highway in southern Russia for a second day Friday to underline their demand that the regional president step down, a police official said.
The protesters were also calling for an international investigation into the Sept. 1-3 terrorist seizure of the Beslan elementary school that left more than 330 hostages dead, Echo of Moscow radio reported.
Some 130 to 150 protesters were at the site on Friday, said Alan Doyev, the spokesman for the North Ossetian Interior Ministry. He said that Beslan residents were helping the protesters, bringing wood for bonfires, sandwiches and warm clothes.
Regional President Alexander Dzasokhov spoke with the demonstrators on Friday morning, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. He told them that he was interested in "balanced, constructive dialogue" and expressed his readiness to meet "time and again" with them.
But he also warned against actions that could lead to strife and said there were unspecified, "invisible" people seeking to use the situation to political advantage.
Dzasokhov had faced heavy popular pressure to step down after the Beslan tragedy but remained in office, though he fired the regional government.
The protesters on Thursday set up a tent that blocked the main federal highway in the North Ossetia region, the Rostov-Baku road, a police official in North Ossetia said Thursday on condition of anonymity.
Many residents are incensed at regional authorities for failing to avert the attack on the school, which was seized Sept. 1 by gunmen who held more than 1,000 people hostage for three days. The seizure ended in explosions and gunfire, and more than half of the hostages killed were children.
The police official said some of the protesters accused authorities of understating the number of assailants who attacked the school and of neglecting to adequately search for four children they said remain missing. Some also criticized the Russian parliament commission investigation into the attack, the source said.
Russian officials have said 32 raiders took part in the attack and that all were killed but one who was captured.
In Moscow, Putin called Friday for serious restructuring of the state's programs to ensure security to citizens.
"A whole series of terrorist acts organized and carried out last year by international criminal groups showed the necessity of a serious restructuring of state activity in the security sphere," ITAR-Tass and the Interfax news agency quoted Putin as telling a meeting of prosecutors.
He said that Russian citizens expect "concrete actions" from the authorities in solving crimes and punishing the perpetrators, as well as in averting attacks. Law enforcement agencies must focus on predicting potential conflicts that terrorists could use to provoke ethnic and religious unrest, he said.
© 2005 The Associated Press.
When this happens in the West will we be to PC to do what needs to be Done??
A hit here or there and hushed up by the press has left us with missles in our Captial and still the PC will not let the truth be known??
Most of these Monsters are not Americans What is wrong with those who Protect the Non-Americans and leave the Americans to be Victims of these Monsters??
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her Give them Strength, Wisdom, Sight, and Courage to stay the course to Victory [FREEDOM] to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Evil give the World Strength to Stand Up and Fight this Evil Amen
'Money can buy a lot of stuff, including the loyalty and conscience of supposedly Christian Conservatives like Bush, his corporate supporters and the RNC.' `giour
...and a lot of democrats too, bub. And don't forget the money michael moore made with Hezbollah...
Leftist reporters (read; Bush haters) on the take from the Saudis:
http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php
Clinton library paid for by Saudis:
http://thepete.com/index.php?p=1014
More on Moore:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39079
Hugh: Aren't you really describing "useful idiots"? Lenin, Hitler, Stalin all had them. Castro still does have them especially people like Danny Glover and Leonardo DiCaprio who wax poetic over that prison known as Cuba. So it really is no surprise that,even with 9/11/01 happening on our American soil, Mohammed has his useful idiots. Of course they never bring up that other 9/11 -- anno Domine 1683 -- cuz in their opinion Jan Sobieski's victory was the WRONG side winning.
It will take more than one 9.11 to wake up the common man, get him to read the writing on the wall and then take the action our socalled authorities have refused to take.
It won't be pretty either. There won't be any tolerance or compassion when the whahooly hits the fan.
Just step out and talk to the man 'next door', you will get the real drift of the simmering anger lying just beneath the surface.
I don't plan on being a human shield for any potential targets either.
Moores a worthless,sleazy, communist scum of the earth who PROFITS BIG TIME FROM 9-11 and the money he cons out of his useful idiots.
-----------------------------------------
59 Deceits of Fahrenheit 9-11:
http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm
Alleged Bush-Saudi Conspiracy
Deceit 26
Moore asks, "Is it rude to suggest that when the Bush family wakes up in the morning they might be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of what's best for you?" But his Bush/Saudi conspiracy theory is contradicted by very obvious facts:
…why did Moore’s evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other’s pockets…then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq’s recuperated oil industry might challenge their[s]....They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film’s "theory."
Hitchens, Slate. This isn't to say that concerns about the wishes and interests of the Saudi rulers play too large a role in American foreign policy--especially in the U.S. State Department, which has been notoriously supportive of pro-U.S. Arab dictatorships for many decades. I would much prefer that the State Department and other American foreign policymakers spent less time worrying about friendly relations with the governments of Saudi Arabia, China, and other dictatorships, and more time supporting the aspirations of people who want to free themselves from dictatorship. But complaining about the historic pro-Saudi tilt in U.S. foreign policy, a tilt which is partly the result of extensive business relations between the two countries, is not the same as propounding a tin-hat conspiracy theory that George Bush is a servile tool of the bin Laden family.
-------------------------------------------
I think this analysis is much closer to the truth:
http://www.jrnyquist.com/roberts_2002_0117.htm
Not only is violent Islam (is there any other kind?) unlikely to go away but here's something that isn't going away either: Islam's horrifyingly brutal history. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been slaughtered by Islamic followers over the past 13 centuries. Try making THAT fact 'go away'!
'Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them'. All those civilizations that have been destroyed by Islam (Egypt's, Persia's, Hindustan's, Asia Minor's et al) probably once made such mistakes Othat of course are being made today throughout the world) as believing misleading and ambiguous literature on the nature of Islam (comparable to what is now being said of Islam by its current 'apologists'), ignoring the jihadist element of Islam and closing their eyes to potential military invasions from Islamic territories.
Beware, history repeats....
Here's the infamous Gen. Vines reading list including a Karen Armstrong white wash and "Islam for Dummies"
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/01/16/international/middleeast/16command.gif
I agree with Hugh: “Note to Hollywood: it is time for movies and television stories, not about Muslim terrorists, but about those who are apologists for Islam, and who are determined to keep certain truths from getting out, in very high places indeed.”
But it goes beyond the duplicity of certain individuals. We have a cultural problem, across the political spectrum, which makes it hard to be critical of Islam. The left, to a large extent, embraces multi-culturalism and condemns from the outset any negative assessments of foreign beliefs, values, and practices. The right, too often, has a hard time seeing a religion in a negative light. There is a taboo against being critical of a religion that stems from the fact that it is generally proper to be polite about someone’s personal beliefs. Islam, of course, is a political ideology, first and foremost. But having a positive prejudice towards religion in general is holding some back on the right. I’ve written about this (see my profile page).
Perhaps, we should adopt the tactic of the left: talk about the censorship we face when trying to critically assess and expose Islam. There is a knee-jerk reaction as soon as one tries to point to a problematic aspect of the texts, beliefs, and practice of Islam. I’m sure we’ve all seen this with well-meaning friends and co-workers. It’s not actual censorship but a cultural taboo.
The war will be won or lost here at home. The Diana West piece we heartening. It’s an encouraging sign.
JasonP, I must agree with you; if there were some gang that had precisely the same goals, policies, and behaviors that Islam promotes, but made no reference to a deity, we would go after it with no holds barred.
However, if we introduce the idea that these goals, policies, and behaviors are sanctioned by a deity and the gang calls itself a religion, then the wolf suddenly acquires sheep's clothing; it thus not only becomes immune from serious criticism, but it is also protected against the steps required to put an end to it.
If it makes so many of us so uncomfortable to label this "religion" for what it is, a criminal conspiracy to enslave the world, and to take all the actions necessary to wipe it out, then we should at least take all those individual actions which are unconstitutional and take the legal steps required to put an end to them.
Think about the fact that no believing, practicing Muslim could, in good conscience, take the oath of a naturalized citizen, or the oath just sworn by the President at his inauguration, or the oath taken by members of the military.
All of the terms of these oaths are anathema to Islam, and to adopt them with sincerity and goodwill would require the Muslim to abandon much of his religion.
But then, there's always taqiyya.
What we are seeing here is a massive mis-information campaign on the part of the jihadist faction that has corrupted major media outlets and even branches of our government. The Muslims have done this to a far greater degree than either the Nazi's or Communist ever enfluenced those media and government power centers.
We are seeing money talk here and conflict of interest. The financial ties of the Bush and Bin Laden families are an open scandal. The Jihad is coming at us from above. The terrorist and suicidal maniacs are the puppets of these powerful muslim interest that are infiltrating our media and governmental centers.
I feel only an independent political movement of the working class in the industrialized nations is the ONLY thing that can save modern civilization. For the various western governments ( the United States included ) are selling out their populations in exchange for short sighted economic gains from the muslim economic interest.
All this adds up to that the War On Terror is designed to fail. A massive misleading exercise that will only in the end ensure the jihadist will prevail. It is up to the American people , not it's corrupted conflicted of interest government to defend freedom.
Nossy