Obama once upon a time took tuition from, or at least listened intently to, the likes of Rashid Khalidi, a practiced performer on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And there were others too, who similarly presented the Arab case, with a practiced air of indignation, victimhood, and sweet reasonableness.
But like Prince Harry, when he becomes Henry V, Obama will have to reconsider, and not just for election purposes, some of the dangerous innocences and perhaps enthusiasms and misunderstandings of his youth, especially on a subject where, apparently, he never received any countervailing presentation from those capable of offering it. Jewish financial backers of the Peace-Now variety are not what one means by those capable of offering a countervailing presentation as to the history of Arabs and Jews, not only this year, or twenty years ago, but over the history of the Middle East since Islam arrived -- and put in the context of the Arab and Muslim treatment or attitude toward all non-Muslims and, as well, toward non-Arab Muslims such as the black Africans in Darfur.
Obama has shown himself to be intelligent and also a quick study, as well as a keenly ruthless politician. It would be good if, rather than offer the pro-forma and palpably unfelt rhetoric that may please the easily-pleased audiences of AIPAC, he were really to study the source, nature, and unsusceptibility to "solution" through further Israeli surrenders of land and relinquishing of rights, of what is not a "struggle" for "the legitimate rights of the (recently-invented) "Palestinian" people (i.e., the local Arabs), but rather a Lesser Jihad against the Infidel nation-state of Israel. This Jihad is without end, though it is possible to manage it through deterrence. And this Jihad is participated in not only directly, but indirectly. Propagandists, including those who may not be Muslim but rather islamochristian (Khalidi may, like Hanan Ashrawi, possibly may fall into this category), should have their soothing presentation balanced by real study and thought about what Islam means, and about what the texts and tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam mean for non-Muslims as judged by those texts, and by the behavior of Muslims toward the non-Muslims whose many lands they conquered and whom they killed, or converted, or subjugated as dhimmis.
Forget, for right now, about Israel. Study what has happened to Hindus in India, to Buddhists and Hindus in East Asia, to Christians and animists in sub-Saharan Africa. Study what is happening today to the historic, now "post-Christian" West in its center and source, Western Europe. Once all of that is grasped, then return to the subject of tiny, hardly-to-be-discerned-on-a-world-map Israel. Compare its size, with the thousand times more land and the fabulous unearned wealth of the Arab Muslims, who everywhere treat ruthlessly their own non-Muslim or non-Arab minorities. Then, in Obama fashion, start to think about "distributivist" or "redistributivist" justice when it comes to what the Arabs possess and what the Jews of Israel have built out of land which, pace Khalidi, was an ill-considered backwater, fallen into ruin and desolation. All the accounts of Western travellers support this view. All the demographic and cadastral records will give a different picture from the one Obama was so plausibly painted.
He needs to understand not the easygoing, syncretistic, even slightly-lapsed Islam that he may identify with his father and with his stepfather, and with still-tolerant Indonesia during those years of his youth. But one cannot judge Islam on that basis; one has to instead study the texts, and the history of Islamic conquest.
One would be relieved to learn that Obama was reading Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who come bearing intelligent and uncowed witness, just as one would be relieved if he were known to be reading, say, such a book as "Since Time Immemorial" and looking not so much at the author's sometimes too-sweeping rhetoric as at the wealth of quotation that cannot be unsaid or undercut.
And one would be even more relieved to discover that Barack Obama, whether or not he wins the election, were not only reading the books by, but meeting with, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, and perhaps, especially, someone who lived in Somalia, and Kenya, and Saudi Arabia, and then in the Netherlands and the United States, and could help Obama see things straight -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Besides, Obama is not foolish enough, one assumes, if he wishes to achieve any of his domestic agenda, to use up political capital and to confirm all the worst fears, or heighten all the anxieties that remain about him. They remain among some who may, nonetheless, decide to vote for him, allowing themselves to believe that he will act as they hope, and not as they fear.
One does not wish to trade the incomprehension and messsianic sentimentalism of the Bush Administration in Iraq (and Afghanistan) for what would be even worse: a policy of dealing with the worldwide manifestations and instruments of Jihad (the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam) through greater "dialogue" and "understanding." Such an understanding is really based on a willful refusal to understand the texts and tenets of Islam, and the behavior that naturally flows from such texts and tenets, and their steady inculcation, whether in a mosque or madrasa, or simply through one's own steady reading, and a taking of those texts to heart. Such false understanding is miles away from what we need: a clever policy designed to exploit pre-existing fissures within the Camp of Islam and -- most importantly -- to force Muslims themselves to confront the fact that the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim states and societies are a direct result of Islam itself. And this can only be done if Infidels themselves come to that clear understanding.
If Obama is willing to learn this, such an understanding would stand him in good stead, and help him to make the case not only for leaving Iraq, but also for not repeating the same naive kind of errors in Afghanistan, and instead for shoring up those conducting the war of self-defense against adherents of Jihad through other means -- including, most importantly, every conceivable attempt to diminish OPEC oil revenues that supply the Money Weapon that has been used to such great effect not least in the capitals of the Western world.
If he proves unable or unwilling to do this, he will probably ends up, for example, appointing as Secretaries of State and Defense those who have given every sign of being susceptible to Muslim arguments and blandishments, or who exhibit a long history of being notably anti-Israel in their voting records and attitudes. That is a sure sign of being more likely, for emotional reasons, or other sorts of pathologies present in a forme fruste, to wish to continue to willfully misunderstand the nature of Islam -- not least because a right understanding would naturally help Israel.
One has only to consider how eager Pat Buchanan is to not understand the worldwide threat of Jihad. For to the pat-buchanans of this world, it is more important to persuade the American government to essentially throw Israel to the wolves, even if this whets, rather than states, Arab and Muslim appetites for further triumphs, and not all of them confined to the Middle East. McCain, if he wins, clearly will be appointing some Democrats to his cabinet. If Obama wins, he might do worse than appoint someone who has held posts dealing with security and who demonstrates an immunity to that anti-Israel undercurrent so obvious in the votes of Senators Hagel and Lugar, who are both mentioned in the short lists. What if that Secretary of State were to be, for example, James Woolsey?
Such a choice would relieve a great many people who are worried about -- and not completely out of whole cloth -- Obama's ties to, or sympathies with, Islam and Islamic causes.
And were Obama to lose, he would still need to better inform himself about Islam, and not to surround himself with Yesterday's Men who have spent the last few decades unaware, essentially, of what the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest in the countries of Western Europe mean. They have not been paying attention, and have focused idiotically only on the Middle East and, in some cases -- see Dennis Ross -- have professional reasons for insisting upon believing that "peace-processing" and "shuttle diplomacy" and endless "negotiations" leading to a "peace treaty" mean a great deal, when any student of Muslim treatment of all treaties with Infidels (see Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam) demonstrate how silly, futile, and dangerous such pious hopes on the Infidel side will and must necessarily be.
Obama has too many wrongs to right. He can't worry about logic. He will be too busy fixing the "blind spot" of our Constitution - not allowing for the redistribution of wealth - to worry about past associations.
Obama is a man on a mission. He doesn't have time to reconsider any of his past positions. He also has little reason to, given that they have gotten him this far. Win or lose, his fight goes on.
Maybe, ten years after Obama has left the White House, a governor of Hawaii will unseal his birth record. Future generations might learn what we did this year.
Obama is a machiavellian power-hungry crypto-Marxist weasel and the best fate for him would be obscurity and oblivion.
Hugh: This is all wishful thinking. Obama's problem is not one of misunderstanding. That would be nice to think, because he speaks so smoothly. But, what if we see is the smoothness of a master of taquiya and soft jihad? Obama's election in that event would be a whole different ball-game.
I sure hope that people wake up at the last minute. The media is not asking the hard question. Only Joe the plumber did.
We need to encourage readers to show up at Obama events, preferably in small groups, and shout out questions, such as:
Is it true you were a member of the DSA and New Party in Chicago?
When you helped Odinga gain power in Kenya, did you know he was a Marxist trained in East Germany who named his son after Fidel Castro? Did you know about Odinga's secret agreement with NAMLEF to establish sharia in Kenyan provinces?
Did Percy Sutton and Khalid al-Mansour help you get into Harvard Law School?
Hugh, I'm sorry, but Obama is not about to rethink anything. He is too sure of the "rightness" of his own ideas and thinking. But, some others don't agree. For example:
Hymn to Hitler
By
Lori Kalner
In Germany , when Hitler came to power, it was a time of terrible financial depression. Money was worth nothing. In Germany people lost homes and jobs, just like in the American Depression in the 1930s, which we have read about in Thoene’s Shiloh books.
In those days, in my homeland, Adolph Hitler was elected to power by promising "Change.” He blamed the “Zionists” around the world for all our problems. He told everyone it was greedy Zionist Bankers who had caused every problem we had. He promised when he was leader, the greedy Zionist bankers would be punished. The Zionists, he promised, would be wiped off the face of the earth.
So Hitler was elected to power by only 1/3 the popular vote. A coalition of other political parties in parliament made him supreme leader. Then, when he was leader, he disgraced and expelled everyone in parliament who did not go along with him.
Yes. Change came to my homeland as the new leader promised it would.
The teachers in German schools began to teach the children to sing songs in praise of Hitler. This was the beginning of the Hitler Youth movement. It began with praise of the Fuhrer’s programs on the lips of innocent children. Hymns in praise of Hitler and his programs were being sung in the schoolrooms and in the playyard. Little girls and boys joined hands and sang these songs as they walked home from school.
My brother came home and told Papa what was happening at school. The political hymns of children proclaimed Change was coming to our homeland and the Fuhrer was a leader we could trust.
I will never forget my father’s face. Grief and fear. He knew that the best propaganda of the Nazis was song on the lips of little children.
That evening before he said grace at the dinner table, he placed his hands upon the heads of my brothers and me and prayed the Living Word upon us from Jeremiah 1:4-5…
‘Now the Word of the Lord came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the
Womb I knew you,
And before you were born I
Consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to
The nations.”
Soon the children’s songs praising the Fuhrer were heard everywhere on the streets and over the radio. “With our Fuhrer to lead us, we can do it! We can change the world!”
Soon after that Papa, a pastor, was turned away from visiting elderly parishioners in hospitals. The people he had come to bring comfort of God’s Word, were “no longer there.”
Where had they vanished to while under nationalized health care? It became an open secret. The elderly and sick began to disappear from hospitals feet first as “mercy killing” became the policy. Children with disabilities and those who had Down syndrome were euthanized.
People whispered, “Maybe it is better for them now. Put them out of misery. They are no longer suffering…And, of course, their death is better for the treasury of our nation. Our taxes no longer must be spent to care for such a burden.”
And so murder was called mercy.
The government took over private business. Industry and health care were “nationalized.” (NA-ZI means National Socialist Party) The businesses of all Jews were seized. (Perhaps you remember our story in Berlin on Krystalnacht in the book Munich Signature)
The world and God’s word were turned upside down. Hitler promised the people economic Change?
Not change. It was, rather, Lucifer’s very ancient Delusion leading to Destruction.
What began with the propaganda of children singing a catchy tune ended in the deaths of millions of children. The reality of what came upon us is so horrible that you in this present generation cannot imagine it.
Our suffering is too great to ever tell in a book or show in a black and white newsreel.
When I spoke to Bodie about some of these things, she wept and said she could not bear to write them. Perhaps one day she will, but I asked her, “who could bear to read our suffering?”
Yet with my last breaths I warn every Christian and Jew now in the name of the Lord, unless your course of the church in America is spiritually changed now, returning to the Lord, there are new horrors yet to come.
I trembled last night when I heard the voices of American children raised in song, praising the name of Obama, the charismatic fellow who claims he is the American Messiah.
Yet I have heard what this man Obama says about abortion and the “mercy killing” of tiny babies who are not wanted.
There are so few of us left to warn you.
I have heard that there are 69 million Catholics in America and 70 million Evangelical Christians.
Where are your voices? Where is your outrage? Where is passion and your vote? Do you vote based on an abortionist’s empty promises and economics? Or do you vote according to the Bible?
Thus says the Lord about every living child still in the womb…
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you…”
I have experienced the signs of the politics of Death in my youth. I see them again now.
Christians! Unless you stand up now, you will lose your freedom of religion.
In America priests and preachers have already lost their freedom to speak openly from their pulpits of moral danger in political candidates. They cannot legally instruct you of which candidate holds fast to the precepts of scripture! American law forbids this freedom of speech to conservative pastors or they will lose their “tax exempt” status.
And yet I have heard the words of Obama’s pastor Damning America! I have heard the words of Obama damning and mocking all of you in small towns because you “Cling to your religion…”
But I am a woman whose name is unknown. My life is recorded as a work of fiction. I have no fear of reprisal when I speak truth to you from the pages of a book. (Though the Zion Covenant books are mocked and condemned by the Left in America ..)
I am an old woman and will soon go to be with my Lord. I have no fear for myself, but for all of you and for your children, I tremble.
I tremble at the hymns to a political leaders which your children will sing at school. (Though even now a hymn or a prayer to God and our Lord Jesus is against the law in public school!)
Your vote must put a stop to what will come upon America if Barrack Obama is elected.
I pray you will personally heed this warning for the sake of your children and your grandchildren. Do not be deceived. The Lord in Jeremiah 1:7-8 commands every believer to speak up!
“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth,’ for to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them for I am with you, declares the Lord!”
I am in Prayer for you, and for the Church!
Spoken to you in the authority of Jesus the Christ,
the Name Above All Names,
Lori Kalner http://www.thoenebooks.com/blog.asp?post=0&id=443#
Not everyone has forgotten. Spinoneone
"Obama has shown himself to be intelligent and also a quick study"
Yeah, intelligent about the superiority of radical Leftism and a quick study about how to make radical Leftism powerfully mainstream. How is that a good thing or even remotely hopeful?
He's not fully made up his mind on a number of things. I think every effort should be made to persuade him that he has given the Israeli case short shrift, that he has accepted, for example, the careful repackaging of the Arab Muslim war against the Infidel state of Israel as a "war for the legitimate rights of the 'Palestinian' people" and has not questioned, as few who were not already adults in Juen 1967 would, the whole business of the premeditated invention of that "Palestinian people." (See Zuhair Mohsen's famous quote, see Elfan Rees, see see see).
He is not an idiot, and it is silly to get mad if his intelligence, and his ability as a quick study, are noted. They can be used for good or for evil. When it comes to foreign policy, where there is great anxiety, and a lot to worry about, one hopes he is willing to learn a lot more than the Khalidi-Brzezinski-Carter-Abunimah connections have given him the past, and that his new understanding, if such were to occur, would be far more than a matter of uttering the right sentiments to an AIPAC audience. The next President has to understand Islam, and understand that neither the sentimental messianism of the Bush Administration (with its squandering), or the continued belief that if we engage in dialogue, if we show we think Islam gives us nothing to fear, if we pretend that there is nothing to fear, then the Bush squandering and folly in Iraq and Afghanistan will be followed by an even greater and more dangerous squandering of effort, of attention, of time.
The war of self-defense against the Jihad, if conducted by sensible people, is in fact manageable. It is not hopeless. It requires a willingness to be much more sober, logical, and unrelenting than has so far been exhibited by those on top. The people Obama chooses will say a lot. Let's hope his choices do not include certain Senators who have exhibited a long history of palpable want of sympathy for Israel, for that means they are unlikely to be able to see afresh what Islam, and what the Jihad, are all about. Others, less wedded to the innocence of the past, and more willing to learn about Islam in ways more intelligent than having an aide read Esposito or Armstrong, and prepare a precis, do exist. They are the ones both candidates -- Obama and McCain -- should be seeking out, and intending to put in relevant place.
Hugh, what you would call "intelligent and a quick study" concerning Obama, I would call a smooth-talking-conman and a political-puppet serving a liberal agenda.
He doesn't deserve the Presidency, but he does deserve an Oscar for an outstanding performance as a Talking Head in an Empty Suit.
Islam is not on Obama's mind right now because he is focused on winning the election. If he wins, islam could be either his first or last priority, depending on his true stance on the subject, and I remain undecided about that. If nothing else, he is definitely sympathetic to the minority, victimhood status of muslims in the U.S. as he is a bitter champion of persecuted minorities, perceiving himself to be the quintessential example of one. Even if he wins the election, that perception will not change and he has plenty of "getting even" on his agenda.
I think Obama is quite confident that he has a clear understanding of islam and I don't think he will attempt to expand his knowledge or allow anyone to challenge it.
Obama remains somewhat of an enigma beyond his Marxist and islamic sympathies, and his hostilities toward whites and American institutions. I believe that he will attempt to radically change this country in ways that make me cringe and I pray he does not win, but I fear that he will. He is the consummate actor and a superb prevaricator, with an uncanny talent for mesmerizing oratory that is bereft of substance yet so awe-inspiring that people faint like groupies at rock concerts at the sound of his banal rhetoric. He is a pied piper, not a messiah.
It would be nice if Obama would just present a valid state issue birth certificate.
What is he hiding?
“Obama remains somewhat of an enigma beyond his Marxist and islamic sympathies, and his hostilities toward whites and American institutions.”
Posted by: Susanp
Uuh, yah.
Outside of those things, he’s just swell!
Obama is a Muslim. If for no other reaon than his selction of a cabal of people who have without exception devoted their lives to Neo-Nazism, as well as his demopathic, willfully ignorant Muslim rhetorical declaration that Israel's wall is "a barrier to peace." Not the Egyptian wall or the Jordanian for the purpose of keeping out the same HAMAS terrorists, just the Israeli wall, since, according to Obama, Arabs are to be held to no moral standard whatsoever while Jews are to be held to a very high moral standard, or Jews are simply not entitled to proect themselves and deserve only the right to allow HAMAS and Hezbollah to complete Hitler's final solution.
Here's what I wrote two weeks ago about Yid with Lid's post about Jesse Jackson and Iran's preconditions. Supna Zaidi, a so-called 'moderate' Muslim rejected it when I submitted it to Islamist Watch. Apparently self-professed 'moderate' Muslims are strongly in favor of Jewish genocide too, but that's hardly news.
Obama, Racism, and Judeophobia
In 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at Harvard, saying “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism.” Apparently, in the last 40 years, not only has Judeophobia come to be called, more accurately, "Judeophobia," but its practice has become quite normalized, not just in the black community, but also on the Left more generally. Gone are the days of Bobby Kennedy, who, in 1948 wrote in his Dispatches: "[Israel] is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect. . . If the American people knew the true facts, I am certain a more honest and forthright policy would be substituted for the benefit of all." When, in 1994, Steven Spielberg toured high and middle schools showing Schindler’s List, the film was met with mixed reactions. Many students seemed indifferent to the Holocaust and some even identified with the Nazis.
Two weeks ago Jesse Jackson declared that "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" will lose their "power" in an Obama administration, which would mean an end to "decades of putting Israel's interests first." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been appalled. On the Iran issue Jackson supports Obama’s notion of meeting with Tehran without preconditions: "We've got to talk to tell them what we want and hear what they want," Jackson says. "Nothing is gained by not talking to others." What is to be gained by talking to an admitted genocidal state, a state sponsor of terror, a rightly-declared member of the “Axis of Evil?”
The MSM must have been too busy preparing propaganda to spin after the debate because they completely missed this story out of Tehran: Ahmedinejad has preconditions for meeting with Obama. OIC nations have plans for the Free World under an Obama administration, and it does not bode well for democracy. First, America must renounce support for "the Zionist regime," and second, America must remove all troops from the Middle East. What was not said was the between-the-lines statement that the US must allow OIC nations to develop nuclear weapons for the express purpose of committing genocide against Jews and Christians. “First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday,” goes the popular Islamist expression.
Given Obama’s roll call of advisors, it is likely that he will meet Iran’s preconditions and enable the destruction of the only democratic nation in the Middle East:
o Samantha Powers called for an invasion of Israel in order to impose a solution to the "Palestinian problem" and complained about the influence of "the Jews" in American foreign policy.
o Robert Mally, Obama’s disputed Middle East advisor, was a family friend of Yasser Arafat and a Clinton Middle East advisor. His presence in France publishing his magazine Afrique-Asie, which supported the Soviets and various "liberation [terrorist] movements," "threatened harm to French relations with conservative Asian and Africa countries and [they] put him on a plane to New York. . . Some on his articles are a veritable incitement to the assassination of foreign chiefs of state. The French government cannot tolerate them [him and his family]." He, not surprisingly, expressed his support for Palestinian terrorism/intifada against Israel.
o Zbigniew Brzezinski has taken an ardent anti-Israel, pro-terrorist Iran stance since the Carter Administration. He has supported Walt’s and Mearshimer’s attack on the Jewish Lobby and has said that America should stop Israel from protecting herself from Iran. He has also apparently been talking to the Taliban of late.
o Merrill A. Peak, Obama's military adviser and national campaign co-chairman, has said that "American Jews" are the roadblock to peace in the Middle East; not a supremacist, genocidal, jihadist doctrine bent on eliminating not only non-Muslims, but also black African Muslims as we are seeing in Darfur, mind you, but "American Jews."
o Daniel Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew, was one of James Baker’s anti-Israel "little Jews." He was a key player in the formulation of the US's decision to recognize the PLO and Yasser Arafat "as the legitimate and sole representatives of the Palestinian people." He supported the handing over of the majority of Jerusalem and has often referred to terrorists as "guerillas." One can only assume that he would favor giving HAMAS the same recognition that he did the PLO.
o Joe Cirincione argued that talk of a Syrian desert nuclear facility was rubbish. In the aftermath of Israel’s September air raid he listed Israelis who "wanted to thwart any dialogue between the US and Syria" as rumor-spreaders of the fact that Syria was constructing a nuclear facility, despite White House Press Secretary Dana Perino's statement that the "Syrian regime was building a covert nuclear reactor in its eastern desert capable of producing plutonium." He also stated unequivocally that Israel must give up its nuclear weaponry.
o Senator Hagel, among the top three most anti-Israel US Senators, accompanied Obama on his little Israeli excursion.
o Obama himself favored working with Yasser Arafat and denounced Israel’s fence to keep terrorists out of their nation, which he called "a barrier to peace." He remained silent when Egypt built an identical fence to keep out the same HAMAS terrorists, thus displaying overt racism by holding Jews to a different moral standard than Arabs. Or perhaps he simply values the lives of Egyptians far more than those of Israelis and therefore he believes that Egypt should be able to protect itself while Israel should not be afforded the same right. He felt that "the Jewish community was too inflexible, and that was why the Mideast situation could not be resolved," according to Audra Wilson. If only Israelis would just let terrorists complete Hitler’s final solution!
o In his role as Senator and in other high positions in Illinois Obama has been propped up by many Nation of Islam/Farrakhan devotees such as Jennifer Mason, Obama's Director of Constituent Services in his US Senate office who is also in charge of selecting his Senate interns. Shakir Muhammad held a consultant post in Obama’s state senate campaign. Cynthia K. Miller served as Treasurer of Obama’s US Senate campaign. Obama attended an Arab Fundraiser with Palestinian activist and Islamist Ali Abunimah at which the racist, plagiarist, prominent PLO/Arafat advisor and demopath Edward Said was the keynote speaker. Then there is his crony, the Federal Indictee Tony Rezko, who "helped Obama in a deal to purchase his new home" and was "in a partnership with NOI founder Elijah Muhammad‘s son, Jabir."
Today Democrats back and are backed by any number of racist/supremacist organizations, including La Raza, Rainbow-PUSH, National Action Network, and on the Obama campaign itself, nearly every Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas front group, all of them unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case, as well as the Nation of Islam. Sure, his first Muslim outreach advisor who met with multiple terror organizations was relegated to another “advisor” post (the same position and in no way a demotion), but not his second, who did the same.
Judeophobia has become more than slightly normalized in modern America. The anti-Israel position is part and parcel of the Leftist stance.
Obama’s advisory roll call includes those who want to renounce US support for Israel, to disempower AIPAC, who encourage rogue states to construct nuclear weapons and who then dissimulate on their behalf when they do, and who state that Israel should abandon its nuclear weaponry. Obama himself believes that Israel should allow HAMAS and Hezbollah to overrun their nation by tearing down the fence, a “barrier to peace,” obviously implying that peace will come when Israel ceases to exist and has been dismembered at the hands of HAMAS and Hezbollah terrorists, or perhaps just Iran, with whom he is willing to meet without preconditions. An Obama victory would not disprove American racism. It would prove just how racist America really is.
Hat tip: Sam at Yid With Lid.
Oh, and don't forget that Khalidi is the only explanation for Obama's Ivy League admission. Affirmative Action doesn't begin to explain how a jackass who lacks a legitimate primary school education, who thinks that there are 57 states, who somehow figures that 100 million people constitutes 95% of the American population (both numbers straight out of his mouth in reference to the same thing in the same speech), and who got Ds (which are Fs in higher education) at a 3rd-tier college got accepted to Columbia and Harvard.
Hugh,
Rashid al-Khalidi belongs to a long prominent Muslim family in Jerusalem, one of the wealthy, influential `ayaan families. One of his relatives was the speaker of the first Ottoman parliament circa 1876. This man, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, also served the Ottoman Empire as a diplomat in Vienna and elsewhere. He was appointed mayor of Jerusalem in the 19th century when Jews were already a majority in the city. Jews were never appointed mayor either by the Muslim Ottoman Empire or by the British, despite the Jewish majority.
Curiously, this al-Khalidi once sent a letter to Theodore Herzl admitting that the Land of Israel belonged to the Jews ["It really is your country"], yet at the same time this al-Khalidi warned Herzl that the Arabs would oppose any Jewish return to the Land that threatened Arab/Muslim hegemony.
Rashid al-Khalidi is not an "Islamochristian."
Mr. Fitzgerald, you are delusional
Like income redistribution, social and economic justice, the core belief set can be obfuscated to achieve the ends desired, but it will never change.
Given his choice of advisers like Zbig, McPeak, Powers, Malley et al ... his belief set on not only Israel, but also Americans who happen to be Jewish is something he can be measured by, not something he will change.
Barrie is a liar.
He is a socialist, Marxist, following the Saul Alinsky playbook that in the pursuit of "community organizing" there is no truth - lie and tell the people whatever they want to hear. Show you are one of them, whatever it takes - join their churches, say whatever (like 95% of you will get tax breaks - another bald faced lie), that you would do better under a Big O administration.
Nonsense,
Barrie wants to confiscate your money and redistribute it to others. He is confiscatory. He would then use the power of the state to oppress you.
He is what he is: a socialist who hates the constitution and America, and wants to change it.
And his surrogates and supporters lie for him - from Oprah to Colin Powell ("he never was a muslim" - as a child he was) to the print media, to his lying campaign and motormouth Biden.
As a pretend "academic""professor" in three interviews with NPR radio 1999 to 2001 he has told us who he is (and which explains why he hides his academic record and past from the public): he is a Marxist, for class warfare (if you believe he or Biden are for the "middle class"
I've got a bridge to sell you), for wealth confication and redistribution, for a clamp down on free speach.
He is exposed. He has told you who he is. Disregard his own words at your peril.
There appears to be a confusion here on the part of some posters. They think that my recognizing that Obama may well become the next President, and my attempting to suggest ways to improve his Administration's formulation of policies having to do with Islam, directly or indirectly, is somehow dangerous and objectionable. Why? Should I ignore the polls? Should I assume that Obama and his advisers are forever beyond the pale, that the narrative helpfully supplied years ago in Chicago by Rashid Khalidi, and supplemented by others (e.g., Abunimah) have not only had a disturbing influence on Obama's understanding of the war being waged by Arabs and Muslims on Israel (a war having nothing to do, in the end, with Israel's borders or the soi-disant "Palestinian people"), but that there is nothing else Obama might, at this point, conceivably learn as a corrective to what he thought he had learned before
I see nothing wrong in appealing to him and to his advisers, to learn as much as they can about the Total Belief-System of Islam, and also to be wary of appointing to high policy-making positions those who are likely to prove most refractory about drawing the correct conclusions from such study. For example, those senators who have demonstrated over a very long period a palpable want of sympathy for Israel, are -- I maintain -- temperamentally and intellectually more likely to be unwilling to grasp the nature of Islam, and the relevance of Islam to the Arab war on Israel. The most obvious case would be those who suffer from the usual mental pathology with which we are all acquainted, to a lesser or greater degree. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that Pat Buchanan would ever fully admit to what Islam inculcates, for if he did, he would have to admit that there is no "solution" to the Arab war on Israel based on further Israeli surrenders, and that is something that the pat-buchanans of this world will never do. For them, keeping to that anti-Israel line is more important than logic and coherence in judging what policies make sense, and what do not, in the war of self-defense, in which all Infidels are implicated, against the Jihad that is being waged against them, and not so much through terrorism as through other, less sensational, but steadier methods.
So a history of being unsympathetic to Israel, I maintian, is a marker for the level of willingness to fully grasp the nature of Islam and its relevance to comprehending the Arab Muslim war (a Lesser Jihad, not a war for the "Palestinian people" who were created in late 1967, part of a world-wide Jihad, the appetite for which is not sated but whetted by every Israeli surrender of rights and tangible assets). It is not a given that, say, someone who has always shown this reluctance to join even in pro-forma Senate votes for Israel cannot come, in the end, to see things differently once the real nature of the Jihad is understood, but it is far more likely, for reasons of temperament and a prepared intellect, that those who have shown a sympathy or support for Israel are more likely to be able to grasp, at long last, what the war being made on Israel is all about, and why "peace-processing" is a snare and a delusion, to those who know their Majid Khadduri and their Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya.
It is not "delusional" to wish that Obama would study, and study enough so that the first version of the Arab-Israeli "narrative" he received, and received, and received, from Rashid Khalidi, someone who was of course aware that Obama was going places, and eager to mold his mind, and present the Arab version of events (anyone who knows Khalidi's background in Beirut, or has seen him speak to an Arab audience, knows what he is all about -- Martin Kramer has set it all out, for those who wish to know more about Rashid Khalidi) to someone who was both innocent of the history of that conflict, and of the history of the Middle East, and of what happened to all of its many non-Muslims or non-Arab peoples wherever Arab Muslims conquered. Obama may never have studied Islam, but like most of us has a warm glow for some childhood years in Indonesia. And the confusion of nostalgia for childhood, or the mingling of such memories, with the belief that that easygoing, syncretistic version of Islam he was certain to have met with in Jakarta, attending a school where the Muslim parents did not mind mingling with Christians, should in retrospect give him pause, allow him to understand that his personal encoounter, through a glass darkly, with Islam was not the Islam, red in tooth and claw, preached all over the Arab world and Pakistan, and indeed preached with increasing fervor (for it grows naturally out of the texts of Qur'an, Hadith, Sira) in parts of Indonesia, such as Aceh, itself.
It is not "delusional" to point out the responsibilities of rule. One of them is to learn about Islam, and not rely on such memories, or the dreamy assumption that "all religions mean the same thing," not to rely on what smiling Prince Bandars offer as the public face of a particularly virulent and malevolent form of Islam (the port-and-cigars Bandar, with those thoughtful gifts to the powerful, and that complicit air, when he is with them, that we-are-all-a-little-corrupt and we-are-all-men-of-the-world-who-understand-one-another and we-are-all-in-this-togethe) or what the promotes of the “Palestinian” cause pretend or may even, in some cases, believe because it suits them better, is far easier to deal with and accept, than the truth: the belief that there is a “solution” to the Arab Muslim war being waged on Israel, that it really is about something to do with the “Palestinian people” invented after the Six-Day War, and about Gaza and the West Bank, though the same war was waged, through combat and terrorism, long before there was a single Israeli soldier in either Gaza or the West Bank. Thus we have the aaron-millers and dennis-rosses, whose entire professional lives have been given up to avoiding the question and relevance of Islam, still promoting peace-processing, negotiations, and the signing of “treaties” which will be scrupulously kept by the Israeli side, and ignored, at a rate and with an impunity still to be determined, by the Muslim side. For the model of all such treaties between Muslims and Infidels is that which Muhammad signed with the Meccans in 628 A.D. at Hudaibiyya. The refusal to learn the most elementary things about Islam, the refusal, apparently, of those in the State Department who deal with the Arab-Israeli “dispute” or “problem” or “situation” (take your choice), to read even a single book – say, Majid Khadduri’s War and Peace in the Law of Islam -- continues to flabbergast and amaze. How can they do this? How can they allow themselves this? After the mess and the squandering in Iraq, how can they? After such ignorance, what forgiveness?
I want Obama to recognize that he has heard only one side – the sly, and no doubt plausibly delivered, PLO version of things, given to him on more than one occasion by Rashid Khalidi. I want him not to think that a few phrases meant to assuge audiences of Israeli supporters are a substitute for learning about the ideology of Islam, about Jihad, about the cadastral and demographic records for 19th century “Palestine,” about the invention of the “Palestinian people” and how that fit into the re-packaging of the Arab attempt, an attempt that has no end because it is rooted in Islam, to eliminate the Infidel nation-state of Israel from what is seen as the middle of Dar al-Islam, as something much more winning: a fight for the “legitimate rights” – who could object to rights already described as “legitimate” – of the “Palestinian people” of whose existence we were made known by the Arabs only after the Six-Day War.
I thinkthe next President has a responsibility to do things differently from Bush, and to replace sentimentality about “religions” – Bush thought they were all “good” and “all must mean the same thing” – with study of the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, and the 1350-year history of Islamic conquest, in order to come up with a much less costly, and more effective, strategy for limiting the threat that a world-wide Jihad poses to all Infidels. And much more attention should be given to Western Europe, where the main instruments of Jihad – the Money Weapon, carefully-targetted campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest – are inexorably undoing the historic heart of the West. And even a child of “Kansas and Kenya” has to recognize the supreme importance of not letting Europe slip under the sway of an aggressive Muslim lobby, determined to remove “all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam.”
It is not “delusional” to discuss these matters. And addressing them primarily to Obama, in recognition that the polls give him a wide lead, does not constitute an endorsement, or a hopeless surrender to the inevitability of those polls. It does mean that, whatever the occasion, one must offer steps or measures appropriate to that occasion. Right now, convincing Obama and his advisers that he must learn a lot more about Islam – and start with the texts, and the major Western scholars who, though no longer alive, had the advantage of writing at a time when scholarly standards in the field were much higher, and it had not yet come to be dominated by a cabal of Muslim and non-Muslim apologists for Islam. And finally, Obama – or McCain – should meet with the most articulate defectors from Islam, that is such peole as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan.
Then the war against Israel will be seen, correctly, as not sui generis, but merely a local example, admittedly for a while the example that received all the attention of the Western press, of a general problem, a wider threat. That threat is not limited to Israel. Others who are suffering are the Hindus of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Buddhists of Thailand, the Christians of the Philippines, the Christians and animists of sub-Saharan Africa, especially in southern Nigeria and southern Sudan, and even those non-Arab Muslims, as in Darfur, who are raped and robbed and have their cattle stolen and their huts burned down because, as black Africans, they are not saved by Islam from Arab enmity and enslavement and genocide, for Islam is the vehicle of Arab supremacism, an Arab supremacism that one can see overcomes any pretense of Islamic universalism whenever Arab interests, and non-Arabs, collide.
Surely whoever becomes president should, at long last, meet and talk with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, The time for the smyler with the knyf under his cloke, Rashid Khalidi, has past, or should have, and the last bits of his propagandistic effort deserve to be held up for inspection, analsis, and shredding.
So Hugh thinks its just a matter of having a talk with Wafa Sultan or Spencer and it will fix his views.
G-d what foolishness.
You aren't dealing with your typical white politician here Hugh.
You think you can reach a man who was mentored for 20 years by the raving racist and anti-semite Reverend Wright. Or who associates with a Communist and ex-terrorist and thinks nothing of it.
Remember he sought those men out, a reasonable man would have avoid them. He wouldn't have sought them out unless their views resonated with his. It points to a man who is intensely ideologically driven.
And people are going to find out how much real soon.
Obama has not given me ANY reason to believe in his ability towards Change within himself - if anything - all he talks about is changing US!
C'mon, Hugh, even you with your excellant intellect have to admit your European (socialist) leanings.
The siren call of the worm of Marxism. Only problem is that it is ruthless (but not at first) and it does not and never has worked.
As with and as against islam, live free or be a slave.
Obama: quick study or dead weight?
I've never been impressed by "intellects" who believe in perpetual motion. Not in the physical sense and not in the economic sense. Marxism is perpetual motion economics. The only way to make it work for any length of time is with a boot to the throat. Apparently no amount of historical evidence or consideration of human motivation is sufficient to convince Obama of this.
This doesn't make him a quick study; it makes him a glib, naïve, dunce… or a Machiavellian opportunist who plays on the sentimentality of naïve dunces. Either way it's unsettling, and when those legions of naïve dunces figure out he can't lead them to the Leftist Promised Land unless he's given expanded powers significantly greater those spelled out by the "negative liberties" of the Constitution, it's likely to become dangerous.
I hope you're right Hugh, I hope he is as bright as you believe. Even more important, I hope he's fundamentally a good person. But, so far I've haven't seen much evidence that he's more than a slick salesman for white guilt and Leftist propaganda. I am however, willing to be convinced otherwise, should he decide to display his "brilliance" in thought instead of just speech at some point.
"I hope he [Obama] is as bright as you believe."
-- from a posting above
All kinds of things are being read into my remarks, which are nothing more than an attempt to deal with reality. The reality is that Barack Obama may well be elected President. And he will have to deal with Islam, the problem of Islam. How will he do so? Based on what he has learned from Rashid Khalidi? Based on what he may have learned about the pesky Israelis and Islam from, inter alia, General Merrill McPeak, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samantha Power? Shall we all just pack up and go home, at the prospect of Barack Obama as president, as if this were the end of the world, or can suggestions be made, arguments put forth, as to what he might study, in order to avoid either the mistakes of his predecessor, or different mistakes, based on the same ignorance of Islam?
Apparently this has in the minds of some made me a suddenly-revealed member of the Comintern, or at least a great admirer of Marxism-Leninism, as described in Stalin's "Short Course," and I must also believe Obama to be supremely intelligent, when for god's sake all I wrote was that he has proved himself to be a "quick study." That's a different thing.
I'm flabbergasted at the exaggerated responses in a few of the postings. Shouldn't one be figuring out ways to help Obama see Islam for what it is, as he certainly could not have understood it as a child, nor later on when he was being carefully fed, by Khalidi and others, a certain view that now one must hope can be undone. Must one simply assume that there is no possibility of bringing to his attention more, and important, information about the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, that there is nothing to be done at all?
Count me out.
Very powerful and moving words, spinoneone. Thank you for them. I personally know a retired physics professor who grew up in pre-war Austria, was a member of the Hitler youth, and can recall from first hand experience the excitement he and his comrades felt singing the songs, marching in the parades, manning the antiaircraft guns in mock drills. His family emigrated to South America before the invasion of the Soviet Union, when things started to get really tough inside Germany, but listening to his accounts of life inside Hitler's Third Reich chills the blood. Your note above paints an eerily similar picture.
“Must one simply assume that there is no possibility of bringing to his attention more, and important, information about the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, that there is nothing to be done at all?”
Posted by: Hugh
You are contemplating changing the mindset of a man who has chosen Socialism over Capitalism – despite all evidence that the former ALWAYS fails while the latter, properly managed, almost always leads to prosperity. The worldview of such a man is one of the perpetual “victim”. It is (in Jeremiah Wrights words) the “RICH WHITE PEOPLE” who keep him down and thus it is those who must be gotten even with. Obama’s view of “Justice” is that their wealth must be taken and “spread around”.
A man with such a mindset has a natural affinity for the imperative of Islam. Islam, the perpetual “victim” in a constant state of conflict with the “other”, often seen as the “rich white Infidel”. In addition to his predilection, he has been inculcated with antagonistic views since his youth, as in Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Khalid al-Mansour, etc., etc., etc. To find Obama’s soul mate, one needs to look no further than Raila Amolo Odinga, the Marxist allied with Muslims who, by thugery, seized power in Kenya – the Odinga that Obama campaigned and raised money for.
is there “nothing to be done at all”?
Can the Jihadi be swayed by impeccable logic and persuasive discussion?
Pehaps.
And I would give better odds on Obama – but not much, not much at all.
Hugh is right. The reality is that there is a very real possibility that, come the 21st of January, Barack Hussein Obama may become the most powerful man in the world, with all that implies. But all the negatives aside, BHOs natural intelligence could, at least in principle, lead him in any number of unforeseen directions. Although I don't see it playing out this way, one of them could be an extremely tough, pro-Israeli stance based on a late-night epiphany that Israel is the only democratic, progressive, modern country in the entire Middle East. I won't hold my breath about this. He could also swing the other way. We just won't know until he names his cabinet and assumes office.
In any event, we, all of us, will have two choices: (1) Sit on the sidelines, wring our hands and sink into apathy and I-told-you-so's, simply accepting meekly whatever comes along; or (2) Regroup, find a new way to make the best of a bad situation, and then work to change it. This last may require radically rethinking the strategy needed to fight jihad. It will certainly require setting aside petty theologically differences such as exist between the various branches of Christianity, as well as renewing support for Israel on the part of individuals and conservatives and expressing this support vigorously, loudly and persistently to our elected congressional representatives.
So, get a grip, people. The end of the world didn't occur in the millennium changes of 1000 CE or 2000 CE, and it won't occur if Obama assumes office. There are likely to be some unpleasant changes, to be sure, so tactics and strategy to fight nonsensical, destructive changes, such as a likely increase in the tempo of the Islamization in America, will have to be devised. Example: Where are all the hotshot ambulance-chasing lawyers? Hasn't any of them noticed that the Saudis have very, very deep pockets? Why can't the snot be sued out of them for any number of reasons? Example: Resist likely efforts to muzzle the conservative media, which could include taking advantage of new technology to form underground Internet-based communications networks. Example: In the 2010 elections, work like hell to eliminate whatever Democratic majority may occur in either or both chambers of Congress as a result of the 2008 elections. By then Obama will have made enough domestic and international mistakes to make him vulnerable.
BTW, does anyone know the reasons for Zbigniew Brzezinski's antisemitism?
Shouldn't one be figuring out ways to help Obama see Islam for what it is, as he certainly could not have understood it as a child, nor later on when he was being carefully fed, by Khalidi and others, a certain view that now one must hope can be undone. Must one simply assume that there is no possibility of bringing to his attention more, and important, information about the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, that there is nothing to be done at all?
Obama's emotional insistence that increasing capital gains taxes, in spite of evidence of the deleterious economics of that policy, somehow represents "fairness" ( http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23137.html ), his fascination and affiliation with Marxists, racists, and anarchists; his unwillingness to commit to exploiting proven high energy density solutions, and his disdain for what he perceives as "imperfections" in our constitution don't give me much encouragement that he can be swayed by evidence or rational argument once he has settled on an ideological position.
A simple reflection on his own success in life, the financial success and freedom of those nefarious characters he has chosen to befriend (and abandon when their inconvenience outweighs their usefulness) should have long ago convinced a rational operator that arguments for systemic racism and oppression the American society are grossly exaggerated.
Obama has hidden so much of his history and shifted so significantly on issues to position himself advantageously in real-time, that his only consistent associations and positions are those that are consistently bad and demonstrably wrong. How could one ever be sure of what he believes, or what he would do should he successfully shrug off the constitutional constraints he mentions in his recently publicized 2001 radio interview?
Obama and the Left in general continue to practice, preach, and teach the adolescent politics of feelings and are happy to drag the rest of us down with misguided, meaningless, and possibly dangerous emotional appeals.
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
…
The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others.
….
National Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. And it wants peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in Europe... The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of the nation... Germany needs peace and desires peace!
--Adolf Hitler
Obama / McCain - Idealism vs Realism? Goldberg / Beinart Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBoBUy9Uuyk&feature=channel