A good topic for JihadWatch: what questions should folks ask the Presidential candidates at their town-hall meetings and at debates?

You might be right that a clear-headed mention of Islam would help a candidate.

Posted by: StillBreathing at July 17, 2008 10:44 AM

Hugh, you're glittering on this one. Thanks.

Posted by: undaunted at July 17, 2008 10:44 AM

.. and the ignorant, corrupt, sellout "The McCain" wants my vote? He can go to the millions of "The illegal amigos".

Posted by: Alert at July 17, 2008 10:45 AM

McCain is breathtakingly ignorant on so many critical issues. We are in serious trouble.

Posted by: n.a. palm at July 17, 2008 11:02 AM

"the" Islam. Reminds one of "the" plague, doesn't it?

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at July 17, 2008 11:03 AM

I wonder is McCain is really all that ignorant, or if he realizes, as Busch does, that this country is hostage to the oil that flows out of the Arab world, and that our economy could be shut down in the blink of an eye, should he say anything offensive about Islam.

As for Obama, he's really a genuine ignoramous. He doesn't have a clue.

Posted by: rational at July 17, 2008 11:20 AM

After listening at Mccain's remarks at the NAACP yesterday, it seems he admires "the Obama" as well.

Posted by: TheOmegaMan at July 17, 2008 11:42 AM

Do McCain supporters still believe that this man knows how to fight Islamism? He doesn't know what it is - fifteen YEARS after the WTC was first attacked!

Posted by: PMK at July 17, 2008 11:59 AM

Great article Hugh, as was your earlier one on Obama.

I'm hoping McCain will win rather than Obama because I think his record shows he is more committed to results over rhetoric, regardless of what he's saying now during the election campaign. That's not to say he doesn't have faults and flaws (e.g. his stance on immigration), but in any election between two candidates there's usually one that you can decide to vote against even if you don't really want to vote for the other. In this case Obama is pretty clearly the one to vote against - due to his almost complete ignorance of foreign affairs.

Regardless of which one wins the presidency though, they will find as President that while we may not be at war with Islam, Islam* is at war with us.

* Islam as defined by islamic theology, ideology, strategy, tactics and activities of many 1000s of individuals and groups in numerous countries in a continuous historical line since inception to now.

As for questions for presidential candidates:
- Do you agree that any state/country which punishes people for giving up their religion is immoral and evil? Will you support economic sanctions against countries that are doing so?
- Do you agree that any state/country which allows girls to be married before puberty is guilty of encouraging pedophiliac activity? Will you support economic sanctions against countries that are doing so?
- Do you agree that any state/country which jails or punishes women for sex outside marraige is immoral and evil? Will you support economic sanctions against countries that are doing so?
- What steps will you take to address the increase in honor killings in the USA?
- What steps will you take to prevent jihadis from emigrating into the USA?
- What steps will you take to identify jihadis already in the USA?
- Do you believe in freedom of speech? Do you believe that it includes the right for others to insult you and your beliefs? Do you believe it includes the right for you to insult others and their beliefs?

And this one is for the presidential candidates, proposed Secretaries of Defence or State, and proposed heads of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security:
- Have you read and understood all of Stephen Coughlin's thesis? (available at http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.176/pub_detail.asp) Will you make it required reading for all federal law enforcement, military, homeland security and intelligence personnel?
- Will you appoint Stephen Coughlin Dep-Sec of Defence or National Security Advisor as he appears to be the only US government official to have described the nature of the threat facing the US?

Posted by: veil416 at July 17, 2008 12:45 PM

Since McCain and his friends in Washington do in fact think that anyone who is against illegal immigration is a racist, then it should follow that he would think of anyone who is against Islam is a religious bigot.

Smart he is not. We are in trouble.

Posted by: Spot on at July 17, 2008 12:50 PM

"Hugh...Thanks."
-- from a posting above

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcAIksVwNsw

Posted by: Hugh at July 17, 2008 1:35 PM

He's a politician, they always sell off.
Also it is alleged by some that he was a traitor during the Vietnam war, so treason should not be a new thing.

Posted by: Charles Martel at July 17, 2008 1:47 PM

Come on McCain. You ain't going to get the muslim vote in America so don't try and grovel for it. Even Obama is distancing himself from the muslims voters on the surface to convince Americans he is not one of them. Even Obama knows he has the muslim vote in the bag.

Do something that is so bold and brave Obama would not expect it. Challenge muslims to confront extremism straight on and if they won't they are not worthy of your time when you do become President. Your office will be shut to them. You may not get their vote, but you will get the respect of the 'Right' that is still numb from you even being a candidate in the first place.

Posted by: alaskan1000 at July 17, 2008 2:23 PM

We know he was almost at the bottom of his graduating class at the Naval Academy - Does he have to keep rubbing it in?

Posted by: MP at July 17, 2008 2:23 PM

Bottom line is that McCain is still better than Obama. Also, as long as we are dependent on Middle Eastern oil, no candidate for President from either party will be able to call a spade a spade where Islam is concerned, even assuming that such a candidate knows what Islam really intends for America and all of the West. Energy independence and freedom from Islam's shackles go hand in hand.

Posted by: Wellington at July 17, 2008 2:24 PM

It would be nice if McCain, who takes a great interest in American history, and who has declared a special fondness for Theodore Roosevelet, were to also look into our earliest Presidents, and to find out, for example, what those who first had dealings with Muslims -- that is, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams, all concluded, from their study and from their experience, about Islam.

I've made it easy for him, and for his handlers and advisers. They can start by reading the following article:

"In a recent article prompted by his reading of Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli, Andrew Bostom, who compiled The Legacy of Jihad, adduces from London’s text a number of telling descriptions of Islam and of Muslims by some of the most important figures in American history. Two of them were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in 1786 ambassadors (Jefferson in Paris, Adams in London) from the newly-established American Republic still under the Articles of Confederation (the Treaty of Paris had been signed in 1783, the Constitution was ratified only in 1787). They had a meeting with the representative of Tripolitania (present-day Libya) then in the Great Britain, Sidi Haji Rahmand Adja.

Like other Christian maritime powers, the American state had suffered from the state-piracy of Muslim corsairs. The word “piracy” implies mere seeking at random for booty, and is inadequate to describe the formal system by which Muslim corsairs had for centuries been making war on Christian shipping, with the foreknowledge (indeed, often registering in advance either the places their ships would be going, or what Infidel shipping they intended to attack) and support of the Muslim rulers of the North African states -- which, in turn, were ostensibly under the control of the Ottoman rulers in Istanbul.

Both Jefferson and Adams were learned men. Take a tour in Quincy or at Monticello and look at their libraries, and then imagine the reading material that sustains the current, or the last few, American presidents. But they had no reason to know about Islam. They were interested in the civilization of the West, to which they belonged. Islam was merely a disturbing and violent intruder, to south and east, of that West. The notion that someday Muslims in the Western world would be insisting that the Western world owed so much to Islam, that the Renaissance was practically a Muslim invention, that without Islam the great civilization of the Western world was unthinkable, would have been regarded by them as what it is: absurdity, from first to last, a travesty of history.

But did they know much about what prompted Muslim behavior? No. So they asked why the Barbary states (present-day Morocco, Algerian, Tunisia, and Libya) would continually attack American and all other Infidel shipping, seize the cargoes and the sailors, taking both back to Islamic lands and enslaving those Christian seamen who sometimes could be ransomed, sometimes not. So they asked the ambassador, Mr. Adja, why the Muslims of the Maghrib, the “Barbary pirates” as they were known in the West, did as they did.

He had no trouble answering them, as the report written by Jefferson and Adams to the Continental Congress shows:

“…that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Nothing surprising here to any contemporary Muslim, though many will wish that Americans will never read that paragraph above, especially since it was written by two of the Founders, two of the Framers of that Constitution which is so flatly contradicted by the principles and Holy Law of Islam. It is easy to denounce this or that truth-teller about Islam today, but not quite so easy for Muslims to denounce or attempt to belittle a report written by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Bostom also quotes London's excerpt from a report by William Eaton, a veteran of the Revolutionary War (who later became the U.S. consul in Tunis, and who in 1799) on his meeting with the Dey of Algiers, Bobba Mustafa:

“…we took off our shoes and entering the cave (for so it seemed), with small apertures of light with iron gates, we were shown to a huge shaggy beast, sitting on his rump upon a low bench covered with a cushion of embroidered velvet, with his hind legs gathered up like a tailor, or a bear. On our approach to him, he reached out his forepaw as if to receive something to eat. Our guide exclaimed, “Kiss the Dey’s hand!” The consul general bowed very elegantly, and kissed it, and we followed his example in succession. The animal seemed at that moment to be in a harmless mode; he grinned several times, but made very little noise. Having performed this ceremony, and standing a few moments in silent agony, we had leave to take our shoes and other p roperty, and leave the den without any other injury than the humility of being obliged in this involuntary manner, to violate the second commandment of God and offend common decency. Can any man believe that this elevated brute has seven kings of Europe, two republics, and a continent tributary to him when his whole naval force is not equal to two line-of-battle ships? It is so.”

Not exactly one of those Western ambassadors – a John C. West or James Akins or an Andrew Kilgore or a Eugene Bird – full of salaam-aleikum lecca-leccas for their Arab counterparts. No, it was a no-nonsense early American, sure of himself, and equally sure that he could recognize a comical primitive when he saw one – and saw no need to pull any rhetorical punches. One wonders how many today would report back in a similar fashion on the absurdities, say, of Arafat and company, or the pretensions of the ludicrous Arab regimes and Arab-League officials who have been allowed to believe in their own significance and importance, when their only significance and importance is that supplied by an accident of geology and the complete failure of even these recipients of the largest unearned wealth in history to create modern polities and modern economies. The fact that these regimes remain morally and intellectually paralyzed should show those who, in the Western world, ought to know a little something about what makes the West the West, just a little something about what the civilizational fruits of Islam are – or rather, about the absence of those civilizational fruits.

In his review-article Bostom also spatchcocked on, from a period later than that of the Barbary Pirates episode in American geopolitical life, a piercing, no-nonsense quote from John Quincy Adams, writing in about 1829 after his retirement from public life:

“….he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God…the faithful follower of the prophet may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.”

The “command” to Believers to engage in “perpetual war” -- performed “alike by fraud or by force” – against the Infidels, the Unbelievers, was no secret to the well-traveled (St. Petersburg, among other places he was stationed) and well-read John Quincy Adams. In a previous article Bostom had quoted John Quincy Adams comparing the essence of Christian doctrine with the essence of Islam.

This was John Quincy Adams on Christianity:

“And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man…On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE [Capitals in original].”
And this was John Quincy Adams on Islam:

“Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST; TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Capitals in original)...Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant...While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”

And Adams concluded:

“As the essential principle of his [Muhammad’s] faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated.”

As one reads and ponders these remarks by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, one is struck by the self-assurance that they represent civilization, and that Islam and its representatives did not, and it would have been ludicrous to pretend otherwise. Islam did not change between 1786 or 1805 or 1830 and today. The doctrine of Jihad did not change. The Qur’an was not a different Qur’an; the Hadith were not differently ranked from the way muhaddithin had ranked them, according to various levels of authenticity, nearly a thousand years before. If anything, the forces of Islam were far weaker then, and far less able, therefore, to conduct Jihad. The only instrument available was military, and in military matters the Muslims were hopelessly surpassed by the technology of a much more advanced civilization – more advanced in every possible way. So what happened? How is it that today no Western leader can bring himself to write about Islam as Jefferson, Adams, John Quincy Adams, or even in modern times, as Churchill did in The River War?

What happened are any number of things, beginning with an entirely different class of rulers. What a falling-off, intellectually, there has been since the days of the Founders and the Framers. The self-assurance and leisure necessary to learn about things, the absence of breathless, round-the-clock news, the fantastic piling-up of duties so that no leader can conceivably read, and take in, once he has risen to the top, the very things he most needs to know -- all this has contributed to that falling off. And right now, of course, the thing that leaders and elites all over the Western world most need to know is all about Islam, its tenets, its history of Jihad-conquest, its subjugation of all conquered non-Muslims, and its recommended instruments of Jihad that go far beyond either “terror” or even military means. This conquest is promoted now in Western Europe mainly by demographics -- the numbers of Muslims multiplying at a rate far faster than that of the indigenous Infidels -- and Da’wa. That Da’wa is targeted at prisoners, and at others who are economically and psychically marginal, and inclined to embrace a belief-system that can be viewed as a vehicle of protest against “the System,” and also supplies, for those who need it, a Complete Regulation of Life and Total Explanation of the Universe. There are plenty of weak-minded people around, their numbers increased by the sometimes intolerable stress and stupidity of frantic getting and spending, or not getting, and not spending.

What happened? Why could Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams and so many others in American history have understood Islam, and also understood that there was no possibility of, and no need to even attempt, to “win hearts and minds” of Muslims, but rather to obtain their cooperation, to force changes in their behavior? The latter is a very different thing from winning hearts and minds, and is grounded in the reality of what Islam teaches its adherents to believe. When Theodore Roosevelt demanded from a Moroccan bandit chief the return of Ion Perdicaris (who at the time was not even an American citizen, though few paid attention to that -- he did have a long American connection) with that famous phrase about “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” he too understood that dealing with such people required that kind of attitude.

Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams read. They thought. They studied. They learned things directly. They did not have staffs that attempted to supply their every mental need by supplying little 1- or 3- or 5-page summaries of information, offered up in bite-size bullets that were not even sentences. They were well-traveled. They all had the habit of study and of thought, and would not have wasted the kind of time that our leaders, in and out of office, waste on meetings, and meet-and-greet sessions, and smiles, and wiles, and all the intolerable nonsense that modern political life requires of those who can endure it, and that often drives away the best people because, in the end, they cannot.

Just imagine that in the previous administration, one of the “experts” called on for his “expertise” on Islam was that supreme and sinister apologist, John Esposito. Jefferson, Adams, and Quincy Adams would have seen through him in a moment’s time. When they were writing, they were not worried about “offending” Muslims. They could afford to speak the truth. But so could Western leaders today, if only they would begin to do it. The Muslims have very little hold over us. Yes, they have oil. And they desperately need to sell that oil. And they are terrified that the West could begin to find other sources of energy, or that the West could begin to tax oil use themselves in ways that would dampen demand. And the Arabs and other Muslims do not “have the Gatling-gun” and militarily could be laid waste overnight. They have money with which to buy influence, but if all over the Western world those on the take were relentlessly exposed, ridiculed, held up for inspection (and that would include a good many ex-diplomats, journalists, academics and others), then that army of apologists could lose its effectiveness. There is no “oil weapon” and never was. There is a financial weapon, but it is in Western and chiefly American hands. What would the rich Arabs do if the Western world decided to seize their property in the West as the assets of enemy aliens, just as was done to the property owned not only by the German government, but by individual Germans, during World War II? And what would they do if they were to be permanently deprived of easy access to Western medical care? (How would you feel if someone threatened to deprive you of the possibility of seeing your Western doctors or being treated in a Western hospital? That might get your attention.) What would they do if they were deprived of access to Western education (for their children, especially), or if they lost any chance of moving to the West? What would they do if they began to see a relentless campaign to remove, as a security threat, Muslims from within Dar al-Harb, where they have been allowed to settle, through negligence, by the tens of millions?

What has happened is not merely a kind of cretinising of our political class, but also a laziness. This can be seen from those who are not in the executive branch, and who could, if they chose, study the contents of Islam, learn about Jihad and about the dhimmi, and never be fooled again. But do you know of any Senators and Congressmen who, over the past few years, have decided to study such matters? Do you have the feeling that John Kerry, with no money worries whatsoever and a good deal of time, has been burning the midnight oil reading Robert Spencer, or Bat Ye’or, or Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not a Muslim, so that he won’t and can’t be fooled? Do you think any of the Democrats, so critical -- for all the wrong reasons -- of the war in Iraq, will ever be able to criticize the war for the right reasons, as has been done here for more than two years?

Sometimes it is fun to imagine a figure from the past suddenly coming to life. I have always imagined John Keats suddenly appearing, and my taking him to Macdonald’s, and trying to explain it to him. Imagine Jefferson and Adams coming to life. Imagine what they would make of all kinds of things, but imagine in particular what they would make of people all over the Western world who had now allowed, within their midst, millions of people who, as a matter of belief, were taught to hate those people among whom they lived, and to work to destroy those Infidel institutions, laws, customs, manners, until Islam dominated and some form of the Holy Law of Islam could be established? What would they make of this? What would they make of the $400 billion in sunk costs spent or committed in the near-term to the war in Iraq, as we try to create out of three separate groups of Muslims a nation-state that supposedly will serve as a “model” for other Arab Muslims, a kind of Light Unto the Muslim Nations? They would rub their eyes in disbelief. They would wonder – how did this happen to the country they helped to found and nurture? Where did things go wrong? And then they would have questions. “What’s a speechwriter?” “You mean, you actually have someone else write words you present as your own, fashion your thoughts, express what should be your views?” “And what are ‘bullets’ used in these pages of Daily Briefings?” “And what is a ‘Daily Briefing’”?

They would be quite capable today, as they were in their own day, of reading and finding out about Islam – through books and through the evidence of their senses. They didn’t have CNN, Fox, spy satellites, and an army of CIA agents. But they knew what Islam was all about. It is we, with all that paraphernalia, seeking complexity when things are perhaps too obvious, too worrisomely simple for many to wish to grasp the matter, who are the innocent ones. It is Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams and many others, right up to Churchill, who had an unobnubilated grasp of Islam and of Muslims. They were not distracted. They were not charmed by a Saudi oil minister, or by someone at the “Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” They had the leisure to read, to think, and even to ponder, slowly, what it was they read, and make it their own. The hectic vacancy of official Washington is scandalous -- especially when one rises to the very top and learns only from those briefest of briefings, and even that only when it is too late, or treated as if it is too late, or perhaps beneath the dignity of the highest officials (“As for study, we’ll let our valets do that for us”).

And this is how it has become nearly impossible to get their attention, to get them to start making sense.

[Posted by Hugh at May 6, 2006]

Posted by: Hugh at July 17, 2008 2:49 PM

"I admire the Islam [sic]. There are a lot of good principles in it." -- John McCain

The next 4 years will be hell - either McCain or Obama president, Tony Snow dead, Brit Hume gone,... For us Conservatives, it's seems like 1992 all over... For Mohammedans, it may be time to call in the Mahdi

Posted by: Infidel Pride at July 17, 2008 3:06 PM

People like Hugh don't run for political office, so we're left with the dregs. Until rational, informed and educated individuals decide to sully themselves in politics, we have no "hope" anything will "change". (Fist bump)

Posted by: Whistling Dixie at July 17, 2008 3:09 PM

One problem with our time is that their are not enough people like Hugh in high places.

Posted by: Spot on at July 17, 2008 3:32 PM

Fine post, Hugh, about what great men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams and William Eaton thought about Islam and Muslims. It would be a delectable day indeed if some prominent American politician echoed the sentiments that Quincy Adams made about Islam and Mohammed. Then I'd know we were really turning the corner. Oh, great word, "unobnubilated." Made my day vocabulary wise.

Posted by: Wellington at July 17, 2008 4:00 PM

"the" Islam. Reminds one of "the" plague, doesn't it? Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS

I think I speak for all plague when I say, "I resemble that remark."

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at July 17, 2008 4:32 PM

From Hugh:
Imagine Jefferson and Adams coming to life.

It would be fascinating to watch McCain, and President Bush too, attempt an explanation of their reverence for "the Islam" to Jefferson, Adams, and Churchill. I doubt their rebuke would be cloaked in the delusional rhetoric of today's sensitive and undiscriminating multiculticians. Forced to personally face the realities of life more straightforwardly than our band of dandies in Washington today, I'll bet their admiration would be reserved for "the freedom".

Sometimes it is fun to imagine a figure from the past suddenly coming to life.

… but I'd much prefer that our current leaders suddenly come to life.

Posted by: RalphInfidel at July 17, 2008 5:12 PM

If I HAD to vote for either the overtly duplicitous Obama or the clueless John "Shamnesty" McCain, I would pick the latter. But I don't, and I won't.

Posted by: Infidel33 at July 17, 2008 5:54 PM

If I HAD to vote for either the overtly duplicitous Obama or the clueless John "Shamnesty" McCain, I would pick the latter. But I don't, and I won't.

Posted by: Infidel33

Same here. McCain might be better than Obama but that's not good enough. It's also debatable. Anyone who votes for McCain as the lesser of two evils is in for a huge disappointment. They're both bad.

Right now McCain and Obama appear tied. Both men believe they are owed the presidency, based on their life experience. Both are either lying or stupid and I choose to believe neither is stupid.

Posted by: PMK at July 17, 2008 6:49 PM

Oh, great word, "unobnubilated." Made my day vocabulary wise."
-- from a posting above

I think I meant to write "inobnubilated" rathet than "unobnubilated" for "cloudless." But for god's sake, let's go wild and allow both spellings.

I also learned a word today, at a posting at another JW thread. I learned, from "undaunted," the verb "to mozambique" as in "he should be mozambiqued." That made my day, clint-eastwood-wise.

Posted by: Hugh at July 17, 2008 7:22 PM

Oh, God.

Is there no one in political power who will ever see this Islam cult of death as it really is?

Posted by: INFIDELATLARGE at July 17, 2008 7:31 PM

Hugh: Could never quite figure out when "in.." is used as opposed to "un..." For instance, Muslims in the West tend to be "ingrates" but when they act that way they are described (accurately, of course) as "ungracious." Go figure. Seems a bit arbitrary to me. Perhaps Noah Webster is somewhat responsible here.

Posted by: Wellington at July 17, 2008 8:26 PM

INFIDELATLARGE: You wonder if no one with political power will ever see Islam as a death cult. An understandable worry to be sure, but I have little doubt that with time many politicians will proclaim such publicly. It may take a few more 9/11s before that happens, but it will happen eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later. After all, the truth is a very difficult thing to bury permanently.

Posted by: Wellington at July 17, 2008 8:34 PM

To mozambique. Mozambiqued. What a beautiful addition to the lexicon. He's a marked man, a lorenzo-marked man. About to be mozambiqued.

Posted by: Hugh at July 17, 2008 10:52 PM

And what of the Kurds , as we exit stage left from Iraq. Do we let them fight off the Arabs , do we let Turkey annex Northern Iraq and let them get 'Armenian-ised' or do we remain in this non-Arab Muslim Western friendly enclave of Nothern Iraq that has much oil wealth?

I can see why you want the attendant choas that would accompany a quick withdrawal , but since we have the possiblity of a stable Iraq that would be akin to an Egypt rather than a Syria perhaps we should settle for that. You of course want a Somalia which is rather ... heartless I think not to mention immoral, and perhaps shows the a level of dehumanisation of the 'other' you have reached. Do Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq also wish to sow sectarianism , war and a large bodycount just to 'weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad everywhere in the world'.

You did not mention the most straight forward idea you have had about sidelining Islam , which is to eliminate the West's reliance on M.E. oil. Whether by finding new domestic sources of oil , or a new Manhattan project focused on alternative for oil in transport. This is very much an issue this election! Or how about the repeal of the silly Immigration Act of 1965 that disallows discrimination on religious or Ideological grounds or even by skill sets and is basically a document in affirmative action. Surely a case could be made for a more skills focused immigration policy like Canada or Australia...the economic rationalisation ( that you despair about) that actually may help in limiting migration from Islamic countries. Immigration is a issue in this election , surely some tradeoffs on the "amnesty" can allow a rejigging of the over all immigration policy? Containment and seperation without without having blood on our hands. is what we surely want ... we are civilised, are we not!

Posted by: David Xavier at July 18, 2008 12:03 AM

“And what of the Kurds , as we exit stage left from Iraq. Do we let them fight off the Arabs , do we let Turkey annex Northern Iraq and let them get 'Armenian-ised' or do we remain in this non-Arab Muslim Western friendly enclave of Nothern Iraq that has much oil wealth?
I can see why you want the attendant choas that would accompany a quick withdrawal , but since we have the possiblity of a stable Iraq that would be akin to an Egypt rather than a Syria perhaps we should settle for that. You of course want a Somalia which is rather ... heartless I think not to mention immoral, and perhaps shows the a level of dehumanisation of the 'other' you have reached. Do Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq also wish to sow sectarianism , war and a large bodycount just to 'weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad everywhere in the world'.”
---- from a poster above who apparently reads very little of what I have written and posted here for at least four years

First, I have repeatedly said that the American government should do everything it can to support an independent Kurdistan. I suggested that the American government, because it would be the main or possibly sole supporter of that free Kurdistan, would be able to extract from the Kurds a promise not to lay claim to parts of Anatolia, and that this promise, in turn, might be used to persuade the Turkish army not to attack – already Turkish investments in Kurdistan are significant. On the other hand, the American government could certainly encourage Kurdistan to lay claim to the Kurdish areas of both Syria and, especially, Iran. And any success of the Kurds in Iran might inspire Azeris, Arabs in the southwest, and Baluchis in the east to at least start demanding far more autonomy. Most important, a free Kurdistan would raise the issue of Arab imperialism, and offer an example of a non-Arab Muslim people who threw off the Arab yoke. That might inspire others, beginning with Berbers. I’ve written about this so many times – just google around and you will find dozens of longer discussions, and perhaps a hundred smaller postings – that I find it infuriating that you raise the question as if I am indifferent to the fate of the Kurds. In fact, I also suggested that the Christians in Iraq, those who wish to remain, might find a haven in the north, and armed by the Americans, might also come to some agreement with the Kurds – might, if the Americans make that a quid pro quo for support for Kurdistan.
Finally, you raise the issue of oil and suggest that I have failed to discuss that. You have failed to read me, and having failed, presume to find omissions where there are none. How many times have I gone over, and in detail, the need for an energy policy to deprive the Arabs of the oil weapon, or at least to diminish its size. Where else have you read – where, anywhere on the Internet – about the actual amounts taken in by Muslim members of OPEC since 1973? And I haven’t been vague in my suggestions, with the usual “Manhattan Project” cries, but specified what exactly I would do, and what kinds of power plants for electricity I think should be built, and by whom, and on what model, and about subsidies for mass transit that should be unapologetically put in place, and just as France is a model of how to build nuclear plants, which are indispensable, so does Germany offer a model of subsidizing domestic use of solar energy.
And I have also suggested ways to use up at least some of the oil wealth that the Arabs have accumulated, by charging them more for access to Western education and medical care, by charging certain regimes large sums if they wish to continue to receive American protection, and so on.

You also seem to think that I think that when the Americans leave there is going to be some kind of terrific bloodbath. I've never thought that, and never gloated over that particular prospect. I think that there may be low-level hostilities between Shi'a and Sunnis, never becoming an all-out civil war, but never allowing, either, for a compromise that would make a unified state possible. And even a federalized or cantonized state will not lead to a situation that the Sunnis can accept, for the Shi'a have the power, have the population, have the land with most of the oil (and the rest is in the Kurdish-dominated north), and control the only port. The Shi'a have won. What happens now is a low-level attempt by Sunnis to make life difficult for the Shi'a, in order to regain far more power than their numbers suggest they should possess.

It is infuriating that I have to yet again go over all this stuff for you because you come intermittently, or read intermittently,at Jihad Watch, and may also have missed a few years of postings and feel no need, in making charges about what, you presume, someone has or has not dealt with, to actually check by making use of the search-box at this site, or by googling.

So infuriating is it, in fact, that if you do this again, and if I have to waste time answering you when everything you ask about can easily be googled by you without my, or anyone else's aid, and if you make charges that I have not dealt with this, when I have, and repeatedly, or not discussed that, when I have done so, and repeatedly, you may find yourself no longer able to post.

I am not here to remind you of what I have written about not once, but dozens and dozens of times. If you don't know, and before you assume that I haven't mentioned it because you happened not to see it in that day's or that week's quota of postings read, you should look around. It's not very hard. Don't wait for me to reply and fill you in on what you've missed. That wastes my time.

Do it yourself. Fai da te.

Posted by: Hugh at July 18, 2008 12:37 AM

Thanks for alerting us to the weakness of John McCain in this area!! Nonetheless, I will vote for McCain as the far lesser of two evils when compared to Barack HUSSEIN Obama, who probably supports 100% the idea of the State Department selling "Mosques of America Wall Calendars" and will most likely EXPAND on thst twisted idea if we are unfortunate enough to have him as President!!

Posted by: CAIR-FREE FUTURE at July 18, 2008 8:34 AM

"I admire the Islam [sic]. There are a lot of good principles in it." -- John McCain

And who thinks McCain will fight Islam any more than BHO?

Whether it's 100%(Obama) or 95% (McCain), it's still an "A" grade for supporting terrorists. What "good principles" does McCain see?

Posted by: PMK at July 18, 2008 9:02 AM

Fortunately, 90% of the Muslims have not, are not and will not read the Quran, the Hadith and Sirah. The do not read the Quran for the following reasons:

70% of Muslims are illiterate or their reading skills are very poor so they only read what they really have to read and Quran is not one of them.

I have met many educated Muslims and I have asked few of them if they had read the Quran. They all say no and many have not read the Quran because they have no time, they are too lazy or they think they know what's in it and they don't have to read it to know what it is all about.

Some may have read the Quran and preferred to deny it and those I understand very well.

It is still a blessing that less than 10% of all Muslims read the Quran. Things would have been even worse or uglier if more than 10% of them had read it.

Posted by: American at July 18, 2008 10:35 AM