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Who said it, and when?
George W. Bush after the surge, or after the Road Map was formulated? No.
Bill Clinton after Oslo? Nope.
Jimmy Carter after the Camp David accords? Strike three.
It was Richard Milhous Nixon in his resignation speech, when he announced that he would leave office on this day, August 9, in 1974. He listed the accomplishments of his abortive administration, including this:
In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom have considered us their enemy for nearly 20 years, now look on us as their friends. We must continue to build on that friendship so that peace can settle at last over the Middle East and so that the cradle of civilization will not become its grave.
Why did that friendship, such as it was, not last? Why have so many other presidents failed in their own attempts to establish and build upon that friendship?
Because, of course, of the fanatical intransigence of the jihad ideology, and because of how dimly understood that ideology always has been, and continues to be, in the State Department and the highest levels of the U.S. government. As long as this fog of ignorance remains -- and it is thicker than ever these days -- every successive President will try, and fail again and again, in achieving the goal so triumphantly announced by Nixon as a point in his favor during his hour of disgrace.
Posted by Robert at August 9, 2008 12:43 PM
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"Kashmir sees worst communal tension in decades".
http://dawn.com/2008/08/09/top9.htm
Jihad has been going in kashmir for years if not centuries. When Kashmir government refused to allocate 100 acres for Hindu pilgrims, they started to protest. After years of dhimmitude Kashmiri hindus have started protesting their oppression.
When 400,000 kashmiri hindus were driven out, it was not communal. But when Hindus start protesting it is totally communal.
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at August 9, 2008 1:45 PM
This story is not directly related. But it shows attitude prevailing attitude(or dhimmitude).
"Kashmir sees worst communal tension in decades".
http://dawn.com/2008/08/09/top9.htm
Jihad has been going in kashmir for years if not centuries. When Kashmir government refused to allocate 100 acres for Hindu pilgrims, they started to protest. After years of dhimmitude Kashmiri hindus have started protesting their oppression.
When 400,000 kashmiri hindus were driven out, it was not communal. But when Hindus start protesting it is totally communal.
at August 9, 2008 1:46 PM
I look forward to the day when an American President tells the American people that Islam is inimical to much that America stands for and that while many Muslims are themselves good people, their religion is not good and cannot benefit America in any way. What a day it will be when this happens. At least I hope it's "when" and not "if."
Posted by: Wellington at August 9, 2008 2:30 PM
lets not forget he also cried i am not a crook after being impeached
Posted by: ISLAMSNOTFORME at August 9, 2008 2:57 PM
Those words predated the Iranian Revolution, by about five years. Nixon probably could not foresee Iran becoming the enemy.
Never underestimate what Ayatollah Khomeini did for the cause of peace in the Middle East - none of it good.
at August 9, 2008 3:37 PM
Most of the insiders probably do understand but liken the acknowledgement to a bomb on Hiroshima. Stating the obvious will start WWIII. It's just a matter of time before one or the other side starts it.
Posted by: Nobama at August 9, 2008 3:57 PM
But we have with us, and apparently are doomed to always have with us, those who have spent their entire professional lives on the "Arab-Israeli dispute" or, as it is now known so tendentiously, the "Israel/Palestine" problem. And since none of them, not the aaron millers (with the "fourcoreissues" of "settlementssecurityJerusalemrefugees," not the dennis-rosses (with the "fourcoreissues" of "settlementsJerusalemrefugeessecurity," not the richard-haases (with the "fourcoreissues" of Jerusalemrefugeessecuritysettlements), not the martin-indyks (with the "fourcoreissues" of Jerusalemsecuritysettlementsrefugees," not any of these people who, never having understood, never having studied, never having grasped the relevance of Islam because Islam is in the minds of men, and is not so obviously visible to them as are the "fourcoreissuesofJerusalemsecurityrefugeessettlements" and it is so much easier to believe, in good American fashion, that there is a "problem" and that this "problem" can be solved, is susceptible of "solution" -- one-state, two-state, three-state-potato four -- because if, for some reason, it could be shown that this war on Israel is a Jihad, and that Jihad is a permanent part of Islam, where -- where then would those hasses and millers and rosses ahd indyks be, where would be the last several decades of their lives, the money they get, from naive rich Jewish endowers of this or that Washington think-tank where they assume that the dennis-rosses and the aaron-millrs and the martin-indyks and the richard-hasses must, simply must, know what they are talking about, and what's more, must, simply must, be "pro-Israel" -- whatever that is supposed to mean when applied to those who refuse to understand, who wilfully will not understand, the real nature of the permanent war -- a manageable war, but a permanent one -- that is waged against Israel, using many instruments beside the most obvious ones of terroism and qitaal.
The dopes must be shown up to be dopes. Their funders must be made to see this, and de-fund them. They must no longer serve as advisers to candidates. They must be held up for ridicule, mocked to scorn, with their "fourcoreissues" that never include the One Big Core Issue: Islam.
Arab Muslims do not, have not, and never will accept the existence of the Infidel nation-state. They can be forced to acquiesce in its existence, as they do now. They can, some of them, possibly decide that the game is not worth the candle, if the stakes, for them, and the damage that will be inflicted on them, in turn, simply becomes too obviously high. But not a single concession made by Israel in any of its many negotiations and treaties with Muslim Arab states, concessions always made in the coin of real, tangible, non-recoverable things -- land, for which successive Israeli governments could not or would not firmly and resolutely state, and then maintain, their legal claims (from both the precise provisions of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, and from the laws and customs that in modern times have always applied in the post-bellum settlements by which territory won by those who have repeatedly been the victims of aggression but have emerged the victor, is kept by those victors, and "peace" is what the victor offers the vanquished, and certainly it is not the defeated who are in a position to expect that an offer of a false "Peace" (why false, one of those "experts" listed above tries to protest in a voice that is breaking? Well, all any of htose fourcoreissue experts need do is look at the record of all those neogiations and those treaties, and then, for the reasons that explain that unbroken record of broken promises, they may consult Majid Khadduri's War and Peace in the Law of Islam, or otherwise familiarize themselves with the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and its significance).
Memo to American Presidents, to American Secretaries of State and Defense, to American dilomats and all those who are involved, or want to be, in "solving" the "Israel/Palestine Question":
When going to the MIddle East, there to "find out what the people in the region think" (a condolleeza-riceish conceit) by hearing from the mouth of some "moderate" Arab leader "what must be done" (any old Hussein or Abdullah of Jordan will do nicely -- once it was the plucky little king, as he used to be called, Hussein, and now it is his less plucky son Abdullah, squiring Obama about in a Mercedes 600 and telling him why the Americans really must put pressure on Israel -- one can just imagine his spiel -- "I say this as a true friend of the United States -- my days at Deerfield were my happiest, you know" -- in order to "calm" the Middle East down), when , as I say, you, diplomat or candidate or Cabinet member or President, are going to the Middle East, make sure you know all about Islam, make sure you have set yourself to school, and not at a school where your smiling tutor is sly John Esposito or the army of apologists for Islam abroad in the land. Need a reading list? That can be supplied? Want a private tutorial? That to.
Just make sure you fix on Islam: the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics of the Belief System, and the history of Islamic conquest, over the past 1350 years, from the Iberian Peninsula to the East Indies.
Islam. Don't leave home without it.
Posted by: Hugh at August 9, 2008 5:03 PM
That hudna didn't last long.
Posted by: tanstaafl at August 9, 2008 5:43 PM
Arab Muslims do not, have not, and never will accept the existence of the Infidel nation-state.
by Hugh
So how does anyone anywhere make the claim that there are "moderate" Muslims anywhere in the Arab world? No one who cannot accept the existence of a state anywhere in the world that is not ruled by Islam can claim to be Muslim "in name only" or "by accident of birth".
at August 9, 2008 7:04 PM
Nice freudian slip there, Hugh, in the 'Memo to..' paragraph: 'American dilomats'.
I know your finger on the keyboard skipped the 'p', unintentionally. But the serendipitous result suggests to me an amusing portmanteau word combining 'dill' and 'doormat', and with arcane echoes of 'dilettante' and 'laundromat' (where, of course, one washes white and spins...).
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at August 10, 2008 12:27 AM
In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom have considered us their enemy for nearly 20 years, now look on us as their friends. We must continue to build on that friendship so that peace can settle at last over the Middle East and so that the cradle of civilization will not become its grave. --Richard Nixon
Nixon knew nothing about the Jihad ideology of Islam. He knew nothing about Islam. In 1974, probably only a handful of people did.
at August 12, 2008 5:15 PM
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