One Man's Terrorist ... Is Every Sane Man's Terrorist

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com In an effort to get close enough to murder Benazir Bhutto, one of the Islamist attackers reportedly strapped his explosives to a one-year old infant. Meanwhile, horrifying new details emerged last night of the attempt by suicide bombers to kill Ms Bhutto on her return home from exile last month. Investigators from Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party said yesterday they believed the bomb, which killed 170 people and left hundreds more wounded, was strapped to a one-year-old child carried by its jihadist father. They said the suicide bomber tried repeatedly to carry the baby to Ms Bhutto’s vehicle as she drove in a late-night cavalcade through the streets of Karachi. “At the point where the bombs exploded, Benazir Bhutto herself saw the man with the child and asked him to come closer so that she could hug or kiss the infant,”

I'm no friend of Benazir Bhutto. But whether she knows it or not, she IS facing terrorists. That's spelled M-U-R-D-E-R-O-U-S L-U-N-A-T-I-C.

The Perfectly Fine Adventures Of Him/Her/It In Iran

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Remember Ahmadi-Nezhad’s boast at Columbia University that there were no gays in Iran? Well, it turns out that at a recent “peace” conference, Mohsen Yahyavi let it slip that, while there might be none, if the regime laid its hands on a homosexual, they killed him/her/it. Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The Times has learnt. Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged. I don’t expect this story to make headlines, but hey, it’s in the London “Times” so you never know. Let’s hope. It is one of those dazzling statements that, so to speak, tears the veil away from the illusion the mullahs try to cultivate in Western circles.

The Despair

clipped from www.nysun.com Capitalism requires careers that are open to talent: successful investment banks need to be run by the best brains rather than the best pedigrees. At the same time, capitalism produces social change. Competition leads companies to invest in new technologies. Great social cataclysms like the industrial and information revolutions change the way people live. Some cultures, some societies, tolerate this kind of diversity and upheaval better than others. Jewish society, with a culture shaped by millennia of exile, encountered capitalist modernity with the ability to maintain a sense of identity and continuity in the face of change and has generally adapted well to the new conditions. Wasps, with cultural roots in a form of Protestant Christianity that is individualistic and future-oriented, have also managed to negotiate the challenges of liberal modernity relatively smoothly. the "Anglo-Judaic" synthesis remains the despair of our enemies.

The Forgiveness Question

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The President is challenging the world with a new order. There is always passionate opposition to change. Have grievous mistakes been made? Yes. But just as Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan laid the foundations for fighting and prevailing in the Cold War, Bush has responded to 9/11 with a foreign policy revolution of similar magnitude: a reorganization of government institutions and appropriate legislation to meet the emerging threats. Containment and deterrence are ineffective in this brave new world. There is no containment if you can’t see the enemy; there is no deterrence if the enemy desires death. I believe the President’s critics are profoundly mistaken. I believe they misunderstand how he’s trying to protect us. I believe they misunderstand the nature of the threat. I believe they misunderstand history. If they succeed in dismantling what President Bush has set in motion, the results may well be catastrophic and history will never forgive them.

Shame And Obsession

clipped from opinionjournal.com Do you know what leadership is all about? Leadership is all about restoring that perspective that this country is truly an exceptional country that has great things that it is going to accomplish in the future that will be as great and maybe even greater than the ones we've accomplished in the past. If we can't do that, shame on us. This is exactly right, and we hope Giuliani keeps hammering home the point. In the conservative circles in which we usually travel, we hear far too much depressive, alarmist talk. And the left is much worse. They are so scared of terrorism that they have constructed an elaborate system of denial. They lash out at anyone who takes the terror threat seriously (see Glenn Greenwald's silly attack on the Giuliani speech for an example), but their complacency is obviously phony, as evidenced by their lurid and obsessive fantasies about torture, tyranny, global warming and all other manner of unreal horrors.

Whoops

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com Robert Spencer links to an FBI report on US “hate-motivated crimes” during 2006, showing the truth behind the constant claims of victimhood from Islamic advocacy groups: FBI hate crimes report for 2006: Jews suffer over 5 times more attacks than Muslims. Anti-Black 3,136 Anti-Jewish 1,027 Anti-White 1,008 Anti-Male Homosexual 881 Anti-Hispanic 770 Anti-Female Homosexual 192 Anti-Islamic 191

The Obscenity

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Max Dimont in his 1962 book, Jews, God and History, observes that Nazi propaganda had been anti-Christian since 1919, and that Jews sent to concentration camps were met there by Christians of conscience who arrived before the Jews. Dimont is not defending Christianity as a Christian and he certainly is not condemning his own faith or denying the mass murder of his own Jewish people in the Holocaust, which his book explains in great and awful detail.   What Dimont does in his book, written only seventeen years after the end of the Second World War, is to show that blaming the Holocaust on Christian "anti-Semitism," is not just wrongheaded, but obscene.  Professor Schapiro, an eminent Jewish professor, in his 1940 college textbook on European history observed that the only opposition to the Nazis came from Protestant and Catholic clergy, who stood their ground despite persecution.

MAD RIP Update

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world. But this is not new. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot also had their apologists who saw them as “nationalists” with “legitimate grievances.” So much for the allegation that the Khomeini quotation is “non-existent.” But there is another quotation I have cited repeatedly in the course of showing why Iran would not be deterred by the fear of retaliation. This one is a statement by the supposedly moderate former President Rafsanjani: If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession . . . application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.

Before, Not After

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Still the idea of BBC broadcasts that might have warned any Germans who participated in the extermination process that they would be prosecuted as war criminals, broadcasts that left no doubt in the mind of every single German, every single European (since most European nations were complicit in the execution of the Holocaust) that they would be held accountable. Even if they weren’t, the fear of it might have had some effect, the putative broadcasts might have made a difference. Still among all the stories of warnings ignored, or disbelieved, rescue action denied or delayed till too late, this struck me as a not-impossible lost chance. And a reminder that the time to stop a nation from committing genocide is before it starts not after it’s finished.

Long Out Of Fashion

clipped from opinionjournal.com For its own protection, and thus that of Europe, Germany could more closely integrate and where appropriate reintegrate itself into the expeditionary and nuclear retaliatory structures of the U.S., Britain, and France without moving nuclear weapons forward to German soil; end leniency for terrorists; step up defensive measures as if it is just about to be hit; and embrace limited missile defense against potentially nuclear-armed Iranian intermediate-range ballistic missiles rather than accept the Russian thesis that 10 interceptors will perturb the nuclear equation. What are the chances of this? Though the West comprises the richest grouping of nations the world has ever seen, it has somehow come to believe not only that it is not entitled to its customary defenses but that it cannot afford them. And looking ahead strategically so as to outmaneuver crisis and war has, unfortunately, long been out of fashion.

Where They Excel

clipped from www.redstate.com The slide to success can only be stopped by the Democrat Congress cutting off funding now. The sad fact of the matter is that they may just do it. All they have to do is nothing. They are excelling at that right now. It would trigger a massive debacle if they carry through with it. The only good that would come of it is the destruction of the Democrat party for decades to come. However, as much as I would like to see the Democrats do that to themselves, it is not worth the cost, and I do not think they would commit party suicide willingly. However, they may be too blind or stupid to realize they are doing it to themselves until it is too late I am afraid. Gosh, the "what if's" can give a person a headache!

Because W Did It Of Course...

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Several other Democrats voiced similar sentiments, but Obama's chief rivals pounced on his answer, suggesting that it sounded weak. What they should have said is that it sounded like George Bush. It is President Bush who has has been saying since 2002 that the longstanding Western policy of accommodating corrupt dictatorships in the Arab world has contributed to the rise of terrorism, and that the only long-term solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism is our effort to bring modernity, including democracy, to the Muslim world. This was the chief reason for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and those who share Bush's view of the matter are conventionally called, for no very good reason, "neocons." What is weird about Obama and other Democrats who pay lip service, at least, to the value of democracy is that they seem willing to apply the principle to every country in the world except Iraq.

#177? (!)

clipped from www.theaviationnation.com TSA Office of Intelligence Comment: Although there is no information that the aircraft was being specifically targeted for a future terrorist attack, the actions of the four passengers are highly suspicious. FFDO confirmation of possible tampering of the lavatory mirror in one of the lavatories could be indicative of an attempt to locate concealment areas for smuggling criminal contraband or terrorist materials.  In this case, it appears the left lavatory was the sole area of interest for the passengers. One subject's excuse that the right lavatory was dirty when it was confirmed to be clean shows the four passengers had a specific, operational objective. Although unconfirmed at this time, this incident has many of the elements of pre-operational terrorist planning.  Source: TSA Suspicious Incidents Report #177 Unless there have been 177 such incidents in the past fifteen months, one wonders when TSA Suspicious Incident Reports #1-#176 occurred — and what information they contain?

Yes. And The Swiss Were "Neutral" In WWII Also...

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Has an opening appeared for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear weapons standoff? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged that Iran might have a neutral third party such as Switzerland perform their uranium enrichment in order to appease Western nations who insist Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons: Iran's President President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Dow Jones Newswires Sunday that he would be consulting with Arab nations on a plan to enrich uranium outside the region in a neutral country such as Switzerland.

The Weak Horses (And Stomachs)

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Blair says he has no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein, but clearly he sees 2003 as a missed opportunity for the UN. He tells the Times that in the end, the permanent UNSC members seemed more interested in hamstringing the US than they ever were in resolving the problem of Saddam Hussein. It points to a problem at the basis of the war on terror -- the lack of stomach in the West for the fight. “The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out." So far, with the exception of George Bush and Tony Blair and perhaps now Nicolas Sarkozy, that mostly appears correct. UPDATE: As CapQ commenter C Cage points out, I forgot John Howard of Australia.

Our Corrupt "Betters" (Part 92365)

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal noticed a story buried at the Washington Post regarding the biggest embarrassment in the House of Representatives, William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson. The man who commandeered a National Guard detachment to act as his personal moving company during Hurricane Katrina and who kept $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer had new allegations of corruption filed in federal court on Friday. Nancy Pelosi does not have her hands tied in this case. The House has the ability to expel members who act unethically, even absent a criminal conviction. It rarely happens; the only two in the last 150 years to be expelled were James Traficant in 2002 and Michael Myers in 1980, and both had to get convicted of bribery first to get the boot from their colleagues. Neither party has proven very courageous in protecting Congress and the People from the corrupt. Denny Hastert even filed a lawsuit to keep the FBI from using material seized in Jefferson's Capitol Hill offices