Detroit's Race Card-in-the-Hole

“Don't you say his name here.”

--City Council President Monica Conyers forbidding a white suitor from uttering the name of Barack Obama in the presence of Detroit's black leaders

Just imagine how ugly Detroit’s race-baiting leadership would come across if President Obama hadn’t birthed us all into a post-racial utopia?

I hate this subject like hell. But I realize that if we can’t talk about race, we can’t talk about jihad. Not because jihad and race are the same thing, (they are not the same thing!) but because the same self-censoring tricks that were deployed by race hustlers, (and then gay-rights activists) to prevent Americans from being able to speak, or even think critically about racial matters (or homosexuality), have been taken up and perfected by jihadist spokesmen and defenders.

Put another way, the nagging inner voice that forbids you from thinking that a black person can be a racist or that homosexuality is not “normal” is the same voice threatening you now that you’d better not dare associating Islam with terrorism.

Last Sunday Detroit News editor Nolan Finley, whose opinions are generally expressed at a moderate temperature and in a calm tone, had the sort of outburst that might have been illustrated in the old cartoons by mercury rising in a big thermometer so fast it breaks the glass as the top and spurts right out.

It captures some of what is going on in this area, and why, so I’m posting it in full.

Elect a crazy council, get crazy results

Nowhere is Michigan's brain drain on greater display than in the Detroit City Council chambers.

My hopes for Detroit's future faded as I watched the tape of last Tuesday's council meeting, the one that considered the Cobo Center expansion deal.

It was a tragic circus, a festival of ignorance that confirmed the No. 1 obstacle to Detroit's progress is the bargain basement leaders that city voters elect. The black nationalism that is now the dominant ideology of the council was on proud display, both at the table and in the audience.

Speakers advocating for the deal were taunted by the crowd and cut short by Council President Monica Conyers, who presided over the hearing like an angry bulldog; whites were advised by the citizens to, "Go home."

Opponents were allowed to rant and ramble on uninterrupted about "those people" who want to steal Detroit's assets and profit from the city's labors.

A pitiful Teamster official who practically crawled to the table on his knees expressing profuse respect for this disrespectful body was battered by both the crowd and the council.

When he dared suggest that an improved Cobo Center would create more good-paying jobs for union workers, Conyers reminded him, "Those workers look like you; they don't look like me."

Desperate, he invoked President Barack Obama's message of unity and was angrily warned, "Don't you say his name here."

Juxtapose the place and the faces and imagine a white Livonia City Council treating a black union representative with such overt racial hostility. The Justice Department would swoop down like a hawk, and the Rev. Al Sharpton would clog Five Mile Road with protesters.

But in Detroit, dealing with the council's bigotry is part of the cost of doing business. As is dealing with its incompetence. (I'll pause here and excuse from that indictment Sheila Cockrel and Brenda Jones, who supported the Cobo deal, as did Kwame Kenyatta, who although he's an avowed nationalist, most often votes in the city's best interests.)

Emmet Moten, the developer who just opened the Fort Shelby Hotel downtown, was at the meeting and found it appalling. Moten went to Lansing in 1983 on behalf of Mayor Coleman Young to successfully lobby for a regional tax to support Cobo.

"And now we're saying, 'We don't want your money,'" Moten says. "If Coleman were alive today, he'd be outraged. It hurts, it really hurts."

Now, Moten says, "we Detroiters gotta be outraged."

Outraged enough to go to the polls in November and elect a brighter, more responsible council. Moten and others I talked with this week are encouraged that mayoral primary voters picked Dave Bing and Ken Cockrel Jr., the two most rational candidates on the ballot.

The test now will be whether it's those primary voters or the angry council crowd who represent the real Detroit.

As Moten notes, "You can't fix this for us. We have to fix it ourselves."

Nobody can help Detroit if voters again elect a City Council composed of separatists, clueless dowagers and the apparently insane.

I could take a couple exceptions to Finley’s account, (he’s far too kind to Coleman Young, who was the Johnny Appleseed that planted this generation of racist politicians), but I’m all on board with Finley for daring to use terms like “bigotry,” “black nationalism,” “separatists,” “clueless,” and “insane.” In this week’s piece he added another, “segregationist.” (“A 22,000-mile view of Detroit's despair”).

These are extremely hard terms, but accurate, and they need to be said. These days, and for a long time now, Detroit's problems with racism have been primarily a majority black problem, not a majority white problem. It isn't the legacy of Jim Crow, or the Ku Klux Klan, or slavery that makes Detroit in 2009 the most segregated city in America: that legacy is thanks to the 40 years of "black consciousness" politics, ordinary Democratic Party corruption, and hireling religious leaders who substitute a gumbo of crackpot race theories, Marxism, and get-rich-quick promises for the gospel.

If black Detroiters want to claim total ownership of Detroit as spoils of the civil-rights "struggle"--want to keep claiming Cobo Hall, and the waterworks, and the DIA, and the Zoo, and saying "that's ours, and that's ours, and that's ours," then they need to take a good, hard look at that old charge about Detroit’s hopeless segregation and admit that, “yeah, that's ours now, too.”

Wright: 'Barack Ain't Jesus'

"Barack's name ain't Jesus. Barack ain't gonna improve your child's reading score. There are things we've got to do on our own," he said.
--Reverende Jeremiah Wright

Barack ain't gonna improve nobody's grammar, neither.

Arrest Warrant for Sudan's President al-Bashir

From Doug Farah's blog:

Mar 5, 18:25

Why The Al Bashir Arrest Warrant is Important

Beyond the genocide and mass murder that Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has presided over in his 20 years in office, it is important to remember what al-Bashir is: a radical Islamist imposing the type of sharia law and carrying out policies that most Islamists approve of.

While the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir for Darfur (and most of the Muslim world has rallied to his defense, as they have remained silent and unmoved by the genocides his regime has perpetrated), that genocide was only one in a long series of actions taken in the name of Islam that have caused us all great harm.

In a case I testified in (now under appeal by the government of Sudan), the court in the Eastern District of Virginia accepted that Sudan “provided material support in the form of funding, direction, training and cover to Al-Qaeda, a worldwide terrorist organization whose operatives facilitated the planning and execution of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole” in October 2000, while in the port of Aden, Yemen.

When he seized power in 1989 he did so as a self-proclaimed Islamist, in the company of Hassan al-Turabi,” who is not only an extremely influential intellectual of the Muslim Brotherhood, but one of Osama bin Laden’s earliest and most ardent backers.

The regime of al-Bashir is not an “ordinary” criminal regime, such as that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Charles Taylor in Liberia. Rather, it is a theologically-motivated regime that provided some of the important theological and financial support for radical Islamist movements around the world.

Al-Bashir and al-Turabi hosted not only al Qaeda, but Hamas, Hezbollah, whose members were able to enter without visas in order to foster revolutionary solidarity and networks.

Sudan, under al Bashir, became an Islamist terrorist Disneyland, where all could mix and mingle. The imposition of sharia law, the war against non-Muslims in the south, and the Darfur genocide, are all follow-ons to those years.

While al-Bahir and al-Turabi parted ways in a power struggle, their political/theological project was one and the same. It is worth recalling all the prestigious meetings, awards and boards that al-Turabi was a part of as he and al-Bashir opened their borders to a host of Islamist terrorist organizations in the 1990s.

(Among the banks al-Turabi helped found, and served on the board for a decade, is Dar al-Maal al Islami Trust, a premier Muslim banking institution.) According a Jan. 31, 2007 Wall Street Journal piece, which I can’t find online, Overland Capital Group, a subsidiary of DMI, is under Justice Department investigation for possible tax violations. A prosecutor from the Counterterrorism division of DOJ was handling the case, the story said.

The al-Bashir regime facilitated the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bosnian Muslim movements in the early 1990s through the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), run by Sudanese diplomats in Vienna, Austria.

TWRA, posing as a charity, provided the template for the fraudulent use of charities by al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups around the world.

After 9/11, al-Bashir, sensing the shift in the winds, turned over some old and harmless intelligence on radical Islamists in Sudan and al Qaeda, to the United States. It was just enough to avoid serious sanctions.

Emboldened, the regime then went on to the Darfur atrocities while maintaining a chokehold at home, and reaping billions of dollars in new revenues as the Chinese poured into the Sudanese oil fields.

Al-Bashir represents the end product of what the Muslim Brotherhood proposes combined with what al Qaeda and violent Islamists seek: an Islamist government ruled by sharia law, with no separation at all between church (mosque) and state, and one that is willing to sponsor and facilitator of violent Islamists who carry out terrorist attacks.
#

It's September 10 for the Taliban in Swat Valley

Reported Friday:

Artists flee Pakistan's Swat valley to escape fanatics' threats

KARACHI (AFP) — Mohammad Shahid scrapes together a living in a city slum by painting birds, flowers, animals and celebrity portraits onto minibuses -- and vows never to return to the horrors of Swat valley.

After pro-Taliban vigilantes beat and threatened him at gunpoint, he swapped the green pastures and sweeping mountains of his birthplace for the concrete jungle of Pakistan's smoggy metropolis of Karachi on the Gulf.

It was heart-breaking to leave the idyll of his youth, he said, but there was no choice.

"I had to come here because there was no other chance for me or my family to survive," said 45-year-old Shahid.

The memories of the terrifying campaign waged by Islamist hardliners to enforce sharia law are still fresh for Shahid, and no fledgling truce between the government and those who chased him out will persuade him to return.

"I'm a painter, an artist. I can't do anything else to earn a living. The Taliban won't allow people like us to do our work, which saw my family suffer.

"What would I do if I return in these conditions? They will remain in control of the region and no one will have freedom to work at will."

The one-time ski resort became a battlefield. Rotar blades from helicopter gunships sliced through the once-clear skies. Warplanes roared overhead.

Anything deemed "un-Islamic" was banned. Opponents were beheaded, more than 120 girls' schools were bombed, entertainment was outlawed.

Shahid said he used to make a good living painting landscapes, birds, Pakistani and Indian film stars, pavement caricatures and portraits, which were popular with tourists who flocked to the once-friendly and tolerant valley.

But then the fanatics came, the tourists left and life changed for those who made a living from the arts.

Suspected Taliban militants kidnapped and murdered a dancer, Shabana, who ignored warnings to quit her profession. Her bullet-riddled body was dumped on the main roundabout of Green Chowk in the main town of Mingora last December.

One after another, artists, dancers and singers renounced their profession or fled to more liberal cities such as Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad.

One day, Shahid said, gun-toting vigilantes walked into his studio.

"They beat and insulted me for doing something that they said was forbidden by religion," Shahid said.

"'From now on, don't paint creatures'," Shahid quoted one of them as saying, "'otherwise you'll suffer an unprecedented punishment'."

Shahid rang his brother, a construction worker in Karachi.

"He asked me to leave immediately. I took my wife and four children, caught a bus from Mingora and came here."

He rented a place in Karachi's western Baldia Colony slum, found a job painting trucks and buses, and put his children in school.

Shahid said the humidity and pollution of Karachi frequently make his children ill, but he insists he will never again put himself at the mercy of the "unpredictable" Islamists in Swat -- where the government has agreed to enforce sharia, or religious, law.

"One's life will still be in danger no matter what guarantee they give," Shahid said. "I don't want to disturb my daughter's studies. She's in school here. The militants could reverse their pledge any moment."

The United States, which puts South Asia on the frontline of the "war on terror," has branded extremists who make their base in northwest Pakistan a direct threat to the country, to neighbouring Afghanistan, and to the security of the US and other nations.

Yet the net of Islamist extremism is spreading across the northwest, where Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists have infiltrated the border with Afghanistan to create de facto fiefdoms in semi-autonomous tribal areas.

US drones have rained dozens of missiles on areas they believe to be extremist strongholds, and Pakistan's military has spent months fighting the Taliban.

Even in Peshawar, the bustling northwestern trading city close to the Afghan border, artists have come under threat from the extremists.

Nishtar Hall, the only theatre in Peshawar, has been closed for six years.

Militants kidnapped Alam Zeb Mujahid, a famous Pashto comedian, from the upscale Hayatabad neighbourhood in January, held him for five days and let him go only after he renounced all drama and film work.

Haroon Bacha, a renowned Pashto singer, left the northwestern town of Swabi for the United States when militants demanded he stop singing.

"I started getting threats from the Taliban about a year ago. I was told to stop singing. There were letters, there were phone calls and there were text messages," he wrote to AFP in an email message from Washington.

"They used to come to my home very frequently, telling me to stop music or I would be killed."

CD and music shops, Internet cafes and barbers who shave beards -- all have been targeted and many shut down. Some of those brave enough to stay open have hired private security.

And for many of those who have left, the bombings and beheadings stay with them.

"My little children still scream when they see planes flying. Children run for shelter in Swat when they see planes or helicopters," says Hashim Khan, a 37-year-old labourer who lives near Karachi airport.

"They saw planes bombing in Swat. It still haunts their dreams. I saw bodies lying near Green Chowk, the roundabout where Shabana was dumped.

"The area once symbolised our city's beauty but now it has become 'khooni' (bloody) Chowk," he said.

On Stem Cell Story, Media Still Lying to Beat the 'Ban'

This from the current U.S. News & World Report online:

Obama to End Stem Cell Ban Monday

By Amanda Gardner

SATURDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- President Barack Obama will lift the eight-year ban on embryonic stem cell research on Monday, the White House has announced.

To the other 80 million mentions of it elsewhere in the nation's alternative information sources, I will add my insignificant reminder to all and sundry that there never was a “ban” on stem-cell research.

Former President Bush merely “limited federal funding for stem cell research only to human embryonic stem cell lines that already existed.”

The denial of federal funding no more acts as a ban on stem-cell research than the failure of the U.S. Government to finance my next Hot-'n-Ready from Little Caesars qualifies as a to a ban on pizzas.

Why is this deliberate dishonesty so important to proponents of embryo-destructive technology?

Because the barely-reported successes of stem-cell technology using adult stem cells is quickly undermining all the justifications for destroying human embryos by emotional appeals to the rights of your grandmother to be cured of Alzheimer’s.

Just yesterday, for example, a scientific journal reported that adult stem cells were successfully reprogrammed back into their “embryonic,” “free of the cancer-causing viruses and genes needed to make them.” (“Cancer threat removed from stem cells, scientists say”).


Since the donor cells came from adult victims of Parkinsons's, this study is hardly going to bolster the case for embryonic-destructive research.

Hudson River Landing

Impressive animation of US 1549 landing in the Hudson River.

Hamas's Road Map Gets You Nowhere Fast

From the American Thinker blog:

Hamas and Jihadism

By Moshe Dann

Problems without solutions are frustrating, especially when the disputes are between warring groups and countries; so politicians, diplomats and envoys spend their time negotiating and trying to hammer out a deal, anything that will show progress.

Sometimes it works, at least temporarily, and sometimes it's just a prelude to confrontation. That's the quicksand of the Middle East.

Attempts to resolve conflicts based on false assumptions, inadequate information, and denial are doomed to failure. That's why American foreign policy in the Middle East, especially concerning the Arab-Israeli dispute, has been a disaster costing thousands of lives and wasting billions of dollars.

The "peace process" that began in Oslo, through Camp David and Annapolis, via agreements and "Road Maps" was based on the "two-state" solution. Reasonable in theory, it failed in practice. Now, with a self-declared jihadist regime in Gaza, even the theory has collapsed.

Efforts to resuscitate the "peace process" by Pres. Obama's envoy, Sen. George Mitchell, will fail again because there seems to be no awareness of what Hamas jihadism means. [Read Hamas' Charter: "all Israeli territory is irrevocably Muslim land; Israel must be destroyed; the struggle against the Jews is a religious obligation for every Muslim."]

Although focused locally, Hamas is linked with every other jihadist group and terror-supporting countries, especially Iran.

Jihadists are not attacking "infidels" like Israel and Americans because they want justice, equality, more freedom, higher standards of living - or even land. They are engaged in a religious struggle to annihilate the enemy, 'the other,' non-Moslems, their entire societies and cultures.

Jihadists don't represent another culture or civilization. They are a world-wide movement that includes Al Qaida and the Moslem Brotherhood. Their goal is the destruction of all cultures and civilizations that are different as a prelude to the Caliphate, the End of Days.

Jihadists, therefore, can't compromise, reconcile, or accommodate because that would deny their reason to exist. Apocalyptic, they yearn for the end of everything - which is why - for them -- life means nothing.

Jihadism is a form of nihilism, the negation of pluralism and progress, the end of notions of good and evil. Hurtling towards a void in which nothingness is everything, martyrdom and death is the ultimate fulfillment.

This is why negotiations with Hamas are futile; any deviation from their Covenant violates their identity. Concessions are a betrayal of Islam. 'Peace-makers' are traitors.

"But," many argue, "Hamas was democratically elected, and therefore has legitimacy."

Although Hamas rules with the consent of many Palestinians, that does not give it the right to commit terrorist attacks. Nor does it mean that Israel must refrain from self-defense. Hamas cannot claim the right to rule without being held accountable.

To suggest that Hamas may change with sanctions or appeasement, or that the people will rise up against the regime is absurd. Hamas controls all schools, media and mosques. This is a locked-down society.

Where then does that leave us? A stand-off can only be resolved within Gaza, not by any outside force, but with caution and patience. Although not an ideal position, it is realistic and offers clear policy guidelines.

Making a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a precondition for rapprochement with the Muslim/Arab world and developing a coalition to confront Iran forces Israel into an untenable position and prevents any realistic alternatives.

The Arab-Israel conflict is not a territorial dispute; every Palestinian leader has said this for the last 70 years and we must believe them.

Ending the addiction to "the two-state solution" -- a quick fix that only makes the problem worse - opens the door to new and more creative possibilities. Not everyone who wants a state deserves one; a privilege, it must be earned. Neither Hamas nor Fatah have shown that they are capable of governing responsibly, maturely or wisely. Why then should they be offered a state?

The author, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.

First Draft of History, Revised Version

From the Associated Press today:

Obama's balancing act on Iraq withdrawal strategy

By JENNIFER LOVEN – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama leaned heavily toward field commanders' preferences in setting a time frame for an Iraq pullout, as he weighed the fervent desires of anti-war supporters who propelled him into office and the equally strong worries of war generals. . . .

At stake was the promise that most defined Obama's presidential bid: to bring all combat troops home — effectively, to end one of the nation's longest and most controversial wars — 16 months after taking office.

This isn’t the way I remember it. It wasn’t the anti-war activists who propelled President Obama into office. Propulsion was provided by the much more prosaic means of organized labor, the Democratic machines in urban America, a locked-down black vote, the mainstream media taking an active role in campaigning for him, and a poorly-run campaign by Senator John McCain that had nothing to attract swing voters drifting into the Obama current.

Nor was ending the Iraq war the promise that most defined Obam's campaign. The promise that most defined Obama’s presidential bid--if we exclude the slogan “hope & change” from the definition of “promise”--was that he would dramatically increase the government’s taxation and regulatory role in American lives.

For the most part Obama avoided talking about the war, especially as the news from Iraq got better and better as the campaign progressed. He also avoided the biggest mouths of the anti-war movement, and we know he dumped his friendship with people like antiwar icon Bill Ayres. Obama wanted to win bad and he knew those folks would turn him into Eugene McCarthy if they could.

I am relieved that Obama is listening to his commanders, and did not initiate the kind of hell-for-leather rout that some of us feared he might. I can’t quite give him credit for being smart about the Middle East, though: I still think he’s a foreign-policy disaster. But he’s too much a political animal to want to lose a major war during the first few weeks of his presidency.

But as I discussed in another post, the media giving him credit for ending the war is pure BS. As far back as a year ago January Bush’s successes in Iraq were pushing the war off the list of top campaign issues. “Instead,” reported the New York Times on January 3, 2008, “candidates are being asked about, and are increasingly talking about, the mortgage crisis, rising gas costs, health care, immigration, the environment and taxes.” (“Domestic Issues Now Outweigh Iraq”).

Weeks before the election, commentators were already discussing post-war Iraq and redeployment of Iraqi troops to Afghanistan, like this from October: "'On Iraq, no matter who wins, the arrows are clear,' said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. 'The U.S. presence is coming down.'” ("Iran & Iraq: No Longer Hot-Button Issues in Campaign 2008").

I know we were already discussing the war in Iraq as nearly over in October, too, here, and here.

In January 2008 Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh reported that the status of forces agreement Bush was starting to negotiate with the Iraqi government was going to be what determined the future of American forces there. The SOFA “would then replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, [and] will become a sworn obligation for the next president.” The upshot of that agreement, Hirsh pointed out, was that “the next president, Democrat or Republican, is likely to be handed a fait accompli that could well render moot his or her own elaborate withdrawal plans, especially the ones being considered by the two leading Democratic contenders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” (“Sorry, Barack, You’ve Lost Iraq./Bush's efforts to negotiate a long-term U.S-Iraq pact may remove troops as an '08 election issue for Obama, Clinton.”)

Just something to keep in mind as Obama supporters fan out across the airwaves to trumpet Obama's principled and heroic decision to end the war in Iraq that Bush and Petraeus had already won.

Affirmative Action for Abortions?

The Obama administration announced this on Friday night because it's least likely to draw unwanted attention:

Washington D.C., Feb 27, 2009 / 06:10 pm (CNA).- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to rescind regulations which made explicit the existing legal protections for medical workers who object to cooperating in abortions. The preparations have led one Republican congressman to charge President Obama’s administration with trying to implement the Freedom of Choice act “incrementally.”

On Friday the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB)announced that it was reviewing a proposal to lift the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) regulation. The move is the first step toward reversing the policy.

Read about it here: ("Obama administration may toss pro-life conscience protections").

Pork for Palestinians

Well, folks, what do you think the likelihood is that anything like the hectoring, intrusive second-guessing of CEO spending is going to be tied to the $900 million we’re sending to Hamas in Gaza?

If Obama and Congressional Democrats can browbeat auto and bank executives into selling their corporate jets, passing up bonuses, and otherwise denying themselves the perks of position, can we expect a bit of “no spending this money on anti-Jew rocket launchers”? Somehow I don’t think we're going to see C-SPAN hearings with toughminded congressmen demanding Hamas killers explain where all the money went.

The funds are supposed to be distributed through the UN and NGOs. The UN’s honest broker reputation towards Israel is badly broken. Unifil border monitors turned a blind eye to Hezbollah weapons smuggling in Lebanon, broadcast IDF troop movements during the Israel-Lebanon War, and UN ambulances have been used to provide weapons transport cover to Palestinian terrorists during the intifadah. Then there is UN headquarters, the source of endless resolutions condemning Israel.

Everything in Gaza belongs to Hamas. That’s the meaning of the coup throwing Fatah out two years ago, and the establishment of Gaza as an Islamic state under Hamas control. Even if the NGOs have mechanisms for keeping US money from going directly for Hamas’s war aims against Israel, whatever social welfare or reconstruction costs Hamas saves thanks to our money they’ll simply redirect into their terrorist agenda.

And I love the way the NYT absolves President Obama for this stupid decision: “By seeking to aid Gazans but not Hamas, the administration is following the lead of the Bush administration, which sent money to Gaza through nongovernmental organizations.”

Did you hear anything in Obama’s State of the Change address the other night that sounded like any of his policies were meant to follow the lead of the Bush administration?

Obama Borrows Heavy on Iraq

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Six years after U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, President Barack Obama will announce on Friday the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces by August 2010, administration officials said. (“Obama to end combat operation in Iraq by Aug 2010”).

I have abandoned all hope that anything can be said, shown, or explained to the average American (who voted for Obama) that will make up for his invincible ignorance when it comes to the War in Iraq: he never knew why we went in there, he never knew what we did there, and even now in February 2009 the word “Iraq” causes to spring into his mind a collage of GIs dying in Vietnam-style ambushes, a mounting pile of American casualties, and a hopeless battle against a shapeless enemy with “no end in sight.”

Nevertheless, it makes me feel better to point out how all the credit the media are allowing President Obama to steal for “ending this war” and withdrawing American forces from Iraq was already accomplished—signed, sealed, and delivered, by George W. Bush last November. It was in November 2008 that Bush concluded the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government. ("Status of Forces Agreement").

Moreover, Bush was already well along with the terms as early as January 2008, more than a year ago. That’s when he and General Petraeus were envisioning a possible outcome of “troop levels to well under 100,000, perhaps to as few as 60,000, by the time the next president takes office.” (“Sorry, Barack, You’ve Lost Iraq.”).

Bush didn’t quite meet that goal by January 2009. But the SOFA that was signed in November specified that all U.S. forces would be withdrawn from “all Iraqi cities, villages and localities. . . no later than June 30, 2009,” and all U.S. forces “shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”

The June 30, 2009 withdrawal from all Iraqi towns accomplishes the “withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces” that Obama’s announcement calls for by August 2010—14 months earlier. That’s even more ambitious than what Obama has in mind—his plan still leaves 50,000 troops in Iraq “for an additional 16 months”—just coincidentally, until the December 2011 date required under the SOFA. (“Obama to Announce U.S. Troop Withdrawal in Iraq”).

But none of those dates means a thing without the one real accomplishment—winning the war— for which Bush deserves nearly all the credit, and Obama deserves not one speck.

Not that who won the war will matter to those invincibly ignorant Americans who don't know it's all but over, and who still think our guys are getting mowed down in losing battles against superior forces in some place called Fallujah.

And for President Obama and his supporters, wars aren't about victory, anyway. Liberals don’t rally to win wars, but to “end” them. (Except wars on drugs or poverty—and then they still manage to lose them!) And since the media refused to report that America won the War in Iraq, they're still free to give the new Commander in Chief credit for ending it, even though all he’s really doing is continuing the withdrawal plans already laid down by the guy who actually won the thing.

President Obama can hardly take credit for the favorable military conditions that make his announcement possible. Any withdrawal of combat troops would be unimaginable if not for the necessary predicate of having achieved lasting military victory.

As the SOFA was reaching its final stages the Left—sensing it could be a sign of success for Bush and too stingy to credit him with anything good in Iraq—tried to minimize it as being much less than Bush had wanted,. They reported that Bush was effectively horse-traded into all kinds of concessions by the crafty Iraqis—as if Bush wanted Americans in Iraq forever! ("Galbraith: SOFA is 'stunning and humiliating' for Bush"). Then they dropped all mention of the SOFA, in joyful anticipation of handing the closing chapter of the Iraq war to Obama as a gift. You'll find no mention of the SOFA in today's articles trumpeting President Obama's dramatic announcement.

Obama has categorically refused to give Bush credit for the favorable outcome in Iraq. Now he’s trying to steal credit for bringing our troops home and “ending the war.”

He may as well pull our forces out of Japan and Germany and take credit for winning World War II.

Made in America

What in hell is going on in Minneapolis?

I just had an intrusive thought based on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show. Picture the opening sequence where the newly-blossoming Mary Richards celebrates her realization that she's gonna make it after all by tossing her beret in the air somewhere on a crowded street in downtown Minneapolis.

Now imagine that same scene, only with this guy tossing his keffiyeh.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

FBI chief: Suicide bomber indoctrinated in Minnesota

By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

February 24, 2009

FBI Director Robert Mueller said Monday in Washington, D.C., that a Somali-American man from Minnesota who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in Minneapolis.

Shirwa Ahmed, the first known suicide bomber with U.S. citizenship, immigrated with his family to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, but returned to Somalia after he was recruited by a militant group, Mueller said.

The FBI director, who spoke at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, declined to be more specific, and did not mention the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, a Minneapolis mosque that some of the young men, including Ahmed, attended, and which some local Somali families have suggested is linked to their disappearance.

Late Monday, an Abubakar spokesman said again that the mosque had nothing to do with the men's disappearances.

Ahmed was driving a vehicle laden with explosives that blew up in northern Somalia in an attack that killed as many 30 people in October, according to news reports. His body was returned to Minnesota with the help of the FBI.

"It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota," Mueller said.

Federal authorities have said that Ahmed was one of as many as two dozen young men of Somali descent who disappeared in the past two years from their homes in the Minneapolis area after being recruited by the Shabab, a militia suspected of having ties to Al-Qaida that has waged a war against the Somali government.

Some in Minneapolis' Somali community have said the young men disappeared after being radicalized at Abubakar. Representatives of the mosque have vigorously and repeatedly denied that the mosque has any connection to the men's disappearance or to any violent ideology.

Attorney Mahir Sherif, a consultant to the mosque, said in a telephone interview late Monday that Mueller "doesn't really know what's happened" and that he's "surprised that he would make such a comment."

The mosque is the largest in Minneapolis, Sherif said, drawing 10,000 to 15,000 people for the last fall's celebration marking the end of Ramadan.

"It's just frustrating to see people at high levels make such statements," he said. "It angers me they can just say this. This is affecting a lot of people. The mosque and Somalis have received a lot of hate messages because of this."

Two weeks ago, the mosque's director also rebuffed rumors.

"We have nothing to do with these kids who left," said Director Farhan Hurre. "I mean, we don't know the time they left, we don't why they left, we don't know who convinced them to go there."

This past weekend, the mosque held a seminar about how suicide is prohibited by Islam attended by hundreds of Somali youth, Sherif said.

"What more can this mosque do?" he said. "They've gone out publicly, and they've put it on paper, that there's nothing secret going on, there are not two separate messages going out. ... The Koran says you can't kill yourself. If you do, you're going straight to hell."

On Monday in Washington, Mueller suggested that Somali recruiting posed a serious issue for the FBI, which has sought the cooperation of the Somali community to try to understand whether the recruiting represents a threat.

'You Cannot Interpret the Signs of the Times'

Yesterday's New York Times article announcing the Vatican’s appointment of Archbishop Timothy Michael Dolan to preside over the Archdiocese of New York contains an obligatory dig at him as “a genial enforcer of Rome’s ever more conservative writ.” (“A Genial Enforcer of Rome’s Doctrine”).

In other words, the Times doesn’t approve of the choice, as the archbishop is obedient to the See of Peter.

To underline the sinister effect, reporter Michael Powell sets it all up this way:

For a few deeply unpleasant days, the Rev. David Cooper found himself in the crosshairs of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

It was 2003, and the priest had opined to a reporter that women should be ordained. Faraway bishops rumbled about censure. Then he picked up the telephone and heard the baritone of Milwaukee’s archbishop, Timothy Michael Dolan. Father Cooper immediately offered to resign.

No, no, the archbishop replied, we just need to repair the damage. “He was very pastoral and caring,” Father Cooper recalled.

And how was it resolved? “Oh, I agreed to recant,” he said. “He effectively silenced me.”

(That is, if agreeing to recant insincerely only to keep your job is recanting. And if being quoted in the Times is being silenced.)

Given the comparison of Archbishop Dolan doing his pastoral duty with placing some poor bastard in Rome’s “crosshairs,” Times readers are invited to understand that for all his outward geniality and care for his flock, he’s still just an enforcer sent to kill the buzz of America’s most with-it Catholics (that is, the ones who defy Church teaching on abortion, who think all religions are equally valid, (except Catholicism, which they’re ashamed of), and who actually give a shit what the Times thinks of them).

But here’s the most silly bit of the piece. Powell writes:

On matters of doctrine, the archbishop 59, adheres to the line laid down by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, including firm opposition to abortion, birth control, divorce, gay marriage and any crack in the wall of priestly celibacy.

If anyone is interested in doing some of the fact-checking the Times dispensed with for this article, I invite you to search out any moment in the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church when she did not preach firm opposition to abortion, artificial contraception, divorce, or did not condemn homosexual practices (“gay marriage” is a recently invented euphemism), nor when, say, in the past 15 centuries, she ever entertained abandoning her rule on the practice of priestly celibacy.

My point is that these fundamentals of Catholic moral teaching and practice were not a line “laid down” by John Paul II and Pope Benedict: putting it that way strongly suggests that before JPII became Pope in 1979 the Church’s line was pointing somewhere else. The fact is, the line the Times sneers at leads right straight right back to the first century. (There are valid questions as to whether the celibacy rule was in effect universally in the first century, but there is no question that once it was adopted formally in the Latin Church, in ancient times, it has never been abandoned: it certainly was not part of a line first "laid down” by JPII).

Even John XXIII, whom Democrat Catholics fondly remember now as a fellow liberal because he was fat, jolly, and foisted Vatican II on the Church, laid down the identical “conservative” line, or he would have, surely, had he foreseen how many silly priests and theologians were going to try to erase it.

I suppose every Times story, looked at through the cracked political lens they use for everything, appears as a struggle between “conservative” reactionaries and “liberal” freedom-loving intellectuals. But applied to church matters, this distorted view is most insidiously misleading.

As the decay of American Catholicism since 1965 has proved beyond doubt, once decouple the Church’s moral teachings and doctrine from essential Catholic identity and you can convince Some of the People of God All of the Time that the Church only teaches what she does because of that one stubborn old priest in Rome who doesn’t know anything about sex.

Catholics were scolded by smug religious teachers for forty years that the Church has got to change, and then left them with no more substantial means of understanding the whys and hows of "change" than to assume it was identical with popular demand. That’s democracy, isn’t it? We Are the Church, aren’t We? Didn't we in America "vote for change" and elect Obama when we grew weary of the Bush tax cuts and all this gloomy talk about terrorism? And lickety-split we had higher taxes, more lobbyists in high office, and a foreign policy we can conduct from our hands and knees? Same deal goes for the Church, right? Get a new Pope, get new doctrines.

Hell, maybe we'll even be popular again.

As John Paul was growing visibly weaker there really were a lot of older “Vatican II” Catholics who consoled one another that once he was dead God would finally be able to rebuild His Church in accordance with the yellowing plans moldering in abandoned convents since the 1960s. When that new day arrived, they said, then we’d have our women priests, our ecclesiastically blessed condoms, and a harmless runny-in-the-middle gospel with all the pith and punch of Mike Brady lecturing Greg and Marcia about sharing the bathroom. But John Paul died and then B16 came along, and like a lightning flash it became clear to all at once that the Heavenly variances needed for the old sixties updates had been denied, and that project was being shut down for good.

And the New York Times saw that it was bad.

Fortunately for humanity the Holy Spirit, Whom the Lord promised would lead His Church into all the truth, uses other criteria for selecting her leaders. He is especially rigid on that promise about the gates of hell not prevailing.

That promise is why we have someone like Josef Ratzinger in Peter’s Chair instead of someone like (God help us), Rembert Weakland or Thomas Gumbleton.

The real miracle of the Catholic Church, if you care to look for one, is that, as Chesterton said somewhere, she’s right when everyone else is wrong–and at this moment everyone else is really, really wrong about a whole lot of things. We’re getting things wrong that we shouldn’t be missing by a mile, like whether lesbian hook-ups should be glorified with taffeta and white veils, or how many lives you count when you see a man and a pregnant woman together. That is why, when even gutsy stand-up guys like George Bush and Tony Blair still can’t quite exactly tell the truth on Islam, Benedict steps up and points out how that ancient heresy has always been a chaos of violence and unreason. He should know. His predecessors were holding the line six centuries before the whirlwind escaped from Arabia.

When it comes to the Catholic Church the New York Times has always clung to its editorial commitment to side with the gates of hell. In some ways, maybe that signifies nothing more than a historical leftover of eastern WASP bigotry. Maybe it's something deeper, something that is now causing Archbishop Dolan to find himself in the crosshairs of the enforcer of the Eastern Establishment. No matter. Even if it's something like that, we know their side will not prevail.

Who Can You Count on When the Chimps Are Down?

The New York Post has apologised to those offended by an editorial cartoon that critics said was racist because it likened President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee.

The New York Post cartoon drew immediate criticism from Al Sharpton, the black activist and community leader. . . .

The country's first African-American president had the previous day signed the $787 billion economic recovery bill after a heated debate in Washington. Mr Sharpton immediately accused the newspaper, which takes a strong conservative editorial tone, of deploying a crude racist stereotype of blacks as monkeys.

Col Allan, the Post's editor-in-chief, had vigorously defended the cartoon as a parody of Washington politics, saying it "broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy". ("New York Post apologises over 'racist' Barack Obama cartoon")

* * *

Needless to say, I’m sad to see the New York Post fall on its sword this way. Free speech has died a little more.

The NYP cartoonist clearly meant to skewer Congressional Democrats. Indeed, Republicans have criticized Obama for letting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have control of this bill instead of having more input himself.

You remember Nancy Pelosi, she’s America's Speaker of the House, and was last seen crouching on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, happily peeling a banana.

Then America’s new Attorney General, Eric Holder, just finished a speech insulting the whole country as a “nation of cowards” because we don’t talk about race more candidly.

Next to cleaning a handgun without unloading it first, I can’t think of a higher-risk activity in this country than talking about race without the express prior approval of the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

The problem is that the folks who most want to talk about race, (the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and the Congressional Black Caucus), are the most reactionary when it comes to boycotting, calling for resignations and firings of people who make the stupid mistake of saying something about race. For example, this is how the NAACP is handling the chimp cartoon controversy, which isn't even about race:

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called on the tabloid to remove editor-in-chief Col Allan, as well as longtime cartoonist Sean Delonas.

Then we’re called cowards because we refuse to step on things clearly marked “LAND MINE.”

The reason these candid conversations fail is because they always follow this pattern:

African-American spokesperson: This country needs to have a serious conversation about race.

Non-African-American respondent: Okay. I feel I treat everybody fairly, and I don’t see why I should get passed over for a promotion to make way for a less-qualified guy just because he’s a minority.

African-American spokesperson: Shut up. You have no right to discuss what our people have gone through.

Race hucksters not only control the subject matter of race, but also claim control of any subject matter that can possibly be connected to race, even if only as an arbitrary emblem or symbol of race.

Hurrican Katrina, for example, was a hurricane, not a Klan attack. As many white people were killed, injured, and suffered property damage as blacks, (more whites died, proportionally). But once the story of New Orleans was adopted by Jesse Jackson and the rest as an example of racial injustice, then white Americans were no longer allowed to discuss Katrina without facing 100-1 odds of offending blacks. (Unless, that is, they used it as shorthand for the racism of the Bush administration. But candid talk about Katrina is forbidden).

Just Friday some state governors said they intended to refuse the “stimulus” money because they don’t want their states saddled with escalating entitlement bills after the federal money runs out. They were rational, economic/political decisions. But U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said he was insulted by opposition to the bill because it was a "a slap in the face of African-Americans."

There simply isn't any having a candid conversation under these conditions.

It’s perfectly obvious this New York Post cartoon isn’t about Obama. I don’t even believe that Sharpton and Julian Bond believe it’s about Obama. They just see an opportunity and they’re going to take it. Good race-hustling jobs are hard to come by in post-racial America.

But where were these guys when Leftist racists were drawing cartoons explicitly mocking Condoleeza Rice as a race stereotype, or Palestinian racists drawing her pregnant with a chimpanzee?

And didn’t Lincoln’s enemies call him a baboon and caricature him as a monkey? Doesn't Obama imagine himself to be the New Lincoln?

If Obama doesn’t unsay his AG’s foolish talk, then he’s the coward.

'Someone Get Me Paula Zahn!'

Damn! It really is September 10, 2001!

Chandra Levy is back in the news.

For five months in 2001 leading right up through the evening of September 10, the cable news producers, the worst offenders of whom were at Fox News, were positively addicted to running empty stories about the unsolved murder of Chandra Levy.

The stations only had a handful of facts, few of them fresh after months of repeating them, and a total of maybe 28 seconds of video, (Chandra doing dishes, Rep. Gary Condit with his sports jacket slung over his shoulder); but they looped the footage incessantly, sometimes dozens of times every evening, until sensitive types like me were going out of our minds.

It took the 9/11 attacks to get Fox News to drop it.

Who knows? If they actually can go back and re-start history where it lay on 9/10 by finally charging Ms. Levy’s killer, maybe they can go back now and catch bin Laden.

Tough Stuff

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil

When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?

By JUDEA PEARL

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.

It’s Quiet. Too Quiet.

"Remember, there is no press now, at least as we have known it since Watergate. Sometime around mid-2007, during its coverage of the Democratic primary, it ceased to be investigatory and chose to become an adulatory megaphone. A news story on the front pages of the New York Times or Washington Post, or a piece aired on NPR, or a feature in Time or Newsweek, is simply a disguised op-ed on yet another underappreciated moral or intellectual gift of Barack Obama." – Victor David Hanson

It All Adds Up

This Sunday's Detroit Free Press editorial:

Now's time to discuss global warming

Time's short for planet; we need the right national response, and quickly



This Monday's Detroit Free Press headline:

London shuts down amid its biggest snowfall in years


LONDON — The British capital ground to a halt today after the worst snowstorm in 18 years caused hundreds of flight cancellations and virtually shut down public transportation.

Shops, schools and courts shut down and long trails of commuters trudged through the streets, looking for scarce taxis or ways to work after more than four inches of snow fell overnight.

"We're not in Russia here," said Guy Pitt, a Transport for London spokesman. "We don't have an infrastructure built for constant snow."

Year of the Double Standard

OK. Not that declarations by this blog count for much, but since it will make me feel better, DU is officially declaring 2009 the Year of the Double Standard. We’ve had them before, obviously; they’re the world we live in. But they're taking it up to a whole new league now.

The LA Times is reporting today that “President Barack Obama has left intact a program that gives the CIA authority to carry out so-called secret renditions — abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.” (“Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool”).

The justification given by the White House to the LA Times:

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

Makes sense to me. It made sense to me back when Dana Priest revealed classified information about it in her mission to bring down the Bush administration.

We all remember secret renditions as one of the critical Bush-Cheney war-crimes accusations that we’ve all had to listen to for five years. Here’s the award-winning double standard:

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism. “Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.”

Limited circumstances, presumably, that didn’t exist from 9/11 until January 20, 2009?

This was how Human Rights Watch felt about secret renditions in 2007:

Human Rights Watch expressed grave concern about President Bush’s stated view that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 permits the government to restart the CIA’s secret prison program. Human Rights Watch called upon the Bush administration
to reject the use of secret detention and coercive interrogation as tactics in fighting terrorism, and announce that the CIA’s detention and interrogation program has been permanently discontinued.

“The CIA program – and the civilian leaders who created it – have inflicted tremendous harm on the reputation, moral standing, and integrity of the United States,” Mariner said. “It’s time for President Bush to repudiate this program,and to take steps to repair the damage it has done.” ("US Secret CIA Prisoners Still Missing").

This was Amnesty International eight months ago on secret renditions under the Bush administration:

European states have been implicated in the US-led rendition and secret detention programme, in which people have been unlawfully detained and transferred from one country to another outside of any judicial process. Some have been transferred from US custody to countries where torture and other ill-treatment is known to accompany interrogation; others have been transferred into US custody and subsequently held in detention centres in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

A number of individuals have been subjected to enforced disappearance, including in secret CIA detention, and the whereabouts of some three dozen people remain unknown. Every one of the victims of rendition interviewed by Amnesty International has said they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in ustody.

Investigations by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament have recommended that Member States take measures to prevent such human rights violations occurring in the future and to ensure redress, including reparation, to the victims. (“End rendition and secret detention: Europe’s duty”).

So today there’s a “legitimate place” for what was a “human rights violation” only in June.

Bush-Free History in Iraq

The BBC and the LA Times and NPR have managed to report on an historic election in Iraq--and in the Middle East--without once mentioning the name of the man who made it possible, George W. Bush.

Imagine a book about the Civil War that makes no mention of Lincoln. That's how journalism rolls these days.

CAIR Wants Rid of a Troublesome Priest

My eye happened to fall on this little story by Detroit News Muslim Affairs Correspondent, Gregg Krupa in the back of Section A this morning. (“Broadcast angers Muslims/Leaders want radio station to stop airing comments by priest they say defame Muhammad.”).

By the way, just for fun I Googled “angers” and “Muslims” together last night to see how many hits I’d get. When it stops counting I’ll let you all know.

But I digress. Krupa’s article describes how:

Muslims and interfaith leaders in Metro Detroit are asking a local radio station owner to discontinue broadcasts in which, they say, a Coptic priest has repeatedly defamed the Prophet Muhammad over the past
year.

In an Arabic-language broadcast Wednesday on WNZK 680/690 AM,the Rev. Zakariah Boutros said the Muslim prophet Muhammad had engaged in necrophilia and gay sex, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations.

(Oh, who else but CAIR?). The priest is Father Zakaria Botros, a Coptic (an ancient Egyptian Christian church). CAIR's Dawud Walid says the claim about Mohammed is false. But then Amani Mostafa, the host of the program that aired the discussion, “Questions About Faith,” responded this way:

. . .Boutros was "reading from an Islamic text" when he said, over the air, that the Prophet Muhammad slept in the grave of a dead woman and allowed a man to kiss and caress his chest.

“I am a former Muslim,” said Mostafa, who is now Christian. “I know exactly what I am talking about. These are the things we were taught as children. We are quoting the Quran and the Hadiths, and if the Muslims have a problem with that then they have a problem with their own book.”

I have to confess to being unfamiliar with Fr. Botros before today. I checked him out and he turns out to be quite a guy. He broadcasts in Arabic on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). He knows his Islamic sources backwards and forwards, and has managed to earn the title “Public Enemy #1” by Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid. Plus, CAIR wants him off the air.

World Magazine gave Fr. Botros their “Daniel” award in 2008. Last March Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al-Qaeda Reader had this to say about Fr. Botros:

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. (“Islam’s ‘Public Enemy #1’/Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire.”)

Fr. Botros challenges his listeners by presenting an Islamic teaching in the form of a question, which he then establishes by citations to the Koran and hadiths: (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”).

Ibrahim describes how the priest spent three years “bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. . . . by being ‘breastfed,’ the men become like ‘sons’ to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them”.

Fr. Botros then leaves the questions open for his Muslim audience, inviting anyone who cares to to call in and point out where his understanding of the sources is incorrect.

He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,” — "evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains — not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence — which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him — which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.

Which is kind of funny, in view of how this current story turns out. Krupa reports that “in an interview with The Detroit News last summer Birach promised to end the broadcasts, upon the request of interfaith Muslim, Jewish and Christian groups in Metro Detroit.” A promise made during an interview? But who makes promises to reporters during an interview? Sounds more like a negotiation.

This is where it gets funny, on several levels, though I don’t think Krupa meant it that way. The italics are mine:

Birach went so far as to put people associated with Boutros's broadcasts on conference calls with this reporter, while he berated them for allowing what some consider hate speech. "It's not right," Birach said at the time. "It's not fair to use some fake or stupid books to accuse someone's religion. Do you hear me?" But on Thursday, Birach said he had since heard from "several prominent people in the community," that what Boutros stated in the broadcasts is true. "Maybe we need to have more meetings," Birach said, referring to members of the Muslim and interfaith communities.

Maybe so. Krupa will be happy to arrange them. Better bring a radio.

Presidential Pay Grade Clarified

I learned recently about the custom of the outgoing President leaving a note for the his successor in the Oval Office. (“Bush Bids Farewell With Secret Note to Obama”).

I don’t know what was in President Bush’s note to President Obama, but I’m reasonably positive it wasn’t a job description.

Diana West views Obama’s televised apology to the Arab world as an effort by the U.S President to offer himself as a bridge to the Muslim world. ("Is this the job of the president of the United States?"). But in the process, we actual Americans learned a few things about how he understands his duties:

Obama spoke quite deliberately about the requirements of his new "job" as commander in chief, many of which are unprecedented. "My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language has to be the language of respect."

That's the job of the president of the United States?

"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," Obama continued, simply speaking about his Islamic connections, indulging in what he condemned as "scare tactics" on the campaign trail. Now these connections are job credentials. "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives."

That's the job of the president of the United States?

Obama continued. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record -- as you say, America was not born as a colonial power -- and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."

Can he possibly be this clueless? Yet the evidence is right in front of us. American presidents have known the real price of “respect” to Muslim leaders since at least the George Washington administration, when the new nation first began paying “respect” to Muslims in the form of extortionate tributes to the pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli--in exchange for not pirating our commerce traders and holding our sailors for ransom.

When Thomas Jefferson, in London in 1786 to negotiate blackmail payments with the Ambassador of Tripoli, put the question, What business do you have attacking ships from nations that had done you no harm?, the Ambassador explained that:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

Jefferson finally began fighting back when he became President in 1801. He'd always known that paying ransoms would never settle things, and he’d long concluded, (probably after hearing the Ambassador of Tripoli's explanation of how Muslims view nonMuslims), that it would be “best to effect a peace by the medium of war.” That approach worked, and by 1815 American ships were no longer being attacked by the Barbary pirates, and we weren't paying any more tribute.

As Diana West explains, Obama wasn't aiming his words at his countrymen, but at the Ummah. Obama wasn’t telling Americans that we need to respect Muslims. He was telling Muslims that his country will pay them respect.

But “respect” is a word that can carry different connotations in different contexts. It can mean one thing in a clasroom, something else in a schoolyard, something quite different in a prison yard, something else in an inner-city alley with a gun in your face.

In this context, Obama is speaking to a Muslim world that since 9/11 has categorically refused to acknowledge any liability--any--for the terror attacks and violence against the West by its jihadists, nor accepts any responsibility for their religious leaders whipping up their people to hatred and violence against Israel, democracies, and infidels. Not one of the Muslim nations, in spite of the diplomatic niceties that require us singling some of them out as our "allies," has willingly cooperated with us in our struggle against Islamic radicalism, and all of them have been obstructionist and two-faced. Regardless, world Islam's demands that the West must defer to Islamic sensibilities, laws, and religious primacy, and complaints that they are being victimized and "disrespected" by us have only increased.

In this context, at this time, for Obama to say that our language toward Islam "must be the language of respect," when no respect is offered in return, is the diplomatic equivalent of dipping the American flag in the presence of a superior power.

This time no mussulman even had to leap to the deck with a dagger in his teeth. Jefferson’s successor in office had no sooner taken his oath than he "cried out for quarter at once."

FBI Stops Returning CAIR's Phone Calls. Finally.

The following story from the Investigative Project on Terrorism is welcome news, long, long, long overdue.

I wouldn’t say the FBI seeing the light about CAIR exactly proves there is a God; but it does prove that repetition of simple, glaring facts, over long periods of time, does actually get exceptionally slow (and reluctant) learners to grasp new and exciting concepts. Eventually. Sometimes.

FBI Cuts Off CAIR Over Hamas Questions

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has cut off contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.

The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an Islamic charity accused of providing money and political support to the terrorist group Hamas, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

CAIR and its chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmad, were named un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF case. Both Ahmad and CAIR's current national executive director, Nihad Awad, were revealed on government wiretaps as having been active participants in early Hamas-related organizational meetings in the United States. During testimony, FBI agent Lara Burns described CAIR as a front organization.

Hamas is a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, and it's been illegal since 1995 to provide support to it within the United States.

The decision to end contacts with CAIR is a significant policy change for the FBI. For years, the FBI worked with the national organization and its state chapters to address Muslim community concerns about the potential for hate crimes and other civil liberty violations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks.

But critics said the FBI improperly conferred legitimacy on CAIR by meeting with its officials, even as its own investigative files contained evidence of CAIR leaders' ties to Hamas.

Please read this important article in its entirety.

We've been tracking this problem a long time, such as here, here, here, and here. The feds have been as stubborn as they can be. In fact, stupidly so. I can only imagine that this present decision, made in the nick of time before the hopeless Eric Holder becomes Attorney General, is an effort to prevent the FBI from being left completely on the outside of whatever domestic counterterrorism efforts will be left during the Obama administration.

It certainly appears that the FBI's decision was made last summer after federal proescutors lost the Holy Land Foundation case the first time. I think the prosecutors desperately tried to explain to the FBI the difficulties of convincing a jury that the bad guys are really so bad, when defendants keep showing jurors their coffee mugs from the nation's premier law enforcement agency with the "Friends Share Everything" motto on it.

I'll bet at least one prosecutor even had to be talked out of naming the FBI as an unindicted co-conspirator.