'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.

Osama bin Who?

Maybe GWB didn’t get Osama before the end of his term.

But how much difference does it make? If we had direct evidence tomorrow that he’d died or we killed, him, it wouldn’t make us one bit safer. Jihad is a lot bigger than bin Laden. The time when killing or capturing bin Laden would have saved lives passed long ago. It passed during the Clinton administration.

Yes, every couple years he comes out with another tape. There are no pictures, naturally, so you can't se his busted head or his bloodless complexion, or the damp cave that has to make do for his ICU. Regardlesss, the media respond to each tape with their usual wet dream that bin Laden's listless voice somehow constitutes a triumph over Bush.

But then think about it: How formidable can an international terrorist be when the main subject of conversation every time he leaks a message out through the Arab press isn't the seriousness of his threats or his mostly irrelevant calls to jihad, but whether or not the poor son-of-a-bitch is even really alive?

No doubt about it, OBL is messed up.

And it was George W. Bush who made him that way.

Fortunately for Planet Earth, that’s one thing none of Obama’s advisers, no matter how hard they try, can reverse.

Ask Not at Whom They Throw Soles--They Throw Soles at Thee

Around the Arab world, if you want to escalate a situation, by saying for example "I'm going to thump you", add the words "with a shoe" and you're literally adding insult to injury, at least the threat of injury.

It's that cultural significance that has added real sting to assault by an Iraqi journalist against US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

In Arab culture it's considered rude even to display the sole of one's shoe to a fellow human being.

Certainly, crossing one's legs ankle-on-knee style should never be done in a public place for fear of offending the person next to you.

The sensitivity is related to the fact shoes are considered ritually unclean in the Muslim faith. In addition to ritual ablutions before prayer, Muslims must take off their shoes to pray, and wearing shoes inside a mosque is forbidden.

Shoes should either be left at the door of the mosque, or carried (preferably in the left hand with the soles pressed together).

But beyond the Islamic significance, the dirty and degrading implication of the sole of a shoe crosses all religious boundaries in the Middle East. (“Bush shoe-ing worst Arab insult”).

See how much we can learn from the BBC?

Read any of the thousands of articles published today explaining the Islamic significance of throwing your shoes at someone, and you would think the Western media had a mission to educate kuffars on the fine points of Muslim antagonism towards infidels.

Far from it. The AP, The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, and the rest are only piling on because they imagine they’re on the same side as Muntadar al-Zaidi. They have passively-aggressively denominated this ungrateful son of a bitch a hero by unanimous republication of Arab press propaganda calling him a hero. These media people are the journalistic equivalent of those white guys in the audience at Def Jam, laughing their asses off every time some comic in Timberlands starts off, “you ever notice how white people always…?”

As we well know around here, those same news organizations have made it their solemn duty to mention as little as possible about what they know about the worldview and motivations of Islam. Mumbai terrorists shouting “Allahu Akhbar” are “gunmen”, or even “alleged gunmen.” The mission and motivations of jihadist murderers are passed over in delicate silence by the media, the way Victorians are supposed to have refused uttering even the politer names for female body parts.

Reuters banned the word “terrorist” years ago. And read mainstream reports of suicide bombings, massacres, and beheadings and we learn only that they’re committed by a variety of “militants”, “insurgents”, and “freedom fighters” sharing no ideology in common except their apparent hatred of the Republican Party platform.

Had the BBC spent this much time explaining to their audience the Islamic significance of

--cutting off Daniel Pearl’s head, (he was a Jew)

--or the meaning in the Muslim world of the 9/11 attacks, (bin Laden: “Jihad against the Kuffar in every part of the world, is absolutely essential” )

--or the Islamic significance of the Khomeinist revolution, (“Death to America”)

--or how the Koran invited the cartoon riots, (because insults against Allah must be avenged)

--or the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood and its kind (submission of the whole world to Islam by force)

--or the Islamic mission of Hamas (no solution to Palestinian question except the obliteration of Israel through jihad)

--or what the Saudi-funded Wahhabist madrasses teach kids (militant jihad against infidels is the summit of Islam)

--or the Qu’ran’s teaching about freedom of religion (apostates must be killed)

--or the Prophet’s opinions of unbelievers, (infidel lives are of no value)

--or the imams’ religious theories about Jews (they are the offspring of apes and pigs),

who knows how much better of we'd all be now.

There are many things that the audience of the BBC and CNN, and the readers of the New York Times don’t know about Muslims, things far more important than what a good job ungrateful Arabs are doing right now insulting George W. Bush. As it is, Times readers and NPR listeners are still foggily mistaken that what’s been going on the past seven years has been Bush’s war, rather than Our War.

They carelessly credit Muntadar al-Zaidi with hating George W. Bush for the same reasons they all hate him: for being an evangelical, for cutting taxes, for being pro-life, for being the anti-Clinton, for not giving a flying bleep what the Europeans or the editorial board at The New Republic think of him.

But that's not who al-Zaidi was throwing shoes at, or why. He will think no more highly of Obama when his time comes. And even if Obama bows and scrapes to the Muslim world, as some of us fear he will, the al-Zaidis will hate him all the more for being weak, as bin Laden despised America under Clinton. They've hated every American president since at least Jefferson. I clearly remember them burning Carter in effigy in Tehran, too. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

But these fools in the media think that because Muslims also hate George W. Bush, that they share a common brotherhood of peace and progressive values.

The fools.

Meanwhile, I am disgusted at the thought of how long the footage of George W. Bush ducking shoes will be replayed deathlessly in our childish media.

But regardless, no one can take this away from Bush: he at least had the sound instinct to duck, and did duck, in fact, without a trace of shock or flinching, smiling all the while.

While these boobs at the Times and BBC don't even know they have shoeprints all over their faces.

'Next Mission, We Shave'

A federal informant testifying in Camden, New Jersey Monday in the trial of the Fort Dix plotters described a “vacation” he took with three brothers, the Dukas, to the Poconos. Besnik Bakalli, a native Albanian in the U.S. illegally, was recruited by the FBI to make friends with the Dukas. His testimony about them is backed up by hours of tapes obtained through the wire Bakalli was wearing.

According to Bakalli, the Poconos vacation turned out to be a jihad training session. (Not the first time a romantic Poconos getaway turned out to be more than was expected).

He said the men talked constantly about Islam, war between the Muslim world and America, guns, and their respect for Osama bin Laden. They also shopped for guns, went to firing ranges and played paintball during the trip. (“Informant: Fort Dix suspects trained for 'jihad'”).

(DU is awaiting comment from Dawud Walid, spokesmen for all Muslims, (e.g., the Dukas), clarifying that the Dukas’ "respect for Osama bin Laden" does not extend to Zawahiri’s “house negro” crack about President-elect Obama, a remark the Dukas reportedly find “deeply disturbing.”)

Defense counsel are attacking the credibility of Bakalli and another paid informant because they’re receiving consideration in their own criminal cases in exchange for their cooperation. But the hours of tapes of the Dukas themselves confirms what Bakalli told the jury.

On the tapes, the men repeatedly discussed what they perceived as the oppression of Muslims around the globe - in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Palestinian territories and other locations. They talked about their own duties as Muslims to wage jihad and help their "brothers."

"The war with Islam has already started," Dritan Duka said on one of the tapes.

The men also talked extensively about where they could buy weapons and how much they cost. Dritan Duka said he had a source for guns in Camden but the source could not talk to him on the phone for fear of being overheard. "We don't want to get caught with guns," he said. "Especially that we have beards. They think we are terrorists." (“Fort Dix informant says he was scared”).

Notice just how deftly Dritan Duka has put his finger directly on what makes us think they’re terrorists.

Never mind the jihad talk and the guns and the laughing at the U.S. soldiers getting blown up. It’s their beards that make us think, “terrorist.”

As the Table Turns

It’s been my view that the anti-anti-terrorist movement amongst liberals since 2001 had little to do with principled stands on civil liberty or pacifism, but was driven by sheer vindictiveness against George W. Bush for having the nerve to beat Al Gore in 2000. Ever since then, more important for Democrats than the security and success of the nation was preventing the success of the hated Bush.

I went so far as to believe that the Democrats were perfectly willing to see us lose a war, or lose American lives in a terror attack because intelligence operations were compromised or obstructed--or otherwise allow harm to the country, if those things contributed to sabotage the Bush administration. I believed it, in part, because I watched it happening in front of my very eyes.

It is probably the most cynical opinion I’ve ever held. And it’s turning out to be absolutely true.

The proof of it is demonstrated in the Left’s sudden discovery, since Election Day, that Islamic terrorists are a threat to the country. Of course, the only thing that’s changed in the Islamic war against the West since November 4th is who’s turn it is to lead the fight. It's not as if we've just had another 9/11-type attack (thanks to George W. Bush).

But until Obama was elected the Left consistently treated Islamic terrorism as, at best, a marginal criminal matter whose root causes can be blamed on American racism, imperialism, and unwillingness to adopt the Kyoto Treaty, or, at worst, something made up by Cheney-Bush at a barbecue in Crawford, Texas.

Regardless, at no time has it been taken seriously by liberals.

(Asking “Why haven’t we caught bin Laden yet?” is not taking it seriously. That was only meant as a jibe at Bush. They said the same thing until Bush caught Saddam, and when Bush did they promptly went about-face and said catching Saddam didn't make any difference. No one who understands this battle believes that bin Laden’s head on a pole on international TV will end global Islamic jihadist attacks. And if he’s captured alive, no one on the Left will let him face justice without whimpering that his rights are being violated.)

Anyway, I see where Michelle Malkin has tapped into some of this, too, in her recent comments about the incoming administration’s sudden maturity on the subject of Gitmo:

Playing Games at Gitmo
Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang.

By Michelle Malkin

The human-rights crowd is right: Life is hard for a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The deprivation is unspeakable. According to the facility’s “cultural adviser,” their brains have not been “stimulated” enough. So this Thanksgiving, America is drawing up plans to provide the 250 or so suspected jihadists at the “notoriously Spartan” detention camp with basic sustenance including, as reported by the Miami Herald, movie nights, art classes, English-language lessons, and “Game Boy-like” electronic devices.

Next up: Wii Fi, Guitar Hero, Sudoku, People magazine, and macrame. Anything less would be uncivilized.

On a deadly serious note, the detainees aren’t the only ones playing games at Gitmo. Some top legal advisers and supporters of Barack Obama, whose name detainees chanted on election night, are now rethinking the president-elect’s absolutist campaign position on shutting the center down and flooding our mainland courts with every last enemy combatant designee. Yes, reality bites. And Democrats must now grapple with the very real possibility that an Obama administration could potentially release a Gitmo denizen who would turn around and commit mass terrorist acts on American soil or abroad.

Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang. Never before have an administration and its followers matured so quickly in office — and they haven’t even taken office yet.

While Obama paid lip service to the “Close the Gitmo gulag!” agenda on 60 Minutes over the weekend, his kitchen cabinet is proceeding more pragmatically. Believe it or not, the Obama crowd is now contemplating a preventive detention law and an alternative judicial system for the most sensitive national security cases involving the most highly classified information — information that has no place being aired in the civilian courts for public consumption.

Listen to relentless Bush critic David Cole, who told the New York Times last week: “You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone.” Added Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution: “I’m afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things.”

Moreover, Obama transition team members have suggested to The Wall Street Journal that despite his campaign season CIA-bashing, “Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”

Next thing you know, they’ll start arguing that the world has been fooled by years of sob-story propaganda about the Gitmo detainees — funded by Kuwaiti government-subsidized lawyers who cast them all as innocent potato farmers and schmucks dazed and confused on battlefields.

Next thing you know, they’ll rediscover the facts that detainees have systematically lied and exaggerated stories about mistreatment at Gitmo, and that interrogators and military personnel have bent over backward to accommodate their personal and religious needs and wants.

Next thing you know, they’ll start reminding us that dozens of former Gitmo detainees have been released and recaptured on the battlefield while committing acts of terrorism.

Funny, when President Bush and his homeland-security team realized these very realities seven years ago, they were branded terrorists and hounded relentlessly by Congress, the media and the left. When Attorney General Michael Mukasey eloquently defended the administration’s counterterrorism policies at the Federalist Society before he collapsed, he was heckled as a “tyrant.” And when I wrote my second book expounding on this very thesis, I was labeled a racist and fascist whose ideas exploring the proper balance between security and civil liberties had no place in public discourse.

Now, at long last, some liberals have realized that the sacred goal of “regaining America’s moral stature in the world,” as Obama put it, may be less important than ensuring that al-Qaeda killers don’t strike on American ground again.

Viva la Hope and Change!
#

Dawud Walid Deals His Own Race Card

Our favorite CAIR spokesman, Dawud Walid, has written a letter to the Detroit News explaining that Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s recent speech insulting Obama as a “house slave” doesn’t “speak for Muslims.” Rather, writes Walid, “From Senegal to Indonesia, Muslims have celebrated Obama’s victory,” and view his election “as a clear sign that America has taken a big step toward the fulfillment of its principle of racial equality.” (“Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader doesn't speak for Muslims”).

As Walid explains the feelings of the world’s Muslims--the majority of whom will not be eligible for Obama’s promised middle-class tax cuts nor his health care plan--the reason they’re all so geeked about Obama is that it proves America isn’t a “racist imperial power” after all. (In retrospect, that must explain what all those riots and beheadings were about!)

Now after days of holiday overeating I can’t see grabbing hold of that old tar baby about who does or doesn’t speak for Muslims, especially to take issue with Walid, who, to hear him tell it, does speak for all Muslims.

Frankly, I don’t really care if Zawahiri or bin Laden want to say our new president (by the way, Democrats, see how easy it is to say “our new president”?) is a house negro, or want to make any other provocative racial comments about Westerners they don’t like. It’s not these guys’ racial theories that earned them a spot on our Most Wanted List. What did that would be their religious theories, according to which murdering innocent Westerners gets them in really good with their deity.

And I’m pretty sure that the election of Obama notwithstanding, that religious point of view still is a big motivator for Muslims out there. Otherwise, to take a recent example (and when it comes to Islamic rerror, there is always a recent example), the Bombay jihadists would have been searching for tourists holding racist imperialist ideas, rather than only tourists with British and American passports. (“Terrorists said `Put your hand up if you're British or American'”)

Apparently, what’s been causing all the tension between the Islamic world and the rest of us all these centuries has been our stubborn refusal to embrace the enlightened racial teachings of Islam. Enlightened teachings that right now aren’t, curiously, offering much comfort to the millions of African Muslims in Sudan who are being systematically slaughtered by their Muslim Arab brothers in Darfur. “Darfur: the genocide is Islamic racism” ” Or the Jews who were specifically targeted, (again, to take only the most recent example) by the Bombay murderers simply because they were Jewish.

The overreaction to Zawahiri’s racial comments was ludicrous, as if a fugitive terrorist “playing the race card” somehow compounds the evil of using hijacked airliners to destroy American office towers and murder thousands of innocent people. Walid may think that he can use this phony race issue to distance CAIR and its radical Islamic mission from that of al Qaeda, and to falsely paint CAIR as a civil rights group when it actually is a jihadist front, but it won’t work.

Osama bin Laden declared religious war on the USA in 1996 because he saw us as infidel crusaders, who needed our civilization destroyed and replaced with Islam.

The Pew Poll in 2006 showed there was still huge support for that amongst the world’s Muslims.

Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come. (“[Pew Poll on] How Muslims Think”).

Dawud Walid's CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, (one and the same) have a mission in America, and it isn’t to foster our principle of racial equality. It is to further their anti-Western “’Civilization-Jihadist process... eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Since they share bin Laden's and Zawahiri's jihadist goals of destroying America and imposing Islam, what difference does it make if Walid tries to take the high ground over this silly race-card flap?

This Will Be on the Final

The following column from Family Security Matters touches on many things we've discussed here before. But constant reminders about basic things helps. Thanks to Wendy Woodley for sending this link to us.

Jihad Means Offensive War to Spread Islam: Osama Bin Laden’s Warning to Europe

Clare M. Lopez

Just in case Europe didn’t catch his drift with one new message, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden launched two audio taped broadsides on the Internet during the third week of March 2008. In them, he specifically threatened Europe with Jihad, apparently in response to recent stirrings of self-assertion on the Continent. It would seem that the republishing of some of the Danish cartoons, the release of a short film about Islam by Dutch filmmaker, Geert Wilders, and a sterner approach to the expansionist Islamist agenda by a crop of tough new European leaders have sparked a yelp of protest from the al Qaeda leadership.

To the Jihadi vanguard, it must have looked like Europe was well on its way to slipping back into a dhimmitude last seen centuries ago, when Jihadi warriors overran much of southern Europe, white women were prized features on auction blocks across the Caliphate, Christians and Jews knew their places in societies dominated by Islam, and it was ransom and tribute that flowed out of Christendom’s kingdoms, not impertinent caricatures of their Prophet. France already had cordoned off over 700 no-go zones where neither Napoleonic Code nor police were welcome. Belgian bishops had permitted North African illegal immigrants demanding sanctuary from threat of deportation to hold Muslim prayer services in beautiful Brussels cathedrals. A German judge had refused the desperate plea of an abused Moroccan-born woman for an expedited divorce, because, as she intoned from the bench, in the culture of Islam, it is permitted for a husband to beat his wife. The Archbishop of Canterbury had urged Britons to just accept the coming of Sharia in the UK. Theo van Gogh had been shot and stabbed to death because he stood unrepentantly for free speech, and his colleague, Ayan Hirsi Ali, had been hounded from the Netherlands altogether. Taxi drivers in Norway, the UK, and elsewhere were refusing blind passengers with Seeing Eye dogs, because they said dogs are deemed unclean animals in Islam. The newest architectural trend from Oxford to Cologne was the building of mammoth, Saudi-funded mega mosques. Yes, the establishment of Eurabia must have seemed well underway.

But then Europe began to push back and a new Pope mounted the throne of Peter, a “Panzer Pope” he’s been called, and gave a 2006 speech at the University of Regensburg in the sturdy Teutonic heart of this continent. He didn’t actually say anything about a crusade; in fact, Pope Benedict XVI, at Regensburg and since, has sought quite sincerely to present Christianity as a vehicle for discourse and reason among faiths. The 2008 establishment of a permanent council for dialogue between the Vatican and Islam was meant to build bridges, not spark fury and menace.

This is where the well-reasoned temperance of the Enlightenment falls flat, however. For the Islamic Jihad is not about reason, or temperance, or enlightenment. It is about conquest. And right now, al Qaeda and its Jihadi cohorts both home-grown and international, including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Union of Islamic Clerics, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and their smooth-talking spokesmen such as Dr. Mustafa Ceric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Tariq Ramadan, have set their sights on Europe. Europe is too liberal, too free, too open, too outspoken, too rich, and also nicely softened up by decades of inroads by concepts like multiculturalism, a paralyzing antipathy to discriminating judgment, and an abhorrence of self-defense.

Make no mistake: Osama bin Laden’s threat is real. Al Qaeda and the Jihadis, whose cultural references were formed in the searing sterility of the 7th Century Hijaz, are coming for Europe. In the Arab desert where Islam was born, the code of the tribes demands challenge, honor, and spoils. A society raised on the values of the strong, where nothing is ever produced but only seized from the weak, where concession and compromise are met with contempt, and where revenge and retribution define human interaction – a society such as this cannot abide a civilization of uninhibited intellectuality and tolerance. In such a milieu, Islam developed, inextricably, as both socio-political system and monotheistic faith. Both remain hard, unforgiving, and bent on global domination. The sacred and immutable doctrine of Islam is laid out for all time in the revealed scripture of the Koran, the hadiths (or sayings of Muhammad), and the Sunna (or accounts of Muhammad’s deeds). There is nothing in any of these about turning the other cheek, loving one’s neighbor as oneself, or the inherent equality of all human beings. Neither will you find virtues of non-violence, self-sacrifice, or truthfulness applicable among any people but Muslims themselves. For the infidel, there is only the choice of three: convert, submit, or die.

Europe needs to wake up, and quickly. The obligatory Islamic warning has been given, the Continent put on notice that unless it agrees to compromise on its liberal lifestyle and legal system, al Qaeda will unleash its Jihadi attackers. The Vatican, too, notably accused of inspiring another crusade only after the conciliatory announcement was made about the new council for interfaith dialogue, will need to muster all the stern resolve and brilliant theological command of its current Vicar if nearly-spent Christianity is to help lead Europe’s defense. For in the end, while its population may well exhibit the studied ennui of a post-faith-based society, Europe nevertheless has much to be proud of and plenty to defend. And even though its advanced technology, orderly and educated native citizens, magnificent artistic expression, complex economies, and sophisticated political systems elicit scant acknowledgment from the savage Jihadis sworn to destroy it all, these are accomplishments that represent a pinnacle of human development. Europe is the well-spring as well as the front line of defense for modern concepts of liberal democracy now spreading inexorably the world over (except for the Arab/Muslim part of it).

Unless Europeans at every level, from the small village grocer to the leaders of academia, government, labor, and media, somehow grasp that the world view driving al Qaeda’s warnings shares virtually nothing in common with their own and adapt their defenses accordingly, it is completely conceivable that Bernard Lewis’s dire prediction about the likely Islamization of Europe by century’s end could prove true. Or, as Daniel Pipes put it some time ago, Europe must either somehow assimilate its burgeoning and increasingly hostile Muslim elements, adopt a draconian program of expulsion and immigration control, or acquiesce to Muslim dominance.

Islam does not really mean peace and Jihad is not inner yoga. Islam means submission: submission to Allah, to Islam, and to Sharia. The only peace being offered by Osama bin Laden is under the shade of the Koran and the sword. Whether by da’wa (preaching and persuasion), infiltration and destruction of faith from within, or the outright terror that al Qaeda promises its enemies, it is not just Europe that faces the Jihadi onslaught. It is every society that dares to be free to choose its own way of life, elect its own leaders, and enact its own laws. It is Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States of America.

Knowing the enemy, naming the enemy, and mastering the enemy’s culture, history, ideology, and tactics are essential to meeting and defeating his challenge. Only by frankly facing the Islamic Jihad and resisting every urge to dismiss it as primitive, already defeated, or somehow unequal to modern civilizations such as our own, will we have any chance of prevailing.