Some links

Somehow I have to find a way to deal with constant lack of time.  For now, here are some quick links, with the usual recommendation to read these articles in full:

Sen. Lieberman speaks to RJC leaders

Thank you so much for that kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here among so many friends.

Now, I know there are some who are probably wondering—what is a nice Independent Democrat from Connecticut doing at a Republican event like this?

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to reelection last year… And as Rabbi Hillel said, the rest is commentary.

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Let there be no doubt—an American defeat in Iraq would be a victory for Al Qaeda and Iran… the two most threatening enemies we face in the world today. It would vindicate the hope of our enemies that America is weak and that we can be driven to retreat by terrorism, and it would confirm the fear of our friends—not only in Iraq, but throughout the world—that we are unreliable allies who will abandon them in the face of danger.

The fact of the matter is, you cannot claim to be tough on terrorism while demanding that our military withdraw from Iraq, because it is the terrorists—particular Al Qaeda—that our military is fighting in Iraq.

You cannot claim to be committed to defeating Al Qaeda, while demanding that we abandon the heart of the Middle East to Al Qaeda.

And you cannot claim to be tough on Iran, while demanding the very thing that the mullahs want most of all—the retreat of the American military from the Middle East in defeat, leaving a vacuum that Iran will rush to fill.

Charles Krauthammer looks at back at the tense weeks just before the start of the Six Day War in 1967 and what they meant for Israel.

There has hardly been an Arab peace plan in the past 40 years — including the current Saudi version — that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred?

Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

The real anniversary of the war should be now, three weeks earlier. On May 16, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser demanded the evacuation from the Sinai Peninsula of the U.N. buffer force that had kept Israel and Egypt at peace for ten years. The U.N. complied, at which point Nasser imposed a naval blockade of Israel’s only outlet to the south, the port of Eilat — an open act of war.

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The world will soon be awash with 40th-anniversary retrospectives on the war — and on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only return to June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that unbearable May when, with Israel possessing no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel’s imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.

Norman Podhoretz writes in Commentary this month about "The Case for Bombing Iran".

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what September 11, 2001 did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the cold war was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II. Like the cold war, as the military historian Eliot Cohen was the first to recognize, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism, yet another mutation of the totalitarian disease we defeated first in the shape of Nazism and fascism and then in the shape of Communism; it is global in scope; it is being fought with a variety of weapons, not all of them military; and it is likely to go on for decades.

What follows from this way of looking at the last five years is that the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood if they are regarded as self-contained wars in their own right. Instead we have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle. The same thing is true of Iran. As the currently main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11, and as (according to the State Department’s latest annual report on the subject) the main sponsor of the terrorism that is Islamofascism’s weapon of choice, Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its effort to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all.

The Iranians, of course, never cease denying that they intend to build a nuclear arsenal, and yet in the same breath they openly tell us what they intend to do with it. Their first priority, as repeatedly and unequivocally announced by their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is to “wipe Israel off the map”—a feat that could not be accomplished by conventional weapons alone.

But Ahmadinejad’s ambitions are not confined to the destruction of Israel. He also wishes to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby to control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil out of it through the Persian Gulf. If he acquired a nuclear capability, he would not even have to use it in order to put all this within his reach. Intimidation and blackmail by themselves would do the trick.

Nor are Ahmadinejad’s ambitions merely regional in scope. He has a larger dream of extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe, and this too he hopes to accomplish by playing on the fear that resistance to Iran would lead to a nuclear war. And then, finally, comes the largest dream of all: what Ahmadinejad does not shrink from describing as “a world without America.” Demented though he may be, I doubt that Ahmadinejad is so crazy as to imagine that he could wipe America off the map even if he had nuclear weapons. But what he probably does envisage is a diminution of the American will to oppose him: that is, if not a world without America, he will settle, at least in the short run, for a world without much American influence.

Not surprisingly, the old American foreign-policy establishment and many others say that these dreams are nothing more than the fantasies of a madman. They also dismiss those who think otherwise as neoconservative alarmists trying to drag this country into another senseless war that is in the interest not of the United States but only of Israel. But the irony is that Ahmadinejad’s dreams are more realistic than the dismissal of those dreams as merely insane delusions. To understand why, an analogy with World War III may help.

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In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush made a promise:

We’ll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.

In that speech, the President was referring to Iraq, but he has made it clear on a number of subsequent occasions that the same principle applies to Iran. Indeed, he has gone so far as to say that if we permit Iran to build a nuclear arsenal, people 50 years from now will look back and wonder how we of this generation could have allowed such a thing to happen, and they will rightly judge us as harshly as we today judge the British and the French for what they did and what they failed to do at Munich in 1938. I find it hard to understand why George W. Bush would have put himself so squarely in the dock of history on this issue if he were resigned to leaving office with Iran in possession of nuclear weapons, or with the ability to build them. Accordingly, my guess is that he intends, within the next 21 months, to order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities from the three U.S. aircraft carriers already sitting nearby.

But if that is what he has in mind, why is he spending all this time doing the diplomatic dance and wasting so much energy on getting the Russians and the Chinese to sign on to sanctions? The reason, I suspect, is that—to borrow a phrase from Robert Kagan—he has been “giving futility its chance.” Not that this is necessarily a cynical ploy. For it may well be that he has entertained the remote possibility of a diplomatic solution under which Iran would follow the example of Libya in voluntarily giving up its nuclear program. Besides, once having played out the diplomatic string, and thereby having demonstrated that to him force is truly a last resort, Bush would be in a stronger political position to endorse John McCain’s formula that the only thing worse than bombing Iran would be allowing Iran to build a nuclear bomb—and not just to endorse that assessment, but to act on it.

Bolton: Attack Iran before it gets bomb

Iran should be attacked - as a last resort - before it develops nuclear weapons, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

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"It's been conclusively proven Iran is not going to be talked out of its nuclear program. So to stop them from doing it, we have to massively increase the pressure.

"If we can't get enough other countries to come along with us to do that, then we've got to go with regime change by bolstering opposition groups... that's the circumstance most likely for an Iranian government to decide that it's safer not to pursue nuclear weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force," Bolton told the Telegraph.

After Pelosi’s Syria Visit, Dissidents Cower

DAMASCUS, SYRIA—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria last month, and the related question of whether or not the U.S. should formally re-engage this Baathist republic, remains as controversial a topic on the streets of Damascus as it was in the days afterwards among Beltway bloggers. And, perverse as it may seem to some American liberals, it is the Syrians who are most sympathetic to their progressive values who have been most critical of Ms. Pelosi’s attempts to begin a dialogue with Syria’s government.

Many Syrian dissidents and pro-democracy activists have privately expressed dismay at Ms. Pelosi’s message of friendship to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They say that Ms. Pelosi’s visit, no matter how well-intentioned, has effectively pulled the rug out from under them, critically damaging their efforts to create momentum for reform from within.

“Pelosi’s visit made the regime feel that Americans were divided on how to deal with Syria,” said a Damascus-based women’s-rights activist who, like five other activists interviewed for this article, asked that his name be withheld because he feared punishment. “This sends a message to the regime that the pressure is off, that it can do what it likes.”

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Yeltsin's lessons for America

My friend George Mellinger of Veteran-American Voices sent me this link:

People who think the Bush years have usurped freedoms and reversed decades of progress “don’t even begin to know what junta really means nor what it feels like to live in a dictatorship.” Part one of a moving first hand account of the death of the Soviet dictatorship, what came after, and what it means to us today in Iraq.

by Oleg Atbashian

...Yeltsin and his supporters resisted the putsch directly. They barricaded themselves inside the Parliament Building. A human wall made of thousands of Muscovites encircled the white multistoried structure to which they jokingly referred as the White House. I regretted I wasn’t in Moscow but it was not possible to get there. The coup leaders had had enough forethought to suspend passenger transportation in and out of the capital. If they hadn’t the human shields would count in hundreds of thousands, standing in the way of the army to protect their new freedoms. But the army was made of people too; some tank units disobeyed orders and joined the protesters.

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Today’s anti-Bush rallies in the U.S. demand the very opposite of what the pro-freedom Soviets rallied for. By advocating for the government control of economy, the ideological monopoly of the Left, and massive redistribution of wealth, American leftists espouse the same ideas as the backward Soviet hardliners - same song, different verse.

These self-absorbed “progressives” don’t want to hear about the strife of the Soviet people who had learned the hard way that these ideas only result in massive poverty and loss of freedoms for everyone involved. In effect, the leftist rallies spit in the face of every victim of communist oppression, living or dead. That count is in the hundreds of millions.

There’s nothing heroic in disparaging democratic institutions, dishonoring the American flag, and carrying placards with anti-capitalist, anti-American slogans pre-printed for them by communist front groups with the money donated by corrupt foreign dictators. The protesters absurdly accuse this free country of being a fascist dictatorship, fully aware that an hour later they’ll be drinking expensive coffee at Starbucks - and not dragged to a political prison and getting their teeth knocked in - a likely prospect for dissidents in the countries whose leaders they idolize.

They may believe their protest leads to more freedom - but freedom can’t be increased by abusing and disparaging it. Objectively, they diminish freedom by providing hope and moral support to dictators, helping tyrants to brainwash their populations, and knocking the ground from under the feet of real fighters for freedom. That makes them a tool in the hands of a reactionary totalitarian ideology. As if supporting communist dictatorships were not enough, “progressive” rallies now also feature slogans backing the Iranian regime that imprisons and tortures its own dissidents.

Every immigrant in this country who had experienced political tyranny understands that true heroism is in standing for freedom and human rights against a real blood-stained dictatorship - not against an America that gives the hope of freedom to all those suffering from tyranny worldwide. Likewise, true journalistic courage is in risking imprisonment or even death for speaking against a real tyrant - not in peddling fabricated documents from a comfortable TV studio in Manhattan with the hope of swinging elections towards a “progressive” candidate.

Just like the corrupt Stalinist apparatchiks, the American leftists will justify anything by invoking the notion of “progress,” which in their Orwellian minds is the opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their utopian ideal of a benevolent government caring for the unwashed masses is nothing but a modernized version of a feudal lord caring for unwashed peasants. That’s hardly a progress by any standard.

And from Part 2:

...The anti-Yeltsin riots took 187 lives and left 437 wounded. Despite some media reports, none of the “People’s Deputies” responsible for the violence were injured. Two of their leaders were charged and imprisoned, but released in less than a year, after Yeltsin’s standing had become more secure. Another persistent myth was that Yeltsin fired at defenseless and unarmed elected legislature. But the count of weapons confiscated from the rebels included 1,132 rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, pistols, mines, and explosive devices, as well as 196,000 rounds of ammunition.

The Americans with whom I discussed these events were surprised at hearing about the high death toll. They didn’t realize it was this bad, nor had they been informed about the anti-Semitic nature of the riots. It seems the media had failed to do its job, which is strange considering that Moscow was swarming with foreign journalists. As far as I can remember, my personal impressions at the time were that in an attempt to stay objective, the Western journalists chose some questionable middle ground - which made their coverage anything but objective.

Some of the Western journalists were even trying to see the events through the eyes of the attacking mob. They did it even after the deadly assault on the TV Center and the killing of its journalists. They continued to do so even after a rebel sniper shot and killed a British cameraman, even when several other Western reporters were wounded, including a New York Times photographer. For some inexplicable reason they refused to see the irrational nature of the extremists they tried to empathize with. All they seemed to be interested in was, feeding on people’s grievances.

Apparently, in their minds, a fascist must always have a swastika prominently displayed on the sleeve at all times - otherwise he’s just a victim working out grievances. These journalists wouldn’t recognize fascism if it smacked them over the head with a hammer and sickle, which is the Soviet version of swastika. They probably wouldn’t have believed me if I were to tell them that in the twisted minds of these ultra-nationalist maniacs, all Westerners were under the suspicion of being Zionist running dogs working to enslave and destroy Mother Russia. To appreciate just how crazy they were, consider the fact that one of their worst imaginary Zionist enemies was Bill Clinton.

I can’t help but think about this media tendency every time I see a Western journalist trying to explain the mindset of a foreign extremist. Quite predictably they end up with projecting Western biases, including the Bush derangement syndrome.

A memo to Western reporters: the extremists hate you and want to kill you just for that little uncomplicated image of you they keep in their hateful delusional minds - that’s why they are extremists, and you have absolutely no control over that. Spare them your personal struggles and complexes. Anything you say will only reinforce their conviction that you are an agent of the international Zionist conspiracy. The more believable your story is, the more cunning and dangerous agent they’ll think you are.

Read both parts.  Here is another money quote from Part 2:

Under pressure from concerned Western leaders, media, and liberal intellectuals, Yeltsin lifted the ban some weeks later. Whatever the reason for the Western concern was, the criticism was unfair because Yeltsin was known to be tolerant of opposing media opinions and never denied interviews to those journalists who he knew disapproved of his policies, as long as it was a rational and civil discourse.

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About three years later, when I already lived in the States, I came across an open letter to Boris Yeltsin, written and signed by the New York Times editors and other leading liberal intellectuals. Printed in large letters across an entire page in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. The letter derided Yeltsin for allowing rabid anti-Semitic publications to exist in Russia and to spread their paranoid conspiracy theories that cultivated ethnic hatred.

Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t know whether you should laugh or find a New York Times editor and slap him silly? The letter named names, giving a list of National-Bolshevik magazines and newspapers - the same ones Yeltsin had banned after the fascist riots but was then forced to lift the ban under pressure from probably the same group of New York Times editors and leading liberal intellectuals who at the time were concerned with the rights of leftist organizations in Russia having no freedom of speech.

The bottom line: a democracy has to be able and willing to defend itself.  Otherwise it is going to be destroyed.

On a side note: Atbashian is an Armenian last name.  So, he is an ethnic Armenian who lived in Ukraine.  Could he be from Odessa, my home town?  Since the end of 19th Century Odessa had a large percentage of ethnic Armenian population, the refugees from the Ottoman Empire.  Just an interesting coincidence.

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I pretty much made up my mind...

...for whom I will vote in the Presidential Primaries.  This is via LGF:

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t care whether the Palestinian government is run by Hamas, which is recognized by the US as a terrorist organization, or Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of Fatah who is regarded by the Bush administration as a moderate.

"Hamas or Abbas, it makes no difference (emphasis mine - Eric-Odessit). The ball is in their court, and we just have to show patience and not push any peace process until they do what they have to do," said Mr. Giuliani.

What they have to do, he said, is, at the very minimum, to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to renounce terrorism. Then, he said, Israel and the US should sit back and see if they mean it.

"They don’t just have to say the words. Anyone can say the words. They have to show that they are ending terrorism; they have to show that they are doing what they have to do to end terrorism. I’m a strong proponent of the philosophy that we can trust, but we have to verify," he said. "If all that happens, then it will lead naturally to a peace process, but we have to wait patiently until they are ready to make it happen. And no one should make any concessions to the Palestinians until they take those steps."

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Mr. Giuliani told his supporters he was running for President because he believes he understands terrorism better than any other candidate currently running to hold the office.

He pointed out that, as far as he is concerned, Islamist terrorism against the West began in 1972 at the Munich Olympics when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and murdered 11 Israeli athletes.

He said he remembered being appalled when the German authorities, who had arrested some of the terrorists, quickly released them. "They let them go because they were afraid if they did not, there would be more terrorist attacks in Germany," he said, pointing out that many European countries followed Germany’s example.

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He found it especially galling, he said, when Italian authorities released the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, the 69-year-old disabled New Yorker who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists who had hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

"The Italians captured the terrorists and then released them two hours later, because they were afraid," said Mr. Giuliani.

As a US Attorney in the Reagan administration, Mr. Giuliani investigated the Klinghoffer case, and, he said, he became convinced that Yasir Arafat personally was responsible for the murder.

Ten years later, as mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani threw Mr. Arafat out of a concert he was hosting at Lincoln Center  (emphasis mine - Eric-Odessit) for world leaders who were in Manhattan to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the UN. "I didn’t forget what he had done to Leon Klinghoffer," said Mr. Giuliani.

Rudy is not shy about taking a stand and does not apologize for it.  It's not just in regard to Israel.  Rudy understands the enemy.  To be fair, I would feel comfortable voting for 9 out of 10 Republicans in the General Election.  (I think I might prefer Hillary to the isolationist Ron Paul, so, if G-d forbid, it will be Hillary vs. Ron Paul, I will not vote for either).  But I trust that Rudy will not stop being blunt about what he believes.  I also happen to agree with him on pretty much everything, including his stand on abortions (hate them personally, but don't think the Government should be involved in this issue).  So, he is my ideal candidate.  Add to it the issue of electability, and my choice become very clear.

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What an Iraqi thinks of the Democrats in Congress

Omar Fadhil is PajamasMedia Baghdad editor. His own blog is Iraq The Model.  Here is his article on the recent Democrat's attempt to cut and run:

Instead coming up with ideas to help the US Democrats are trying to stop the effort to stabilize Iraq and rescue the Middle East from a catastrophe.

I am an Iraqi. To me the possible consequences of this vote are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth it.Time to leave’.

To the Democrats my life and the lives of twenty-five other million Iraqis are evidently not worth trying for. They shouldn’t expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes. The administration made mistakes and admitted them. My people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.

But now, in the last two months, we have had a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics. These were reached after studying previous mistakes and were designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

Of course, read it all.

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An interesting story

Remember, there was a movie called "So I Married an Ax Murderer"?  Well, this article is called

So I Married a Terrorist . . .

Saraah Olson’s strange trip through the U.S. war on terror

By NICK SCHOU

Thursday, April 19, 2007 - 3:00 pm

Saraah Olson and her daughter, Ala. Photo by John Gilhooley

The first time Saraah Olson called the FBI about her husband was on Feb. 26, 1993. At 12:27 p.m. Eastern time, a truck bomb had exploded inside the garage of New York City’s World Trade Center.

While working on a term paper at her Garden Grove apartment, Olson turned on her television and saw coverage of the explosion, which killed six and wounded 1,042 people. She immediately called her husband, Hisham Diab, an Egyptian immigrant and insurance salesman for MetLife whom she had married two years earlier. She reached Diab at his office in Carson, California.

“They blew up the Trade Center,” Olson told him, her voice frantic with disbelief. “They keep saying, ‘The Arabs did it; the Arabs did it. They are blaming Arabs.’” Olson recalls that her husband didn’t seem the least bit surprised.

He uttered exactly two words. “They should,” he said. Then he hung up the telephone.

Olson had been growing suspicious about her husband for several months, ever since Diab had invited a blind Egyptian cleric to stay in their apartment building for three days while he gave inspirational sermons at the local mosque. The cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, would later be charged in connection with the Trade Center bombing. But more than anything, it was Diab’s apparent lack of surprise and cold reaction to the Trade Center bombing that led Saraah Olson to call the FBI.

“I was like, son of a bitch,” Olson says. “What kind of person would say, ‘they should’ unless they know something they’re not supposed to know?”

Immediately after calling Diab, Olson dialed the number of the Santa Ana office of the FBI. A nice-sounding woman answered the telephone and asked how she could help. “I need to give someone some information,” Olson said. “I don’t know who I should talk to. I married an Arab. He’s Egyptian. He’s a friend of the blind cleric. He has some extreme political beliefs, and I just told my husband they blew up the Trade Center and are blaming Arabs, and he said they should. I just think somebody should look into that.”

Read the whole thing.

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Ismail Ax

Here is an article about Virginia Tech shooter:

First it was Johnny Muhammad, now it was Cho Sueng Hui aka Ismail Ax. Precisely how many mass shooters have to turn out to have adopted Muslim names before we get it? Islam has become the tribe of choice of those who hate American society. I'm not talking about people who grew up as Muslims, confident and secure in their faith, good fathers, sons and neighbors. I'm talking about the angry, malignant, narcissist loners who want to reject their community utterly, to throw off their 'slave name' and represent the downtrodden of the earth by shooting their friends and neighbors.

This morning I read that the Virginia Tech shooter died with the name Ismail Ax written in red ink on his arm. The mainstream press doesn't seem to have a clue as to what this might mean. To quote Indiana Jones, "Didn't any of you guys go to Sunday School?"

The author is absolutely correct: those who hate America identify with Islam one way or the other.  Back when the Soviet Union was around, it was Communism.  Now they pick Islamism as their ideology.  Many Muslims might not want to be associated with America-haters.  But they are not the ones making that choice.  America-haters identify with Islam, whether normal people who happen to be Muslim like it or not.

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Where Are the Anti-Communist Movies?

The title of this post duplicates the title of an article I stumbled upon:

By David Boaz:

...Anti-Nazi movies keep coming out, from Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Hitler, Beast of Berlin in 1939 and on through The Great Dictator, The Mortal Storm, The Diary of Anne Frank, Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List, right up to the current Black Book. And many of these have included searing depictions of Nazi brutality, both physical and psychological.

But where are the anti-communist movies? Oh, sure, there have been some, from early Cold War propaganda films to such artistic achievements as The Red Danube, Ninotchka, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Killing Fields, East-West, and Before Night Falls. But considering that National Socialism lasted only 12 years in one country (and those it occupied), and Communism spanned half the globe for 75 years, you'd think there'd be lots more stories to tell about Communist rule.

No atrocities, maybe? Nazis and Brits were vicious, but Communists were just intellectually misguided? Well, that seems implausible. They murdered several times as many people. If screenwriters don't know the stories, they could start with the Black Book of Communism. It could introduce them to such episodes as Stalin's terror-famine in Ukraine, the Gulag, the deportation of the Kulaks, the Katyn Forest massacre, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Hungarian revolution, Che Guevara's executions in Havana, the flight of the boat people from Vietnam, Pol Pot's mass slaughter—material enough for dozens of movies.

Do read it all.  I agree, we do need anti-communist movies in order to explain to young people that it really was (and is) a bad idea.  But, besides the leftist bias of many Hollywood filmmakers, I think I can guess another reason why there are very few movies about the struggle against another totalitarian ideology of the 20th Century.  You see, at least in the former Soviet Union Communism lasted so long, it is very hard to produce a movie with a happy ending.  On the other hand, if you take a time frame that encompasses the fall of Communism, the happy end is possible.  I hope there will be people that take it up.

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Saddam's WMD

I am very busy at work and have to work on weekends, so I haven't posted for a while.  However, I have a little bit of time now, so this is my attempt to catch up.  My first post today is about a fairly old article by Melanie Philips about Saddam's WMD:

It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Dave Gaubatz, however, says you could not be more wrong. Saddam's WMD did exist. He should know because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don't know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam's WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.

Read the whole thing.  The evidence that Saddam did have both WMD and research program to create more WMD are overwhelming.  Yet, the Bush Administration seems to be quite willing to self-flagellate about being mistaken about their existence.  Why?  The other day Rush Limbaugh echoed my thoughts on this subject.  He suggested that it might be easier for many people in the administration to admit to a lesser screw-up of being too paranoid about the WMD that weren't really there, rather to admit to much bigger screw-up failing to find the existing WMD, which now obviously got into the wrong hands.  Yes, Syria would be those wrong hands.

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My letter to Senator Lieberman

It took me a while: I am very busy at work and had to work last weekend.  But here it is, my letter to Senator Lieberman that I intended to write since my last post.

Dear Senator Lieberman.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for your steadfast support of our troops and their mission, as well as for your overall support of our war effort against this new totalitarian enemy known as Islamism (different from Islam).
Although I do not live in Connecticut, I write to you as a fellow American and a fellow Jew.  Just like previous generations of your family, I am a naturalized American, originally from the former Soviet Union.  Having grown up in the former Soviet Union, I have a very special appreciation for this country: I have something to compare it to.
I am now embarrassed and horrified by the actions of the Democratic Leadership in the US Congress.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently stated that the war is lost.  He stated this in the middle of the war, while our troops are in combat.  This basically amounts to spreading enemy propaganda.  People went to jail for things like this at the end of World War 2.  Some, like "Lord Haw-Haw", were even executed.  So, it is a disgrace that Harry Reid remains in the leadership position of the US Senate.  The Democratic Party kicked you out.  Ironically, you are the only one who remained true to the ideals of the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.  In fact, it seems that those ideals found their home in the Republican Party of today.  By aligning yourself with the modern incarnation of the Party of FDR, the Republican Party, you can change the leadership of the Senate and ensure more effective prosecution of the war against Islamism.  I implore you to do just that.
Thank you very much.

On a related note, a commenter to my last post suggested that, since Bush Administration committed numerous blunders in Iraqi Theater of operations, we should just let it go and give up.  My answer to that is that mistakes are made in any war.  For example, World War 2 was no exception.  However, those blunders are certainly not the reason to surrender.  Especially, since they did not result in military defeat.  They may still result in political defeat, but only if we do give up.  I am trying to make my small contribution to preventing such outcome.

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Joe Lieberman has the power...

...to fire Harry Reid.  I found this via Bill's Bytes:

Our country is divided today in a manner not seen since the Civil War. Rogue far-left fanatics, socialists and anarchists, and all those who despise and hate America and would wish it dissolved and replaced by a Marxist multi-culturalist commune of relativistic moral values where all depravities are permissible and the only allegiance is to one's self, and answering not to the will of the American people, but to a "Socialist, Secularist 'Internationale' World Order," have taken over the Democratic Party!

Perverting public opinion with an unrelenting campaign of propaganda in the face of public apathy and complacency, much as the Nazis did in the elections of 1933 in Germany that brought Adolf Hitler to power, the Democrats managed to marginally win elections in 2006 , in some cases winning local elections by merely a few hundreds or a few thousands of votes in constituencies of millions of people, and abrogate the reigns of power from the silent majority!

…………………………………………………………………………….

That is why I would like to take this opportunity to hold Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to his word for the sake of our troops and the very survival of our nation. Thus I write the following open letter to Senator Joe Lieberman:

Dear Senator Lieberman,

In this most crucial time in our nation's history, and even as our troops lie in harm's way while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid does everything in his power not only to encourage Al-Qaeda and our enemies, telling them that "the war in Iraq is lost," but doing everything in his power to ensure and achieve said defeat at any cost - even at the expense of the blood of our Servicemen by denying them the very bullets with which to defend themselves - I besiege you Senator Lieberman to keep your word and switch sides and become a Republican, in the dire necessity of wresting power, and the Senate Majority Leadership, from Reid and his defeatist Democratic ilk.

Those of us concerned for Israel also realize, from the actions of Senator Reid, House Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Murtha, and their Democratic cohorts now in power in Congress, that it doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that they would leave Israel to its fate, were Israel to have need of us surrounded by a sea of hostile enemies as it is, with as much enthusiasm as they now work to achieve our defeat and for us to cut-and-run in Iraq, have tried to appease Syrian dictator Al-Assad in flagrant violation of established State Department and Administration policy, and keep making overtures of appeasement to a hostile Iran fueling the insurgency in Iraq and defiant of the world community in its dogged insistence on developing nuclear weapons!

All of us concerned about our troops and our achieving victory in Iraq, with the safety and survival not only of Israel but our own as well, and with the direction our country is taking under this present Democratic leadership - with the resulting dire consequences not only adversely affecting our nation's future, but verily the consequent course of history and the future of the world and Western Civilization - see it as imperative that we take the reigns of power from their hands... and only you can do it, Senator Lieberman!

I would like to remind you, that though you become a Republican out of the present exigencies we face as a nation, that at heart you will always be a Democrat in the proud tradition of FDR, Truman, and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, that it is the Democrats who repudiated you and made you run as an Independent in 2006 because you were not enough of a "leftist" and a "defeatist" for their tastes, and that it is this Democratic Party hijacked by the far-left, the peaceniks, anarchists, and other fringe groups, which has left you and betrayed you, much as it has America's traditional conservative Democrats!  (emphasis mine - Eric-Odessit)

America is at a crossroads, Senator Lieberman, it faces one of its darkest hours even as our troops in the battlefield are being used as "political pawns," at the risk of their safety and their lives, by such power mongering, unscrupulous, demagogues as Senator Reid, and or betrayed by Democratic leftist ideologues in Congress! The fate of our nation, of Israel, and of Western Civilization hangs on the balance. The Islamofacist terrorist enemy must be defeated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever it rears its ugly head of intolerance, oppression, and death, or we let it fester at our peril. It will come knocking at our door once again, much as it did on 9/11!

The time is now, Senator Lieberman! Fulfill your promise, and your commitment to our troops in the field, switch Parties now, become a Republican, end the impasse about the war funding, and wrest the Leadership of the Senate from infamous Harry Reid, the Democrats, and America's enemies!

Our future is in your hands!

Sincerely,

AR

I don't know which of the Hyscience posters signs "AR", but I could certainly sign this letter myself.  I wrote a while ago that Senator Lieberman would have to say: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party threw me out”.  Since the Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate decided to surrender, perhaps now would be a good time for Senator Lieberman to make good on his threat and change the leadership in the Senate.  Hyscience posted Senator Lieberman's contact information on their site.  I am repeating it here:

Washington, DC Office
706 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-4041 Voice
(202) 224-9750 Fax

Connecticut Office
One Constitution Plaza
7th Floor
Hartford, CT 06103
(860) 549-8463 Voice
(800) 225-5605 In CT
(860) 549-8478 Fax

You can e-mail Senator Lieberman from his official website at: http://lieberman.senate.gov/

I intend to use this information over the coming weekend.  Please do the same.

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My thoughts on the Virginia Tech Massacre

It is too late now to treat it as some news now, but it is not too late for me to comment.  My heart goes out to the victims and their families.  Things like that did not affect me as much as now before I had kids.  But now I always think to myself: "What if my daughter was there?"  I also feel very sorry for the shooter's family.  Not only did they loose their their son and brother, but knowing that he was actually the evil monster that did this must be unbearable.

Now the dust settles a bit, and the whole story gets politicized even more than it was in the immediate aftermath.  It is all very predictable.  The Left screams for gun control.  Their ideal is to ban all guns.  In fact, as it turns out, the guns were (and still are) banned on Virginia Tech campus:

BLACKSBURG - Virginia Tech's recent action against a student caught carrying a gun to class could draw unwanted attention from groups already angry about firearms restrictions on public college campuses.

University officials confirmed that, earlier this semester, campus police approached a student found to be carrying a concealed handgun to class. The unnamed student was not charged with any crimes because he holds a state-issued permit allowing him to carry a concealed gun. But the student could face disciplinary action from the university for violating its policy prohibiting "unauthorized possession, storage or control" of firearms on campus.

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker declined to release the student's name or specifics of the incident, citing rules protecting student confidentiality. But Hincker said Tech's ban on guns dates back several decades.

Students who violate the school policy could be called before the university's internal judicial affairs system, which has wide discretion in handing down penalties ranging from a reprimand to expulsion.

"I think it's fair to say that we believe guns don't belong in the classroom," Hincker said. "In an academic environment, we believe you should be free from fear."

Here it is again, the ridiculous argument about guns somehow instilling fear in people.  But the ban on guns did not stop Cho from bringing guns on campus and killing a bunch of people.  The gun rights advocates logically point out that had some students who were already licensed to carry weapons been able to bring them to class, the number of victims would have been drastically reduced (via Pamela of Atlas Shrugs):

In reality, Virginia Tech was, as many bloggers put it, a "danger-free zone for armed criminals." The school was one of many to prohibit all guns on campus. Last year, legislation to allow exceptions for licensed and trained gun owners failed to pass the Virginia legislature.

Virginia Tech officials falsely believed their policy meant more security, not less. Its spokesman, Larry Hincker, described the school's anti-gun policy in 2005 by saying: "We believe guns don't belong in the classroom. In an academic environment, we believe you should be free from fear." He proudly noted that students who had tried to bring handguns onto school property had been promptly suspended.

John Lott, a gun-control scholar, says the problems with such laws is that good intentions aren't enough. "What counts is whether the laws ultimately save lives. Unfortunately, too many gun laws primarily disarm law-abiding citizens, not criminals." He notes that some 40 states now have some kind of law allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed firearms. In most of those states, between 2% and 6% of all adults have such permits, thus giving citizens in a community the size of a university the knowledge that someone other than the local police will have access to self-defense.

So, banning guns on campus was not much help:

Virginia Tech thus went out of its way to prevent what happened at a Pearl, Miss., high school in 1997, where assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a handgun from his car and apprehended a school shooter. Or what happened at Appalachian Law School, in Grundy, Va., in 2002, when a mass murder was stopped by two students with law-enforcement experience, one of whom retrieved his own gun from his vehicle. Or in Edinboro, Pa., a few days after the Pearl event, when a school attack ended after a nearby merchant used a shotgun to force the attacker to desist.

I understand that many people would argue that college students are not known for responsible behavior.  But it seems to me that people who were already qualified and licensed to carry guns should have been allowed to do so.  You see, as it turns out, police are not obligated to protect anybody.  They just have to catch the criminals after the crime has been committed.  I actually first realized this after I read an article on the site for "Jewish NRA".  I could not find it now, but go ahead and browse this site.  While you are there, look at this article (via Pamela of Atlas Shrugs).  This explains how to end school shootings.

It is pretty obvious that guns should not have been sold to Cho, a very disturbed individual with a couple of stalking complaints against him and referral to a mental health facility.  A good computerized data base would have prevented this.  That would be the gun control part.  But in case of a terrorist act or someone who just snapped there would be no previous data available.  Even if the guns are outlawed, people who intend to do harm will find a way, including obtaining guns illegally.  Armed citizens who are qualified to use firearms would be the only way to minimize the damage.

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New essay by Bill Wittle

Bill Wittle does not know me.  But he is the guy who inspired me to start writing articles for other blogs, which eventually resulted in this blog.  He has a new essay up.  Just go read it.  And read the rest of his stuff, while you are at it.

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A sane (and brave) Saudi journalist

I found (don't remember how) this from MEMRI:

Saudi Columnist: 'The Right of Return Is an Illusion'

In two recent articles in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Saudi columnist Yousef Nasser Al-Sweidan argued that the Palestinian refugees' right of return is an idea that cannot be implemented, and that the only solution is for the refugees to be naturalized in the countries where they currently reside.

The following are excerpts from the articles:

The Right of Return - An Idea that Cannot Be Implemented

In the first article, published March 5, 2007 and titled "On the Impossible [Idea] of the Right of Return," Al-Sweidan wrote: "...The slogan 'right of return'... which is brandished by Palestinian organizations, is perceived as one of the greatest difficulties and as the main obstacle to renewing and advancing the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians based on the Road Map and a two-state solution.

"It is patently obvious that uprooting the descendents of the refugees from their current homes in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other countries, and returning them to Israel, to the West Bank, and to Gaza is a utopian ideal and [a recipe for] anarchy. More than that - it is an idea that cannot be implemented, not only because it will upset the demographic [balance] in a dangerous and destructive manner, and will have [far-reaching] political, economic and social ramifications in such a small and constrained geographical area, but [mainly] because the return [of the refugees] stands in blatant contradiction to Israel's right as a sovereign [state], while the Palestinian Authority lacks the infrastructure to absorb such a large number of immigrants as long as the peace process... is not at its peak..."

The Refugee Problem is the Result of Mistakes By the Host Countries

"Clearly, the refugee problem is mainly the result of cumulative mistakes made by the countries where [the refugees] live... such as Syria and Lebanon, which have isolated the refugees in poor and shabby camps lacking the most basic conditions for a dignified human existence. Instead of helping them to become fully integrated in their new society, they let them become victims of isolation and suffering... Later, the worst of all happened when Arab intelligence agencies used the Palestinian organizations as a tool for settling scores in internal Arab conflicts that probably have nothing to do with the Palestinians...

"The Israelis, on the other hand, were civilized and humane in their treatment of the thousands of Jewish refugees who had lost their property, homes and businesses in the Arab countries, and who were forced to emigrate to Israel after the 1948 war. The Israeli government received them, helped them, and provided them with all the conditions [they needed] to become integrated in their new society...

"The lies of the Syrian Ba'th regime, and its trading in slogans like 'right of return,' 'steadfastness,' 'resistance,' 'national struggle,' and all the other ridiculous [slogans], are evident from the fact that, to this day, dozens of Palestinian families [remain] stranded in the desert on the Syrian-Iraqi border, because the Syrian regime refuses to let them enter its horrifying Ba'th republic and return to the Yarmouk [refugee] camp.

"The Arab countries where the Palestinians live in refugee camps must pass the laws necessary to integrate the inhabitants of these camps into society. [In addition, they must] provide them with education and health services, and allow them freedom of occupation and movement and the right to own real estate, instead of [continuing] their policy of excluding [the refugees] and leaving the responsibility [of caring for them] to others, while marketing the impossible illusion of return [to Palestine]..."

The Refugees Don't Need Another 60 Years of Misery

In the second article, published March 16, 2007 and titled "Naturalization is the Solution," Al-Sweidan wrote: "There is no doubt that the Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon - who have for many long years been fed by their Arab hosts on impossible dreams and on shiny promises that were soon broken - do not need another 60 years of misery, wretchedness and suffering... in order to figure out for the thousandth time that all the talk about the 'bridge of return' is [nothing but] nonsense and deceit - a fairytale that exists only in the old, worn-out demagogy of the Arab propaganda...

"In reality, there is no 'bridge [of return]'... except for the bridge that we now must pass... called the peace process and normalization of relations between the Arabs and Israel. Undoubtedly, the Arabs cannot continue to avoid the implementation [of the peace process], which brooks no further delay. [Any delay] will have a heavy price for the Arab societies in the present and in the future, considering the sharp strategic changes [occurring] in the Middle East. [These changes] demand an immediate and final solution to the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and [require] the two sides to direct their joint energies and efforts towards confronting the Iranian nuclear threat which imperils us all."

The Inevitable Solution is to Naturalize the Refugees in the Host Countries

"As the Middle East peace process gains momentum, and as the regional and international forces remain committed to the need to resolve this [conflict]... there is a growing necessity for a realistic, unavoidable and bold decision that will provide a just solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees by naturalizing them in the host countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, and other countries.

"Even though this is a humanitarian [project], it requires intensive efforts on the legislative, economic, logistic, and administrative levels, in order to integrate the Palestinians organically into the social, economic and political fabric of the Arab societies...

"By every conceivable and accepted criterion, naturalizing the refugees [in the Arab countries] is the inevitable solution to [this] chronic humanitarian problem. The fact that [this solution] constitutes an important part of the overall peace process and of the historic reconciliation between the Arabs and the Israelis will help to reinforce [the naturalization process] and to perpetuate it."

I could not decide which part is a good part to excerpt, so here is the whole thing.  It is particularly remarkable that this journalist compares Israel favorably to the Arab countries and talks about the forgotten refugees: the Jews from the Arab countries.  There is a good reason why they are forgotten: they got integrated into Israel and no longer are refugees.

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New information on LGF post

Little Green Footballs posted this on Friday:

A candidate for the Green Party in Vancouver reveals the sick mentality of the Truther “movement,” as he stands by an editorial in which he took joy in the mass murder attacks of 9/11: Green candidate stands by remarks praising 9/11. (Hat tip: Joel.)

A federal Green party candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway is standing behind a controversial editorial he wrote more than four years ago in which he describes the falling of the World Trade Center twin towers as “beautiful.”

The editorial, entitled, A Revolting Confession, was first published on Nov. 28, 2002 in an alternative newspaper, The Republic of East Vancouver, which Kevin Potvin founded.

I have cousins in Vancouver, so I decided to ask them about this a$$hole.  Also, since I myself happen to be Jewish, any leftist creep who might be Jewish causes personal embarrassment to me. "Potvin" sounds Jewish, so I asked my cousins about that also. Here is my cousin Sveta's answer:

Hi Eric,
Kevin Potvin is not Jewish, he was born in a small town in Ontario and now lives in a bad section of Vancouver. He owns and operates an extremely left wing, biased by his own admission , newspaper that I never heard of until now. He wrote that insane article 4 or 5 years ago and nobody noticed except morons that read his rag. Now he is in the news because his article was reprinted in the mainstream Canadian magazine. He wants to run in the next federal election as a representative of a Green Party, a party that has no issues besides environment and has no representatives in the parliament. Thanks to that article , Green Party is now in the lime light and it makes all the 'tree huggers' very upset that this moron is speaking under their party banner. There are calls for him to leave the party and to issue 'deep apology'. But over all it is a very marginal news item and I don't think is worthy of anyone's attention.
Take care,
Sveta

So, I am happy to report that this idiot is sufficiently marginalized.  Good for our neighbors to the North.

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Disagreement between friends

Freedom Now, my friend and fellow member of the Sand Diego Chapter of Protest Warrior, disagreed with my posts on the British-Iranian crisis.  His comments are here and here.  Now, obviously, this is a disagreement between friends, people who share the same goals, like defeating Islamo-Fascism and defending Western Civilization.  This is what loyal opposition used to be about: arguing about the means to achieve common goals.  But I digress.  Back to my argument with my friend.  He does not think that the Brits surrendered to the Iranian demands.  He also thinks that mine and others' disappointment about the whole thing drives a wedge between us and Britain, undoubtedly one of our most loyal allies and the most significant ally at that.  I don't think that my criticism of the British rules of engagement and the Royal Navy personnel is enough to drive that wedge in.  So, I would like to ask my friend to explain why I am wrong on that point.  I would like also to ask my friend to explain why he does not think that the British Government surrendered to Iranian demands.  I suspect that the release of the Iranians we captured in Iraq is coming.  That would constitute our surrender along with the Brits.

Let me elaborate a bit on my own point.  What I lamented in my posts (and nothing changed since) is the attitude.  The attitude of not treating the war we are in like a real war.  This attitude is shared to a large extent by our own Government, by the Administration that both my friend and I support.  Instead of defining the enemy at least by ideology, the enemy is defined by merely tactics that he uses, i. e. War on Terror instead of War against Islamism.  Political Correctness runs amok.  The Government makes no effort to explain why we have to fight.  The explanation of the war, including the Iraqi theater, is left to the bloggers.  Believe it or not, propaganda is a vital part of the war effort.  And it is totally neglected.  The mainstream media plays the role of Axis Sally, and the Administration makes no effort to counter it.  No achievements, no heroic deeds are reported.  In my post I mentioned the BBC refusing to air a docudrama about a Victoria Cross winner in Iraq.  But our MSM is no better.  And apparently the British rules of engagement require asking for approval from London before firing on hostile forces.  We are losing the war of public opinion, and, if things don't change, we will lose the war itself.

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Curchill is crying

It might have been apparent from my numerous links to The Churchill Centre site that I am a great admirer of Sir Winston Churchill.  I consider him the greatest statesman of the 20th Century.  There are some others that come close.  Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher come to mind.  But Churchill led the Free World all alone at the time of great peril.  Some people say that America won World War 2, others say that Soviet Union won that war.  But without Churchill standing up to the Nazis there would not be the war to win.  People of Europe would basically have a choice between Stalin and Hitler: not a good choice to have.  Well, I found the photoshop below via Bill's Bites (originally posted here):

After seeing this picture I wanted to cry myself.  Basically the British rules of engagement were akin to a Spitfire or a Hurricane pilot observing German bombers approaching England, but being ordered not to shoot them down until the pilot makes sure that they actually intend to bomb, which would happen after the bombs start dropping.  Here is Austin Bay's analysis of the British surrender.  There is nothing to excerpt.  Just read it.  And here is Dennis Prager's article.  It is all very sad, really.

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Mainstream Media at its best

This is via LGF:

The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide.

Key portions of the documentary focus on Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix and his American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit organization of Muslim Americans who advocate patriotism, constitutional democracy and a separation of church and state.

Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.

Just read this and the LGF post.

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Mothers of soldiers visit their congressman

I found this via Atlas Shrugs.  A bunch of mothers, whose kids are fighting the Islamo-Nazis in Iraq, visited their congressman and told him what they think of his vote to set the deadline for withdrawal.  Just watch it.  I doubt that these mothers really want their kids to be in combat.  I am sure they would prefer their kids be safe at home.  But they know that there is a job to be done, and their kids are doing it, while Democrats in Congress make their job harder and more dangerous.

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The Left really does support the new Nazis

I often say that the Left is Nazi-sympathizing.  But I used to think that they do that without completely realizing who they sympathize with.  But this is absolutely amazing.  It turns out, they know exactly who they support (via LGF):

...Kassass's evaluation of the situation in Egypt was echoed in the exchanges of Sadala Mazraani of the Lebanese Communist Party, and Ali Fayyad of Hizbullah. Mazraani admitted that during the civil war in Lebanon, Islamists and socialists were fighting each other, and argued that we should learn from the successes of the anti- fascist front of WWII, the nationalist revolution of the 1950s in Egypt and the non-aligned movement of the 1960s, when imperialism was on the defensive. He pointed out how Latin America is uniting with the Middle East against the common enemy, and said it was more a matter of coordinating movements that have recognized common goals. "The Lebanese Communist Party actively works with Hizbullah against the occupation and in elections, both trying to unite Lebanese society to fight Israel and Zionism."

Ali Fayyad of Hizbullah backed up Mazraani, though he complained that, "many socialists in Europe still refuse to work with us, calling us 'terrorist'". He admitted that Islamists are conservative and often don't want to work with the left, especially extremists like Al-Qaeda, which "will not work with anyone and will fail". Then there are the liberal Muslims who don't care about the war and occupation, lack a clear position on imperialism, and as a result, actually ally with it. "The differences of Hamas and Hizbullah with the left are minor -- family and social priorities -- and at the same time, the Islamic movement must apply democracy, which is really the same as shura. Democracy is a bridge to cross to a better world. We should avoid intolerance in governance, whether it's Islamic or not, and forcing religion upon people." He referred to Gramsci's argument about creating a common front at important historical junctures to induce historical change, after which the different groups can go their separate ways.What a lovely irony to have an Islamist quoting a Western communist theorist.

"By working with Islamic groups in an open way, the left can have a positive impact on Islamic movements, and vice versa."

The international left, as represented at the conference, emphasized practical ways to reach out to the broader Muslim community, as reflected in conference forums on such projects as twinning UK and Palestinian cities, countering the boycott of the Hamas government in Palestine with a boycott of Israel and Western firms that provide military equipment to Israel, countering Islamophobia -- in a word, citizens' diplomacy.

James Clark of the Canadian Peace Alliance described how the anti-war coalitions are now supportive of Muslims who find themselves targets of racial and religious profiling and no-fly lists, and that there is active work in the peace movement to counter Islamophobia, "which the governments use to fan the flames to generate support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are committed to defend all civil liberties. "On the wall of the prayer room at Ryerson University in Toronto, someone's spray painted 'Die Muslim'. The administration refused to condemn this as hate crime, so we organised a petition and a campaign to counter Islamophobia, and as a result, the head of the Islamic students' organization was elected president of the students' council. So you can use such incidents to educate and mobilize people." Clark vowed that the Canadian peace movement, inspired by the Arab resistance in Lebanon and Iraq, would work with Muslims to defeat imperialism.

Johannes Anderson of Denmark criticized the Danish left for not standing behind Muslims during the cartoon controversy, allowing a weak prime minister to emerge unscathed. "I've changed through the past years and grown through criticism. We should not be afraid of it. We fight for democracy in the Middle East and Europe against neo- liberalism which is taking away our rights everywhere."

I can't believe I just linked to Al-Ahram.  But here it is.  The Left now knowingly cooperates with Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with clear Nazi ties.

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Bernard Lewis's lecture

Here is the link to the lecture.  Just read it.  It is crucial for understanding who we are fighting and why.

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What happened to Britain?

I did not comment on the British sailors and marines taken hostage (or should we call them POWs?) while they were still held, because there was a lot of questions about the whole thing.  Now things are clearing up.  During their press conference it became pretty clear why they did not fight back.  Basically by the time they knew beyond any doubt that the Iranians had hostile intents, they were already surrounded, outgunned and outnumbered.  Normally in war people surrender in such circumstances, so the Brits can't be blamed for surrendering.  What they did afterwards is another story.  But first about how they were taken.  The rules of engagement are faulty.  If the Brits opened up on the Iranians while they were approaching, none of this would have happened.  According to some people I asked, our guys would have done exactly that.  HMS Cornwall could have sunk them all, but they were ordered not to shoot.  And by the time the British boarding party was surrounded, they could not without killing their own guys.  But then the Brits just went along with the Iranians.  It seems to me that the reason for that is the attitude displayed by one of the released sailors during their press conference.  He said: "Iranians are not our enemies.  We are not at war with Iran".  That attitude made an act of war into a misunderstanding, so they did whatever they could to get out of this situation.  And if this required humiliating their country, so be it.  Could you imagine Royal Marines defending Port Stanley saying: "Argentineans are not our enemies.  We are not at war with Argentina" after Argentinean troops landed on Falkland Islands?  But evidently people still don't understand that we are at war and don't understand the nature of the enemy.  So they participate in the disgraceful TV appearances (via LGF).  Then they sell their story for big bucks.  I am not even adding my own comments to this: there is nothing to add to LGF's post.  Someone might say that I should not be judging them: I am not in this situation and don't know what I would do.  True, but at least I know who the enemy is.  Therefore, I at least can hope that should I be in this situation, I might be strong enough to just give my name, rank and serial number.  At least I know what I should strive for.

The problem does not affect just those sailors.  It affects the whole country of (formerly) Great Britain.  This is also via LGF:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

So, the teachers are afraid and quite ready to sacrifice the historical truth on the altar of political correctness.  Meanwhile, the BBC (no, I am not linking to it) does this (also via LGF):

Amid the deaths and the grim daily struggle bravely borne by Britain's forces in southern Iraq, one tale of heroism stands out.

Private Johnson Beharry's courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle's crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is "too positive" about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain's youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

The BBC's retreat from the project, which had the working title Victoria Cross, has sparked accusations of cowardice and will reignite the debate about the broadcaster's alleged lack of patriotism.

"The BBC has behaved in a cowardly fashion by pulling the plug on the project altogether," said a source close to the project. "It began to have second thoughts last year as the war in Iraq deteriorated. It felt it couldn't show anything with a degree of positivity about the conflict.

"It needed to tell stories about Iraq which reflected the fact that some members of the audience didn't approve of what was going on. Obviously a story about Johnson Beharry could never do that. You couldn't have a scene where he suddenly turned around and denounced the war because he just wouldn't do that.

Below in that Telegraph article is the description of exactly what he did:

He was cited for "valour of the highest order" after he drove a Warrior tracked armoured vehicle through heavy enemy fire in May 2004 to come to the rescue of a foot patrol that had been caught in a series of ambushes. The 30-ton Warrior was hit by multiple rocket-propelled grenades, causing damage and resulting in the loss of radio communications. Pte Beharry drove through the ambush, taking his own injured crew and leading five other Warriors to safety. He then extracted his wounded colleagues from the vehicle, all the time exposed to further enemy fire.

The following month, Pte Beharry was again driving the lead Warrior vehicle of his platoon through al-Amarah when his vehicle was ambushed. A rocket-propelled grenade hit the vehicle and Pte Beharry received serious head injuries. Other rockets hit the vehicle incapacitating his commander and injuring several of the crew.Despite his very serious injuries, Pte Beharry then took control of his vehicle and drove it out of the ambush area before losing consciousness. He required brain surgery for his head injuries and he was still recovering when he received the VC from the Queen in June last year.

So, the British teachers are scared to teach historical truth, while BBC, which used to be the voice of Freedom 65 years ago, effectively spitting on The Few.  I am afraid "we shall never surrender..." will never again be heard in Britain.  Churchill must be turning in his grave.

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My friend's brother...

...is a US Army officer.  He has just got back from Iraq, and my friend invited me to join him and his brother for lunch last Thursday.  I am going to try to re-cap what I've learned.

My friend introduced me by saying: "Eric counters the leftist demonstrations", to which his brother replied with a question: "Protest Warrior?"  Needless to say, I was pleased that he knew about us.  My friend's brother was in Ramadi.  I asked him about the attitude of the locals toward Americans.  He replied that initially, when his unit just got there, everybody hated them, but now it is different.  It's not really surprising: after all, Ramadi is in the Sunni Triangle.  But then, they started fixing infrastructure, providing security and generally improving people's lives, while relentlessly pursuing the bad guys, and things started to change.  Now things are relatively quiet.  The local police are very effective.  They are former insurgents for the most part, but, as he put it, "they are joining the winning team".  In contrast, the Iraqi army units in Ramadi are not very effective: they are mostly Shias from the South and are not trusted by the locals.  We asked if there was a lot of fighting.  He said that initially it was pretty bad: the insurgents were mounting coordinated attacks daily, in several places around the city, in large numbers attacking fixed American positions.  To some extent it must have made thing easier: it was essentially conventional warfare.  It does not happen any longer.  The insurgents might take pot shots at our guys, but that's about it.  The locals inform on them: they are tired of fighting.  And, as I've said before, many insurgents switch sides and join the police.  People are still afraid to show too much friendliness toward our guys: "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is still there.  But the locals do cooperate with the authorities.  We asked whether the insurgents were locals or foreigners for the most part.  He said that the insurgents were mostly locals, but the suicide bombers are mostly foreigners from all over the Muslim world.  Out of curiosity I asked whether there were any Chechens fighting our guys.  He said that he hasn't seen any, but he heard of them.  He also said that some formerly hot places like Tal Afar are completely pacified, while Ramadi is almost pacified.  We asked what our guys do if somebody starts shooting at them from some building.  He said that usually our guys shoot back and call for a couple of tanks.  If the bad guys are still shooting by the time the tanks arrive, the tanks eliminate them.  If after a couple of shots from tank cannon the bad guys are still there, they call for an air strike.  I asked if the bad guys hide behind the civilians.  He said that they perhaps would, but the buildings used by the bad guys are all empty: the locals don't want to be there and simply abandon those places.  I asked him whether General Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, is any good.  He said that while he does not know personally, he's heard good things about him.  However, he did mentioned that Petraeus has a bit of MacArthur complex: he always has a bunch of reporters following him.  I replied to it that MacArthur did get a job done.  Besides, some good PR would not hurt right now.

Here is the bottom line that I got out of it.  The new tactics is basically creating a sharp contrast: cooperate with or at least do not resist the authorities, and your life will be really nice.  Join the insurgency, and you won't have a life.  And this is working, as it should.  People for the most part do not want to fight anybody.  They just want to be left alone.  Whoever gives the people a chance at peaceful life will ultimately win.  Thus, they will not be on our side if we just abandon  them to "Al Qaeda in Iraq".  We just need to be patient.  Any artificial deadline will preclude us from succeeding: why would anybody join us knowing that we will just leave by a certain date?  We will go home, but the locals will have to live there.  So, their survival requires them to be on the other side.  That is why we cannot leave by any deadline.  Furthermore, we will need bases there.  Just like we kept bases in Germany in order to confront the Soviets, we will bases in Iraq to project power against the crazy mullahs in Iran.

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I am about to forgive Germany, ...

...thanks to their Chancellor Angela Merkel.  I don't really hold any grudges against individual Germans, but I am still angry at Germany as a country and at certain German institutions for what they did over 60 years ago.  Well, I am about to re-consider my anger.  This is via LGF:

Palestinian Authority officials have accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "offending the Palestinians' feelings" during her visit earlier this week to Ramallah, where she met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The accusations, the first of their kind against a European leader, were made by top PA officials only hours after Merkel and her entourage left Ramallah on Monday.

"She did everything to provoke the Palestinians during her visit," said one official. "She showed no understanding for the plight of our people. On the other hand, she appeared to be very biased toward Israel."

The official claimed that while Merkel refused to meet with families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, she focused during her talks with Abbas on the need to release kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who has been held in the Gaza Strip since last June. In addition, he noted, Merkel met with the families of missing IDF soldiers during her visit to Jerusalem.

At the joint press conference with Abbas, Merkel refused to answer a question about the Palestinian prisoners in Israel, the official added. "She appeared to be obsessed with the case of Gilad Schalit," he said. "But she refused to even acknowledge the fact that we have more than 10,000 prisoners in Israel."

…………………………………………………………………………….

"We were hoping to show her the wall that Israel built around Bethlehem, but she refused to go there," he said. "President Abbas was hoping to draw parallels between Israel's wall and the Berlin Wall. He wanted to remind Merkel of the days when she lived in East Berlin."

The Palestinian Arabs forgot that Merkel knows exactly what was the purpose of the Berlin Wall: to keep people from escaping to freedom, rather than to keep terrorists out.  I guess, her experience in East Germany really makes her appreciate Western Democracy.

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Response to a troll - updated

Update - 4/3/2007

TikiLoungeLizard has responded here and engaged in a debate. So it is official: he/she is not a troll. I apologize for making the wrong assumption.

Two days ago I had one more achievement as a blogger: I had several polite, but hostile, comments on my blog, posted by the same person. Well, technically the term "troll" is a bit premature for this particular commenter: this person still might to engage in a debate. So, let's try to determine whether we are dealing with a troll, shall we? I will reply to his/her comments in this post, and we'll se how the debate will proceed.

The comments were posted here, here (twice) and here. This commenter signs as TikiLoungeLizard, so this is the name I will use in addressing this person.

The first post (chronologically) where the comment appeared was the one about Protest Warrior action in San Diego. I mentioned links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda found by 9/11 Commission, and TikiLoungeLizard commented that Bin Laden was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. The short answer to this is here,, but I will also write this here for clarity. I have the report. Guess what? The links are there. They are listed on page 66 of my edition. That page also used to be available in the on-line edition of the report in Chapter 2. For reasons that I fail to understand this particular page seems to have been removed. But here is the scan of that page 66 from my copy. See for yourself. Note that whatever new evidence that you might claim disproving the links (there are none, but let's just clear this up for the sake of argument) is not an excuse to remove anything from the original report. If there would be any new evidence, that evidence should be added to the original. But anyway, here is the answer regarding the Hussien-Al Qaeda links.

The next post where TikiLoungeLizard's comment appeared was the one about name-calling. It is interesting that TikiLoungeLizard skipped the post in between, where I ask opponents of the war effort a question. So I'll go ahead and repeat this question for TikiLoungeLizard personally:

Are you prepared to abandon the people of Iraq to the perverted monsters who use children in suicide bombings?

Now we can deal with the comment. First of all, the lady I mentioned in my post did not indicate any support for Hezbollah. She just objected calling the kids in the photograph "Hezbo-Jugend". So, TikiLoungeLizard, what else would you call these kids? You say further that you don't support Hezbollah, nor Zionism. So, what's wrong with Zionism? The Left supports all the so-called national liberation movements. Even if they are Nazi in nature. So, the Left supports all the national liberation movements, except one: national liberation movement of the Jewish people, otherwise known as Zionism. If you will claim that "Jewish" means "practicing Judaism", you will be wrong. Jewish, or Jew, is an ethnic, rather than religious, definition. Religion defines Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims much more than Jews: those people all speak the same language and have very close, if not the same, culture, and differ only by their religions. Jews, on the other hand, have and always had a distinct language and a distinct culture. The Left always seems to encourage multiculturalism, encourage preserving ethnic identities. So, why are you so eager to deny me my ethnic identity? For the record, I don't support multiculturalism: I think that we are all Americans, and the language of this country is English. But as assimilated as I am, I still can't change the fact that I am a Jew from the former Soviet Union. That is a big part of my personality, so please leave that to me.

Interestingly enough, there was a time when the Left supported Israel. That was before the late 1960s, when United States started actively supporting Israel, and the Left became the collective agent of influence for the Soviet Union, the 2nd (after Mao) most deadly dictatorship in the history of mankind, regime very similar to the Nazi regime. How do I know it was similar? Read this, this and this. My grandpa told me many times that after signing of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the Soviet newspapers were praising friendship between two socialist countries. I can't provide any links to what my late grandfather told me, but I can link to what grandpa remembered in June of 1945. Note that a military alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was a real possibility. Are you still proud to be on the Left?

There is only one reason for your opposition to Zionism: anti-Semitism. Martin Luther King said: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, You are talking anti-Semitism." Note that I deliberately provide the link that disputes that he wrote some letter on the subject. So, you are an anti-Semite. And if you know some self-hating suicidal Jews that agree with you, that does not change that fact.

Now on to your 2 comments on the Home Front post. It really pisses me off, when people talk about "exit strategy". What was the "exit strategy" in World War 2? The best answer to the question of "exit strategy" was given by a former Democrat Joe Lieberman:

“In war, there are two exit strategies. One is called victory. The other is called defeat and America has too much on the line in Iraq to accept defeat.”

As for the airline security, you will be the first to scream if real security measures are implemented. Besides, it is said that the authorities trying to prevent a terrorist attack have to be right 100% of the time, while the terrorists have to succeed only once. So it is more productive to fight them at the source, rather than implementing security measures (although, they would not hurt). Perhaps the war in Iraq drains enough Al Qaeda resources away from their operatives in the US, so they weren't able to mount a successful attack since 9/11.

In your second comment you refer to Hermann Goering as a general. You are the first one to do that. You see, usually people refer to him by his wartime rank (Reichsmarschall) or by his position (chief of the Luftwaffe). But those would people who know the history of World War 2. I suspect that this history is not your strong point. Otherwise you would not be on the Left. However, your quote is there in that Wikipedia link. But you see, I don't need to be told that I am being attacked: I already was attacked. My cousin worked right next to the World Trade Center. I know people who escaped. My cousin knew people who did not. My relatives and friends are being bombed in Israel. The nut in Iran denies that members of my and my wife's families were murdered, while promising to do it again. So, don't pull the Nazis on me. It is you who support the modern incarnation of Nazis, even if you don't realize that. Because by opposing the war against the Nazis you support them. So, what I called the Left in my Name-Calling post still stands. The Left is evil, Nazi-sympathizing, indifferent to human suffering and treasonous. I should add "anti-Semitic" and "ignorant" to it.

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