Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a dramatic speech to the United Nations, employed a simple diagram to hammer home his plea that the international community set a "clear red line" over Iran's nuclear program -- warning that a nuclear-armed Iran would be tantamount to a nuclear-armed Al Qaeda.
. . . But what Obama hasn't done is effectively address the single greatest overarching foreign policy issue facing the U.S. since day one of his Administration - the continued viability of Iran's theocracy and that theocracy's drive for a nuclear weapon. This is a regime every bit as dipped in blood as that of Pol Pot's and, as they draw ever closer to having a nuclear arsenal, every bit as threatening to the world as that of Hitler. To repeat the assessment of Iran by then Defense Secretatry Robert Gates in 2008:
Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.
On the day Obama was inagurated into office, stopping Iran's drive towards a nuclear arsenal was by far his most important foreign policy challenge. Yet here we sit, four years later, with Iran's centrifuges spinning ever faster. As Mitt Romney noted this past week
:
U.S. President Barack Obama's policy on Iran represents his single worst foreign policy failure, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview on Sunday, saying that Iran was closer to having "nuclear capability" than when Obama took office in 2008.
Obama's response - "If Gov. Romney is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so." Clement Attlee couldn't have said it better.
Without doubt the most important lesson of WWII is that the delay of Attlee and his French counterpart in standing up to Hitler - to draw a red line if you will - ended up embroiling the world in the costliest and deadliest war in the history of man. It wasn't the beligirence of the French and British that led to WWII, it was their desire for peace at all costs, and thus their refusal to threaten force against Nazi Germany all the way up until the date Germany attacked Poland in September, 1939. According to a post-war debriefing of Nazi generals, WWII could been avoided had Britain and France stood up to Hitler in 1936-37, before Hitler's war machine was built up in strength.
Today, Obama claims, for domestic consumption, that the use of force is on the table as an option against Iran. But he is trying to have it both ways, criticizing Romney for even wanting to threaten Iran with force, while to Iran, he is silent.
Israeli PM Netanyahu has been publicly begging Obama to make a credible threat for the use of force against Iran for months as Iran moves ever closer to a nuclear arsenal. At the UN yesterday, Netanyahu gave a crystal clear warning to the world of the threat Iran poses and repeated his plea to Obama to act decisively with a threat of force before it is too late. Do watch this whole speech. It is worth a half hour of your time:
Do note that not only has Obama refused to meet with Netanyahu this past week, our U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, did not attend Netanyahu's speech at the UN. She wsa off having lunch with Hillary.
The prog war on the Kulaks - and their desire for global governance - continues apace. This from Breitbart:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative Monday "One of the issues I have been preaching about around the world is collecting taxes in an equitable manner, especially from the elites in every country," Clinton said. “It is a fact that around the world the elites of every country are making money. There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries.”
This is pure class warfare as perfected by Lenin. The difference between the rich in a capitalist system and the rich in the world of progressives is that the latter are hand picked and favored. Its not, at least in America, that the rich don't pay their "fair share," the top 5% are shouldering, what, something like 50% of the total income tax burden. Its that the progs, like the Hildabeast, want a bigger cut, and more importantly, they want to use class warfare to increase their own power.
Only speech that they agree with is to be allowed. In the video below, Egyptian-American activist and frequent MSNBC guest Mona Eltahawy tries to obliterate a pro-Israeli poster, citing complete justification for doing so on the grounds of her own freedom of speech.
A real and present threat to the West, albeit a distant second to Iran's nuclear program, is the Muslim world's call to make criticism of Islam a crime. Those calls have increased ten fold in the wake of riots throughout the Muslim nations, nominally in response to the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer. Obama has been serially apologizing for that film trailer since it came out. And now, what does he say at the UN yesterday, addressing those rioting nations?
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.
Really???? Of all the things Obama could have said, that was the most insane. It is an affirmation of Muslim outrageous outrage at any perceived slight and an agreement that any criticism of Islam is misplaced. Good God, nothing in this world is more in need of criticism than Islam as practiced in the Middle East, whether Salafi's would consider it "slander" or not. And indeed, no religion is more deeply involved in "slander" towards other religions than are the Muslims.
You can read Obama's full remarks at the UN here. He simultaneously tried to present a luke warm defense of America's First Amendment protection while condemning the "Innocence of Muslims" video. Disgusting.
Compare and contrast the response of Rep. Allen West. This from Politico:
Florida Rep. Allen West ripped President Barack Obama’s United Nations speech Tuesday, saying he would have told the U.N. that America would be an “Angel of Death” that wreaks “havoc and destruction” on anyone who attacks the U.S.
“My statement to the United Nations would have been, ‘The future does not belong to those who attack our Embassies and Consulates and kill our Ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence,’” the Florida congressman wrote in a Facebook post.
He criticized Obama’s U.N. speech for linking recent attacks on U.S. posts overseas to a trailer for the anti-Islamic film “Innocence of Muslims.” West said terrorism, not a video, sparked the violence.
[Obama] continues to offer up apologies instead of defending our hard earned First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression,” he wrote. “There is no message to this silly video trailer, and it is beneath the dignity and esteem of the Office of the President of the United States to mention it at all. When tolerance becomes a one way street it leads to cultural suicide. I shall not be tolerant of the intolerant. I know about the UN Resolution 1618 which would make any statement deemed by the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) ‘offensive’ to Islam a crime…..NOT ON MY WATCH FELLAS!”
Those are the messages Islam needs to get - clear, concise, and unyielding - if we are to stop an existential conflict with these radicals. The messages of Obama will lead to war with the West.
In 1933, a German democracy elected Hitler. In about 1980, Iranians democratically elected a theocracy. In 2006, the people of the Gaza Strip elected Hamas. In 2012, Egyptians elected the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2008, Americans elected Obama, and it is looking like we might reelect him in 2012. I gotta tell you, this democracy thing, it's not all that its cracked up to be.
Ours is the worst economy since the Great Depression. Obama, hired to fix it, has not merely failed, he is poised everything worse if, inexplicably, we elect him to a second term. Obama promised to bring unemployment under 8% in 2009; it hasn't been under 8% at any point during Obama's term. Long term unemployment is up almost 90%. Middle class incomes - down over Obama's term. People on food stamps - up by almost 50%. Gas prices - more than doubled. And Obama has grown our national debt by over 50% in just four years, taking it to a level exceeding our Gross Domestic Product. Obama's four years in office have been an economic disaster for America.
And yet . . . there are still people, a near majority at least, who are going to vote for Obama. Something is deeply and systemically wrong with our nation.
Democracy only works if people are well informed and have skin in the game. Far too many of the people who will vote in America this November are not well informed, far too many will be single issue voters, and far too many will vote based on what they can get from government redistribution of wealth. Just to clarify, I am not referring to anyone who has paid into Social Security and Medicare and are, today, merely getting repaid under those programs. But public sector union employees, women like Sandra Fluke, the people filmed in NYC a few months ago holding out their hands for "Obama bucks," crony capitalists . . . there is a sizable portion of the voters who in fact are little more than parasites on society.
There is no doubt in my mind that universal sufferage is a failed experiment. As Ben Franklin stated, "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." With universal suffrage and the rise of socialism / progressivism, is there anyone who doubts that Franklin had it exactly right?
When Franklin made his observation,, at the inception of our nation, the United States was designed not to have that problem. The vote was limited to white male landowners and tax payers. While the white male bit is an unsupportable anachronism, landowners and people paying income, SSI, or capital gains taxes - people with skin in the game - certainly sounds like an appropriate method of limiting suffrage.
Another variation is the world envisioned by Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers, a society where the only people with rights of suffrage were those who had served their country in the military. As Wiki explains Heinlein's new world:
There is an explicit contrast to the "democracies of the 20th century", which according to the novel, collapsed because "people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears." Indeed, Colonel Dubois criticizes as unrealistic the famous U.S. Declaration of Independence line concerning "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". No one can stop anyone from pursuing happiness, but the Colonel claims life and liberty exist only if they are deliberately sought and, often, bought painfully by great effort and sacrifice.
Heinlein was nothing if not a keen observer of politics and humanity. But that is not the only other option. There is the world envisioned by a science fiction author, I can't recall his name, where those who wish to live off the public dime are housed in controlled camps, separated from the productive classes of society. They do not vote, but they get to live the life of Julia, swaddled in the protective arms of the state from cradle to grave.
At any rate, man has been experimenting with forms of democracy since at least the days of Plato. Just because universal suffrage is the latest iteration does not make it the best form of democracy. Indeed, given Obama and the state of our nation in 2012, after a century of progressivism clogging our political machine, it is clear that universal suffrage has failed. It may well be that by 2016, we will be far less in need of an election than a revolution. We need to be sure, if and when America 2.0 arrives, that we listen to the wisdom of our founders and not make the mistakes with suffrage that have given us our nation as it is today.
When progs play the race card, it is usually to mine white guilt and end debates they can't win on the merits - but not always. Sometimes the race card is solely meant for consumption by the black population itself. And that is how Michelle Obama played it the other day when she proclaimed that contesting voter i.d. laws is the "civil rights issue of our time."
Perhaps the most scurrilous aspect of the U.S. society today is how the vast majority of the black population is both screwed and manipulated by the far left - and in particular, by blacks in leadership on the far left. The myriad of deep and systemic problems facing blacks in the U.S. today do not arise out of white discrimination. A broken education system, disintegration of the black family unit, a black middle class being devastated in the Obama economy, massive unemployment and the lowest median net worth of any racial group in America are just a few of the problems facing blacks - and every last one of them can be laid, in whole or in large part, at the feet of the far left. That those problems should so plague the black community in America in the 21st century is unforgivable.
As a threshold matter, polls on the topic of voter i.d. laws show that the vast majority of Americans - 75% - support such laws. With such broad support, Michelle and the rest of the progs of the far left know that they are not going to be able to mine white-guilt on this issue. Theirs is a pitch being made directly to the black population in order to get them to turn out and vote in November for Obama. The message, repeated ad infinitum by the progs today, is:
Look at all those racist crackers out there trying to keep you from voting. Now don't worry about any of your other problems, and don't worry that the Obama economy has devastated blacks. Don't worry that Obama is willing to consign black children to a failing educational system in order to support the teachers' unions. The single most important thing you can do is come out and vote for those of us protecting you from this non-existant virulent racism.
Michelle and the progs are beyond shameless. Whoever said "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time" did not take into account our modern black population. They will turn out and they will vote about 9 to 1 in favor of a man who has done more damage to the black community as a whole than the KKK did in its entire history.
Now I will agree with Michelle Obama on one point. The most important right in our democracy is the right to vote. Inherent in and central to that right is the proposition that each legal vote will be fully counted.
As to physical act of voting, the claim that a requirement for a picture i.d. will be unduly burdensome is a canard of the highest order. Getting a picture i.d. - which you would need to have in order to board a plane, enter a federal courthouse, enter the DOJ, attend the Democratic National Convention, enter the White House to see Michelle Obama, or buy alcohol - is not an onerous or unreasonable impediment to voting. I don't know of one person the left can point to who, in a state that has enacted voter i.d. laws, was actually kept from casting a ballot if they had a right to do so. Indeed, the lead plaintiffs the left have raised in voter i.d. cases either seem to have committed voter fraud (Indiana) or were, in fact, able to easily secure a free picture i.d. (Pennsylvania).
Voter i.d. laws are directed at the second half of voting rights, insuring that each legitimate vote cast is fully counted. Vote fraud is insidious, because it dilutes the vote of all legitimate voters. It is real, and it has impacted on numerous elections, including national elections, perhaps most recently the Senate race of 2008 in Minnesota.
I am not sure whether the progs are trying to suborn voter fraud or merely trying to get out the black vote. I strongly suspect that it is both. But in any event, if the black population were rational, they'd tell their prog masters to pack it. Blacks should be the first people standing in line in support of voter i.d. laws. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died since our country's inception in order to ensure that blacks have the right to vote, and that their vote would be fully counted. Ensuring that should be the most jealously guarded of all rights for blacks. The 90% of blacks that are still toiling away on the Democrat's plantation really need to figure out that the tune Michelle Obama is playing on that cheap violen is not "Lead Me To The Promised Land," its a bit older than that.
From the Washington Examiner: "Al Qaeda is alive and GM is half-dead" Its a bit of realism brought to the left's meme, "Bin Laden is dead; GM is alive."
I really have nothing to add to the quote above, except to note that Biden is, in equal measure, a buffoon and an insightful observer of the human condition. That said, his quote, made to a group of high school students, probably should have been addressed to a more mature audience.
The recently released film, the "Innocence of Dogs," a virulently anti-dog film produced by Cats Uber Alles, a U.S. corporation owned by one Kitty Galore, has led dogs to violent world wide protests organized by the Islamadog Foundation. The protesters, who condemned the film as "blasphemy," called for "death to all four legged chew toys" and a global ban on insults to canines.
In response to this unrest, President Obama immediately had Kitty Galore called in for questioning by a joint FBI/ASPCA task force and asked Google to "review" whether the film should remain on line. In addition, he produced an advertisement wherein he apologized to dogs everywhere, stating that their protests were the "natural result" of the provocative film and adding that free speech in America must be exercised with restraint. Sec. of State Clinton also appeared in the ad, pointing out that the U.S. government does not in any way agree with the "disgraceful film." In an apparent gesture of goodwill, the President invited the head of the Islamadog Foundation, Mo bin-Barken, to "dinner at the White House," an invitation the foundation has declined pending clarification of whether the invitation is for bin-Barken to be a guest or a menu item.
Long ago, a fine history prof. explained to me that it takes about 10% of a committed population to dominate the rest. I believe that to be the case in Iran, and I believe it to be the case in most nations of the Middle East where radical Islam dominates the government or is close to control. The 90% are sheep, some complicit, most fearful and ultimately ruled by the sword. I did not think that I would see the sheep strike back - but it is happening today in, of all places, Benghazi, Libya. This via Michael Totten's blog from a BBC report:
Hundreds of Libyan protesters have stormed the Benghazi headquarters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia in a backlash against last week's attack on the US consulate.
Witnesses say militiamen opened fire as the crowd overran the base, but it is not clear if there are casualties.
Buildings and a car were set alight and fighters evicted following a day of anti-militia protests in the city.
US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others died in the 11 September attack.
Earlier, some 30,000 protesters had marched through the eastern Libyan city calling for an end to the armed groups that have sprung up in the country since last year's ousting of Col Gaddafi.
Several thousand supporters of Ansar al-Sharia lined up outside its headquarters, in front of the crowd, waving black and white banners, AP news agency reported.
They fired into the air to try to disperse the protesters, but fled with their weapons after the base was surrounded by waves of people shouting "no to militias", the report added.
This is a glimmer of hope in what is now a blackhole of despair in the Islamic world. Amazing. Now let's see if this is the first step in a move to limit the power of the Salafists in the first permanent government of Libya. If that happens, then it really will be a major event.
Tony Blair has called on governments around the world to stand up to protesters engaged in violent attacks on western embassies in retaliation for an anti-Islamic film.
Compare and contrast Blair's response to most recent Middle East violence with that of the Obama administration, apologizing to the radicals for freedom of speech in the U.S. - see the ad below. Obama isn't standing up to radical Islam, he is prostrating America before it.
Tony Blair is, on the issue of the Middle East, the most eloquent and intellectually honest of all the major politicians in the world today. This short video from his appearance before the Iraq Inquiry commission from January of last year is as concise a summary of the situation, and as damning an implicit criticism of Obama's Middle East policy, as you will find.
H/T to reader Bill from across the pond for pointing out this video.
By the way, how is the Obama ad working in Pakistan to satisfy the radicals? This from Fox News:
Thousands angered by an anti-Muslim film ignored pleas for peaceful rallies and rampaged in several Pakistani cities Friday in battles with police that killed 19 people and touched off criticism of a government decision to declare a national holiday to proclaim devotion for the Prophet Muhammad.
The above ad, from the Obama administration, is currently playing in Pakistan. Romney really should start playing this embarrassing ad in the U.S. This apology for free speech by someone in the U.S. really sums up Obama's Middle East policy and its utter failure.
[T]he last thing we should be doing is silencing the criticism of Islam, let alone apologizing for it as a nation.
Our government stance must always be that people have the right to peacefully practice whatever faith they choose inside of our borders free of government sanction. But our Constitutional responsibilities end there. It does not require us to refrain from criticizing a religion mired in the 7th century, that causes bloodshed on a grand scale, that maintains itself by the sword, and that wishes to conquer by the sword. I do not know if Obama actually does not understand that, or whether he is too afraid of kicking the hornets' nest, or whether this is simply the natural result of a drift into anti-semitism and pro-Arab sympathies by those on the left generally.
And as I pointed out in another post today, the Obama ad hasn't exactly tamped down the violence in the Pakistan. To the contrary, after the Obama ad posted in Pakistan, the violence has become significantly worse, with 19 people dying in anti-American violence. Is anyone, other than perhaps the Obama administration, surprised?
How to solve the problem of pretextual Islamic hyper-rage? A brilliant suggestion from Daniel Pipes in an op-ed at Fox News - use fire to put out the fire:
. . . What would happen if publishers and managers of major media outlets reached a consensus -- “Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoon every day, until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot”? What would happen if Korans were recurrently burned?
Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause?
I predict the latter. A Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, would make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Westerners could then once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values.
So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: Display the Muhammad cartoon daily, until the Islamists become accustomed to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.
Actually, it sounds a lot more likely to work than the Obama / Clinton apology for U.S. freedom of speech ad now playing in Pakistan. Here is my part, reprinting from Charlie Hebdo's edition this week:
Yes, I know, they are over the top. Here is hoping U.S. cartoonists grow some testicles and come up with something more tasteful and critical. I still like Mo' with the bomb for a turban. It is certainly apropos.
Lots of posts and columns on the web today about the implosion of the Obama's "Cairo" doctrine, the Obama decision to use our tax dollars to fund an ad in Pakistan with Obama and Hillary attacking the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, and lastly, the implosion of the White House claims that the slaughter of our personnel in Benghazi was a spontaneous response to the film trailer.
Before addressing those points, let's note the elephant in the room. There is a huge scandal in this mix - the virtually non-existent security at our consulate in Benghazi on 9-11-12, site of previous attacks and a breeding ground for radicals. That lack of security was beyond negligent; it was criminally reckless. And that does not even begin to consider that no special precautions were taken on 9-11 to increase security there.
The person with the answers to this scandal is Hillary Clinton, which is I suspect why UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who would not even be in the loop on this issue, was offered up on all of the Sunday talk shows last Sunday to address it. She could prevaricate and obfuscate with at least some fall back claim to ignorance. Heads need to roll over this, and I strongly suspect that one of those heads is Hillary's.
The seminal critique of Obama's Middle East policy comes from Charles Krauthammer:
In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.
On June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.
But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.
. . . his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.
These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States, and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.
It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses, and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan.
The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and which may not even exist. What else can it say? . . .
Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf States beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.
Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.
What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign-policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”
Islam is a tool of politics and power in the Middle East - a tool that has not matured from its founding in the 7th century. I made the point here that what goes on in Muslim countries should not be countenanced in the civilized world, a point Rhymes with Right also makes in a very insightful post, Is Speech Against Islam A Crime Against Humanity -- Or Is Islam Itself?
The problem with Obama's Middle East policy is that it is wholly premised on fundamental conceits about the nature of Islam as practiced in the Middle East. Islam there is not rational, peaceful, or susceptible to compromise. It is not civilized. It is not benign. That Obama still bitterly clings to these conceits is the only way to explain why he would allow our State Dept. to spend $70,000 on an ad buy in Pakistan apologizing for and denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims." It is as damaging to America as it is pathetic.
The hypocrisy of Islamist's calls to respect the prophet, even as the Muslim religion is premised on the most fundamental of blasphemies against Christianity, is mind-boggling to me. But in any event, the last thing we should be doing is silencing the criticism of Islam, let alone apologizing for it as a nation.
Our government stance must always be that people have the right to peacefully practice whatever faith they choose inside of our borders free of government sanction. But our Constitutional responsibilities end there. It does not require us to refrain from criticizing a religion mired in the 7th century, that causes bloodshed on a grand scale, that maintains itself by the sword, and that wishes to conquer by the sword. I do not know if Obama actually does not understand that, or whether he is too afraid of kicking the hornets' nest, or whether this is simply the natural result of a drift into anti-semitism and pro-Arab sympathies by those on the left generally.
Lastly, hats off to CBS News for their superb reporting on what actually happened and is happening in Benghazi relating to the deaths of our Ambassador and three other Americans. This from CBS News:
Let's count the revelations embedded within this minute-and-a-half long clip:
(1) "The FBI still hasn't made it to the crime scene in Benghazi." More on this later, but the fact that the administration is treating our sacked consulate as a "crime" scene is telling. This was a terrorist attack. An act of war. . . . We've dispatched criminal investigators to look into it, but they still haven't even made it to ground zero yet? Nine days after the fact? Why?
(2) "Witnesses tell CBS News that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate. Instead, they say it came under planned attack." As I wrote this morning, the administration is at last beginning to acknowledge the latter fact, but the former element is crucial, too. If there really were no protests outside the consulate before the ambush began -- as multiple news outlets are now reporting -- even the premise of the administration's fictional account is false. CBS says the facts on the ground are in "direct contradiction" to the White House's statements. The administration is still saying that the raid could have spun out from spontaneous protests that didn't even exist.
(3) "What's clear...is that the public won't get a detailed account of what happened until after the presidential election." This conclusion strongly reinforces several of my theories about the White House's foot-dragging and misdirection on the Benghazi raid. We have a murdered ambassador and sensitive intelligence missing, and the administration is in pure political CYA mode.
Nice Deb also has an excellent round-up on these topics.
Dr. Sanity has returned to the blogging world (thankfully) and has a particularly insightful post on the administrations decision to run an ad in Pakistan denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, The Obama Apology Tour Continues:
I regret to inform those that support the constant apologizing, that the increasingly violent Islamic response to appeasement, solicitation, and understanding has always been completely predictable from a psychological perspective. Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it.
Here's a tip for the clueless Obama Administration and their supporters:
What an appropriate juxtaposition of pictures, one the latest in Obama iconic art now on sale from Team Obama, another showing the impact of Obama policies as wounded Americans were dragged to their deaths in Benghazi . . .
The IG Report on Fast and Furious - the Holder ATF / DOJ program that purposefully allowed purchasers for Mexico's drug cartels to buy weapons inside the U.S. in bulk, then did not trace the weapons, did not stop the weapons before getting into cartel hands, did not coordinate or even inform the government of Mexico of the program, and justified this insanity on the grounds that DOJ would be able to find out where the guns ended up by tracing guns that were left at the scene of crimes - has been released. This from a report summarizing the IG findings and the immediate effect of its release:
A bombshell report released Wednesday on Operation Fast and Furious faulted a range of federal agencies for the failed anti-gunrunning program and accused officials in charge of a "disregard" for public safety. In the wake of the report, one Justice Department official resigned and another retired.
The sprawling report by the department's inspector general is the most comprehensive account yet on the deadly operation which allowed weapons to "walk" across the U.S.-Mexico border and resulted in hundreds of firearms turning up at crime scenes in both countries.
The report says Attorney General Eric Holder was not made aware of potential flaws in the program until February of last year. But the report cites 14 other department employees -- including Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer -- for potential wrongdoing, recommending the department consider disciplinary action against them. One congressional source told Fox News the report was "more brutal than was expected."
The report marked Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, as the highest-ranking DOJ employee in a position to stop the program. Weinstein, who disputes the findings, is resigning in the wake of the report.
Another official criticized for not asking enough questions about the Furious operation, former ATF acting director Kenneth Melson, retired after the report came down.
Congressman Issa appeared on Fox News last night to point out the fact that the report is not anywhere near a completed investigation:
And this is Congressman Issa questioning the IG today, pointing out DOJ's unlawful refusal to provide 90% of documents relevant to Fast and Furious to Congress, as well as the refusal of government employees outside of the DOJ with relevant knowledge to answer questions from the IG.
Now that the IG Report is finished, Issa needs to dust off all of the old document subpoenas which Holder refused to comply with on the ground of an on-going IG investigation and resubmit them. Immediately.
Until today, I thought the last people of French origin worthy of any respect were Charles Martel and his army of Franks - the men who heroically beat back the advance of Islamic armies into Europe. That was in 732 A.D. - a turning point in history.
It has been a long dry spell, but today, I can stand and salute France's stand on free speech, and in particular, the publishers of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, a magazine that has had its headquarters firebombed previously for "blasphemy" against the Prophet of the religion of peace. The magazine is in the midst of publishing more caricatures of Mohammed and the radical Islamists, this time based on the movie "Innocence of Muslims." This from the USA Today:
France stepped up security at some of its embassies on Wednesday after a satirical Parisian weekly published crude caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The prime minister said he would block a demonstration by people angry over a movie insulting to Islam as the country plunged into a fierce debate about free speech.
The government defended the right of magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish the cartoons, which played off of the U.S.-produced film The Innocence of Muslims, and riot police took up positions outside the offices of the magazine, which was firebombed last year after it released an edition that mocked radical Islam.
What, no phone calls to the publisher from the Chief of Staff? No statements of disgust at the content from the President or the Sec. of State? No calls from the left to have the publisher jailed for blasphemy against Islam? Government protection of the publisher instead of sending brown-shirts to drag him from his home after midnight for questioning - or fingering him for the Islamists?
Hey, this is France, people, the place that quite literally introduced the word "surrender" into Anglo-Saxon English. This is the place that probably has more white flag factories than any other place on this earth. This is the place that gave birth to socialism and the war on Christianity. And their government - albeit with some wavering - and at least a part of their media are showing more backbone than our current administration and media?
The small-circulation weekly Charlie Hebdo often draws attention for ridiculing sensitivity around the Prophet Mohammed, and an investigation into the firebombing of its offices last year is still open. The magazine's website was down Wednesday for reasons that were unclear.
One of the cartoonists, who goes by the name of Tignous, defended the drawings in an interview Wednesday with the AP at the weekly's offices, on the northeast edge of Paris amid a cluster of housing projects.
"It's just a drawing," he said. "It's not a provocation." . . .
On the streets of Paris, public reaction was mixed.
"I'm not shocked at all. If this shocks people, well too bad for them," said Sylvain Marseguerra, a 21-year-old student at the Sorbonne. "We are free to say what we want. We are a country in which freedom prevails and ... if this doesn't enchant some people, well too bad for them."
Khairreddene Chabbara disagreed. "We are for freedom of expression, but when it comes to religion it shouldn't hurt the feelings of believers."
Charlie Hebdo has courted potentially dangerous controversy in the past. Last November the magazine's front-page, was subtitled "Sharia Hebdo," a reference to Islamic law, and showed caricatures of radical Muslims. The newspaper's offices were destroyed in a firebomb attack just hours before the edition hit newsstands.
In 2006, Charlie Hebdo printed reprints of caricatures carried by a Danish newspaper in 2005 that stoked anger across the Islamic world. Many European papers reprinted the drawings in the name of media freedom.
Charlie Hebdo has also faced legal challenges. The weekly was acquitted in 2008 by a Paris appeals court of "publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion" following a complaint by Muslim associations. . . .
For refusing to back down and silence themselves in response to the violent animals of the Middle East - and those in their own midst - I can honestly say that I now have respect for a second group of French people very much in the mold of their great predecessor, Charles Martel. Let me utter words that I honestly thought would never pass my lips: Viva La' France.
It appears that Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has caved in to the Teachers Union in order to end the seven day old strike. The offer made to the Teachers Union, and which they have now accepted, includes:
- Suspensions without pay are eliminated
- The board must promote racial diversity in hiring
- Regarding the rehiring of laid-off teachers, now 50% of new hires must come from the laid-off pool.
- The student survey is removed from teacher evaluations (except in special circumstance)
- Merit pay rejected
- 16 percent average pay raise over four years
So the people of Chicago will continue to pay ever greater sums to underworked, overpaid and underperforming public school teachers who will not be held to objective standards of performance. I call this one a complete victory for the Teachers Union and another huge loss for the children and tax payers of Chicago. I was surprised that a Decomcrat would even start to take on a Teachers Union, given that such public sector unions form the financial foundation of the Democrat Party. I am not surprised with the outcome, particularly given that the last thing Obama and Emanuel want at this point, this close to the general election, is the public focusing on Chicago and the corruption of public sector unions.
Update: Welcome Crusader Rabbit readers. Unless you want to read an exposition on U.S. law of freedom of speech, the parts you want to read are higihlighted in yellow.
_________________________
Writing in the LA Times, Sarah Chayes, like many on the left, is demanding that the producer of the "Innocence of Muslims" be tried for inciting the violence of 9-11-12. Leave aside for the moment that this argument is a pretext to take focus off of Obama's failed foreign policy, just as for the radical Islamists, the movie was itself a pretext for their violence directed at the U.S. The roadblock to the left's call for prosecution is the First Amendment. But Ms. Chayes has an answer to that - stop applying the test of how a "reasonable person" would react to particular speech, and apply the test of how radical Muslims would react to the same speech. Ms. Chayes would give radical Islamists control over our right of free speech and insert a de facto "blasphemy" exception into our Constitutional law, one applicable only to Islam. This from Ms. Chayes in the LA Times:
In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."
Holmes' test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines . . .
The current standard for restricting speech — or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence — was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited.
Likelihood is the easiest test. In Afghanistan, where I have lived for most of the past decade, frustrations at an abusive government and at the apparent role of international forces in propping it up have been growing for years. But those frustrations are often vented in religious, not political, terms, because religion is a more socially acceptable, and safer, rationale for public outcry. . . .
As a threshold matter, despite Ms. Chayes's obfuscations, the law applicable to the film in question is crystal clear and long settled. The Supreme Court held, in the 1952 case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson that the makers of a sacriligous film could not be prosecuted for their speech:
[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures.
Ms. Chayes wholly ignores that case law to make her argument. But even then, and leaving aside whether the speech has any intrinsic "value," the Holmes test mentioned by Ms. Chayes is ultimately a test of how a reasonable person in OUR society would react in the circumstances, not how al Qaeda members living in Egypt would react. In America, a reasonable person does not react with violence, even when an artist displays a crucifix in a jar of urine, when Louis Farrakhan regularly denigrates Judaism, when Islam strips Christ of his divinity, or even when the Onion uses an obscene cartoon to make the point that reasonable people in our nation do not respond with violence to criticism of the basest sort against their religion.
Most importantly, there is a historical reason to treat Ms. Shayes's argument with utter derision. The questioning of religious dogma and customs were critical parts of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and such questioning was the entire basis for the Reformation. Those titanic events of Western History took all aspects of our civilization, including our religious practices, out of the Dark Ages and into modernity.
Without these titanic historical periods, we would still be living under the yoke of a Dark Ages interpretation of religion. Witches would be executed, as would blasphemers and heretics. Any criticism of religious dogma would be met with violence. Any who left our religion would be subject to murder. Corruption among the clerics would be beyond reproach. Religion, instead of being a faith, would be a central tool of political power and state control. Our civilization would be dysfunctional, not dynamic. Our government would subject people of other religions to severe state discrimination. Modern science, sparked by the Enlightenment and the basis for all of the technological advances of Western civilization, would have been severely circumscribed. Wouldn't that be horrendous?
Well, take a look at Islam today as practiced in the Middle East, and that is what you will find - all those things and more in every country with a Muslim government. And as to science, do note that Saudi Arabia only put the flat earth theory behind them with the recent turn of the millenium. A fatwa issued by the Grand Mufti in 1993 instructed "the earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment."
The radical Muzzies have never gone through a period of Enlightenment, a Renaissance or a Reformation. And they never will if criticism of their religion, in any and every form, is silenced. That is the world to which Ms. Chayes would consign Muslims, and if not altered, it is a world that will inevitably lead to an existential clash with our own civilization. Ms. Chayes's proposal is the precise opposite of what is needed, both for the Muslim world and our own.
Six months after declaring that all churches in the Arabian peninsula should be destroyed, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called at the weekend for a global ban on insults targeting all religious “prophets and messengers,” a category that, from a Muslim perspective, includes Jesus Christ.
“We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker said, holding up a handwritten sign in English that read “Shut Up America.”
Allow me to respond to your contentions, Grand Mufti and Mr. Ali.
Your religion is unique in many ways - one of which is that adopts a false Christianity as part of its founding narrative. Islam claims that Jesus is a "prophet" of its religion while ignoring his teachings and denying his divinity. In the Dome of the Rock Mosque, built atop the most holy site in the Jewish faith, there is an inscription now 1,300 years old:
The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not Three. It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from his glory that he should have a son.
Now, that is blasphemy in its purest sense. It irks me, but I ignore it, thinking only that you are misguided. But if you and your fellow Muslims in the Middle East, on the other hand, are prepared to do violence because someone in the U.S. said something not nice about Mohammed - well, you can pack it where the sun doesn't shine. And if you act violently, expect an appropriate response in return, bearing in mind that our tolerance level for your infantile, hypocritical and outrageous acts is not infinite. At some point, your violence will beget a response of overwhelming force.
As to Jesus, while the Koran claims to adopt him as part of Islamic faith, yet the Koran adopts none of his teachings. Perhaps most importantly, Jesus commanded us to follow the Golden Rule. Mohammed acknowledged no Golden Rule. To the contrary:
Islam does not enjoin believers to do unto infidels as you would have infidels do unto you. On the contrary! Islam tells its followers to subdue infidels; to kill them; to, at best, reduce them to dhimmitude.
And as to the Dome of the Rock, let's talk about the detestable Muslim habit of attempting to wipe out symbols and buildings of other faiths - an act directed by the Koran, verse 018:021. The Dome of the Rock was built on the holiest Jewish site, the Temple Mount, 1,300 years ago. It wasn't until 800 years ago that Muslims justified this on the claim, apparently made out of thin air, that this was a site also intrinsically holy to Muslims because of Mohammed's night ride. Everywhere Islam conquered, they built mosques on top of the holy sites of Christianity, with Constantinople and Cordoba being the two most famous of thousands of examples. Unfortunately, this is not merely historical - it continues to this day, from destroying ancient historic Buhddist statues in Afghanistan to the destruction of Churches in Nigeria, Egypt the West Bank - and let's not forget Jordan's industrial scale destruction of Jewish holy sites after they captured the Jewish Quarter in Jerulsalem.
I could raise an entire litany of other examples. There is the Muslim world's glorification of the most animalistic, subhuman acts of terror directed against Jews and Christians. There is the Koran's direction that it is acceptable to rape and enslave non-Muslims. There is the officially sanctioned discrimination against Christians and the few Jews left in every country with an Islamic government. There is the murder of homosexuals and people accused of witchcraft, not to mention the grossly unequal, violent treatment of women.
I consider the vast majority of these things to be a blasphemy against my religion - and indeed, all of these things to be a blasphemy against humanity. Here is reality. Your nations have produced nothing to advance civilization in the past near millenium. Today, the Arab Middle East is a cesspool of poverty, corruption and dysfunction - and that is not the fault of the West, not the fault of the Crusades, not the fault of 'Western imperialism,' and not the fault of America, where if you want to practice your religion in peace, you are perfectly welcome to do so. It is the fault of Islam and an Islamic culture that is, in the words of Churchill, the most "retrograde force" on this earth.
The best thing that I and the world can do for you is to criticize your religion and demand that you reform it to the point that its believers comport with civilized behavior. The best thing that you can do is evolve your culture and religion.
In an addendum to a post that she wrote today, blogger and law professor Ann Althouse wrote a short and concise summary of Free Speech rights in the U.S., pointing in particular to a 1952 case in which the Supreme Court held that a state could not prosecute an individual for blashemy for producing a film with anti-Christian overtones. This from Prof. Althouse, with a warning::
We're not that far from criminalizing blasphemy in the United States, though it seems obvious to educated Americans today that [blasphemy] laws are unconstitutional. Here's a quick summary of the history of blasphemy law in the U.S. And here's the 1952 case Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson where the Supreme Court struck down a New York law that banned showing "sacrilegious" movies. New York's highest court had interpreted the statute to mean "that no religion, as that word is understood by the ordinary, reasonable person, shall be treated with contempt, mockery, scorn and ridicule." The U.S. Supreme Court said:
[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures.
My point is: it took a Supreme Court case as recently as 1952, to establish that principle in our country, with its rich free-speech tradition. Lawyers even saw fit at that time to argue that movies shouldn't get free-speech protection at all because "their production, distribution, and exhibition is a large-scale business conducted for private profit."
Posts
