Archive for category Terrorism
Ugly Fact For “People of the Book”
Posted by Tom in Defense, Foreign Policy, Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, Terrorism on January 21, 2010
Mohammed started successfully consolidating Islam from Medina by raiding caravans heading to Mecca. Then, he started spreading Islam from his Medina base with conquests, eventually throughout the Mediterranean world .
For a time, he tolerated “people of the book.” This, the term given to Abrahamic religions, namely Judaism and Christianity, of which Islam claims to be one. Late antiquity through medieval times to modernity the Islamic-other, religious battles and tolerance shifted to and fro. Today, the civilized norm would seem to be benign tolerance in secular, neutral or tolerant environments, certainly to minorities within Islamic dominated societies.
Not so, as set out in Clifford May’s January 21st NRO post, The War Against the Infidels. In it he enumerates this century’s minority persecutions: dynamiting of the Bamiyan buddhas, desecration of the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel, this week’s Christian killings in Nigeria, the murder of Egyptian Coptic Christians, Pakistan church bombings, and the attacks on Malaysia Christian churches.
Very little reporting from Western journalists. Silence from academics, diplomats and politicians. We are too politically correct. We don’t want to offend. Our president goes around bowing and apologizing in the Middle East, but never condemning.
Clifford May sums it up well: “When the dots are connected, the picture that emerges is not pretty: An “Islamic world” in which terrorists are regarded often with lenience, sometimes with respect, and occasionally with reverence, while minority groups face increasing intolerance, persecution, and “cleansing,” and where even their histories are erased. And we in the West are too polite, too “politically correct,” and perhaps too cowardly to say much about it.”
Don’t look for socialist Europe, the UN or the Democratic administration to raise any objections.
Tom Motherway
Musings on Democratic Personnel
Posted by Tom in Financial Crisis, Intelligence, Terrorism on January 16, 2010
Politics is politics, so you expect political appointments, you know, to the victor goes the spoils. But there may be instances when you want competent people running the show. I would think a couple of those would be investigating the recent financial collapse and investigating our national security lapses. So what do we see in those functions?
Phil Angelides, the former California State Treasurer who oversaw California’s slippage into bankruptcy is now chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission charged with finding out causes and solutions to the market breakdowns. He starts out by failing to consider the roles of the Fed, and Barney Frank’s Fannie and Freddie; the scripted conclusions are already set. Apparently, Phil hasn’t learned any lessons while he watched California slip into bankruptcy! See: D.C. Witness Protection Program in the January 15th WSJ.
And how about national security and the intelligence necessary to make it work? The departments are run by so-called managers like John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Janet Napolitano, and Dennis Blair, not by professionals who know how to connect the dots. People like Napolitano are comically clueless. With these people in charge intelligence will continue to fail according to Herbert Meyer a former CIA official. His article Why Intelligence Keeps Failing, in the January 16th edition of Real Clear Politics presents a summary of intelligence from the OSS days to today’s CIA and NSA. His point that only the pros should run intelligence services is hard to refute.
So what do we get from our Democratic rulers in these critical areas? Laughable incompetence!
Tom Motherway
“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but pretty much all terrorists are Muslim.”
Posted by Tom in Defense, Foreign Policy, Terrorism on January 2, 2010
That truism, complements of an Israeli security officer, is something Barack Hussein Obama refuses to recognize. Can the man be so intellectually stubborn as to not see this simple truth? Is he so dense as to put his obsessive, leftist political correctness over the security of the nation?
Bloomberg reports his feeble attempt to assure US citizens he will protect them, he used the word “war” in his recent pronouncement: “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred,” Obama said. Yes, he swallowed hard and used the word “war” instead of “overseas contingency operation!” But against whom or what, Mr. President? Terrorists, terrorism, perhaps? No, he still can’t bring himself to use the word “terrorist;” thus he leaves the “man-caused disaster” joke hanging in the air, marking his administration’s posture on defense.
That defense posture is well illustrated by treating the act of war as a mere crime: not interrogating the enemy combatant as to future attack plans, but giving him miranda rights, a defense attorney, discovery rights, and a trial by jury. All rights, hard won rights, of a US citizen! No wonder the nation is insecure. Charles Krauthammer said is well in his post today: “From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guatanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York–a trifecta of political correctness and and image management. And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over–that is, if it ever existed.”
It’s time to drop the PC crap, start profiling and stereotyping as the Israeli security officers do and stop frisking 80 year old grandmothers. We are looking for muslim terrorists, Islamic terrorists. These people come from certain countries, certain ethnic groups, certain religions. They have typically traveled to certain places as their passports well illustrate. Barack Hussein Obama, please learn this well and see that is is implemented in our security procedures.
Tom Motherway