AYAAN HIRSI ALI COMES BACK TO THE US

The brave critic of Islam is now back in the US again, and this time, she's thankfully got security funding to back her (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin). But is Holland retreating on their image as a free country that they'd seemed to cultivate in the years gone by?

Last week, the Dutch government abruptly cut off her security funding, forcing her to return briefly to Holland.

The reasons given were financial, but there was clearly more to it. To put it bluntly, many in Holland find her too loud, too public in her condemnation of radical Islam. She doesn’t sound conciliatory, in the modern continental fashion. Compare her description of Islam as “brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women” with the German judge who, citing the Koran, in January told a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from her violent husband that she should have “expected” her husband to deploy the corporal punishment his religion approves. Hirsi Ali herself says she is often told, in so many words, that she’s “brought her problems on herself.” Now the Dutch prime minister openly says he wants her to deal with them alone.

Fortunately, Hirsi Ali is already back in the United States, under professional, full-time, well-resourced and for the moment privately organized protection. But this week, the Dutch parliament is due to debate her status once again. And once again, the Dutch will be confronted with the facts that Hirsi Ali remains a Dutch citizen; that the threat to her life comes at least in part from groups based in Holland; that she lives abroad because the Dutch political situation forced her to; and that when she speaks out, she does so in defense of what she believes to be Dutch values.

Whether or not the Dutch like it — and I’m sure most of them don’t — revoking her police protection will send a clear message to the world: that the Dutch are no longer willing to protect their own traditions of free speech. Resources will be found, and she will recover. But will Holland?

If the Dutch are in any ways taking a similar path to that of Britain, by living in a bubble and acting as if the victim/target is the one to blame, then how can they expect to recover?

Christopher Hitchens has come out in defense of Hirsi Ali (via Hot Air), and says that America should stand behind her.

Here's Hirsi Ali's AEI page with info for anyone who'd like to know how to contribute to funding her security needs.

FOREIGN POLICY SOPHISTICATES WOULD SOUND LESS STUPID IF THEY STOPPED MIXING CONDESCENSION WITH DEMONSTRABLY FALSE FANTASIES OF COMPETENCE

Do you notice how Israeli security concerns are always dismissed by purported foreign specialists? And how those dismissals always come in the most condescending ways possible? And how those specialists are always wrong?

Newest example: US Lt-Gen Keith Dayton, the guy responsible for training Fatah troops. A month before Hamas took over Gaza, he imperiously tried to get Israel to make massive security concessions to the Palestinians. His statements - to say nothing of his demeanor - gave the impression that Fatah's weakness was Israel's fault. Turns out he was spouting the the same nonsense - in more or less the same tone - all over Washington.

The U.S. security coordinator for the Palestinians, Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, who is in charge of strengthening Abbas' security forces, came to Washington a few weeks ago with a positive assessment of the consolidation of the presidential guard and the Fatah forces subordinate to Abbas. He claimed they were holding their own in the battles against Hamas, and to skeptics he suggested the "telephone test." "Phone the Karni crossing," Dayton said. "If a Fatah man answers the phone, that's a sign that Fatah has won the battle."

That's how these people talk. Condescension built on, to put it mildly, a less than robust justification in reality.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

OF COURSE CUTTING-EDGE MILITARY TECH ENDED UP IN HAMAS HANDS

Weapons given to Fatah end up in terrorist hands. This has been a demonstrably true statement for the better part of a decade. Either the Fatah people become terrorists, or they give the weapons to terrorists, or the terrorists hijack the weapons en route after fortuitously guessing the time and place of the delivery. And now this:

Hamas gunmen completed the conquest of the main building of the headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, long associated with Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan, as additional bastions of Fatah support fell to the Islamist forces. Hamas seized the vehicles and weapons in the compound, wrapping up a broad sweep which has almost completely vanquished the forces of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Don't give invaluable resources to people who are likely to be overthrown by radical forces. This is not a radical proposition. The post-Sinai weapons transfers to Egypt were a mistake because Egypt is one disgruntled general away from being the most dangerous country in the Middle East - don't compound the error by giving them nuclear technology. This is not an isolated example - experiences with Syria and Lebanon - to say nothing of pre-Islamist Iran - are almost entirely one-sided on this issue. The fantasy of "bolstering moderate forces" by giving them arms and concessions has never worked. At best it just paints them as Western stooges. Far more often it provides bait for their overthrow.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]