ENGAGING WITH IRAN AND SYRIA REGARDING IRAQ WILL BE AS FRUITFUL AS ENGAGING WITH THEM ON ANYTHING ELSE

HOW HAS THE WEST'S ENGAGEMENT WITH SYRIA GONE REGARDING THE HARIRI AFFAIR?

Awful. They've even continued to assassinate their Lebanese foes.

HOW HAS THE WEST'S ENGAGEMENT WITH IRAN GONE REGARDING NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION?

Awful. They continue to violate the NPT and thumb their noses at the UN, the IAEA and everyone else.

Engaging with Syria and Iran on Iraq will be just as awful. There isn't a rational reason to even try. It's worse than an exercise in futility; it will actually embolden them to be even more destabilizing and dangerous.

There hasn't been an idea this dumb since the last time Rangel opened his mouth. Or Hagel. Or Kerry. Sheesh.

SEGOLENE ROYAL: AS ANTI-SEMITIC AS THE FRENCH LEFT

I blogged HERE that the French Left and the Socialist Party was anti-Semitic, and that this would help Segolene Royal win the socialist nomination.

I have argued for a long time that Jospin's loss in the last election was caused by the splintering of the Left caused by critical comments he made about Hizballah (while in Israel) - and support he expressed for Israel. And I argued that Royal would defeat here two rivals in part because they were both Jewish. NOW COMES THIS, (from the left-wing Israeli daily HAARETZ) :

... the heads of the French Jewish umbrella organization, CRIF, invited Segolene Royal to appear before members of the organization. An appearance before the organization has to this day been considered an event that must not be missed ...

Nearly five months have elapsed since the first invitation was sent, but she still has not come. ... "This is unprecedented," an Israeli diplomat who is serving in France admitted. "That's right," agreed CRIF director Chaim Musikant. "All the French leaders apart from Royal have already appeared before us. We have offered her whatever setting she would like, but to my regret, until now, we haven't heard from her."

Royal, apparerently, isn't about to make the same mistake that Jospin made. But now, French Jews seem to have taken notice:

"Sarkozy is the natural candidate of Jewish voters," Deputy Interior Minister Christian Estrozi told Haaretz. Most of the Jews, or so it appears at this time, are likely to vote for the candidate of the right.

There are several reasons for this: Sarkozy's Jewish roots, the fact that he is considered a friend of Israel and the fact that he appears to be the only politician in the French leadership who has evinced sensitivity to French Jewry's distress. He has gone to every place where Jews have been attacked, and at every opportunity, he has condemned and attacked and threatened and asserted that any harm to Jews is tantamount to harming the heart of the Republic. "He has honestly earned the Jewish vote," said a Jewish doctor this week, who revealed that for the first time in his life, he is planning to defect from the Socialist camp. "And it's not just me, but also most of my Jewish friends."

France will be making an important choice in their next election: choosing either to revert to the failed policies of socialism and to appeasement of jihad, or ... Sarkozy. The future of Europe may depend on what France decides. I'm praying for Sarkozy.

EXPOSED: THE EXTREMIST AGENDA

From The Glenn Beck Show, approximately 40 minutes:

FROM MELANIE PHILLIPS'S DIARY

Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, had this to say on November 27, 2006:

Those who know President Bush say that alarm over Baker and Gates should not be overdone, since Bush is a man who means what he says and is unlikely to retreat from his stated positions over seeing it through in Iraq and not tolerating Iranian nuclear weapons. Against that, however, is the fact that he does rely on Condoleezza Rice; and no less disturbingly, that he requires his people to present him with a consensus for action. This means he does not hear rival proposals, and instead gets served with proposals which are forced to embody the lowest common denominator. This is not the leadership required for the defence of the free world.

The above was Ms. Phillips' commentary to this piece by Carolyn Glick. Excerpt:

…The most pressing question today then is whether Bush will give in to Baker and the Democrats and agree to capitulate to Iran and Syria in Iraq, Lebanon and indeed throughout the world. Unfortunately, things look bleak given that Bush relies most heavily on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice has been blocking US action against Syria and Iran for the past two years. She was the primary architect of UN Resolution 1701 this summer, has been pushing for dangerous Israeli concessions to the Palestinians and is known for her good relations with Baker.

I've got the sinking feeling that the famed "W Resolve" is going down the tubes.

THE MESSAGE IS "DON'T HAVE CHILDREN, THEY'RE A PAIN IN THE ASS"

A relative of mine, who lives in Europe, sent this ad to me, because he thought it was funny.





The message isn't, "Be a better parent." No. Instead, it is, "Don't have children."

Too bad our European brothers and sisters no longer understand the blessings of life. There is no major Western European country that is producing enough children to replace the current population. Instead, they are replacing their population with Muslim immigrants. Here are the birthrates for various European countries:

Remember the birthrate for a population that is neither increasing nor declining is 2.1 babies per woman of childbearing age.

Ireland - 1.87

Germany - 1.3

Austria - 1.3

Italy - 1.2

Russia - 1.2

Spain - 1.1.

At a replacement rate of 1.1, Spain is at half the stable population replacement rate. This means Spain's population is halving every generation. The magnitude of the numbers is difficult to comprehend. In 2000, the total population of Europe was 728 million. By 2050 at the present rate of births, it will be less than 600 million, a loss of a staggering 125 million Europeans.

Are children really just a pain in the ass, or are they hope for a future?

Japan Freezes $10 Billion Loan To Iran

While Bush and Blair mull over asking Iran to help us out in Iraq, Japan is actually behaving in a sane manner and prepping for sanctions and possible war:

Tehran, 23 Nov. (AKI) - The Japanese government, apparently convinced that international sanctions against Iran are imminent, is gradually disinvesting there. Having already relinquished control of Iran's Azagedan oilfield project, Tokyo has frozen a 10 billion dollar loan that Japan Bank for International Cooperation was due to transfer to the Iranian government in the next few days. The bank's director general has stated that "only in the event that negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme lead to an agreement that is acceptable to the international community, can these 10 billion dollars be released."

This is a very positive development. I hold no hope that sanctions will work against Iran. However, I do think sanctions might drive Iran to do something stupid, like attack Israel, or a Western nation. Because I think war with Iran is inevitable, I welcome any provocation.

WE HAVE WAYS OF FINDING OUT WHAT YOU THROW AWAY: BRITAIN SPIES ON RUBBISH DUMPS

In Britain, the government has set up cameras at local rubbish dumps to ensure that their citizens are recycling properly:

Unbelievable. Britain continues to lurch towards totalitarianism with the news that SPY CAMERAS have been installed at household rubbish dumps to check what residents are throwing away and to fine those breaking recycling rules. The sophisticated CCTV systems are capable of reading and storing car number plates to identify who is using the dump, how often, and what they are disposing of. Big Brother IS watching you.....but we're too busy watching reality TV shows to care.

UPDATE: Britain is now considering using high-powered microphones to monitor conversations on the street.

FIRST FRUITS OF THE NEW GAZA 'HUDNA' - VOLLEYS OF ROCKETS

The Olmert government is already reaping the whirlwind. Hard on the heels of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to Amy Teibel and Ibrahim Barzak of the Associated Press, are volleys of anti-personnel rockets fired into what the Palistanian terrorists consider a free fire zone:

Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip as a last-minute cease-fire deal took hold Sunday morning, but two major Palestinian militant groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel. The ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad tempered hopes for a lasting truce, which was meant to end five months of deadly clashes. The rockets landed in open fields and caused no injuries.

Olmert's response:

"Even though there are still violations of the cease-fire by the Palestinian side, I have instructed our defense officials not to respond, to show restraint, and to give this cease-fire a chance to take full effect," he said during a ceremony at a high school in southern Israel.

This is all part of the game. Fund, equip, and arm semi-autonomous groups whose actions you can disavow. Ask for a "Hudna' and then continue the war.

DEMOCRAT CAMPAIGN PROMISE TO GO UNFULFILLED?

Looks as if the Democratics' pie-in-the-sky plan to "fix" the Medicare prescription-benefit program might not be so feasible. From the Sunday, November 26, 2006 edition of the Washington Post, "Success of Drug Plan Challenges Democrats" :

It sounded simple enough on the campaign trail: Free the government to negotiate lower drug prices and use the savings to plug a big gap in Medicare's new prescription-drug benefit. But as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, they are struggling to keep that promise without wrecking a program that has proven cheaper and more popular than anyone imagined. [UMPH ADDED.]

House Democrats have vowed to act quickly after taking power in January to lift a ban on Medicare negotiations with drugmakers, which they hope will save as much as $190 billion over a decade. But House leaders have yet to settle on a strategy and acknowledge that negotiation is, in any case, unlikely to generate sufficient savings to fill the "doughnut hole," the much-criticized gap in coverage that forces millions of seniors to pay 100 percent of drug costs for a few weeks or months each year....

"This is going to be much more of a morass than people think," said Marilyn Moon, director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research and a former trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Negotiating drug prices is "a feel-good kind of answer, but it's not one that is easy to imagine how you put into practice."

The Medicare drug benefit, one of the Bush administration's signature domestic programs, was created in 2003 and took effect in January....The cost of the program has been lower than expected...

Tell the AARP, staunch supporters of the Democratic Party, that they've been had on this one.

CALM 2006 HURRICANE SEASON SILENCES THE ECO-NUTSIES, FOR NOW...

Many eco-nutsies claimed that Katrina was a result of man-made global warming, and that because of MMGW we were gonna get more frequent and worse hurricanes. (A few links here and here and here and here. And here, too. I could link forever - since there is seemingly no end to the eco-nutsies hysterical analyses and prognostications. And let's not forget fat jet-setter Al Gore and his inconvenient truth.)

Well, er um... it just effin' didn't happen, now, did it! The current hurricane season was pretty effin mild. And since man-made global greenhouse gases increased last and this year - like the year before that and the year before that, and so on - that must mean that THERE'S NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INTENSITY OR FREQUENCY OF HURRICANES AND MAN-MADE GREENHOUSE GASES. Period.

Al Gore's tirade turns out to have been nothing more than convenient demagoguery. The forecasters were ALL EFFIN WRONG WRONG WRONG!

So... ya think fat Al and the eco-nutsies will STFU?! YEAH: but only until there's another NATURAL disaster they feel they can blame on free markets, industrialization and the USA. SO: Let's enjoy the silence while we can!

UPDATE: OH NO! They're all ready predicting that 2007 will be worse! SHEESH!

11/27/06 - UPDATE #2 : TWO DAYS LATER: DRUDGE follows our lead, making this past QUIET hurricane season the lead story on his webpage today, with this link - proving once again that T.A.B. is the place to be!

UPDATE #3 / 11/28/06 - THE DOCTOR IS ON THE CASE: Dr. Sanity expounds on The Elders of the Protocols of Kyoto - with some great links!

YET MORE FRUITS OF APPEASEMENT IN THAILAND

When the Muslim Thai general, Sonthi Boonyaratglin, seized control of the Thai government in a military coup in September, he announced that the new government would take a far softer line towards the jihadist terrorists in the southern part of the country. [Reliapundit adds: The junta claimed they were adopting this softer-line in the hope that this would appease the jihadists and end the religious strife.]

Previous entries at The Astute Bloggers have documented how appeasing the terrorists has only added fuel to the fire. Now there's this: in reaction to the recent incendiary murder of a school principal in Pattani province, the Pattani Teachers Federation has decided to close all 322 schools in the province until further notice. And more attacks are in store, according to the Bangkok Post:

In Narathiwat's Rangae district, many business operators have decided to yield to insurgent demands to close their businesses every Friday and Sunday. Small businesses in the district have closed their stores on Fridays due to similar threats in the past. But yesterday, business operators received a letter signed by ''Terrorist Group,'' telling them to also close their shops on Sundays.

The letter says all businesses in Rangae district's Tambon Tanyongmas municipality must acknowledge that Sunday is also a holiday as well as Friday. Any business operators failing to comply with the announcement would have to bear the consequences on their lives and property, the letter threatened.

A grocery shop owner in Tambon Tanyongmas said the letter had been placed at her door yesterday. After reading the letter, she and her fellow grocery shop operators agreed to comply with the instructions in the letter for fear of attacks. The letter was handed to state officials for further investigation.

In Yala province, an insurgent group clashed with a unit of military rangers yesterday near a railroad in Yala's Muang district, a military source said. Insurgents ambushed the rangers at their operation base near Tambon Taseh railway station, prompting an exchange of gunfire for about 10 minutes. There was no report of casualties at press time when reinforcements from nearby police and military units were sent to the scene of the fighting.

Earlier last night, three Buddhists were killed and three others wounded in three separate gun attacks in Yala's Muang and Yaha districts. One of the injured was a 78-year-old woman.

Police said the attacks were believed to be the work of insurgent groups. An intelligence official in the deep South predicted possible simultaneous, coordinated attacks against state officials and public facilities by separatist groups in villages where members of militant groups are living. The militants are believed to be planning bombing attacks on local electricity generating facilities in the villages before hitting other targets.

Closing down the schools seems to be a prime goal of the terrorists; in the last 3 years, 59 school teachers and officials have been killed. By depriving children of an education, they will plunge this region of a modern, vibrant, 21st-century country back into their hellish 12th-century dystopia.

And is it too far-fetched to believe that facilitating the secession of Pattani province is part of Sonthi Boonyaratglin's plans for Thailand? After all, he was the military commander responsible for the southern part of the country during 2005, when the insurgency dramatically escalated, and he once improbably claimed that communists, not jihadists, were responsible for the insurgency. The local governors thought that was nonsense. [Reliapundit adds: Which means the junta's efforts are either ill-fated appeasement or treachery. Neither are any good.]

We should all pray for the safety and well-being of the Thai people, and for their King, Rama IX, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is an accomplished agronomist, a philanthropic humanitarian, a firearms enthusiast, and the proud biographer of his rescue-dog "Tongdaeng."

WHAT IS A 'HUDNA'?

Now that the Olmert government has agreed to a cease-fire with Hamas, it seems apropos to examine the concept of a "Hudna" in Islamic jurisprudence- particularly since Hamas recently offered a 10-year "Hudna" to Israel. Just what is a "Hudna" anyway? To start off with a relatively middle-of-the-road definition, we can use the Wikipedia article, which notes:

According to Umdat as-Salik, a medieval summary of Shafi'i jurisprudence, hudnas with a non-Muslim enemy should be limited to 10 years: "if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud" ('Umdat as-Salik, o9.16).

The key to understanding the significance of the "Hudna" is in the phrase "if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary."

You have understood the "Hudna" when you realize that the problem it solves is not a problem for both parties in a conflict, but a problem unique to Muslims engaging in jihad. If jihad is truly a religious obligation incumbent on all Muslim believers, than to desist from continuing a jihad war, once commenced, would be a significant offense.

But what can the mujaheddin do, if the jihadis are in a weak military situation, and carrying the battle forwards would mean their destruction? Why, offer a "Hudna," of course! Once a "Hudna" is agreed upon by both parties, the jihadis are relieved of their pressing and immediate obligation to engage in warfare, and can rebuild their military strength while using diplomatic and propagandistic means to undermine their enemies. When that strength is renewed, and after a duration of no more than ten years, the jihad must be started up again.

The "Hudna" is not a cease-fire to which both parties agree, with the intention of ultimately and eventually resolving their differences in peaceful and binding negotiations. The "Hudna" is a one-sided cease-fire, the only purpose of which is to relieve military pressure on the jihad, when the jihad is in an untenable situation.

When Islamist fanatics such as Hamas offer a "Hudna" you can be certain that they understand that they are losing the war, and that they intend to regroup and re-arm while gulling their enemies into a false sense of security.

Hamas previously offered a "Hudna" in 2003, during which some 180 terrorist attacks occurred anyway. [The cartoon to the left is from 2003.]

In a recent op-ed in the New Duranty Times, a Hamas spokesman claimed that "a hudna extends beyond the Western concept of a cease-fire and obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences."

That is clearly an example of taqqiya, or dissimulation.


As the moderate Muslim commentator Dr. Tashbih Sayyed points out:

Those who understand the Islamist ethos know that for political Islam, disengagement, a cease-fire, or a pull back on the part of the "enemy" is a sign of its weakness.

That is so because:

Political Islam finds a number of examples in the life of Prophet Muhammad that sanction the use of treaties as a tactical necessity. In explaining why he signed the Oslo Accord, Yasser Arafat cited a truce signed by Prophet Muhammad with the Meccan tribe Quraish at Hudaybiyah in 628 C.E. According to the PLO leader, Prophet Muhammad had signed the truce when he was not strong enough to win a war and it was to last for ten years. But when, within two years of the signing, the Muslims felt that they have gained enough strength to defeat the Quraish, they broke the truce, attacked the Quraish and captured Mecca.

A prominent Saudi sheikh, 'Abd Al-Muhsin Al-'Obikan, also referred to the same treaty while condemning Hezbollah's actions in Lebanon. He issued the edict against Hezbollah's actions not because he considered them wrong but because in his view Muslims, at the moment, are not strong enough to defeat Israel. He said that since the Muslims have no chance of winning this campaign against the Jews, a temporary solution is necessary - a truce similar to the temporary truce of Hudaybiyya.

According to the Saudi Sheikh, Islamic laws (Shari'a) also "place preconditions and constraints on the declaring of jihad, which must be considered in order to ensure the greatest gain for the nation and spare it loss - [that is,] in order to ensure the minimum possible damage and avoid greater damage.

One of the preconditions regarding jihad [states] that the [the jihad fighters] must have [sufficient] capability to inflict harm on the enemy and to repulse its evil, so as to ensure the lives, the property, and the honor of the Muslims and to safeguard them from aggression or harm, that is, [from] destruction of property, from violation of honor, and from bloodshed."

Accepting a "Hudna" from a committed Islamist adversary is inviting a viper into the nursery. If the West intends to defend itself from an unrelenting jihad, it must learn to recognize that when jihadis offer a "Hudna" is precisely when they must be pressed even harder.

Reliapundit adds: According to TIME, Hizballah (with the help of Syria and Iran) is using the HUDNA they received (courtesy of Bush and Rice and the UN) to rearm. As the song says: "WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN? WHEN WE WILL EVER LEARN?"

THE FRUITS OF APPEASEMENT IN THAILAND

The German Press Agency reports:

Insurgents shot a school director Friday afternoon in southern Thailand, then set his vehicle on fire, killing him in the flames, the English-language Bangkok Post newspaper website reported.

Police said the director of a school in Pattani province, 750 kilometres south of Bangkok, was shot in his pickup truck while driving out of school. He was wounded but not killed in the shooting before insurgents set his pickup truck on fire. He was burned alive inside the truck.

Thailand's three predominately Muslim southernmost provinces have been increasingly restive the past three years, but no insurgent groups are claiming responsibility for the violence or making demands in exchange for stopping it.

Bangkok's new military-installed government has apologized to the people in the southern provinces for past injustices and is making a new approach to ending the violence peacefully a top priority.

It doesn't seem to be working out that way, does it?

HUDNA WITH GAZAN ARABS SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN SOMETHING

Well, Israel has agreed to another cease-fire with the enemy. The same enemy which is still holding Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev.

POWER LINE:

"The agreement apparently fails to mention kidnapped Israeli soldier Crpl. Gilad Shalit, who now has been held captive by the terrorists in Gaza for five months."

Hudnas and cease-fires are half-measures which only aid the enemy. It seems to me that we're fighting with one hand tied behind our back, and that every time we give the enemy a bloody-nose we give him a time out. DO WE WANT TO WIN OR NOT!? If we do, then we should fight that way.

PERETZ MAY NEED TO STEP DOWN, BUT THEN SO DOES OLMERT

It's true that the Labor party's chairman (for now), Amir Peretz, is responsible for not taking any proper steps to halt rocket attacks on Sderot. However, that does not mean that Ehud Olmert (and even foreign minister Tzipi Livni) doesn't have responsibility to share. For now though, Peretz is certainly guilty of irresponsibility on his own part:

By most accounts, Defense Minister Amir Peretz’s days in his senior cabinet post are numbered. His future as party leader is also in jeopardy as a result of his behavior. Labor Party leader Defense Minister Amir Peretz is not only battling to remain in his senior cabinet post, but for his future as party leader as well. His adamant refusal to "do the right thing" and step down in compliance with public opinion polls and expressed wishes of party leaders may land him a spot outside of the inner circle of the political arena.

Peretz’s party leadership victory last year was viewed as a brilliant political coup, leaving his post as head of the nation’s Histadrut labor federation to beat seasoned politicians for the party leadership. Vice Premier Shimon Peres, then still a leading Labor Party statesman, was among those who ran for the leadership spot, but in defiance of all odds, Peretz emerged the victor. Others he defeated included former party leader Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and MK Matan Vilnai.

It did not take long for critics of the new leader to express concerns, warning he was a political novice despite being a seasoned labor negotiator. It was a sure bet that Peretz would be given the responsibility for the treasury, a natural senior position for the Histadrut veteran. To the surprise of all, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a coalition deal with Labor, placing Peretz in the defense spot.

The announcement was met with grave warnings of ‘what if,’ that have since been realized, resulting - in the opinion of some analysts - in the IDF failures in this summer’s war in Lebanon. Supporters of Peretz, on the other hand, praised the move, complimenting Olmert on being the first prime minister to appoint a civilian to the post rather than a retired general. They believed the move would result in a less hawkish policy. However, regional realities vis-a-vis Arab terror continue to dictate Israel’s realities and the need for a retired general, most analysts agree.

[...] A poll released today shows that 78% of the country would like Peretz to step down and hand over the post to someone with experience in running of the nation’s defense/intelligence and security agencies. The most visible candidate to date is Ehud Barak, a former Prime Minister and IDF chief of staff who happens to be the nation's most highly decorated soldier/officer. This is based on the assumption that Labor is not planning to break away from the coalition and wishes to maintain control of the defense post.

Is that so? Because Barak is the one who led to much of this downslide to begin with when he was prime minister, and there's no telling if he'll do any better. In any case, while Peretz can certainly be held accountable, let us be clear here: Ehud Olmert is also responsible, as is even his foreign minister Tzipi Livni, and they too should leave office ASAP. They've been trying repeatedly to avoid genuine show of muscle against the terrorists, and ergo, are not qualified to be political leaders.

UN TRIBUNAL WILL INVESTIGATE THE GEMAYEL ASSASSINATION; THEY SHOULD ALSO INVESTIGATE THE POLONIUM CASE, TOO

Right now the UN Tribunal is investigating 16 political assassinations.

Gemayel's assassination has just been added to the list. The Litvinenko murder should be added to the list, too.

It is interesting to note that these two new murders - like the rest - all aided the Axis of Evil, to which we must surely now add Putin's increasingly ruthless, and increasingly totalitarian regime. He is aiding our enemies. He's aiding Iran with missiles and he's been helping them with nuke technology for years.

UPDATE: This post might as well be titled BIRDS OF A FEATHER - parts 29 & 30!

MORE ON TARIQ RAMADAN

Excerpt from my latest posting, a follow-up to this one ... from this source, quoting Tariq Ramadan:

"Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West" ("Islam, le face à face des civilisations," Tawhid, 2001).

And again: "The Koran confirms, completes, and corrects the messages that preceded it" ("Les messages musulmans d´occident"). Some Christian personalities whose charitable works cannot be misconstrued - Mother Teresa, Sister Emanuelle, Abbé Pierre, Fr. Helder Camara - are exceptions who show only that all good people are implicitly Muslims, because true humanism is founded in Koranic revelation. Thus, both directly and through this humanism, the "Muslim City" can be founded upon the earth. "Today the Muslims who live in the West must unite themselves to the revolution of the antiestablishment groups from the moment when the neoliberal capitalist system becomes, for Islam, a theater of war..." ("Pouvoirs," 2003, n. 164).

Tariq Ramadan is the Islamic expert to whom Time Magazine turns and presents to its readers as the European voice of reformist Islam?

Read the entire posting at Always On Watch.

DETENTE/CONTAINMENT/APPEASEMENT/REALISM = SURRENDER

WEEKLY STANDARD (hat tip Prairie Pundit):

Surrender as 'Realism' -- Retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries.

[EXCERPT]: So let's add up the "realist" proposals: We must retreat from Iraq, and thus abandon all those Iraqis--Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, and others--who have depended on the United States for safety and the promise of a better future. We must abandon our allies in Lebanon and the very idea of an independent Lebanon in order to win Syria's support for our retreat from Iraq. We must abandon our opposition to Iran's nuclear program in order to convince Iran to help us abandon Iraq. And we must pressure our ally, Israel, to accommodate a violent Hamas in order to gain radical Arab support for our retreat from Iraq.

This is what passes for realism these days. But of course this is not realism. It is capitulation.

What defeated the USSR was not detente, and not containment; it was Reagan's huge defense build up, SDI and straight-forward/"in your face" no-holds barred "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" rhetoric. IOW: confrontation.

So called realists would like you to believe that they are in a noble line of "Cold Warriors," and they'd like you to believe that containment won the Cold War, (and that Vietnam was a waste). They'd like you to believe that global jihad can be likewise contained - by engaging in detente with Iran and Syria, but they are just as wrong. FACT: From 1945 to 1980 -- the era of so-called containment, appeasement and detente -- the USSR grew and grew and grew. They did not stop growing and start collapsing until Reagan.

Actually, adopting the policies of containment and appeasement now would be WORSE than they were during the Cold War; it would be like appeasing Hitler in 1942!

UPDATE: It's NOT off-topic to include a photo-shopped pic' of John Forbes Kerry in a post about so-called realism. Kerry would like you to believe he is a "realist" just like Baker and just like his own father - Richard - a life-time bureaucrat in the State Department, and a lifelong member of the "realist school", (who opposed Reagan and attacked Wilsonian foreign policy). Here's a quote:

"Americans," he writes, "are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white." They celebrate their own form of government and denigrate all others, making them guilty of what he calls "ethnocentric accommodation -- everyone ought to be like us."

As a result, America has committed the "fatal error" of "propagating democracy" and fallen prey to "the siren's song of promoting human rights," falsely assuming that our values and institutions are a good fit in the Third World.

And, just as Americans exaggerate their own goodness, they exaggerate their enemies' badness. The Soviet Union wasn't nearly as imperialistic as American politicians warned, Kerry argues. "Seeing the Soviet Union as the aggressor in every instance, and the U.S. as only reacting defensively, relieves an American observer from the need to see any parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world, and the Soviet use of military power outside the Soviet Union," he writes. He further claims that "Third world Marxist movements were autonomous national movements" -- outside Moscow's orbit. The book culminates in a plea for a hardheaded, realist foreign policy that removes any pretense of U.S. moral superiority.

It matters not who promulgates so-called "realism" in foreign policy and national security - whether is Kerry or Hagel or Baker or Hamilton or Scowcroft or Brzezinski. "Realism" is an amoral policy which has never defeated an enemy, never liberated a people, and never brought lasting peace, either. In fact, it brought us 9/11.

ARE MOSQUES LEGITIMATE TARGETS?

We in the West generally believe certain sites are off limits for violent action: religious sites, schools, hospitals etc. In Iraq this is certainly not the case, as mosques are frequently targeted in the spiraling sectarian violence.

What could possibly bring an end to this violence? A strong Iraqi authority, or an external enemy? The problem is which enemy will the sunni and shia agree upon? Iran? NO: more likely the USA and the Zionists!

UPDATE: BBC: Mosques torched

A Sunni area in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighbourhood came under attack on Friday when gunmen rampaged through the area, setting four mosques and several houses alight.

MORE HERE.

THE WEST AGAINST THE REST: THE CLOCK IS TICKING!!!

Reports that Russia is exporting anti-aircraft missiles to Iran highlights the fact that the global struggle against anti-libertarian forces continues - and time is not on our side.

The struggle involves various configurations of alliances who are caring for their own global interests through the use of proxies. In this complex constellation of alliances it is sometimes difficult to judge who our true allies are. [Reliapundit adds: YES: An ally in one region is a competitor or a foe in another.]

Russia is interested in continued tension in the ME because that supports the price of their oil and gas. [Reliapundit adds: YES: And anyhting which ties down the USA intrinsically opens up things for Russian hegemony.] The Chinese, like the Russians, want to knock the US off the podium. We know the intentions of the Islamic Fundamentalists.

And whether or not the islamofascists are being supported by the North Koreans, the Chinese, or the Russians, I see no reason to delay decisive preemptive action directly or through our own proxies.

[Reliapundit: RIGHT ON! ALSO: Note that Putin's hegemonist Russia is killing journalists left and right, and just assassinated - with a rare radioactive substance, in London, a former Russian spy who had just defected. Russia is playing hardball; we should too: We should probably assassinate Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, al Sadr and Assad.]

Fascist Fashion And Hitler's Home

In 1938, Homes and Gardens Magazine ran a spread called Hitler's Moutain Home. We learned that there was "no pretension" to Hitler's "chalet", and that it had lovely views, in a mountain setting. Herr Hitler's life was portrayed as one of luxurious glamour in a pastoral setting.

This past month Marie Claire fashion magazine ran a spread glamorizing the Burqa/Niqab, the fascist fashion of the Islamic world which enshrouds women in a black deathwrap from head to toe,

rendering them faceless

a total eclipse of their humanity.

Marie Claire portrays this as sexy. Marie Claire apparently has a morbid fascination with the Sado-Masochistic.

Burqas are the chains of modern slavery. The burqa is a portable concentration camp for women.

In Islam, women are slaves, and their slavery is enforced through threat of violence. Koran Sura 4, verse 34:

"And (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them."

A woman who continuously disobeys her husband may be labelled un-Islamic, or an apostate. The penalty for apostasy is death by stoning. This why we have the phenomenon of "honor killings" in which a women, or girl, is murdered for having brought "dishonor" on her family, through disobedience.

The burqa is enforced through threat of physical violence, and Marie Claire believes this is sexy and glamorous.

Clearly, many women who call themselves feminists are nothing but fascists willing to exploit the masses of women for fun and profit. Marie Claire is simply feeding women through the meat grinder of the glamour process. And, women are buying it.

Ladies, your burqas are waiting for you.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - PART 28: "ANTI-WAR" CANADIAN LEFTISTS AND JIHADISTS

THE TYEE - VIA MEMEORANDUM:

Canada's progressive Muslims wonder why left would embrace theocrats.

This is what it's come to: a disgraced, dictator-praising British MP [Galloway, pictured on the left] who dances around in red tights on reality-television shows is visiting Canada to commemorate the founding of a fascist movement known for its own distinctive swastika and Nazi-style uniforms and an anthem that's sung to the tune of Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles.

And it's just another otherwise unremarkable day in the life of Canada's "anti-war" movement.

Just how things degenerated so badly, and so fast, is a long and sad story. The upshot is that Canada's anti-war movement has become not only the primary vehicle for an obscure, formerly left-wing group that attacks anyone who opposes Shariah courts in Canada, it's also now the main source of public respectability for a Toronto think-tank that advocates for the establishment of theocracies that hang gay people.

RTWT. TAB readers know why the Left and the jihadists are united: They both want to destroy Western Civilization and Judeo-Christian culture. And they will succeed if we don't fight back.