Dec 26, 2007 21:32 Updated Dec 27, 2007 11:34
By DANIEL PIPES
Western financial aid to the Palestinians has, I showed last week, the perverse and counterintuitive effect of increasing their rate of homicides, including terrorist ones. This week, I offer two pieces of perhaps even stranger news about the many billions of dollars and record-shattering per-capita donations from the West: First, these have rendered the Palestinians poorer. Second, Palestinian impoverishment is a long-term positive development.
(read more)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Coal in Israel's stocking
editorials and opinion
By CLIFORD D. MAY
Scripps Howard News Service Wednesday, December 26, 2007
In this holiday season, there are journalistic conventions one comes to expect: stories lamenting the commercialism of Christmas; stories summing up the 12 months gone by and predicting the direction of the New Year; and stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land.
Reuters, the BBC, McClatchy, ABC News -- in recent days, all have run pieces in the last category. But the one that troubled me most appeared in the Wall Street Journal -- my favorite national daily newspaper -- on Dec. 24. It was written by Ken Woodward, a religion writer whose work I've long respected. But in this instance his subject was not religion but foreign affairs, and what he produced was the usual anti-Israeli dogma.
His op-ed was headlined: "The Plight of Bethlehem: Why Christians can't visit the holy
(click here to continue article)
By CLIFORD D. MAY
Scripps Howard News Service Wednesday, December 26, 2007
In this holiday season, there are journalistic conventions one comes to expect: stories lamenting the commercialism of Christmas; stories summing up the 12 months gone by and predicting the direction of the New Year; and stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land.
Reuters, the BBC, McClatchy, ABC News -- in recent days, all have run pieces in the last category. But the one that troubled me most appeared in the Wall Street Journal -- my favorite national daily newspaper -- on Dec. 24. It was written by Ken Woodward, a religion writer whose work I've long respected. But in this instance his subject was not religion but foreign affairs, and what he produced was the usual anti-Israeli dogma.
His op-ed was headlined: "The Plight of Bethlehem: Why Christians can't visit the holy
(click here to continue article)
Sunday, December 23, 2007
The Islamist war on Muslim women
Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / December 23, 2007
THE "QATIF GIRL" won a reprieve last week. On Dec. 17, Saudi Arabia'sKing Abdullah pardoned the young woman, who was sentenced to 200lashes and six months in prison after she pressed charges againstseven men who had raped her and a male acquaintance in 2006. Two weeksearlier, Sudan's president extended a similar reprieve to GillianGibbons, the British teacher convicted of insulting Islam because her7-year-old students named a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons had beensentenced to prison, but government-organize d street demonstratorswere loudly demanding her execution.
In January, Nazanin Fatehi was released from an Iranian jail after adeath sentence against her was revoked. She had originally beenconvicted of murder for fatally stabbing a man when he and two othersattempted to rape her and her niece in a park. (Had she yielded to therapists, she could have been flogged or stoned for engaging innonmarital sex.)
The sparing of these women was very welcome news, of course, and itwas not coincidental that each case had triggered an internationalfuror. But for every "Qatif girl" or Nazanin who is saved, there arefar too many other Muslim girls and women for whom deliverance nevercomes.
No international furor saved Aqsa Parvez, a Toronto teenager, whosefather was charged on Dec. 11 with strangling her to death because sherefused to wear a hijab. "She just wanted to look like everyone else,"one of Aqsa's friends told the National Post, "and I guess her dad hada problem with that."
No reprieve came for Banaz Mahmod, either. She was 20, a Kurdishimmigrant to Britain, whose father and uncle had her killed last yearafter she left an abusive arranged marriage and fell in love with aman not from the family's village in Kurdistan. Banaz was choked todeath with a bootlace, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in a garden70 miles away.
More than 25 such "honor killings" have been confirmed in Britain'sMuslim community in recent years. Many more are suspected.
There has been no storm of outrage about the intimidation and murderin Basra, Iraq, of women who wear Western-style clothing. Iraqi policesay that more than 40 women have been killed so far this year byIslamists; the bodies are often left in garbage dumps with notesaccusing the victims of "un-Islamic behavior."
By Western standards, the subjugation of women by Muslim fanatics, andthe sometimes pathological Islamist obsession with female sexuality,are unthinkable. Time and again they lead to shocking acts of violenceand depravity:
In Pakistan, a tribal council ordered a woman to be gang-raped aspunishment for her brother's supposed liaison with a woman fromanother tribe.
In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after sheuncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor ata friend's wedding.
In Tehran, a father beheaded his 7-year-old daughter because hesuspected that she had been raped; he said he acted "to defend myhonor, fame, and dignity."
In Saudi Arabia, the Islamic police prevented schoolgirls from leavinga burning building because they were not wearing headscarves andabayas; 15 of the girls died in the inferno.
The president of Cairo's Al-Azhar University, a renowned center ofIslamic learning, described the proper method of wife-beating in atelevision interview: "It's not really beating," Sheikh AhmadAl-Tayyeb explained on Egyptian television. "It's more like punching."
When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 1996, the repressionof women was among their first priorities. They issued a decreeforbidding women to leave their homes, with the result that work andschooling for women came to a halt, destroying the country'shealthcare system, civil service, and elementary education."
Forty percent of the doctors, half of the government workers, andseven out of 10 teachers were women," Lawrence Wright observed in "TheLooming Tower," his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of Al Qaeda. "Underthe Taliban, many of them would become beggars.
"Women are not the only victims of this rampant misogyny. MohammedHalim, a 46-year-old Afghan schoolteacher, was dragged from his familyand horribly murdered last year - disemboweled and then dismembered -for defying orders to stop educating girls.
All these are only examples - the tip of a dreadful iceberg that willnever be demolished until Muslims by the millions rise up against it.As for the rest of us, we too have an obligation to raise our voices.It took a worldwide outcry to spare "Qatif girl" and Nazanin. Butthere are countless others like them, and our silence may seal their fate.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is http://us.f362.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=jacoby%40globe.com.
Globe Columnist / December 23, 2007
THE "QATIF GIRL" won a reprieve last week. On Dec. 17, Saudi Arabia'sKing Abdullah pardoned the young woman, who was sentenced to 200lashes and six months in prison after she pressed charges againstseven men who had raped her and a male acquaintance in 2006. Two weeksearlier, Sudan's president extended a similar reprieve to GillianGibbons, the British teacher convicted of insulting Islam because her7-year-old students named a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons had beensentenced to prison, but government-organize d street demonstratorswere loudly demanding her execution.
In January, Nazanin Fatehi was released from an Iranian jail after adeath sentence against her was revoked. She had originally beenconvicted of murder for fatally stabbing a man when he and two othersattempted to rape her and her niece in a park. (Had she yielded to therapists, she could have been flogged or stoned for engaging innonmarital sex.)
The sparing of these women was very welcome news, of course, and itwas not coincidental that each case had triggered an internationalfuror. But for every "Qatif girl" or Nazanin who is saved, there arefar too many other Muslim girls and women for whom deliverance nevercomes.
No international furor saved Aqsa Parvez, a Toronto teenager, whosefather was charged on Dec. 11 with strangling her to death because sherefused to wear a hijab. "She just wanted to look like everyone else,"one of Aqsa's friends told the National Post, "and I guess her dad hada problem with that."
No reprieve came for Banaz Mahmod, either. She was 20, a Kurdishimmigrant to Britain, whose father and uncle had her killed last yearafter she left an abusive arranged marriage and fell in love with aman not from the family's village in Kurdistan. Banaz was choked todeath with a bootlace, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in a garden70 miles away.
More than 25 such "honor killings" have been confirmed in Britain'sMuslim community in recent years. Many more are suspected.
There has been no storm of outrage about the intimidation and murderin Basra, Iraq, of women who wear Western-style clothing. Iraqi policesay that more than 40 women have been killed so far this year byIslamists; the bodies are often left in garbage dumps with notesaccusing the victims of "un-Islamic behavior."
By Western standards, the subjugation of women by Muslim fanatics, andthe sometimes pathological Islamist obsession with female sexuality,are unthinkable. Time and again they lead to shocking acts of violenceand depravity:
In Pakistan, a tribal council ordered a woman to be gang-raped aspunishment for her brother's supposed liaison with a woman fromanother tribe.
In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after sheuncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor ata friend's wedding.
In Tehran, a father beheaded his 7-year-old daughter because hesuspected that she had been raped; he said he acted "to defend myhonor, fame, and dignity."
In Saudi Arabia, the Islamic police prevented schoolgirls from leavinga burning building because they were not wearing headscarves andabayas; 15 of the girls died in the inferno.
The president of Cairo's Al-Azhar University, a renowned center ofIslamic learning, described the proper method of wife-beating in atelevision interview: "It's not really beating," Sheikh AhmadAl-Tayyeb explained on Egyptian television. "It's more like punching."
When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 1996, the repressionof women was among their first priorities. They issued a decreeforbidding women to leave their homes, with the result that work andschooling for women came to a halt, destroying the country'shealthcare system, civil service, and elementary education."
Forty percent of the doctors, half of the government workers, andseven out of 10 teachers were women," Lawrence Wright observed in "TheLooming Tower," his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of Al Qaeda. "Underthe Taliban, many of them would become beggars.
"Women are not the only victims of this rampant misogyny. MohammedHalim, a 46-year-old Afghan schoolteacher, was dragged from his familyand horribly murdered last year - disemboweled and then dismembered -for defying orders to stop educating girls.
All these are only examples - the tip of a dreadful iceberg that willnever be demolished until Muslims by the millions rise up against it.As for the rest of us, we too have an obligation to raise our voices.It took a worldwide outcry to spare "Qatif girl" and Nazanin. Butthere are countless others like them, and our silence may seal their fate.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is http://us.f362.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=jacoby%40globe.com.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Scholar decries apathy toward Palestinian Christians
Tuesday, December 04, 2007 by Staff Writer
A leading Israeli human rights lawyer on Monday criticized Western governments and the mainstream media for largely ignoring the systematic persecution of Palestinian Arab Christians by their Muslim neighbors and rulers.Speaking at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs where he is a scholar in residence, Justus Weiner presented yet more evidence of the harassment, discrimination, intimidation, religious intolerance and physical violence Palestinian Christians in Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") are regularly subjected to.Weiner presented several specific cases of recent intimidation, physical abuse and murder of Palestinian Christians, but said those were merely the tip of the iceberg. Most of the Palestinian Christians affected by this persecution dare not open their mouths, and when they do are careful not to further upset the waters.If the situation continues, Weiner warned that in another decade there will be but a handful of Arab Christians remaining in the Holy Land. Already, the once Christian-dominated town of Bethlehem now has a population that is less than 20 percent Christian. Most of the Christian exodus from Jesus' birthplace has come after Israel handed control of Bethlehem over to the Palestinian Authority.The answer, said Weiner, is for Western "Christian" governments, the mainstream international media and human rights organizations to intervene and demand the Palestinian Authority begin protecting the rights of Christians living in areas under its control.But international concern for Palestinian Arab Christians dried up with the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1995 out of a desire to not paint that regime in a bad light and risk scuttling the process of extracting territorial and security concessions from Israel in return for "peace."
A leading Israeli human rights lawyer on Monday criticized Western governments and the mainstream media for largely ignoring the systematic persecution of Palestinian Arab Christians by their Muslim neighbors and rulers.Speaking at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs where he is a scholar in residence, Justus Weiner presented yet more evidence of the harassment, discrimination, intimidation, religious intolerance and physical violence Palestinian Christians in Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") are regularly subjected to.Weiner presented several specific cases of recent intimidation, physical abuse and murder of Palestinian Christians, but said those were merely the tip of the iceberg. Most of the Palestinian Christians affected by this persecution dare not open their mouths, and when they do are careful not to further upset the waters.If the situation continues, Weiner warned that in another decade there will be but a handful of Arab Christians remaining in the Holy Land. Already, the once Christian-dominated town of Bethlehem now has a population that is less than 20 percent Christian. Most of the Christian exodus from Jesus' birthplace has come after Israel handed control of Bethlehem over to the Palestinian Authority.The answer, said Weiner, is for Western "Christian" governments, the mainstream international media and human rights organizations to intervene and demand the Palestinian Authority begin protecting the rights of Christians living in areas under its control.But international concern for Palestinian Arab Christians dried up with the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1995 out of a desire to not paint that regime in a bad light and risk scuttling the process of extracting territorial and security concessions from Israel in return for "peace."
Monday, December 17, 2007
AT ANNAPOLIS, ISRAEL BOWED TO THE 'SOLUTION' OF THE NATIONS
In his recent speech in Annapolis the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Ehud Olmert made the following statement:
"I believe that there is no path other than peace. I believe there is no just solution other than the solution of two national states for two peoples. I believe that there is no path which does not involve painful compromise for you Palestinians and for us Israelis. I want to thank you, President George Bush, an ally in the path of peace, for your willingness to assist in the historic process of peace and reconciliation between us and our neighbors."
This statement exposes the absolute fallacy of the policy being pursued by Israel and the Nations concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict.
When Prime Minister Olmert says - with the blind agreement of not only the nations of the world but even most of the ministers of his cabinet - that he believes there is NO path other than peace and NO just solution other than the establishment of two national states for two peoples, it is clear that he has - apparently freely - swallowed the lie and the deception that peace will come to this region and to Israel only by way of the vision first foolishly proclaimed by the president of the United States.
The opposite is true. Peace will come to the Middle East - as it came to Europe - by military victory. As the Bible so truthfully, if sadly, states: There is a time to make war, and there is a time to make peace (see Ecclesiastes 3:8).
To make peace - after the manner in which Hitler negotiated an agreement with Chamberlain in Munich in September 1938) - when the other side is going to use that very surrender for the sake of peace to destroy you, is stupidity. And it is this folly which the Western powers already fell into once in history, when they chose to believe that by ceding the Sudetenland to Hitler they would save the rest of Czechoslovakia and thus prevent a war on the European continent.
We know that the opposite happened. The surrender of the Sudetenland did not bring the longed-for peace; it encouraged Hitler and his Nazis to take all of Czechoslovakia, and then unleash their armies on all of Europe.
This is precisely what will result from the wish spelled out, again under the pressure of the Nations gathered in Annapolis: that Israel cedes her own God-given land to the Palestinians to prevent further war. Any such cession of land will achieve the reverse - it will whet the appetite of all the radical Muslim forces, from Hamas to Hizbollah, from Al Qaida to the Islamic Jihad, from Iran to Syria, the big sponsors of Islamic terror. It will cause - just like the surrender of the Sudetenland - a world war and not peace!
Mr Olmert's statement thus proves just how dreadfully off base the thinking of even the present Israeli leadership is.
At least President Edvard Benes of Czechoslovakia withstood "the wisdom" of the Western powers when they (Britain and France) pressured him to give Hitler the Sudetenland for the sake of peace.
But with Israel the outlook is even worse, as we realize reading this utterly foolish statement of its leader.
For Israel is itself admitting that this withdrawal demanded of her by the Nations - a solution that will lead to her destruction - is the only solution there is!
President Benes at least shouted in despair at the Western powers that he felt betrayed by them, and that the forced evacuation of the Sudetenland could spell the end of his courageous, sovereign Nation!
But NOT SO Israel's present leaders.
They hasten to bow before the demands of the Goyim, themselves announcing that this solution to their conflict is THE ONLY SOLUTION, thus strengthening the Nations' hand and pride in this their plan - a plan that WILL lead, just as with Czechoslovakia, to the dismantling of their sovereign Jewish State.
May God prevent it!
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
In his recent speech in Annapolis the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Ehud Olmert made the following statement:
"I believe that there is no path other than peace. I believe there is no just solution other than the solution of two national states for two peoples. I believe that there is no path which does not involve painful compromise for you Palestinians and for us Israelis. I want to thank you, President George Bush, an ally in the path of peace, for your willingness to assist in the historic process of peace and reconciliation between us and our neighbors."
This statement exposes the absolute fallacy of the policy being pursued by Israel and the Nations concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict.
When Prime Minister Olmert says - with the blind agreement of not only the nations of the world but even most of the ministers of his cabinet - that he believes there is NO path other than peace and NO just solution other than the establishment of two national states for two peoples, it is clear that he has - apparently freely - swallowed the lie and the deception that peace will come to this region and to Israel only by way of the vision first foolishly proclaimed by the president of the United States.
The opposite is true. Peace will come to the Middle East - as it came to Europe - by military victory. As the Bible so truthfully, if sadly, states: There is a time to make war, and there is a time to make peace (see Ecclesiastes 3:8).
To make peace - after the manner in which Hitler negotiated an agreement with Chamberlain in Munich in September 1938) - when the other side is going to use that very surrender for the sake of peace to destroy you, is stupidity. And it is this folly which the Western powers already fell into once in history, when they chose to believe that by ceding the Sudetenland to Hitler they would save the rest of Czechoslovakia and thus prevent a war on the European continent.
We know that the opposite happened. The surrender of the Sudetenland did not bring the longed-for peace; it encouraged Hitler and his Nazis to take all of Czechoslovakia, and then unleash their armies on all of Europe.
This is precisely what will result from the wish spelled out, again under the pressure of the Nations gathered in Annapolis: that Israel cedes her own God-given land to the Palestinians to prevent further war. Any such cession of land will achieve the reverse - it will whet the appetite of all the radical Muslim forces, from Hamas to Hizbollah, from Al Qaida to the Islamic Jihad, from Iran to Syria, the big sponsors of Islamic terror. It will cause - just like the surrender of the Sudetenland - a world war and not peace!
Mr Olmert's statement thus proves just how dreadfully off base the thinking of even the present Israeli leadership is.
At least President Edvard Benes of Czechoslovakia withstood "the wisdom" of the Western powers when they (Britain and France) pressured him to give Hitler the Sudetenland for the sake of peace.
But with Israel the outlook is even worse, as we realize reading this utterly foolish statement of its leader.
For Israel is itself admitting that this withdrawal demanded of her by the Nations - a solution that will lead to her destruction - is the only solution there is!
President Benes at least shouted in despair at the Western powers that he felt betrayed by them, and that the forced evacuation of the Sudetenland could spell the end of his courageous, sovereign Nation!
But NOT SO Israel's present leaders.
They hasten to bow before the demands of the Goyim, themselves announcing that this solution to their conflict is THE ONLY SOLUTION, thus strengthening the Nations' hand and pride in this their plan - a plan that WILL lead, just as with Czechoslovakia, to the dismantling of their sovereign Jewish State.
May God prevent it!
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
Newt Gingrich speech - Jewish National Fund Meeting
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivered the following remarks to a Jewish National Fund meeting Nov. 15 at the Selig Center.
I just want to talk to you from the heart for a few minutes and share with you where I think we are.
I think it is very stark. I don't think it is yet desperate, but it is very stark. And if I had a title for today's talk, it would be sleepwalking into a nightmare. 'Cause that's what I think we're doing.
I gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute Sept. 10th at which I gave an alternative history of the last six years, because the more I thought about how much we're failing, the more I concluded you couldn't just nitpick individual places and talk about individual changes because it didn't capture the scale of the disaster. And I had been particularly impressed by a new book that came out called Troublesome Young Men, which is a study of the younger Conservatives who opposed appeasement in the 1930s and who took on Chamberlain. It's a very revealing book and a very powerful book because we tend to look backwards and we tend to overstate Churchill's role in that period. And we tend to understate what a serious and conscientious and thoughtful effort appeasement was and that it was the direct and deliberate policy of very powerful and very willful people. We tend to think of it as a psychological weakness, as though Chamberlain was somehow craven. He wasn't craven. Chamberlain had a very clear vision of the world, and he was very ruthless domestically. And they believed so deeply in avoiding war with Germany that as late as the spring of 1940, when they are six months or seven months into they war, they are dropping leaflets instead of bombs on the Rohr, and they are urging the British news media not to publish anti-German stories because they don't want to offend the German people. And you read this book, and it makes you want to weep because, interestingly, the younger Tories who were most opposed to appeasement were the combat veterans of World War I, who had lost all of their friends in the war but who understood that the failure of appeasement would result in a worse war and that the longer you lied about reality, the greater the disaster.
And they were severely punished and isolated by Chamberlain and the Conservative machine, and as I read that, I realized that that's really where we are today. Our current problem is tragic. You have an administration whose policy is inadequate being opposed by a political Left whose policy is worse, and you have nobody prepared to talk about the policy we need. Because we are told if you are for a strong America, you should back the Bush policy even if it's inadequate, and so you end up making an argument in favor of something that can't work. So your choice is to defend something which isn't working or to oppose it by being for an even weaker policy. So this is a catastrophe for this country and a catastrophe for freedom around the world. Because we have refused to be honest about the scale of the problem.
Let me work back. I'm going to get to Iran since that's the topic, but I'm going to get to it eventually.
Let me work back from Pakistan. The dictatorship in Pakistan has never had control over Wiziristan. Not for a day. So we've now spent six years since 9/11 with a sanctuary for al Qaeda and a sanctuary for the Taliban, and every time we pick up people in Great Britain who are terrorists, they were trained in Pakistan.
And our answer is to praise Musharraf because at least he's not as bad as the others. But the truth is Musharraf has not gotten control of terrorism in Pakistan. Musharraf doesn't have full control over his own government. The odds are even money we're going to drift into a disastrous dictatorship at some point in Pakistan. And while we worry about the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon, the Pakistanis already have 'em, So why would you feel secure in a world where you could presently have an Islamist dictatorship in Pakistan with a hundred-plus nuclear weapons? What's our grand strategy for that?
Then you look at Afghanistan. Here's a country that's small, poor, isolated, and in six years we have not been able to build roads, create economic opportunity, wean people off of growing drugs. A third of the GDP is from drugs. We haven't been able to end the sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan. And I know of no case historically where you defeat a guerrilla movement if it has a sanctuary. So the people who rely on the West are out-bribed by the criminals, outgunned by the criminals, and faced with a militant force across the border which practiced earlier defeating the Soviet empire and which has a time horizon of three or four generations. NATO has a time horizon of each quarter or at best a year, facing an opponent whose time horizon is literally three or four generations. It's a total mismatch.
Then you come to the direct threat to the United States, which is al Qaeda. Which, by the way, we just published polls. One of the sites I commend to you is AmericanSolutions.com. Last Wednesday we posted six national surveys, $428,000 worth of data. We gave it away. I found myself in the unique position of calling Howard Dean to tell him I was giving him $400,000 worth of polling. We have given it away to both Democrats and Republicans. It is fundamentally different from the national news media. When asked the question "Do we have an obligation to defend the United States and her allies?" the answer is 85 percent yes. When asked a further question "Should we defeat our enemies?" – it's very strong language – the answer is 75% yes, 75 to 16.
The complaint about Iraq is a performance complaint, not a values complaint.
When asked whether or not al Qaeda is a threat, 89% of the country says yes. And they think you have to defeat it, you can't negotiate with it. So now let's look at al Qaeda and the rise of Islamist terrorism.
And let's be honest: What's the primary source of money for al Qaeda? It's you, re-circulated through Saudi Arabia. Because we have no national energy strategy, when clearly if you really cared about liberating the United States from the Middle East and if you really cared about the survival of Israel, one of your highest goals would be to move to a hydrogen economy and to eliminate petroleum as a primary source of energy.
Now that's what a serious national strategy would look like, but that would require real change.
So then you look at Saudi Arabia. The fact that we tolerate a country saying no Christian and no Jew can go to Mecca, and we start with the presumption that that's true while they attack Israel for being a religious state is a sign of our timidity, our confusion, our cowardice that is stunning.
It's not complicated. We're inviting Saudi Arabia to come to Annapolis to talk about rights for Palestinians when nobody is saying, "Let's talk about rights for Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabia. Let's talk about rights for women in Saudi Arabia."
So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis.
You keep pumping billions of dollars a year into countries like Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Russia, and you are presently going to have created people who oppose you who have lots of money. And they're then going to come back to your own country and finance, for example, Arab study institutes whose only requirement is that they never tell the truth. So you have all sorts of Ph.D.s who now show up quite cheerfully prepared to say whatever it is that makes their funders happy – in the name, of course, of academic freedom. So why wouldn't Columbia host a genocidal madman? It's just part of political correctness. I mean, Ahmadinejad may say terrible things, he may lock up students, he may kill journalists, he may say, "We should wipe out Israel," he may say, "We should defeat the United States," but after all, what has he done that's inappropriate? What has he done that wouldn't be repeated at a Hollywood cocktail party or a nice gathering in Europe?
And nobody says this is totally, utterly, absolutely unacceptable. Why is it that the number one threat in intelligence movies is the CIA?
I happened the other night to be watching an old movie, “To Live and Die in L.A.,†which is about counterfeiting. But the movie starts with a Secret Service agent who is defending Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the person he is defending Ronald Reagan from is a suicide bomber who is actually, overtly a Muslim fanatic. Now, six years after 9/11, you could not get that scene made in Hollywood today.
Just look at the movies. Why is it that the bad person is either a Right-wing crazed billionaire, or the CIA as a government agency? Go look at “The Bourne Ultimatum.†Or a movie like the one that George Clooney made, which was an absolute lie, in which it implied that if you were a reformist Arab prince, that probably the CIA would kill you. It's a total lie. We actually have SEALs protecting people all over the world. We actually risk American lives protecting reformers all over the world, and yet Hollywood can't bring itself to tell the truth, (a) because it's ideologically so opposed to the American government and the American military, and (b), because it's terrified that if it said something really openly, honestly true about Muslim terrorists, they might show up in Hollywood. And you might have somebody killed as the Dutch producer was killed.
And so we're living a life of cowardice, and in that life of cowardice we're sleepwalking into a nightmare.
And then you come to Iran. There's a terrific book. Mark Bowden is a remarkable writer who wrote “Black Hawk Down,†has enormous personal courage. He's a Philadelphia newspaper writer, actually got the money out of the Philadelphia newspaper to go to Somalia to interview the Somalian side of “Black Hawk Down.†It's a remarkable achievement. Tells a great story about getting to Somalia, paying lots of cash, having the local warlord protect him, and after about two weeks the warlord came to him and said, "You know, we've decided that we're very uncomfortable with you being here, and you should leave."
And so he goes to the hotel, where he is the only hard-currency guest, and says, "I've got to check out two weeks early because the warlord has told me that he no longer will protect me." And the hotel owner, who wants to keep his only hard-currency guest, says, "Well, why are you listening to him? He's not the government. There is no government." And Bowden says, "Well, what will I do?" And he says, "You hire a bigger warlord with more guns," which he did. But then he could only stay one week because he ran out of money.
But this is a guy with real courage. I mean, imagine trying to go out and be a journalist in that kind of world, OK? So Bowden came back and wrote “Guests of the Ayatollah,†which is the Iranian hostage of 1979, which he entitled, "The First Shots in Iran's War Against America." So in the Bowden worldview, the current Iranian dictatorship has been at war with the United States since 1979. Violated international law. Every conceivable tenet of international law was violated when they seized the American Embassy and they seized the diplomats. Killed Americans in Lebanon in the early '80s. Killed Americans at Khobar Towers in '95 and had the Clinton administration deliberately avoid revealing the information, as Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI, has said publicly, because they didn't want to have to confront the Iranian complicity.
And so you have an Iranian regime which is cited annually as the leading supporter of state terrorism in the world. Every year the State Department says that. It's an extraordinary act of lucidity on the part of an institution which seeks to avoid it as often as possible.
And you have Gen. Petraeus come to the U.S. Congress and say publicly in an open session, "The Iranians are waging a proxy war against Americans in Iraq."
I was so deeply offended by this, it's hard for me to express it without sounding irrational. I'm an Army brat. My dad served 27 years in the infantry. The idea that an American general would come to the American Congress, testify in public that our young men and women are being killed by Iran, and we have done nothing, I find absolutely abhorrent.
So I'm preparing to come and talk today. I got up this morning, and a friend had sent me yesterday's Jerusalem Post editorial, which if you haven't read, I recommend to you. It has, for example, the following quote: "On Monday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, 'The problem of the content of the document setting out joint principles for peace-making post-Annapolis has not been resolved. One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state. We will not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.' "
What truly bothers me is the shallowness and the sophistry of the Western governments, starting with our own. When a person says to you, "I don't recognize that you exist," you don't start a negotiation. The person says, "I literally do not recognize" and then lies to you. I mean the first thing you say to this guy is "Terrific. Let's go visit Mecca. Since clearly there's no other state except Israel that is based on religion, the fact that I happen to be Christian won't bother anybody." And then he'll say, "Well, that's different."
We tolerate this. We have created our own nightmare because we refuse to tell the truth. We refuse to tell the truth to our politicians. Our State Department refuses to tell the truth to the country. If the president of the United States, and again, we're now so bitterly partisan, we're so committed to red vs. blue hostility, that George W. Bush doesn't have the capacity to give an address from the Oval Office that has any meaning for half the country. And the anti-war Left is so strong in the Democratic primary that I think it's almost impossible for any Democratic presidential candidate to tell the truth about the situation.
And so the Republicans are isolated and trying to defend incompetence. The Democrats are isolated and trying to find a way to say, "I'm really for strength as long as I can have peace, but I'd really like to have peace, except I don't want to recognize these people who aren't very peaceful."
I just want to share with you, as a grandfather, as a citizen, as a historian, as somebody who was once speaker of the House, this is a serious national crisis. This is 1935 or 1936, and it's getting worse every year.
None of our enemies are confused. Our enemies don't get up each morning and go, "Oh, gosh, I think I'll have an existential crisis of identity in which I will try to think through whether or not we can be friends while you're killing me." Our enemies get up every morning and say, "We hate the West. We hate freedom." They would not allow a meeting with women in the room.
I was once interviewed by a BBC reporter, a nice young lady who was only about as anti-American as she had to be to keep her job. Since it was a live interview, I turned to her halfway through the interview and I said, "Do you like your job?" And it was summertime, and she's wearing a short-sleeve dress. And she said, "Well, yes." She was confused because I had just reversed roles. I said, "Well, then you should hope we win." She said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, if the enemy wins, you won't be allowed to be on television."
I don't know how to explain it any simpler than that.
Now what do we need?
We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless when they're strong, demand mercy when they're losing, show no mercy when they're winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we're living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You'll be able to tell who won and who lost by who's still standing. Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn't going to stop this war. They're just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it includes winning the argument in the rest of the world. And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple example because we're now muscle-bound by our own inability to talk honestly.
Iran produces 60% of its own gasoline. It produces lots of crude oil but only has one refinery. It imports 40% of its gasoline. The entire 60% is produced at one huge refinery.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan decided to break the Soviet empire. He was asked, “What's your vision of the Cold War?†He said, "Four words: We win; they lose." He was clearly seen by The New York Times as an out-of-touch, reactionary, right-wing cowboy from California who had no idea what was going on in the world. And 11 years later the Soviet Union disappeared, but obviously that had nothing to do with Reagan because that would have meant he was right. So it's just a random accident the Soviet Union disappeared.
Part of the war we waged on the Soviet Union involved their natural gas supply because we wanted to cut off their hard currency. The Soviets were desperate to get better equipment for their pipeline. We managed to sell them through third parties very, very sophisticated American pipeline equipment, which they were thrilled to buy and thought they had pulled off a huge coup. Now we weren't playing fair. We did not tell them that the equipment was designed to blow up. One day in 1982, there was an explosion in Siberia so large that the initial reflection on the satellites looked like there was a tactical nuclear weapon. One part of the White House was genuinely worried, and the other part of the White House had to calm them down. They said, "No, no, that's our equipment blowing up."
In the 28 years since the Iranians declared war on us, in the six years since 9/11, in the months since Gen. Petraeus publicly said they are killing young Americans, we have not been able to figure out how to take down one refinery. Covertly, quietly, without overt war. And we have not been able to figure out how to use the most powerful navy in the world to simply stop the tankers and say, "Look, you want to kill young Americans, you're going to walk to the battlefield, but you're not going to ride in the car because you're not going to have any gasoline."
We don't have to be stupid. The choice is not cowardice or total war. Reagan unlocked Poland without firing a shot in an alliance with the pope, with the labor unions and with the British. We have every possibility if we're prepared to be honest to shape the world. It'll be a very big project. It's much closer to World War II than it is to anything we've tried recently. It will require real effort, real intensity and real determination. We're either going to do it now, while we're still extraordinarily powerful, or we're going to do it later under much more desperate circumstances after we've lost several cities.
We had better take this seriously because we are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust. Three nuclear weapons is a second Holocaust. Our enemies would like to get those weapons as soon as they can, and they promise to use them as soon as they can.
I suggest we defeat our enemies and create a different situation long before they have that power.
I just want to talk to you from the heart for a few minutes and share with you where I think we are.
I think it is very stark. I don't think it is yet desperate, but it is very stark. And if I had a title for today's talk, it would be sleepwalking into a nightmare. 'Cause that's what I think we're doing.
I gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute Sept. 10th at which I gave an alternative history of the last six years, because the more I thought about how much we're failing, the more I concluded you couldn't just nitpick individual places and talk about individual changes because it didn't capture the scale of the disaster. And I had been particularly impressed by a new book that came out called Troublesome Young Men, which is a study of the younger Conservatives who opposed appeasement in the 1930s and who took on Chamberlain. It's a very revealing book and a very powerful book because we tend to look backwards and we tend to overstate Churchill's role in that period. And we tend to understate what a serious and conscientious and thoughtful effort appeasement was and that it was the direct and deliberate policy of very powerful and very willful people. We tend to think of it as a psychological weakness, as though Chamberlain was somehow craven. He wasn't craven. Chamberlain had a very clear vision of the world, and he was very ruthless domestically. And they believed so deeply in avoiding war with Germany that as late as the spring of 1940, when they are six months or seven months into they war, they are dropping leaflets instead of bombs on the Rohr, and they are urging the British news media not to publish anti-German stories because they don't want to offend the German people. And you read this book, and it makes you want to weep because, interestingly, the younger Tories who were most opposed to appeasement were the combat veterans of World War I, who had lost all of their friends in the war but who understood that the failure of appeasement would result in a worse war and that the longer you lied about reality, the greater the disaster.
And they were severely punished and isolated by Chamberlain and the Conservative machine, and as I read that, I realized that that's really where we are today. Our current problem is tragic. You have an administration whose policy is inadequate being opposed by a political Left whose policy is worse, and you have nobody prepared to talk about the policy we need. Because we are told if you are for a strong America, you should back the Bush policy even if it's inadequate, and so you end up making an argument in favor of something that can't work. So your choice is to defend something which isn't working or to oppose it by being for an even weaker policy. So this is a catastrophe for this country and a catastrophe for freedom around the world. Because we have refused to be honest about the scale of the problem.
Let me work back. I'm going to get to Iran since that's the topic, but I'm going to get to it eventually.
Let me work back from Pakistan. The dictatorship in Pakistan has never had control over Wiziristan. Not for a day. So we've now spent six years since 9/11 with a sanctuary for al Qaeda and a sanctuary for the Taliban, and every time we pick up people in Great Britain who are terrorists, they were trained in Pakistan.
And our answer is to praise Musharraf because at least he's not as bad as the others. But the truth is Musharraf has not gotten control of terrorism in Pakistan. Musharraf doesn't have full control over his own government. The odds are even money we're going to drift into a disastrous dictatorship at some point in Pakistan. And while we worry about the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon, the Pakistanis already have 'em, So why would you feel secure in a world where you could presently have an Islamist dictatorship in Pakistan with a hundred-plus nuclear weapons? What's our grand strategy for that?
Then you look at Afghanistan. Here's a country that's small, poor, isolated, and in six years we have not been able to build roads, create economic opportunity, wean people off of growing drugs. A third of the GDP is from drugs. We haven't been able to end the sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan. And I know of no case historically where you defeat a guerrilla movement if it has a sanctuary. So the people who rely on the West are out-bribed by the criminals, outgunned by the criminals, and faced with a militant force across the border which practiced earlier defeating the Soviet empire and which has a time horizon of three or four generations. NATO has a time horizon of each quarter or at best a year, facing an opponent whose time horizon is literally three or four generations. It's a total mismatch.
Then you come to the direct threat to the United States, which is al Qaeda. Which, by the way, we just published polls. One of the sites I commend to you is AmericanSolutions.com. Last Wednesday we posted six national surveys, $428,000 worth of data. We gave it away. I found myself in the unique position of calling Howard Dean to tell him I was giving him $400,000 worth of polling. We have given it away to both Democrats and Republicans. It is fundamentally different from the national news media. When asked the question "Do we have an obligation to defend the United States and her allies?" the answer is 85 percent yes. When asked a further question "Should we defeat our enemies?" – it's very strong language – the answer is 75% yes, 75 to 16.
The complaint about Iraq is a performance complaint, not a values complaint.
When asked whether or not al Qaeda is a threat, 89% of the country says yes. And they think you have to defeat it, you can't negotiate with it. So now let's look at al Qaeda and the rise of Islamist terrorism.
And let's be honest: What's the primary source of money for al Qaeda? It's you, re-circulated through Saudi Arabia. Because we have no national energy strategy, when clearly if you really cared about liberating the United States from the Middle East and if you really cared about the survival of Israel, one of your highest goals would be to move to a hydrogen economy and to eliminate petroleum as a primary source of energy.
Now that's what a serious national strategy would look like, but that would require real change.
So then you look at Saudi Arabia. The fact that we tolerate a country saying no Christian and no Jew can go to Mecca, and we start with the presumption that that's true while they attack Israel for being a religious state is a sign of our timidity, our confusion, our cowardice that is stunning.
It's not complicated. We're inviting Saudi Arabia to come to Annapolis to talk about rights for Palestinians when nobody is saying, "Let's talk about rights for Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabia. Let's talk about rights for women in Saudi Arabia."
So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis.
You keep pumping billions of dollars a year into countries like Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Russia, and you are presently going to have created people who oppose you who have lots of money. And they're then going to come back to your own country and finance, for example, Arab study institutes whose only requirement is that they never tell the truth. So you have all sorts of Ph.D.s who now show up quite cheerfully prepared to say whatever it is that makes their funders happy – in the name, of course, of academic freedom. So why wouldn't Columbia host a genocidal madman? It's just part of political correctness. I mean, Ahmadinejad may say terrible things, he may lock up students, he may kill journalists, he may say, "We should wipe out Israel," he may say, "We should defeat the United States," but after all, what has he done that's inappropriate? What has he done that wouldn't be repeated at a Hollywood cocktail party or a nice gathering in Europe?
And nobody says this is totally, utterly, absolutely unacceptable. Why is it that the number one threat in intelligence movies is the CIA?
I happened the other night to be watching an old movie, “To Live and Die in L.A.,†which is about counterfeiting. But the movie starts with a Secret Service agent who is defending Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the person he is defending Ronald Reagan from is a suicide bomber who is actually, overtly a Muslim fanatic. Now, six years after 9/11, you could not get that scene made in Hollywood today.
Just look at the movies. Why is it that the bad person is either a Right-wing crazed billionaire, or the CIA as a government agency? Go look at “The Bourne Ultimatum.†Or a movie like the one that George Clooney made, which was an absolute lie, in which it implied that if you were a reformist Arab prince, that probably the CIA would kill you. It's a total lie. We actually have SEALs protecting people all over the world. We actually risk American lives protecting reformers all over the world, and yet Hollywood can't bring itself to tell the truth, (a) because it's ideologically so opposed to the American government and the American military, and (b), because it's terrified that if it said something really openly, honestly true about Muslim terrorists, they might show up in Hollywood. And you might have somebody killed as the Dutch producer was killed.
And so we're living a life of cowardice, and in that life of cowardice we're sleepwalking into a nightmare.
And then you come to Iran. There's a terrific book. Mark Bowden is a remarkable writer who wrote “Black Hawk Down,†has enormous personal courage. He's a Philadelphia newspaper writer, actually got the money out of the Philadelphia newspaper to go to Somalia to interview the Somalian side of “Black Hawk Down.†It's a remarkable achievement. Tells a great story about getting to Somalia, paying lots of cash, having the local warlord protect him, and after about two weeks the warlord came to him and said, "You know, we've decided that we're very uncomfortable with you being here, and you should leave."
And so he goes to the hotel, where he is the only hard-currency guest, and says, "I've got to check out two weeks early because the warlord has told me that he no longer will protect me." And the hotel owner, who wants to keep his only hard-currency guest, says, "Well, why are you listening to him? He's not the government. There is no government." And Bowden says, "Well, what will I do?" And he says, "You hire a bigger warlord with more guns," which he did. But then he could only stay one week because he ran out of money.
But this is a guy with real courage. I mean, imagine trying to go out and be a journalist in that kind of world, OK? So Bowden came back and wrote “Guests of the Ayatollah,†which is the Iranian hostage of 1979, which he entitled, "The First Shots in Iran's War Against America." So in the Bowden worldview, the current Iranian dictatorship has been at war with the United States since 1979. Violated international law. Every conceivable tenet of international law was violated when they seized the American Embassy and they seized the diplomats. Killed Americans in Lebanon in the early '80s. Killed Americans at Khobar Towers in '95 and had the Clinton administration deliberately avoid revealing the information, as Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI, has said publicly, because they didn't want to have to confront the Iranian complicity.
And so you have an Iranian regime which is cited annually as the leading supporter of state terrorism in the world. Every year the State Department says that. It's an extraordinary act of lucidity on the part of an institution which seeks to avoid it as often as possible.
And you have Gen. Petraeus come to the U.S. Congress and say publicly in an open session, "The Iranians are waging a proxy war against Americans in Iraq."
I was so deeply offended by this, it's hard for me to express it without sounding irrational. I'm an Army brat. My dad served 27 years in the infantry. The idea that an American general would come to the American Congress, testify in public that our young men and women are being killed by Iran, and we have done nothing, I find absolutely abhorrent.
So I'm preparing to come and talk today. I got up this morning, and a friend had sent me yesterday's Jerusalem Post editorial, which if you haven't read, I recommend to you. It has, for example, the following quote: "On Monday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, 'The problem of the content of the document setting out joint principles for peace-making post-Annapolis has not been resolved. One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state. We will not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.' "
What truly bothers me is the shallowness and the sophistry of the Western governments, starting with our own. When a person says to you, "I don't recognize that you exist," you don't start a negotiation. The person says, "I literally do not recognize" and then lies to you. I mean the first thing you say to this guy is "Terrific. Let's go visit Mecca. Since clearly there's no other state except Israel that is based on religion, the fact that I happen to be Christian won't bother anybody." And then he'll say, "Well, that's different."
We tolerate this. We have created our own nightmare because we refuse to tell the truth. We refuse to tell the truth to our politicians. Our State Department refuses to tell the truth to the country. If the president of the United States, and again, we're now so bitterly partisan, we're so committed to red vs. blue hostility, that George W. Bush doesn't have the capacity to give an address from the Oval Office that has any meaning for half the country. And the anti-war Left is so strong in the Democratic primary that I think it's almost impossible for any Democratic presidential candidate to tell the truth about the situation.
And so the Republicans are isolated and trying to defend incompetence. The Democrats are isolated and trying to find a way to say, "I'm really for strength as long as I can have peace, but I'd really like to have peace, except I don't want to recognize these people who aren't very peaceful."
I just want to share with you, as a grandfather, as a citizen, as a historian, as somebody who was once speaker of the House, this is a serious national crisis. This is 1935 or 1936, and it's getting worse every year.
None of our enemies are confused. Our enemies don't get up each morning and go, "Oh, gosh, I think I'll have an existential crisis of identity in which I will try to think through whether or not we can be friends while you're killing me." Our enemies get up every morning and say, "We hate the West. We hate freedom." They would not allow a meeting with women in the room.
I was once interviewed by a BBC reporter, a nice young lady who was only about as anti-American as she had to be to keep her job. Since it was a live interview, I turned to her halfway through the interview and I said, "Do you like your job?" And it was summertime, and she's wearing a short-sleeve dress. And she said, "Well, yes." She was confused because I had just reversed roles. I said, "Well, then you should hope we win." She said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, if the enemy wins, you won't be allowed to be on television."
I don't know how to explain it any simpler than that.
Now what do we need?
We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless when they're strong, demand mercy when they're losing, show no mercy when they're winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we're living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You'll be able to tell who won and who lost by who's still standing. Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn't going to stop this war. They're just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it includes winning the argument in the rest of the world. And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple example because we're now muscle-bound by our own inability to talk honestly.
Iran produces 60% of its own gasoline. It produces lots of crude oil but only has one refinery. It imports 40% of its gasoline. The entire 60% is produced at one huge refinery.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan decided to break the Soviet empire. He was asked, “What's your vision of the Cold War?†He said, "Four words: We win; they lose." He was clearly seen by The New York Times as an out-of-touch, reactionary, right-wing cowboy from California who had no idea what was going on in the world. And 11 years later the Soviet Union disappeared, but obviously that had nothing to do with Reagan because that would have meant he was right. So it's just a random accident the Soviet Union disappeared.
Part of the war we waged on the Soviet Union involved their natural gas supply because we wanted to cut off their hard currency. The Soviets were desperate to get better equipment for their pipeline. We managed to sell them through third parties very, very sophisticated American pipeline equipment, which they were thrilled to buy and thought they had pulled off a huge coup. Now we weren't playing fair. We did not tell them that the equipment was designed to blow up. One day in 1982, there was an explosion in Siberia so large that the initial reflection on the satellites looked like there was a tactical nuclear weapon. One part of the White House was genuinely worried, and the other part of the White House had to calm them down. They said, "No, no, that's our equipment blowing up."
In the 28 years since the Iranians declared war on us, in the six years since 9/11, in the months since Gen. Petraeus publicly said they are killing young Americans, we have not been able to figure out how to take down one refinery. Covertly, quietly, without overt war. And we have not been able to figure out how to use the most powerful navy in the world to simply stop the tankers and say, "Look, you want to kill young Americans, you're going to walk to the battlefield, but you're not going to ride in the car because you're not going to have any gasoline."
We don't have to be stupid. The choice is not cowardice or total war. Reagan unlocked Poland without firing a shot in an alliance with the pope, with the labor unions and with the British. We have every possibility if we're prepared to be honest to shape the world. It'll be a very big project. It's much closer to World War II than it is to anything we've tried recently. It will require real effort, real intensity and real determination. We're either going to do it now, while we're still extraordinarily powerful, or we're going to do it later under much more desperate circumstances after we've lost several cities.
We had better take this seriously because we are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust. Three nuclear weapons is a second Holocaust. Our enemies would like to get those weapons as soon as they can, and they promise to use them as soon as they can.
I suggest we defeat our enemies and create a different situation long before they have that power.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Jews Decide Their Own Fate
Anonymous Post
We have all read the terrible stories about life in the European ghettos during the Holocaust. The Jewish population diminished with each selection and cut in rations. The leaders did their best to calm the remaining Jews as life slowly drained away. All the while, lavish weddings were celebrated in the West and most mainstream Jewish organizations, detached from the horrors of Europe, went about their business.
Then Israel was born and with it a collective Jewish spirit to fight and defend itself. One might think that we would have learned from the Holocaust, the black hole of our history, but never again seems to ring hollow in the ears of many Jews. Last weeks Annapolis Conference made it clear to me that the Jews in the end will decide their own fate. Israel's leaders attended a gathering, headlined as a global peace effort, where they had to enter through their own "service" entrance in order to respect the wishes of the Arab attendees. The Israelis conferred with people who both refused to shake their hands and removed their translation headphones when Prime Minister Olmert spoke. It is hard to imagine any self respecting African leader willingly subjecting themselves to such humiliation at the hands of white dominated countries. And for this Israel is going to pledge its strategic heartland? For this, Israel is going to squander its proud legacy and possibly the lives of its innocents? For all of this, Jews must accept the shame of betraying their own history. Why are so many Jews so consumed with their petty pursuits that they can not even imagine, once again, being consumed by their pursuers? The answer is that we choose the blissful ignorance of the day, protected in our communities while our enemies prepare for war and our leaders prepare for their next meeting.
We have all read the terrible stories about life in the European ghettos during the Holocaust. The Jewish population diminished with each selection and cut in rations. The leaders did their best to calm the remaining Jews as life slowly drained away. All the while, lavish weddings were celebrated in the West and most mainstream Jewish organizations, detached from the horrors of Europe, went about their business.
Then Israel was born and with it a collective Jewish spirit to fight and defend itself. One might think that we would have learned from the Holocaust, the black hole of our history, but never again seems to ring hollow in the ears of many Jews. Last weeks Annapolis Conference made it clear to me that the Jews in the end will decide their own fate. Israel's leaders attended a gathering, headlined as a global peace effort, where they had to enter through their own "service" entrance in order to respect the wishes of the Arab attendees. The Israelis conferred with people who both refused to shake their hands and removed their translation headphones when Prime Minister Olmert spoke. It is hard to imagine any self respecting African leader willingly subjecting themselves to such humiliation at the hands of white dominated countries. And for this Israel is going to pledge its strategic heartland? For this, Israel is going to squander its proud legacy and possibly the lives of its innocents? For all of this, Jews must accept the shame of betraying their own history. Why are so many Jews so consumed with their petty pursuits that they can not even imagine, once again, being consumed by their pursuers? The answer is that we choose the blissful ignorance of the day, protected in our communities while our enemies prepare for war and our leaders prepare for their next meeting.
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