I need to update my morning post on Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack’s new article at Foreign Affairs, “Standing Down as Iraq Stands Up.”

As noted, the piece isn’t all that impressive. Most of the analysis seems somewhat behind the curve of events, and the conclusion’s basically the authors’ attempt to curry favor within the Democratic foreign policy establishment by re-floating the “Bush lied” meme on the origins of the deployment.

Well, the antiwar bloggers aren’t too happy no matter the motives. Indeed, this liberal warhawk-neocon triumvirate is being attacked just like the old days, although not just as war cheerleaders for the GOP imperialist project, but as enablers of American war crimes in Iraq to boot!

The meme’s getting a lot of play, but Spencer Ackerman’s attack is the most vociferous:

Matt Yglesias is on vacation until his new ThinkProgress blog launches August 11. But he IMs to ensure I don’t miss this argument in the new Steve Biddle/Mike O’Hanlon/Ken Pollack Iraq piece in Foreign Affairs:

It is worth noting that separation resulting from sectarian cleansing was not the chief cause of the reduction in violence, as some have claimed. Much of Iraq remains intermingled but increasingly peaceful. And whereas a cleansing argument implies that casualties should have gone down in Baghdad, for example, as mixed neighborhoods were cleansed, casualties actually went up consistently during the sectarian warfare of 2006. Cleansing may have reduced the violence somewhat in some places, but it was not the main cause.

I had to reread this to make sure I didn’t misunderstand. Ethnic cleansing is a violent process of extirpating members of a rival ethnicity or sect. If the ethnic cleansing occurred in 2006, of course casualties went up consistently. This argument makes no sense.

But there’s actually a broader point to make. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. The U.S. quite rightly intervened in the Balkans in the 1990s to stop it. The horrors of ethnic cleansing are unfathomable to those who haven’t experienced them. What you really, really shouldn’t do is treat other people’s ethnic cleansing as a debaters’ point. It’s perverse, isn’t it, the way that ethnic cleansing that occurred during a U.S. occupation can be treated so nonchalantly by Washington polemicists.

I’d be remiss not to send a quick message to Yglesias: Dude, take some time off. You’re going to be swamped with that new, nasty gig at Think Progress.

But back to the debate at hand!

Actually, it’s not illogical for sectarian violence to have dropped if the term “cleansing” is recognized in its very common useage as a broad shorthand for the consolidation of ethnic neighborhoods and the internal displacement of populations from their homes. Iraq’s ethnic cleansing has not generally been seen as genocidal. Indeed, surge proponents using this shorthand terminology have been savagely attacked for allegedly seeking to minimize the refugee tragedy of “millions of Iraqis being robbed of their homes.”

The fact is that the antiwar hordes have never accepted the COIN strategy of President George Bush and General David Petraeus. The victory of the beefed-up troop contingents along with the tactical adjustments on the ground have long been slandered as an alleged “false narrative” of success. Just over a week ago some of the most implacable Bush-bashers on the left smeared success under the surge as a myth, or that perhaps it has “worked tactically, but hasn’t succeeded strategically, at least not yet.”

Yet now, with all the mainstream political actors accepting the new realities of Iraq - including both John McCain and Barack Obama - most of the antwar contingents are seeking to push the war debate past the question of victory to that of culpability in alleged American atrocities.

This all ties into the big push on the left for “accountability” of the Bush administration foreign policy decisions, such as the treatment of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the domestic surveillance operations and the question of telecom immunity.

Ideally, for war opponents, Bush administration “criminals” would be prosecuted for war crimes under a Barack Obama administration come January 2009. What’s most likely to happen, in the advent of an Obama regimes, is that Congress would establish a “commission on torture” to investigate alleged wrong-doing under the Bush-Cheney years. Yet, the recent hard-left uproar over Obama-advisor Cass Sunstein’s recent dismissal of war crimes prosecutions indicates that the antiwar forces want a bit more than “truth and reconcilliation.”

Thus, today’s uproar over the Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack essay can be seen as building more war crimes charges against the administration.

The whole thing may well end being a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing, especially as Barack Obama’s been dropping in the polls like an anchor.

On the other hand, the war crimes push is an international movement, and U.S. bloggers like Ackerman, Ezra Klein, and the crew at Newshoggers - with no substantive loyalty to the principle of American sovereignty - would like nothing more than the establishment of a universal jurisdiction of vengeance and star chamber prosecutions of Bush’s neo-imperialist cabal next year.

~cross-posted at American Power

I wrote previously on “The Ingrid Betancourt Rescue.” Yet, the more I learn of Betancourt’s ordeal, the more powerful is her story of moral courage.

André Glucksmann, at City Journal, argues for seeing Betancourt’s six years in captivity as a story of personal bravery and the ultimate rejection of slavery and terror:

Public opinion, government officials, ordinary citizens, and her friends and family—all are moved by, and rejoice in, Ingrid Betancourt’s liberation from the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Bravo to the woman who survived and stood fast in her tropical gulag; to her family, who moved heaven and earth to secure her release; to the organizations that fought against forgetfulness; and to the politicians who worked tirelessly to free her. Such joy aside, however, I fear that the thunderous worldwide applause may smother, with flowers and compliments, a troublesome and insistent truth—one that the hostage pondered ceaselessly during her six-year ordeal and has sought to deliver to us since her arrival on the Bogota tarmac. This truth alone gives absolute meaning to her liberation.

From the outset, Betancourt has congratulated the Colombian army and President Álvaro Uribe for the military operation that saved her. She praised not only its impeccable success but also—as she deliberately pointed out—its daring, for any military operation risked going awry for some unforeseen reason and leading to the execution of the hostages, as has sometimes happened in earlier attempts. Unlike her family members—who, she is careful to emphasize, have always so feared losing her that they distrusted and criticized Uribe’s adventurism and militarism—Betancourt congratulates the Colombian president. To be sure, Operation Checkmate could well have ended in bloodshed; but Betancourt had long wished for it, ready to face death if necessary. This had become a matter of principle for her. Better, she said, “a second of freedom,” even deadly freedom, than an eternity of slavery. She had attempted five escapes, and in retribution the guerilla fighters had chained her up by the neck. “I always avoided imagining my wife’s living conditions,” her husband said. “Now I know she lived like a dog.”

Betancourt’s choice, which she has proclaimed loud and clear since her first breaths of free air, is the result of mature reflection: rather the possibility of a bloody outcome than the life of a dog. She does not tell us that anything is better than death; she says rather that freedom is worth any price….

Ingrid Betancourt’s physical, moral, and intellectual courage reminds us of what is fundamentally at stake in a civilization: the refusal of slavery.

Betancourt, who was interviewed on Larry King Live the other night, cannot talk of some of the sheer inhumanity she witnessed while in captivity: “The memories are better left in the jungle,” she said thoughout the broadcast:

Charles Krauthammer writes on the larger implications of the Betancourt story for international politics, “How Hostages, And Nations, Get Liberated” (on the hard power of military force and moral clarity).

~cross-posted at American Power

Some of the best news this past week came out of Colombia, where Government agents posing as rebels tricked actual rebels into freeing 15 hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 Colombian police and military personnel.  This really was some amazing work on the part of the Colombian military:

The agents gained the rebels’ trust and rose to the top of FARC’s leadership council as well as a team assigned to guard the hostages.

When the time was ripe, the moles used the authority they’d gained within the group to order the 15 hostages moved from three separate locations to one central area, and the game was on.

Incredibly, the entire mission was carried out without a shot fired.  The agents led their rebel counterparts to believe the helicopter coming to rescue the hostages was an “international mission” like the Red Cross.  They loaded up the hostages, convinced the other rebels to lay down their arms, and then arrested the men and got the hostages out.  Fact is, you don’t hear many stories like this, that end so well.

In other news, an Arab Israeli ran a front end loader into a bus in Jerusalem killing several people and wounding many more.  His family has said he was not involved in politics, and that the apparent terrorist attack was actually just a guy who lost his cool.  It looks as though, perhaps, he was involved in criminal rather than political disputes.

Calling Michelle Malkin, Charles Johnson, A.J. Strata, Ed Morrissey, Richard Fernandez and Ace of Spades

When the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 was unveiled in September 2005, these six high profile conservative bloggers were instrumental in raising the public protest that forced the Memorial Project to agree to a redesign. Charles Johnson stayed with the story until the summer of 2006, and Ace has done two links since 2005, but for the most part, these conservative heroes seem to have decided that the “circle of embrace” redesign is okay.

It is NOT okay. Architect Paul Murdoch described his original Crescent of Embrace design as a broken circle. The redesign is still described as a broken circle, and the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains exactly as it was in the original design.

In particular, the giant crescent still points to Mecca, and the repetition of this Mecca orientation in the crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices part of the memorial proves that the Mecca orientation is intentional. That makes the giant crescent a mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. (more…)

~from Churchill’s Parrot

This March 17, while the civilized world dutifully besots itself in taverns the world over, Lefties will be taking their impaired judgment to the streets and parading it about for all the world to see. This March 17, you see, is especially significant to Lefties as it represents the 40th anniversary of the 1967 March on the Pentagon as well as the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Massive demonstrations (such as these planned here and here) have thus been organized to commemorate the first and decry the latter: the “criminal invasion of Iraq.”

No doubt among these Lefties are a few who sincerely believe Bushie’s decision to invade Iraq was a something he concocted out of thin air at his ranch in Crawford, or a misguided attempt to avenge the attempted assassination of his father, or the desire to line his cronies’ pockets with oil money, or his unthinking allegiance to those neo-con Jews who just don’t like Arabs and were itching for a fight.

(more…)

There is an absurd notion floating (or perhaps burning wild-fire-like) throughout the anti-war camp that Iraq is some invention of the Bush Administration.  Now, while I have professed many times to having been a critic of our entrance into Iraq due to what I perceived as poor (and avoidable) timing, I take offense at the notion that somehow this is Bush’s war, pawned off on the American public and the US Congress alike in some epic hoodwinking–as though there was no lead-up whatsoever during the Clinton years.

This ignores history, of course, and parces quite selectively the situation in Iraq in ways that are utterly untrue. (more…)

By Julian Krasta

Now that the Democrats have, at long last, selected their nominee, “We” need to remind ourselves of long-standing facts concerning those persons we elected to public office. More importantly, the presidential candidates need to hear from us.

The United States is hovering closer to the thin edge of the wedge, because too large a percentage of the men and women we voted to represent our best interests – and those who will yet finagle to win our votes – are preoccupied in grudge matches for supremacy within their club quarters.

(more…)

In the context of the 2006 stalemate, progress in Iraq post-surge has been a success beyond what even the most optimistic of supporters of the invasion could have expected. The indicators are all pointing in the right direction- violence incidents at a 4 year low, the Iraqi army taking control of Sadr City and Basra, oil production rising, an expansion in Iraqi army and munitions, the flow of refugees reversed and the operational abilities and manpower of al-Qaeda severely damaged.

(more…)

~by Jillian Becker

I am a convinced law-and-order conservative, an eagerly practicing capitalist, an ideological libertarian. I accept enthusiastically the whole package of US Republican Party policy and sentiment - pro-America, pro-victory in Iraq, pro-gun, anti-abortion (with sensible reservations), pro-death penalty, pro-tax cuts, pro-smaller government, pro-spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world, pro-Israel, anti-welfare - all except one of its usual ingredients: belief in God. I do not accept God.

Quite simply, I cannot believe in God. I am old, past my three score years and ten, and decade upon decade I have read and listened, and there cannot be much that is old or new, famous, terse, verbose, smart, innocent, insidious, widely published or commonly uttered, learnedly debated or popularly discussed on the subject of God that I have not read or heard.

(more…)

First there was Rev. Wright with his “God Damn America” speech. Now we have a Catholic Priest, Father Pfleger, which is kind of a fun name to say out loud, mocking Clinton and white people in general.

The Georgetown Blog notes:

During his sermon, Father Pfleger mocked Hillary Clinton’s tears before the New Hampshire primary. He opines that she cried because she felt “entitled” because she is white “and there’s a black man stealing my show.” Father Pfleger apologized late Thursday for the remarks, saying his sermon was “inconsistent with Senator Obama’s life and message.”

Though after now two religious leaders at one very racist Church saying very anti-white things, you start to wonder if Obama’s message isn’t really more along the same lines, just better disguised. Indeed, Obama is a slick character, and who would honestly be surprised if his message wasn’t merely camouflaged beneath his hope & change rhetoric? (more…)

Neoconservatism has become a hot topic nowadays because of the its conflict with the fundamentals of Republican concepts and other polical philosophies. Unilateral use of force, the belief in preventive action to avoid threats, and the proactive dissemination of democracy are the three basis of neoconservatism. These beliefs create a rift with republican concepts which include abstinence from low tax cuts and indulgence to enormous government spending. Factors that will generally help citizens obtain heftier savings accounts and have financial transparency.

Interview: Douglas Murray

Neoconstant is delighted to welcome the leading British Neoconservative political commentator and author, Douglas Murray. In the year 2000, he became the youngest ever published biographer with his widely acclaimed ‘Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas’. However, it is probably his most recent book ‘Neoconservatism: Why We Need It’ that has seen his reputation and popularity soar. He’s also written articles for numerous newspapers and magazines across the globe including The Sunday Times and The New York Sun whilst his lectures, broadcasts and discussions have been featured on BBC radio and television, Sky and Fox, to name just a few. He is the director of the think-tank The Centre for Social Cohesion.

Mr. Murray, first of all thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to answer some of our questions. Your time and insight are very much appreciated. I’d like this interview to focus on what Neoconservatism really is, with the hope of sparking interest in our reader’s minds to research further and perhaps indeed, purchase your book.

Beaman - I personally had the great pleasure of reading your book on Neoconservatism; however for our readers who have not, would you please give a brief synopsis and your main reasons for writing the book?

Murray - Well it’s really my attempt to provide what I hope is a coherent and unified explanation of how I and other people broadly defined as ‘neoconservatives’ view the world. I give a history of neoconservatism’s origins and antecedents. Then an explanation of how this point of view moved from the academy into politics. This is really the ‘what neoconservatism is’ section.

Then in the second half of the book I try to demonstrate why the neoconservative impulse is vital at this moment in history, concluding with a kind of manifesto for British (and in the US edition American) neoconservatism. That’s the structure. But the drive of the book is really an attempt to put down a marker. Having observed the allegedly ‘anti-war’ left sink into what became in large part a pro-war, but pro-the-other-side-winning stance it seemed to me that a philosophical and practical explanation had to be attempted which identified not only the jihadist enemy, but also the disastrous relativistic bent of our time which has given that enemy some of its oxygen. Relativism has deeply damaged my own generation and greatly hindered our chances of defeating this or any future enemy.

The notion of being open to the idea that you or your society might be wrong seems to have transformed into the notion that we and our society could never be right or that anyone who assaults us must have a point. It seems to me that to deny the obvious supremacy of liberal-democratic values over the morals of, say, the Taliban, is a demonstration not of cultural generosity, but of nihilism. The book is an attempt to hit back at that, and an attempt to show that such nihilism is more than indulgent: it is suicidal.

Beaman - You mention in your book that a room full of Neoconservatives would be as likely to argue amongst each other as agree, except for a few basic but important points. What are these fundamental beliefs of “Neoconservatism”?

Murray - Broadly, neoconservatives would agree on the fact that liberal, democratic values constitute the most desirable end-point of human political striving - that accountability of the government to the people is not a luxury but something to be fought for. Much of this we would share with contemporary liberals. What differentiates the neocon from the modern-day liberal is the unanimously-held neoconservative belief that force can be used for the good, and that force should be used, where appropriate, to stand up for liberal-democratic values. Many conservatives agree with the occasional necessity of the use of force, but don’t agree with neoconservatives on using force to carry out regime-change or intervene in situations where a government is abusing its people. So neoconservatives stand at a curious place in the middle of the political debate – not to the far-sides of it as is often alleged, but rather in the middle, making common cause with lots of people for often differing reasons. The term ‘muscular-liberals’ has a slightly embarrassing and self-aggrandizing quality, but it might sum up the tendency best if we agree on using the term ‘liberal’ in the classical sense.

Beaman - Many people who claim to know what Neoconservatism is have never read the works of the German-born American political philosopher, Leo Strauss. How important is he to understanding what it means to be a Neoconservative?

Murray - Both important and not terribly important. To those of us who like to trace intellectual lineages, Strauss’ impact is fascinating. But I feel sorry for those who think that ‘Natural Right’ or ‘On Tyranny’ constitute some kind of invader’s handbook. Strauss’ writing is enormously esoteric and in my reading has very little in it which can be applied directly by those interested in governance. So on the one hand his impact is obscure. On the other, though, Strauss laid out a quite extraordinarily detailed refutation of twentieth-century relativism and his works stand like monoliths against the worst elements of contemporary philosophy. That was Strauss’ area. Strauss was a philosopher’s philosopher, not some wild Machiavellian (in the vulgar derogatory sense) interested in world domination. As I have often said, his political vision, if he had one, was simply to make the world safe. It is the ultimate expression of his Athenian pre-occupation. If people are interested in his impact then they would be best to go to his disciple (for once the term is apposite) Allen Bloom. Bloom extended the Straussian critique and made it applicable to the academy and indeed – through his teaching and writing – to Washington.

All this is fascinating to me, and I believe helps to explain how one strand of neoconservative thought found intellectual weight. But the reason I say that Strauss is also not terribly important is simply that most people who I would describe as neocon-ish have never read him and didn’t need to in order to arrive at their position. Most neocons arrive at their outlook through a process of being, as Irving Kristol famously put it, ‘mugged by reality’. This is how they will continue to emerge. Neocons will exist as long as people experience Damascene moments when they realize that liberalism as such is not enough, and that liberalism sometimes has to fight to defend itself if it is to be more than a mono-generational phenomenon. I can’t imagine today that many people will come to this point of view because they read Strauss first. For my part, I went to Strauss to find antecedents for views I already intimated.

Beaman - Shadia Drury, the prominent Canadian critic of Leo Strauss, labeled the Straussian ideology as a ‘cult’ and one that needs to be exposed to the world. What are your views on her work and why do those averse to Neoconservatism constantly bring up the ‘noble lie’?

Murray - She is a ludicrous figure, hardly worth the attention. If she didn’t have a chair at a university she would be a Brian Haw-style figure, squatting on some street-corner, wearing sandwich-boards covered with conspiracy theories, selling pencils from a cup. Her fleeting popularity is merely a reminder of the desire of a sadly perennial fringe to identify cliques and cults which run world-affairs from some secret control-room. For Drury it is Straussians who do this. Others follow the Bilderberger angle. Some pursue the lizards line. What they all have in common is an inability to distinguish fact from fantasy. It’s a first attempt by inadequates to imagine how the world works – with sinister and secretive sub-groups fitting in nicely to a world-view so ludicrous that it cannot be disproved to the satisfaction of the holder. As Swift once said, it is useless to attempt to reason someone out of an attitude which they were never reasoned into.

Beaman - I’m sure many readers, including myself, would like to know more about your personal political development. Are you a former “Liberal” ‘mugged by reality’ or have you always been seated in the Conservative camp?

Murray - Well it’s not easy to say. I find it much easier to analyze other peoples’ journeys than I do my own. I’ve never been a party-political man if that’s a key. I’m not tribal as it were. I’d say that I’m both a liberal and a conservative. I’d certainly identify as being on the liberal side of the spectrum in the American culture-wars (ie. pro-abortion, pro-gay-rights etc). But I’m also conservative in small ‘c’ ways. I’m in favour of a very small state, am a low-tax type etc. I suppose the key is that I want government to do very few things, and what I want it to do least is to believe that it can make many choices for me better than I could have made them for myself. However, those things that only the state can do (police, raise armies etc) I think it should be good at.

I think I was on the left for a while, and said it, as well as felt it. But it wasn’t a long-standing menage. I was very much in favour of the intervention in Kosovo whilst I was at university, and remember arguing its merits furiously to slightly bemused friends. I’m almost certain that I had a period before leaving university (and mercifully without going into print on the matter) in which I thought that the International Court and so on could answer most of our problems.

I suppose I do feel like I have been ‘mugged’. And I can identify a number of such muggings – mostly obvious. The first one was the realization that a genocide could go on in mainland Europe in the 1990s and that the world would do nothing to stop it. It was deeply shocking growing up in that period and realizing how hollow ‘never-again’ rang from then on. The inability of European countries to get to grips with the problem and the eventual saving-grace of American hard-power certainly made a great impression on me.

After that the main mugging I experienced was not so much the 9/11 attacks themselves, but the reactions of so-called liberals to those attacks – the desire to reach for justifications which were never asked for and provide excuses which were never requested. That was the period when – like a lot of the people who are now my comrades – I found myself falling out with my ‘liberal’ friends and allies. (Something I don’t mind, by the way. I’d rather not associate with apologists for clerical fascism.)

But perhaps more shocking to me, and genuinely and personally affecting were the twin-murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh (in 2002 and 2004 respectively) and the gradual surrender as I see it of a Dutch tolerance which I have much admired and which I think that country will lose. It is from Holland more than any other country that I learnt the sad truth that history can go backwards. Progress does not necessarily possess a pull like gravity.

Beaman - You were born in 1979. Critics could be forgiven for wondering whether your relatively young years might be an indication of youthful political idealism without the weathered experience of reality that older commentators could claim to hold. Could this be true? Have you found that your age has been held against you?

Murray - Yes it has been. But what can I do about it? I’m sure if I were 80 people would find a reason to criticize me as well.

For what it’s worth, far more than the allegation of youthful idealism I am told that I am world-weary, cynical and rather more burnt than 28-year olds are meant to be. I’m certainly fairly pessimistic about certain innate characteristics of human nature which I believe have to be contained. So no, I don’t think I’ve got much of a rose-tint on my spectacles. Of course I think I’m a realist, but then everybody does. And of course on some things I am idealistic. But then what am I idealistic about?

The right of all people – irrespective of race, religion, origin, creed or sex – to have possession of, and a say in the determination of, their own lives? The fact that I hold human-rights and liberal-rights to be universal?  The fact that in a battle between a dark-ages religious barbarism and every attainment of the modern state I don’t mind saying which side I’d like to win? If these things make me an idealist then I’m not sorry to be one.

Beaman - Like yourself, I have been asked about my heritage and religion when it comes to my support of Israel and certain American foreign policy. Plus there have been the slurs about ‘Jewish cabals’ at the heart of the so-called Neocon agenda. Do you think a lot of the hostility to Neoconservatism is connected to anti-Semitism?

Murray - A part of it certainly is. There are some prejudices that seem so able to transmogrify that it makes you fear that they might be perennial. If you’d told me ten years ago that we’d again hear some of the sub-Der Sturmer stuff we’ve heard played in a just slightly different key with a new twist of emphasis these last few years I don’t think I’d have believed you. But there it all is.

Mearshimer-Walt, the New Statesman covers, Independent-newspaper cartoons daily opinion-filth from the Guardian et al. And before you know it, there we are again with perfectly open explanations – in its 60th birthday year – for why the Jewish state won’t long be with us. It’s sickening, but we should call people out on it every time. Relentlessly. And pardon me if I question peoples motives by noticing that of all the injustices in the world somebody decides to single out only those actions which they believe are attributable to the one Jewish state. I know what such double-standards demonstrate. It is not equality: it is prejudice and racism.

Personally I am perfectly pleased when somebody asks if I am Jewish. Not just because I don’t think that it is an insult, but because I know how much more people give away than they mean to when they ask me the question. Many of them just can’t quite believe that anyone who isn’t Jewish would support the state of Israel’s right to exist. That’s their sickness not mine, but it’s interesting who gets more flack for their stance. What it must be like being one of these ‘critics’ of Israel, eternally filling up the acres of newspaper comments-pages with the self-pitying ‘critics of Israel are being silenced’ stuff. Do they have any idea how ridiculous they look? Or how definitively they contradict themselves every time they take to the airwaves or do a book-tour saying that nobody will listen to them. It takes a heart of stone not to laugh.

Beaman - In a recent interview with historian Michael Burleigh, he said “Terrorism as a tactic is, bound to fail.” Do you agree?

Murray - No I don’t. Terrorism is bound to fail when those being subjected to the terrorism are resolute and determined. Terrorism is bound to fail when the terrorists are identified, singled out, isolated and told in no uncertain terms that if they are determined to wage war on us then we will wage it back on them – and they will be the ones who lose. But I don’t think that is happening at the moment. As Jean-Francois Revel, among others, said, liberal democracies are the first societies in human history which, when attacked, ask what they did wrong.

In Britain we have a Home Secretary who has asked us to refer to Islamist terrorism as ‘anti-Islamic’ activity. And across the Western world our leaders, political and spiritual often seem to have spent the last seven years denying the root of the problem more busily than they have been tackling it.

It took one set of bombs to change the government of Spain. When the next big attack happens here in Britain, will the British people turn on their enemies and say: that stops right now, we don’t care for any ifs or buts, that won’t happen here. Will they say that even if, as I do not think is the case, this is all caused by our foreign policy, we will not allow terrorists to dictate our foreign policy?  Or will they decide it was all our fault, that we must have ‘provoked’ them, that it would never have happened if we forced Israel to cede the West Bank or Spain to give its bottom-half away or France to reverse the headscarf ban?  I’m not confident that I know which way we would go.  Terrorists fail when they try lacerating a society which is tough and resolute. But what about when they attack societies so riven with relativism that they’re willing to out-source their self-harm? That’s what worries me most. But it’s something we can sort out. It’s easier to cure ourselves than to get rid of the enemy. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do both.

Beaman - Finally, what does the future hold for neoconservatism in both America and Britain?

Murray - For left and right, neoconservatism has laid down the case which needs answering. Ideologically it has few competitors and there is no school that unifies people from such a wide range of the political spectrum. That said, we might have to avoid flaunting the term around for a while. There’s no doubt that the willful misrepresentations and misunderstanding of what neoconservatism is, as well as the desire to pin the strategic mistakes made in Iraq on the neocons have combined to blacken the term. But it doesn’t really matter what we call it. There’s never much point in arguing over nomenclature. What matters is that the case for democracy and universal rights as well as the refutation of the lies and misunderstandings of our enemies – at home and broad – continues. Most people who engage in this will not call themselves neoconservatives. Many of them will not realize that is what they are. That is fine. What matters is that the case is made – unashamedly, unapologetically and by as many people as possible.

Beaman - Douglas Murray, your expertise is much appreciated. Thank you.

Mr. Murray’s book can be purchased at Amazon.

Mr. Murray’s current commentary can be found at CentreRight.

Edward Beaman also writes at his blog, Beaman’s World.

By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com

I worked with a Shiite Muslim for seven years, probably one of the best customers I’ve ever had. I avidly follow true moderate Muslim commentators like Fareed Zakaria, [1] Kamal Nawash, [2] Fouad Ajami, [3] and Mansoor Ijaz. [4] I hold democratically-elected Muslim leaders like President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia with the highest regard. So I find it disturbing that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a “media darling” claiming “itself as an advocate for Muslims’ civil rights and the spokesman for American Muslims” when it is indeed a Saudi-funded, Islamist front for whitewashing terrorism [7]. CAIR is far from moderate.

Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that CAIR’s leaders have “intimate links with Hamas” and that “we know CAIR has ties to terrorism.” [5] [6] [7] [8] [10] Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called CAIR “unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect.” [6] [7] [9]

Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director and co-founder, [21] stated publicly, “I am in support of the Hamas movement,” [22] a group whose founding charter requires it to destroy Israel, i.e., to commit genocide. [23]

CAIR’s founder, Omar Ahmad, [24] stated publicly in California, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” [22] [25]

Randall Todd “Ismail” Royer, who served as CAIR’s communications specialist and civil rights coordinator, pled guilty to involvement with terrorist groups, to explosives and weapons charges, and to helping several people “gain entry to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.” [7] [11] [12] [13] [14] Royer is now serving 20 years in prison. [7] [11]

CAIR’s Texas chapter founder, Ghassan Elashi, was convicted in July 2004 for illegally transporting computers to Libya and Syria, officially designated as state sponsors of terrorism. [7] [15] He was again “convicted in April 2005 of knowingly doing business with Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader.” [7] [16] Finally, “he was charged in July 2004 with providing more than $12.4 million to Hamas.” [7] [17]

Bassem Khafagi, “CAIR’s onetime community relations director, pleaded guilty in September 2003 to lying on his visa application and passing bad checks for substantial amounts in early 2001, for which he was deported.” [7] [18]

Rabih Haddad, “a CAIR fundraiser, was arrested in December 2001 on terrorism-related charges and deported from the United States.” [7] [19] He was involved in “financing Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.” [7] [19]

A one-time member of CAIR’s advisory board, Siraj Wahhaj, was named in 1995 by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White “as one of the ‘unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators’ in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments.” [7] [20]

In one of CAIR’s most recent episodes, in which the group was named an unindicted co-conspirator during federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, “…Documents introduced into evidence indicate both HLF and CAIR were part of a Muslim Brotherhood committee in the U.S. created to help Hamas.” [26]

CAIR has used litigation in an attempt to silence those trying to expose its ties to terrorism. [7] But the group has found the court room to be a double-edged sword. CAIR settled its lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR (http://www.anti-cair-net.org/) [27]. CAIR-CAN dropped a similar suit against David B. Harris, Director of the International and Terrorist Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc. [28] As Daniel Pipes pointed out:

…[CAIR] ran into a litigation buzz-saw, and it seems to have cut and run. CAIR preferred the ignominy of walking away from the case [against Anti-CAIR] it initiated rather than open to public scrutiny its finances, its list of supporters, and the beliefs and intentions of its key leaders. [27]

Unfortunately, there are droves of people who either know nothing of CAIR or, on the other extreme, are eager to tolerate the group merely because the word “Islam” is included in its organization’s name. Are good citizens to sit back while this Islamist front-group runs roughshod over the U.S. Constitution?

I strongly encourage readers to write letters to the editor of their local newspapers whenever CAIR is mentioned, and remind citizens of the group’s scary agenda. Use the references provided here when you speak out.

Think globally, act locally. You may not get published at the Washington Post, but you may be able to expose CAIR on the local level.

Suggested Reading

• *Anti-CAIR* Defending America from the Council on American-Islamic Relations
• CAIR Exposed
• Getting to Know the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

References

[1] David Kemker, “PEACEMAKER HERO: DR. FAREED ZAKARIA,” The My Hero Project, Laguna Beach, CA, 6/18/2004, http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=Dr._Fareed_Zakaria.

[2] Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism, Washington, DC, info@freemuslims.org, http://freemuslims.org/.

[3] Fouad Ajami, “Iraq and the Arabs’ Future,” Foreign Affairs, Palm Coast, FL, January/February 2003, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030101faessay10218/fouad-ajami/iraq-and-the-arabs-future.html.

[4] Mansoor Ijaz, “Islamic truths,” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, February 18, 2006, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ijaz18feb18,0,6492979.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions.

[5] Ben Johnson, “Tides Foundation and Tides Center - Excerpted from 57 Varieties of Radical Causes,” DiscoverTheNetwork.org, September 2004, http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/articles/Tides%20Foundation%20and%20Tides%20Center1.htm.

[6] Mychal Massie, “We have right to know truth about CAIR,” WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., Grants Pass, OR, August 16, 2005, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45799.

[7] Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, “CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment,” Middle East Quarterly, PHILADELPHIA, PA, SPRING 2006, VOLUME XIII: NUMBER 2, http://www.meforum.org/article/916.

[8] FDCH Political Transcripts, Sept. 10, 2003.

[9] Evan McCormick, “A Bad Day for CAIR,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Los Angeles, California, September 24, 2003, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9981.

[10] Christopher Orlet, “The Nation’s Pulse - A Phony Fatwa,” The American Spectator, Salt Lake City, UT, 8/3/2005, http://tas.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8532.

[11] “RANDALL TODD ROYER AND IBRAHIM AHMED AL-HAMDI SENTENCED FOR PARTICIPATION IN VIRGINIA JIHAD NETWORK,” Press Release, U.S. Department of Justice, WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 9, 2004, http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/April/04_crm_225.htm.

[12] “Va.-based terror members plead guilty,” USA TODAY, Gannett Co., Inc., McLean, VA, 1/16/2004, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-01-16-terror-group_x.htm.

[13] “Guest CV - Ismail Royer,” Islam Online, Doha, Qatar, http://www.islamonline.net/livedialogue/english/Guestcv.asp?hGuestID=605R88.

[14] “Muslims win rights in MO, VA, NE, and NJ: Store owners apologize to Muslim customer,” Action Alerts, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington, DC, 7/17/2001, http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=89&theType=AA.

[15] “ELASHI BROTHERS CONVICTED,” Press Release, U.S. Department of Justice, DALLAS, TEXAS, JULY 8, 2004, http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn/PressRel04/elashi_conv.pdf.

[16] “Brothers Found Guilty of Funding Hamas,” FOXNews.com, FOX News Network, LLC, New York, NY, April 13, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2c2933%2c153402%2c00.html.

[17] “HOLY LAND FOUNDATION, LEADERS, ACCUSED OF PROVIDING MATERIAL SUPPORT TO HAMAS TERRORIST ORGANIZATION, Press Release, U.S. Department of Justice, JULY 27, 2004, http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn/PressRel04/HLF_ind_release_doj.pdf.

[18] “PLAINTIFFS’ MORE DEFINITE STATEMENT/ADDITIONAL ALLEGATIONS AS TO DEFENDANT COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS (CAIR) AND CAIR-CANADA,” UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, IN RE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, Civil Action No.: 03 MDL 1570 (RCC), September 30, 2005, http://www.anti-cair-net.org/OneillVsCAIR.pdf.

[19] “FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Treasury Department Statement Regarding the Designation of the Global Relief Foundation,” PO-3553, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC, October 18, 2002, http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/po3553.htm.

[20] Daniel Pipes, “CAIR: ‘Moderate’ friends of terror,” New York Post, New York, NY, April 22, 2002, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/394.

[21] “Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Board Member: A Short Biography,” Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington, DC, http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=Board&person=Nihad.

[22] John Perazzo, “Hamas and Hizzoner,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Los Angeles, California, March 5, 2003, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6473.

[23] “Hamas, Islamic Jihad: Palestinian Islamists,” Terrorism: Questions and Answers, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, NY, Updated: October 2005, http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/hamas.html.

[24] “Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Board Member: A Short Biography,” Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington, DC, http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=Board&person=Omar.

[25] Art Moore, “Should Muslim Quran be USA’s top authority? Paper stands by story citing ‘mainstream’ leader pushing for Islamic America,” WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., Grants Pass, OR, May 1, 2003, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32341.

[26] “HLF’s Financial Support of CAIR Garners New Scrutiny,” IPT News, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, October 12, 2007, http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/513.

[27] Daniel Pipes, “CAIR Backs Down from Anti-CAIR,” FrontPageMagazine.com, April 21, 2006, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3511.

[28] Andrew L. Jaffee, “A Bad Week for CAIR,” netwmd.com, LLC, April 25, 2006, http://netwmd.com/blog/2006/04/25/560.

General Legal Reference

“TEXT FROM LAWSUIT RESPONSE - VIRGINIA: IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR THE CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH,” COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS, INC.: Plaintiff, v. ANDREW WHITEHEAD: Defendant, Law No. CL04-926, http://anti-cair-net.org/Response.html.

“Trust but verify.” Those were the watchwords of President Ronald Reagan when he embarked upon the historic series of negotiations with the Soviet Union that would culminate with the START I Treaty designed to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Soviet Union. Today a tempest in a teapot has ensued over President Bush’s remarks before the Israeli Knesset comparing negotiations with hostile foreign dictators as tantamount to Neville Chamberlain’s alleged “appeasement” of Adolph Hitler at Munich in 1938. (more…)

Ron Paul has absolutely no chance in a million years of becoming the next President of the United States of America. None. I site, as my source for this wild claim, the fact that he has not won a single state primary. Add to this the fact that his popularity is more a media infatuation with a certain inexplicable fervor unique to his supporters, and you basically can see how Ron Paul has built his castle out of sand. The realities of politics in America will wash the campaign into the wide oceans of time and memory. (more…)

Yesterday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen joined former LBJ speechwriter Doris Kearns Goodwin for a discussion of the similarities between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy. For those less mindful of their history one could only sense that any such comparisons the two made favorably of Obama with Kennedy would redound to the former’s benefit. Such should not be the case.

During Kennedy’s run for president against Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president Richard Nixon in order for the young Massachusetts senator to prove his bona fides on foreign policy as a Cold Warrior he resorted to playing what might rightfully be called the first lie about WMDs in US history. That was, of course, the so-called “missile gap” between the United States and Soviet Union in which Kennedy accused the Eisenhower administration of allowing the United States to fall behind the Soviets. Kennedy knew this accusation was untrue but he also knew that Nixon, as an administration member, could not use the intelligence gathered by the CIA through U-2 overflights to prove that Kennedy was lying about this crucial issue.

Now yesterday Sorensen and Goodwin went to great lengths to talk about how Kennedy’s muscular and shrewd diplomacy paid dividends during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 in convincing Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba and allowing Khruschev to save face at the same time by having the U.S. remove obsolete US missiles from Turkey. All of that is true as far as it goes. What goes unsaid, of course, is that the existence of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the first place owes its existence to Kennedy’s reckless fecklessness in the abortive Bay of Pigs Operation against Castro a short time before wherein the young president inherited a flawed plan hatched by the CIA and Cuban exiles to topple Castro. Kennedy signed off on this mission but after it began got cold feet and refused to commit US airpower to support it and the mission failed. To this very day Democrats have not recovered from damage done to the party’s reputation over that incident with Cuban-Americans. And it was Kennedy’s poor performance in that episode that was to embolden Khruschev to begin shipping missiles to Cuba precipitating the latter crisis as the Soviet dictator, based on Kennedy’s past performance, was convinced he could get away with it.

Upon entering the White House, Jack Kennedy was trying to prove his mettle as a tough guy and it backfired on him and nearly resulted in the closest that the USSR and the U.S. ever came to war during that “thirteen days in October” 1962 when the world held its breath. In some of his more strident comments such as “if Pakistan can’t or won’t act in the Frontier Tribal Areas we will unilaterally if necessary” Barack Obama echoes some of the same reckless statements. The example of another young president should dampen the enthusiasm some of Sen. Obama’s supporters might feel for comparisons of their man with an earlier U.S. Senator trying to become president of the United States.

~read more from Bill Harrison.…

I’m not a smoker. I used to be, but I quit two years ago. Now I can’t stand smoking. I try it every once and a while, and I always feel worse for wear afterward. I don’t particularly like being around second-hand smoke either. I don’t like the smell of old smoke–it’s stale, and dirty, a sort of yellowish smell. Besides that, second hand smoke awakens the old addict in me. Makes me want to light up, inhale….

So you might think that I’d be all for the ban on smoking in Flagstaff bars. After all, where better to encounter second hand smoke than a bar? What could be more of an inhibition killer than a smoky bar and a few drinks? When I did smoke, I always did so the most when I was out drinking, and I think this is the case for most smokers. Nothing tops off a cold beer or a shot of whiskey better than a cigarette. Nothing.

Now when I go to the bars, it’s nice. There’s no smoke. No temptation (or very little) exists to bum a smoke off a friend, especially when it’s cold and smoking requires you to walk out of the nice, warm bar and into the frigid outdoors, to smoke huddled in a group on the side of a snowy street. I like that. I like the fact that I’m not faced with much of an option. I like that the bar doesn’t smell like smoke. There’s a lot of things I like about smoke-free bars in Flagstaff.

But I still think it’s wrong. I think the City of Flagstaff has done a grave injustice by banning smoking in our bars. You may say, well plenty of cities, large and small, have banned smoking. It’s the natural course of events across the country and even the world! I say, so much for the rest of the world. This is America, and in America our businesses have rights that they aren’t afforded elsewhere, at least in theory. Our business owners should have the right to chose whether or not smoking is allowed in their bars. Where children aren’t present, and only consenting adults, there is no valid reason why smoking shouldn’t be perfectly acceptable. It’s legal to smoke, after all.

The Critic

Ah, the critic will say, but second-hand smoke causes cancer! Well, quite simply put, that’s a bogus statement. The original EPA study was thrown out by a Federal court. It was a weak study with a pre-conceived agenda that even in its furthest reaches could not prove that second hand smoke leads to cancer.

Beyond this, the smoking ban is bad for business, both here in Flagstaff and abroad. It’s even worse in towns back East and in larger populations where some nearby cities don’t ban smoking and thus draw in a great deal of extra bar-goers who prefer, reasonably, to smoke while they drink. This is not as great an issue in Flagstaff, however the principle of the matter remains: banning smoking is a violation of our rights as citizens, and is an example of Big Government stepping in where they have no business interfering.

The argument that workers suffer undue health risks is a poor one for two reasons:

The Reasons

Firstly, those workers have a choice as to where they work. I never wanted to work at a bar because I didn’t want to work that late at night. So I didn’t work at a bar. Another person may not want to work at a bar because of second-hand smoke–so they can work somewhere else. Many people prefer not to mine coal because it’s cramped, dangerous, grueling work. So they choose not to. Should the government ban all coal-mining because it’s dangerous? No! And second-hand smoke has never been proven to be anywhere near to as dangerous as coal-mining.

Secondly, the health risk workers actually face working at a bar is minimal at best. Studies have shown that people who live around second-hand smoke consume at most a total equivalent of six cigarettes a year. You get more carcinogens just living in a big city and breathing smog-crusted air on a daily basis.

The notion t