Note: A slightly different version of this appeared as the weekend op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record.

Well, 2009 sure went out with a bang.

On November 5, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, suffering from the hitherto-unknown “pre-traumatic stress syndrome,” shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and gunned down 13 fellow soldiers in Ft. Hood, Texas, including one pregnant woman.

President Obama urged Americans not to “jump to conclusions.”

On Christmas Day Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, driven mad by poverty, oppression, and having to live in a $4 million hovel in London, attempted to explode a bomb in his undershorts on a flight to Detroit.

Abdulmutallab was taken into custody, advised of his right to remain silent and provided with a lawyer, Miriam Siefer, who has some experience representing terrorists.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano crowed, “The system worked.”

President Obama, referring to “the incident,” called Abdulmutallab “the suspect” who “allegedly tried to detonate an explosive device,” and an “isolated extremist.”

Obama and Napolitano subsequently issued revised statements after polls allegedly showed an alarming number of Americans jumped to the conclusion they’re airheads.

Sorry. About the only pleasure I get in these terrible times is making fun of the sheer airheadedness that passes for public dialog on the subject of “man-caused disasters,” in Napolitano’s preferred phrase.

Listen, I understand a winning candidate has to pay off supporters with jobs. But does he have to put them in positions they are obviously incompetent for and expect them to actually work? In the Diplomatic Corps, ambassadors to cushy posts in Paris or London are figureheads, provided with an “assistant” who does the real work.

As much as Republicans would like to think otherwise, the nonsense didn’t start with this administration. After 9/11 George Bush created the absurd phrase “war on terror.”

Author Dan Simmons brilliantly asked, “What if after Dec. 7, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt had gone before congress and asked for a declaration of war – on Aviation?”

Terror is a tactic, not an enemy.

We are told by treating terrorists as criminal defendants we’re “upholding the rule of law.”

Since 1929 there has been a body of international law called “The Geneva Convention” which defines Abdulmutallab and his kind as “unprivileged combatants,” and says it’s just fine to try them by military commission and summarily execute them.

Some express alarm about a “backlash” against Muslims in America.

Since 2001 there have been (depending on definitions) as many as 60 foiled terrorist plots and successful terrorist incidents, resulting in more than 3,300 dead Americans. All perpetrated by individuals within a pretty specific demographic.

In the first five years following 9/11, Anya Cordell, founder of the Campaign for Collateral Compassion, counted eight “backlash” murders of Middle-Eastern men. To get that figure she had to count a convenience store owner working late at night, two unsolved murders, one involving a business dispute, and one who was dating his killer’s ex-girlfriend.

Hasan all by himself did worse than that in just one “incident” than 300 million Americans.
This doesn’t strike me as much of a backlash, but I sympathize. I was profiled once.

About six years ago as I got on a flight from Richmond, Virginia, to Lithuania, I was asked to step out of line, surrender my shoes (not standard practice then,) and was patted down.
The official very courteously apologized for the inconvenience.

I said, “Hey that’s OK. I’m the one getting on the plane.”

I wondered why I was singled out. Until it occurred to me a black-haired man, who tans pretty swarthy and has a nose some have been unkind enough to call large (and when Arabs tell you you have a big nose, you have to face it, you have a big nose,) whose name identifies an ethnic group which has produced its fair share of terrorists, and a bunch of Arabic stamps in his passport, might fairly arouse some suspicion.

Later a colleague asked, “Yeah, but how’d you like to get profiled all the time?”

“A heck of a lot better than I’d like being blown out of the sky,” I replied.

panty bomber · terrorism

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others are going to be tried in New York for the murders on 9/11.

You don’t need me to list all of the responses, they’re all over the place.

On the pro side, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was “fitting” they should face justice near where the victims were murdered.

Ordinarily I’d say yes. This isn’t an ordinary case.

Andrew McCarthy, is the former federal US prosecutor who led the case against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings. He is also the author of ‘Willful Blindness: a Memoir of the Jihad,’ which looks very good sitting on that stack of books by my bed that doesn’t seem to grow any less tall as time goes by.

(I will read it in time. Right now it’s just that I know damn well too many people are suicidally denying the reality that our civilization is at war with an implacable enemy. The book will be handy in filling in the details, but I don’t need convincing of what I can see with my own eyes.)

McCarthy said, “It’s a massively stupid decision when we’re at war with them. We have to give them all kinds of information about our methods of intelligence that can only make them more efficient at killing us.”

Worse, it’s been pointed out that in a civilian court they’ll have the protection of the Miranda decision. Which could very well mean that all confessions (boasts actually) will be thrown out – and all evidence collected later from leads provided by the waterboarded Mastermind of 9/11.

It’s a legal doctrine that goes under the poetic name of “the fruit of the poisoned tree.” Unless you can establish with a pretty high degree of certainty that the evidence would have emerged in the course of the investigation anyway, all downstream evidence collected after the first lead was illegally obtained, must be excluded.

It may not matter however. These guys are probably dying to boast of their deeds. In open court. With cameras. Broadcast to the whole world. Making them even bigger heroes back home, and perhaps martyrs.

What I haven’t seen in the media so far is this: anybody consider that juries can be intimidated?

If I were a juror, I’d like to think I’d have the huevos to defy any threats on my life.

It doesn’t work that way if the threat is to my family.

We’re about to find out what the Irish Republic has known for a long time. Trying terrorists in open court is dangerous.

Justice systems in the Western world were designed to deal with criminals, not soldiers and terrorists. The Irish tried IRA terrorists in camera. And they don’t release the names of the jurors.

But of course no trial lawyer would be sleazy enough to make sure the names of the jurors were publicly available. Heavens to Betsy surely not!

Hey, do you suppose Sheik Rahman’s lawyer Lynne Stewart is still disbarred? Perhaps she could be a consultant.

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After the Ft. Hood attack, President Barack Obama voiced the concerns of the mustn’t-tar-all-Muslims-with-the-terrorist-brush-and-we-need-to-reach-out-to-moderate-Muslims, etc, etc, crowd.

“I think it is very important for us to recognize that we have a battle or a war against some terrorist organizations, but that those organizations aren’t representative of a broader Arab community, Muslim community.

“I believe we can win over moderate Muslims to recognize that that kind of destruction and nihilism ultimately leads to a dead end.” –President Barack Obama

I agree.

I am going to point out again that I have lived in Saudi Arabia and in general liked the people. I’ve have quite a few Muslim friends, among whom I have the reputation of being a pretty well-informed amateur Arabist.

And furthermore, in those infrequent moments I wonder about my soul, the spiritual tradition that I find most interesting is Sufism.

(By the way, it’s illegal to call yourself a Sufi in Saudi Arabia. Islamic jihadists hate it with the passion otherwise reserved for Jews. And I should add that most of my knowledge of Sufism comes from the writings of author Idris Shah, and I have no idea if he’s a typical Sufi.)

So here is my question Mr. President, and all those who remind us after every jihadist attack that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists:

If that Muslim “silent majority” would rather not be involved in a war with the West, why do you imagine they are overwhelmingly silent on the issue, with the exception of a few incredible courageous ones such as Wafa Sultan and Irshad Manji?

(That is, when they’re not dancing in the streets for joy at the news the Great Satan has been attacked again.)

Could it be that they’re terrified to speak out? Terrified if they do, they and their families will be killed?

(Which could also be a charitable explanation for why they dance in the streets too. Or maybe they just hate our guts.)

Now here’s the Final Jeopardy question: if that is in fact the case, what do you imagine is going to bring the moderate majority over to our side? Conciliation, denial of the threat, offers to meet the jihadist half-way?

Or: implacable hatred, refusal to negotiate on any other basis than “F*** with us and you’re dead,” and resolute will to hunt our enemy down, kill them, and expell all their sympathizers from our countries?

If you were a moderate Muslim who just wanted to live a normal life, what would you think was more dangerous to you and your family; siding against the jihadists, or siding against the reasonable, conciliatory, president of the United States who believes all enmities can be talked out?

Now here, consider Jonah Goldberg’s take on those who deny the reality of jihadist war against the West. I have enormous respect for Jonah Goldberg’s opinions, and cannot repeat too many times that you need to read, “Liberal Fascism.”

“I am more sympathetic toward this reluctance to state the truth of the matter than are some of my colleagues on the right. There is a powerful case to be made that Islamic extremism is not some fringe phenomenon but part of the mainstream of Islamic life around the world. And yet, to work from that assumption might make the assumption all the more self-fulfilling. If we act as if “Islam is the problem,” as some say, we will guarantee that Islam will become the problem. But outright denial, like we are seeing today, is surely not the beginning of wisdom either.”–Jonah Goldberg

Jonah, this is a very reasonable concern, but I wonder if anyone has considered the other end of this.

Is it possible that what most maddens the Islamists is the militant refusal to take them seriously?

When they say, “We are at war with you,” and the left commentariat responds by ignoring, or figuratively patting them on the head and saying, “Oh you don’t really mean that,” can you imagine how insulting and patronizing that is?

Few things are more insulting than discounting and militantly refusing to take you and your opinions seriously.

When they tell us how much they hate us and want to destroy us, a genuine respect for their dignity and ours (and I am not being facetious) requires us to take them seriously – i.e. treat them as adults and enemies, not children throwing a tantrum.

And which attitude is most likely to open the possibility of negotiation? Respect enough to take them seriously, or condescention and patronizing?

Third question, for the moral equivalence, Christianity-has-its-fanatics-too crowd.

Among liberals it is an article of faith, that people of faith in America suffer from neuroses and mental illness due to sexual repression.

Though that’s been overstated, I’ve met enough Catholics (largely Irish I hate to say) and fundamentalist Protestants who show it’s not a totally invalid stereotype.

(I’ve also met lots of Catholics from the admirable scholastic tradition and many warm and joyful rural Protestants who aren’t the least hung-up.)

So how come this analysis is never applied to fundamentalist Wahabists?

You want to talk sexual repression? These guys are raised never even seeing an unveiled woman who is not their mother or sister.

And, if their mother or sister refuses to keep her place, as chattel only a little above domestic animals, they are obligated by strong social pressure to murder her.*

It’s called “honor killing.”

So how come it has never occured to the liberal crowd that fundamentalist Islam has created a society that drives a critical number of its young men murderiously insane from sexual frustration?

Just asking.

*This is not a long-standing tradition throughout the Arab world though. My friend Ali Alyami, Executive Director, The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, once told me when he was growing up in the Ismaili region of the Kingdom, boys and girls used to associate together. He said there were dances, women went unveiled (as Bedouin women do today) and if a young bride had a baby six or seven months after marriage, nobody got bent out of shape.

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I just had a look at the names and pictures of the 13 victims of Major Hasan’s attack of Sudden Jihad Syndrome, which brought back a memory from my childhood.

In Newport, Rhode Island, tucked away on a side street just off the old town square is the Newport Artillery Company museum/HQ.

By an odd bureaucratic fluke, the company was never officially deactivated after the Revolution and so can technically claim to be the oldest unit of the U.S. Army. A charming fiction of course, but it’s a really fine museum. The members still have colonial-style uniforms and I believe a canon.

Among the exhibits was a propaganda poster from WWII, and I mean good propaganda. The graphic, if memory serves, was a soldier standing (I think, it’s been a very long time) in a graveyard. Along one side of the poster is a roster of obviously ethnic names: Polish, Irish, German, Italian, whatever.

Blazoned across the top were the words, “Americans All!”

The role of the dead at Ft. Hood:

Maj. Juanita Cole, 55 (Was her maiden name Hispanic or did her folks just like “Juanita?” That happens in this country.)

Maj. Libardo Caraveo, 52

Capt Russell Seager, 51

Capt. John P. Gaffaney, 54

Staff Sgt. Justin DeCrow, 32

Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29 (During WWI anyone named “Krueger” would have come in for a lot of suspicion and harassment. She joined the Army after 9/11 and vowed to get Osama bin Ladin. Sometimes, in degenerate ages it takes a woman to do a man’s job.)

Spc. Frederick Greene, 29

Pfc. Michael Pearson, 22

Pfc. Aaron Nemelka, 19 (Jewish? Slavic? I wonder how much “harassment” he got as a kid for his name?)

Pfc. Kham Xiong, 23 (Is that Cambodian? Did his parents flee the Killing Fields? Is it Chinese, perhaps from one of the ethnic minorities of China? We owe it to him to get it right.)

(UPDATE: He was Hmong, a tribal group in Vietnam with a strong warrior tradition who sided with the U.S. during the war.)

Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21 (Hasan got a twofer with her – she was pregnant.)

Spc. Jason Hunt, 22 (A fellow-Okie. He must have gotten some ribbing down at Ft. Hood during the annual OU-Texas football games.)

Michael G. Cahill, 62 (John Q. Civilian – except the enemy has made plain enough there ain’t no civilians in this war.)

Americans all. Gunned down by a man whose family was taken in by this country. Who was given a costly education in return for service in the military – in the higher ranks with honors and dignity. Not as an enlisted man, officer’s houseboy or hash slinger in the mess.

This is three straight posts on one subject, and I’m sorry I’ll quit now. Right after this.

I want him dead. I want him executed, hanged with a hemp rope. I want his mouth stuffed with pig’s flesh, his body wrapped in the skin, and I want him buried in a pig yard.

And if anyone objects, I want us to rise up as a nation and say, “GOT A PROBLEM WITH THIS? COME AND GET YOU SOME.”

Jihadism

Well lo and behold, it seems Major Hassan had links to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. He evidently attended the same jihadist-friendly mosque at the same time. Coincidence of course.

More worth reading on the Fort Hood massacre from Bruce Bawer.

Living in Norway, I get CNN International, which is different from CNN in the U.S., though when major stories are breaking in the U.S. the international network often switches to the U.S. feed for hours at a time. CNN International’s sponsors are disproportionately Middle Eastern airlines, tourism authorities, and such; so it was that in between ads for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, for Abu Dhabi tourism, for some art show in Abu Dhabi, and for the Dubai World Championship, not to mention cozy promos for an apparently soft-feature series called Inside the Middle East (presented “in association with Qatar Foundation”), CNN reporters kept hammering home the line that Hasan had been the victim of anti-Muslim prejudice by his military colleagues. Repeatedly they read out, and showed onscreen, a long statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemning the massacre — never mentioning, of course, CAIR’s well-established terrorist links.

Here in Norway CNN International was my only real TV option. Our cable system doesn’t offer Fox News, though it does offer Al-Jazeera, BBC News, and Sky News, all of which offered only spotty, repetitious coverage of the massacre. It was a deeply frustrating experience. In the hours after Michael Jackson’s death CNN International had stayed with the U.S. feed continuously, focusing on nothing other than Jacko’s life and death. This time around, however, the network kept cutting away from the U.S. feed and from the massacre in order to give us international news, including endlessly repeated sports reports and other trivial material. They seemed determined not to treat this as a truly major story.

Bruce Bawer is a gay American who has been living in Europe (Norway and the Netherlands) for several years now. He is the author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.

I mention he’s gay because it’s relevant, and I’ve been meaning to do a post on gay intellectuals like Bawer and the incomparable Lee Harris, author of Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next State of History, and The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West.

Get them, for God’s sake you can order used copies of Harris’ books for a nickel. Few things will prepare you as much to navigate your way through the Long War.

The reason gay is relevant in their cases is that they are intellectuals, in the finest sense of the word, who realize they have the most to lose from the craven capitulation of the West to the jihadists.

More from Bawer.

Then, after Cooper was over, we got a “special edition” of Larry King Live hosted by Wolf Blitzer. This one really took the cake. By way of “illuminating” Hasan’s actions, Blitzer interviewed a panel of — no, not experts on Islamic jihad, but psychiatrists. Blitzer endlessly repeated the mantra that Hasan had been “taunted” for being Muslim, had feared going to a war zone, and had ultimately gone “berserk,” and the docs echoed this line. “He did not reach for help when he should have,” lamented one panelist. Another opined: “It sounded like it got to be too much for him.” Yet another told us: “All kind of people need help who aren’t getting help. … He was feeling picked on by his colleagues. … He was strained. He was scared.”

This is not idiocy, this is what the Uniform Code of Military Justice calls “pussilanimous conduct in the face of the enemy” – at best. What CNN is doing is selling out their country and their civilization for ratings and advertising revenue.

Remember that after the invasion of Iraq CNN admitted they knew of many of Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity, but chose not to report on them for fear of… having their Baghdad bureau closed down.

Let’s ponder that for a moment. CNN made themselves accessories during the fact at best, accomplices at worst, in torture and murder. And not because they feared for their lives, feared torture, feared for their families – but because they didn’t want their office closed down.

Also see Victor Davis Hanson.

Herein he cites a press release about Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Neapolitano.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas. Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday’s rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s official. The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

And check out Phyllis Chesler.

Quickly, reflexively, without waiting for more of the facts to emerge, the mainstream print media (I am talking about the Paper of Record) has already decided that Major Hasan is a tormented “innocent” who must have snapped under alleged conditions of extreme provocation and humiliation. Indeed, today, the headline in the New York Times about this story is: “Little Evidence of Terror Plot in Base Killings” with a sub-heading of “Investigators Say Major at Fort Hood Faced Many Pressures.”

However, there is no sub-head. If there was, it’s been taken down.

But do check that one out. It’s a concoction of dubious speculations, and pretty much everything asserted as fact has been contradicted by actual evidence.

It is becoming increasingly evident that a lot of people have a lot to answer for for this.

Hassan of course, and any possible accomplice. There are reports of a meeting with someone described as Middle Eastern, and of Hassan asking friends to use their computers to email from a number of accounts.

As I’ve said, it is very important that Hassan face the death penalty.

It is becoming equally important that certain officers face courts martial for dereliction of duty and cashiered in disgrace. Yes they were afraid of being stignatized as “anti-Muslim” if they reported Hassan’s ravings.

So what? Commissioned officers aren’t supposed to be cowards. That’s not what we pay them for.

And, we have to revive the concept of treason and be unafraid to call it what it is.

Of course it ain’t going to happen. Not yet.

Jihad · Jihadism

Note: This is my weekend op-ed for the newspaper.

There’s some good news and some bad news about the arrest of Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi last week for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks on New York public transportation.

The good news is, the FBI and local police really seem to be on top of things. They’ve evidently had red flags up on this guy for some time now, and know something about accomplices in Al-Qaeda cells operating in America. And it’s a safe bet they know more than they’re telling the press, which I find professionally frustrating but personally reassuring.

The bad news is, Zazi was evidently arrested because law enforcement believed he’d started making a powerful explosive by a process so simple, using chemicals so easily available that I’m not going to give it’s formal name. I’ll just refer to it by its nickname among Islamic terrorists, “Mother of Satan.”

Its chemical name alone gives half the formula for making the stuff. It took me five seconds to find a video detailing the process on the Internet. But I’m going to be responsible and not tell you how to find it. That’ll keep you busy for… easily five minutes.

As an aside, a few years back when we were living on the Oklahoma University campus, a student blew himself up near the football stadium on game day with Mother of Satan. There’s no evidence he was a terrorist. He was evidently just fooling with the devilish stuff, which explodes at a harsh look.

That’s the terrifying thing about terrorism these days. A modern industrial society puts the means of making powerful weapons into everyone’s hands. And technology is only going to make it worse as time goes on.

Timothy McVeigh made the Oklahoma City bomb out of fertilizer and diesel oil. The good news is, if you try to buy a whole bunch of fertilizer these days and you’re not a farmer, some folks are going to have some searching questions for you.

Not too long ago I’d have considered that a dangerous expansion of government powers of surveillance. Now I’m just fine with it.

But then there’s good news, of a sort. Islamic jihadists seem fixated on suicide missions to the point they don’t even consider long-term campaigns of widespread destruction in our country through missions which allow for the survival and escape of the jihadists.

The bad news is, I took some time off to think about it and came up with a comprehensive, detailed plan which terrified me.*

But there’s some other good news.

What they are doing is not exactly war, in the sense we understand it. Islamic jihadists trumpet their desire to first drive the “crusaders” out of the Lands of Islam (dar Al-Islam) and re-establish the ancient Caliphate under Sharia law; then to conquer the Lands of War (dar Al-harb, i.e. all countries that aren’t Islamic.)
This is of course a fantasy, albeit a dangerous one. Both for them and us.

What they appear to be doing with terrorist actions is something like the plains Indian custom of counting coup. Among the horse-riding plains tribes, the highest honor a warrior could win was to do something daring against an enemy, such as riding up to one and striking him with a coup stick in battle, or sneaking into their camp and stealing his horses.

Likewise, a jihadist terrorist is going “nya-nya” to the richer, more powerful Great Satan with terrorist acts that serve no real military purpose. Their purpose is exactly what the name implies, to terrorize. They prove to themselves they are our superiors by making us afraid.

The good news is, to get greater glory jihadists have to top the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. And that’s really hard to top because for one, we’re warned and ready now. And second, actions the size of Sept. 11 requires a large group. Larger conspiracies are easier to catch. Especially when maybe not everyone in the group is equally enthusiastic about martyrdom. (There is some evidence that not all the 19 hijackers on 9/11 realized it was a one-way trip until they were in the air.)

The bad news is, after 9/11 the ultimate coup is a terrorist strike using no-name nukes.

*See, ‘If I were a terrorist, part 2′ http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2007/01/if-i-were-terrorist-part-2.html

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Yale University Press is publishing a book by Jytte Klausen, entitled The Cartoons that Shook the World.

Among other things, the book is of course about the cartoons of Mohammed published in the Danish newspaper Jylland- Posten in September, 2005, and the aftermath.

However, something interesting (the absurd is always interesting, don’t you think?) is going on here. The book will omit the cartoons that are one of the most importants subjects of the book!

Yale University Press Director John Donatich said a committee of experts’ “overwhelming and unanimous recommendation” was to withdraw all images of Muhammad.

Of course they gave a reason. And of course it was longish and left out the single word that would have summed it all up – cowardice.

Long-time readers know I try to avoid using vulgarity, satire, and personal insult too often. Not so much from delicate sensibility, but because overuse diminishes effectiveness.

Nor do I usually care to belittle any man’s religion. However absurd I may think another’s opinions on the Great Perhaps may be, if it gets you through this vale of tears with any amount of courage and grace, more power to you.

So here’s my thoughts on the matter: Fuck you Yale University Press. You Ivy League assholes used to produce scholars, leaders, and heroes.

How are the mighty fallen!

And you Yale University Press Director John Donatich and your committee of “experts,” fuck you you gutless cowards.

Now here’s my challenge:

Fellow bloggers – plaster these pictures on your blogs. Pick your favorite and feature it prominently.

Shame the cowards, and defy those who would tell free-born Americans what they can and can’t say or print.

Show them we are worthy descendants of the brawling, lusty, vulgar men who conquered this continent and built a mighty nation!

“Where there are no men – be thou a man.”
– Rabbi Hillel

“Freedom is not negotiable.”
– Andy Garcia

UPDATE: Here http://townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/08/20/yale_economics_101_crush_cartoons,_get_sharia-backed_gold

Columnist Diana West offers an additional explanation for the YUP decision – greed.
In “Yale Economics 101: Crush Cartoons, get Sharia-Backed Gold,” West details why she thinks Yale is whoring after sources of Saudi money that has already benefitted Harvard and Georgetown Universities. The same sources have also openly supported suicide bombing and supported the families of the “martyrs.”

Enjoy spening your 30 pieces of silver guys. But if and when the West ever wakes up to realize it’s under attack, I wonder how much good your money is going to do you on that day?

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Note: This appeared as an op-ed in the weekend edition of the Valley City Times-Record.

“There were young knights among them who had never been present at a stricken field. Some could not look upon it and some could not speak and they held themselves apart from the others who were cutting down the prisoners at My Lord’s orders, for the prisoners were a body too numerous to be guarded by those of us who were left. Then Jean de Rye, an aged knight of Burgundy who had been sore wounded in the battle, rode up to the group of young knights and said: ‘Are ye maidens with your downcast eyes? Look well upon it. See all of it. Close your eyes to nothing. For a battle is fought to be won. And it is this that happens if you lose.”
Froissart’s Chronicles, 14th century

President Obama, announced he would authorize release of photos showing prisoners undergoing “enhanced interrogation.” Right-wingers announced the imminent downfall of the American republic.

Then he changed position and said he wouldn’t. Left-wingers announced the imminent downfall of the American republic.

Reportedly, top US commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan personally told the President they opposed release, arguing it would make the US mission more difficult.

Most of the controversy concerns “waterboarding,” a technique used on three terrorists a total of six-and-a-half minutes. It’s also routinely used on U.S. military personnel training to resist interrogation.

One of the terrorists the CIA is known to have waterboarded is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The 9/11 Commission claims Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “the principle architect of the 9/11 attacks.” Under questioning he boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan.”

Pearl’s body was found cut into ten pieces in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi in 2002. A video of Pearl’s last minutes was posted on the Internet, and featured on snuff-DVDs sold as light entertainment in parts of the Middle East where they don’t like us much.

The arguments about “enhanced interrogation” concern whether the techniques used are, or are not torture. And given they are, is torture ever justified?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the CIA didn’t tell her they would actually go out and do what they described in the briefings she attended. The minutes of the meetings show, to put it bluntly, that she’s lying her head off.

Anyone who says they’d never use torture under any circumstances is lying their head off. Tell anyone that someone they love more than their own life is in the hands of Khalid’s buddies, and watch them join the “waterboarding is for sissies” camp in two seconds.

The question is, how far can we go before what we do destroys us and the ideals that define us as a civilization? Is there too high a price to pay for survival?

Maybe – but you have to survive to have that discussion.

We are justifiably proud of the progress we’ve made since the not-so-long-gone days torture was acceptable legal practice, and executions and bear baiting were public entertainment. What we too-often fail to realize is, that progress has not been evenly distributed across the globe.

Our enemies come from a culture which holds public beheadings – and parents bring their children and let them kick the head around like a soccer ball. Where to murder someone who insults you, your clan, or your religion is praiseworthy. Where mothers teach sons if their wife, daughter, or sister is raped, their duty is to murder her.

Our enemies think we are soft, and their ruthlessness will overcome our power. Whether they are right or not, is a still-open question.

So Mr. President, I’d say go ahead and release those photos. If we allow these things in our name, we ought to be willing to look at them.

But if we do, let’s look at that Danny Pearl video too.

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Note: The body of this appeared as an op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record.

“What matter the victims, so long as the gesture is beautiful?”
- Laurent Tailhade, 1854-1919

A couple of news items caught my attention last week, and apparently almost nobody else’s.

On March 17, Sara Jane Olson, nee Kathleen Soliah, was released from the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California, after serving seven years of a 14-year sentence for possessing explosives with intent to murder, and first-degree murder for the killing of Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four, during a bank robbery. Though she did not personally discharge the shotgun that killed Mrs. Opsahl, she did kick a pregnant woman in the belly during the robbery, causing her to miscarry.

Before her arrest for acts committed while a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Olson had been living for 23 years in Minnesota as a housewife and mother of three, active in various worthy causes.

The SLA was famous in the 1970′s for kidnapping, and shortly thereafter converting, heiress Patty Hearst.*

On March 12, representatives from “The Campaign for Justice for Victims of Weather Underground Terrorism,” held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., asking the Justice Department to reopen the case of the 1970 bombing of Park Police Station in San Francisco, which killed police Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell.

FBI informant Larry Grathwohl, testified under oath that Bill Ayers, University of Chicago professor of education, told Grathwohl that Ayers’ wife Bernadine Dohrn, Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and the Director of Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center, “had been forced to plant the bomb at Park Station because others were not active enough in committing violence.”

Full disclosure: I was not part of that world, but I knew people in it. My childhood best friend disappeared underground. But unlike Mrs. Olson and Professors Ayers and Dohrn, he never resurfaced.

Olson, Ayers and Dorhn’s parents were affluent to wealthy. Ayers’ father was a CEO at Commonwealth Edison. His comrades in the Weather Underground included the children of high-powered lawyers, business owners, and educators. Many of them received financial support from their families while living underground.

My friend, Thomas “Tiff” Feeney, was the son of an Irish cop, who made it into a good university on a scholarship. Since he disappeared underground, I have never heard a word of him. I fear the worst.

The criminal justice system is ill-equipped to deal with these people. Criminals act to satisfy their desires to get things without working for them, and to feel good by hurting people they don’t like.

A terrorist feels him-or-herself to be a soldier in a cause separate from and superior to himself – although he or she my be acting to satisfy a need greater than wealth or comfort, the need to feel important. This is felt most strongly by those whose material wants are already satisfied. Which is why the ranks of American terrorists come largely from the children of privilege.

Before paroling an offender into society, the justice officials wants to see some evidence of remorse, or at least a desire not to go back to jail. They are well aware that criminals are very good at faking it. Recidivism rates among released and paroled offenders are high.

Recidivism among our aging domestic terrorists is rare. After their youthful radical adventures, they re-entered society and hold prestigious, well-paid jobs they’d be disqualified for if they’d robbed, bombed, and killed for mere money, rage, jealousy, or any motive any sane person could comprehend.

Remorse is totally absent. Ayers and Dorhn have said many times they’d do it all over again. Their only regret is they “didn’t do enough.” Olson pleaded guilty and allocuted to her offenses, then had to be hauled back into court after stating publicly she was innocent. None of them have ever cooperated with authorities to solve any of the still-open cases. Their attitude towards their victims is eerily detached, like they aren’t real.

Well, that’s what you’d expect from “soldiers in a cause,” though to my knowledge none of them ever demanded to be tried by military commission under the laws of war. They prefer to trust the criminal justice system of the “fascist pig-state of AmeriKKKa” and the best lawyers Daddy’s money could buy.

You see, under the Geneva Convention, you get to shoot people who do things like that.

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*Patty Hearst was treated rather harshly by the press after she was caught, tried, and sentenced. Journalist Marylyn Baker quipped, “Patty didn’t need a brainwash, just a quick rinse.”

I confess I shared the sentiments. However, in the Playboy interview Patty said two things that hit me right between the eyes.

“I did two years of a seven year sentence, and everybody talks about it like it was nothing.”

Right Patty. Two years in stir is not nothing. And it wasn’t a country club prison for politicians and white collar criminals either.

And, this I thought was really profound. The interviewer asked her what she thought made it politically possible for President Jimmy Carter to commute her sentence (she eventually got a full pardon from Bill Clinton.)

She replied, “Jonestown. Before Jonestown, nobody believed in brainwashing.”

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones

*And by the way, Marylyn Baker was the journalist who really broke the case, did the legwork the feds followed up on, and revealed the SLA were in fact mostly a bunch of white, middle-class dykes, who got a totally un-political black career criminal (Donald DeFreeze, a.k.a. “Field-Marshall General Cinque”) to front for them.

*”I asked, ‘well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?’ and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say ‘eliminate,’ I mean ‘kill.’ Twenty-five million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people. And they were dead serious.”
-Larry Grathwohl

*“She lived in Berkeley. It was kind of normal. I always tell people she wasn’t a terrorist. She was an urban guerrilla.”
-Emily Peterson, Olson’s daughter.

*”We were young, we were idealistic and we’d do it again… we were so lucky to have been born into that moment in history.” – Bernadine Dorhn, Connie Chung interview 1998

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQsYzBlXK6M

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In a discussion group I sit in on, the following was contributed by an elderly English gentleman, who is sort of the “odd man out” in the group. He was invited in under circumstances I’m not up on, to contribute another point of view.

A fair number of his contributions amount to, in the words of the moderator, “your country, form of government and people are despicable. I know it’s true because I say so. There is no discussion about it.”

For the record, though I’ve had pleasant enough discussions with the gentleman, I think that’s a fair assessment. We got much the same from his Canadian daughter, who contributed also that Canadians are “more kind” than Americans.

How sad. There was a time when Canadians might boast they were tougher than Americans.

I am quoting without attribution, because I don’t have permission. Some of you know that doesn’t always stop me.* But in fact I rather like the gentleman, and he’s old and alone.

He said:

“Earlier history is irrelevant. One need go no further than the Ottoman Empire becoming our enemy on aligning itself with the German Confederation in WW1. Then, as in WW2, the Germans sought, with Turkish help, to take the Suez Canal – towards which their railroad project was already within 400 miles.
We British ejected the Turks in 1917 from what became Palestine, mediating and keeping the peace between Arab and Jew for 31 years.

The Holocaust was of course a prime motivator towards the establishment of a Jewish state. The UN had neither mandate nor authority to recognise the state of Israel – but it had the votes of the western world, led by America, for an ultra vires resolution.. (A recent count showed GW Bush Administration contained at least 43 Jews in senior appointments (on merit?), including 8 ambassadors – Muslims NIL – perhaps little proportionate change since 1948). One needs also to consider the massive Jewish influence, then as now, from Wall Street to LA, particularly in finance and media – despite comprising only about 1.4% of US population. US Administrations cannot ignore that influence to which it is ‘in hock’, let alone bring it to heel.

Against such pressure there was no chance of the UN insisting upon a secular state of Israel. So non-adherents to Judaism effectively became non-citizens – Palestinians not only dispossessed but made pariahs in their own land. Israelis now claim ‘God given authority’. What of Allah?

So what if Israelis boast about “settling in a barren land neglected by its shiftless inhabitants, making it a vital country and making the desert bloom”.
That ‘get up and go’ appeals to Americans but is no justification for stealing the land. None of you would take kindly to foreigners ‘invading and ‘improving’ your back-yard !’ You may despise Palestinians for their grubby track suits, night-shirt style garments, and apparent indolence but that is their prerogative, making them no less human beings with equal rights. – and accords no entitlement to colonize and partition their land. Would you not fire rockets in defiance, lacking the means of proper defence against modern weaponry, much provided by benevolent Uncle Sam.

One must presume the UN did not consider the impact on resident Palestinians already in situ – trusting the Jews to treat them fairly !. It has been argued that Palestinians refused to negotiate. I would not negotiate with invaders over my real estate, particularly in the face of force majeure.. Of course inevitably 9/11 enters the equation. Palestinians are mostly Moslem as were the 9/11 perpetrators – there must be a connection?.

One senses an intention to draw a parallel — Redskin has accepted Paleface, so why does not Palestinian yield to Jew? Why the hell should he? He is the ultimate loser, and doubtless recognises that. In other places we would applaud the heroism of fighting to the end against insurmountable odds. And we have seen the ruthlessness of Israeli forces, including use of white phosphorus weapons against civilians, obliteration of UN HQ and stores, point blank shooting of children. Israeli /Nazi. What’s the difference? Bush openly declared for the Israeli government (having no option) – and I had thought Americans fair minded. They now just want the case ‘wrapped up’ – regardless of humanity. The US should first put its own house in order. Obviously the US considers its sheer might adequate cover for their blind ignorance of other nations and races – vitally necessary before assuming a mantle of world leadership – as claimed yesterday.

At least the Koran forbids usury – which has brought western civilisation(?) to the brink.
Well intentioned Yanks have caused more harm than good in many parts of the world. Get your act together.”

In a follow-up discussion he claimed:

“Yanks now seem to have a fixation that all Muslims are wicked. Are all Christians, Hindus and Jews saints? There is no trace of anti-semitism; only fierce criticism of wicked deeds. Of course I could have taken a pragmatic view ‘Palestinians were always destined to be losers’. Perhaps you think they should now quit. But my view is supported by the Law Faculty at Cambridge University walking out – so I have some brains on my side – should you doubt mine!”

I’m sorry, I know the claim that “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism,” and I’ve made it myself. But if you look at the above, it just doesn’t wash.

To wit, conspiracy thinking and:

“(A recent count showed GW Bush Administration contained at least 43 Jews in senior appointments (on merit?), including 8 ambassadors – Muslims NIL – perhaps little proportionate change since 1948).”

A count of Nobel Prize winners would show a hundred-plus Jews, and Muslims amounting to a number I could count to without taking my shoes off.

Bias? Favoritism?

Not from the freaking Nobel Prize Committee, I assure you.

And, I’ve been encountering this kind of attitude from English and other Europeans for a while now.

One English correspondent claimed the Israeli’s were “as bad as” Islamists, (actually, I believe he said “Jews” – he didn’t make the distinction between Jews and Zionists.) To this end he forwarded articles on 1) a bunch of idiot frat boys who turned out to be Jewish, who’d gotten caught burning down a church somewhere down south, and, 2) some Hasids in Israel who’d beaten up some tourists on a bus.

For 1) he had to search the KKK/neo-fascist sites to find particular mention that, gasp!, some criminals are Jewish.

I could have pointed him here: http://www.amazon.com/Tough-Jews-Fathers-Gangster-Dreams/dp/0375705473/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232901968&sr=8-1

to the book “Tough Jews,” a history which shows that the so-called Mafia in America is also largely a creation of Jewish gangsters.

By a Jewish author, by the way.

Lo and behold, the Jewish minority has a criminal class. Show me a group without one please.

For 2) he found that Jews also have nutty cults that behave obnoxiously. In fact, I have it on good authority that Chasids are widely disliked – in Israel, by Israelis. Who nonetheless tolerate them, because that’s what free people do.

I could point out that Chasids are a small minority, compared to say, the number of Wahabbis within Islam. And Wahabbis, to the best of my knowledge, have never produced any literature as inspiring and uplifting as the tales of the Baal Shem Tov.

Bottom line: If Israel decisively wins yet another war, what’s going to happen?

If Israel decisively loses for the first time, what’s going to happen?

Does anyone have any doubt there won’t be any Israelis left, beyond those that might be saved by emergency evacuation to America?

So, because it’s time to take a stand, my view:

There’s actually a fair amount I agree with in the gentleman’s post – I just reach different conclusions.

The justifications offered for the right of European Jews to colonize the area of ancient Israel strike me as very thin indeed. An absence of 2,000 years is not like stepping out for a beer and returning to find squatters in your home.** And who did give the UN the right to dispose of other people’s territory?

A startlingly sensible suggestion was made to FDR by the late King Saud of Saudi Arabia, “Give them the lands and possessions of the Germans who oppressed them.”

(Is it too late for that one?)

I supported these points back when it was dangerously unpopular to do so. I haven’t changed my mind, now that anti-Semitism is again popular on the Left.

It’s just that now I don’t give a damn.

When it comes down to the crunch, you’ve got to choose between people who: practice chattel slavery, treat women like chattel, have no concept of the rights of man whatsoever (and it’s rather odd that the gentleman is claiming “rights” for a people who recognize none), and demand that when a woman is raped (or just seen in a compromising position with an unrelated man) her husband, father, mother, brother or son must murder – her.

Versus: a people whose law released John Demjanjuk (accused of being a concentration camp guard “Ivan the Terrible”) because the evidence didn’t rise to the bar of proof demanded by their law.

That choice was not forced on us by the Israelis, but by the Islamists, so screw ‘em.

And you can’t blame their behavior solely on the Israelis. It doesn’t explain the barbarous behavior of the Islamists in Algeria to their fellow-Algerians.

Remember that forgotten conflict?

That’s where the Islamists invaded school rooms and cut the throats of little girls who weren’t wearing head scarves.

That’s where the Islamists cut off the heads of vile people who for example, read books, and arrange them artisticly on staircases.

Nor for that matter, does it explain the easy-going Tunisians. They’ve got a police state, but a rather nice one, with a wine and spirits industry and an attitude of, “Have fun and make money. Just don’t forget who’s in charge.”

Their contributions to the ranks of terrorists are minimal. Evidently, they could care less about Israel. And I’ve had it on good authority many of them don’t like to make the Hajj, “because of those damn fanatics.”

To put it bluntly, 5 million obnoxious Jews are worth more to me than 500 million obsequious Arabs who’ll kiss a Brits backside the way they love so well.

And I want them to know that.

* I recently excised the name and contact data of a lady who asked me nicely. Among other reasons, it was pointed out to me that true Bulgarians and other victims of communism, rather forcefully resent apologists for communism coming from their kind and tend to consider them traitors and collaborators, with all that implies.

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2009/01/pleasant-afternoons-slanging-match.html

** See here: http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=316

a piece I give as an example of possibly the worst piece of reasoning that reaches a conclusion I support.

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