The Left And Islam
Below is an article that appeared on americanthinker.com by Timothy Birdnow:
Paradise Lost; Why the Left Loves
Muhammad
Conservatives seem baffled by the animosity held by liberals towards Christians and Jews. Christianity requires the believer submit to authority, accept the rule of government, be charitable to his fellow; in short, be a model citizen. Ditto the Jews, who held these requirements even longer than the Christians. Why are liberals so hostile to both? For that matter, why do liberals seem so smitten with that 7th century holdover known as Islam? Why do those on the Left seem less than eager to defend our freedom and way of life from the ravages of Islamic Jihad?To understand this, it is necessary to examine the intellectual underpinnings of modern Liberal thought. We must begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Godfather of modern liberalism, in his treatise The Social Contract:
“MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”
Why? George Bush, of course, but also because
“It was in these circumstances that Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom, which, by separating the theological from the political system, made the State no longer one, and brought about the internal divisions which have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. As the new idea of a kingdom of the other world could never have occurred to pagans, they always looked on the Christians as really rebels, who, while feigning to submit, were only waiting for the chance to make themselves independent and their masters, and to usurp by guile the authority they pretended in their weakness to respect. This was the cause of the persecutions. “What the pagans had feared took place. Then everything changed its aspect: the humble Christians changed their language, and soon this so-called kingdom of the other world turned, under a visible leader, into the most violent of earthly despotisms.“Several peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighborhood, have desired without success to preserve or restore the old system: but the spirit of Christianity has everywhere prevailed. The sacred cult has always remained or again become independent of the Sovereign, and there has been no necessary link between it and the body of the State. Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well together; and, as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good.”
So, Christianity and Judaism, by giving the World Separation of Church and State, destroyed the old pagan order and splintered the power of the collective will. To those who believe in this collective and the exercise of the will of society over the individual, there can be no worse crime. The results were ‘the most violent of earthly despotisms’ while the Islamic world, that model of theocratic benevolence, offered a government ‘so far good'”.
(It is ironic that the Left would use that very Christian concept of separation between Church and State as a tool to eliminate the author of this division.)
Those who would revolutionize society, who would remake America in their own neo-pagan, atheistic mold, find the fundamental weakening of the power of the State intolerable (since it is only by that power that their will can triumph), and would prefer to institute a system more akin to that of Muhammad. They admire Islam for maintaining the ancient regime, although they ultimately plan to displace Allah with a Man-centered deity.
Of course, the liberal also hates being constrained in any way, and traditional morality flows, as they perceive it, from the Church down. By raising Islam as an alternative to Christendom, the liberal hopes to bludgeon the keepers of morality. Islam can help with the dirty work of crushing the usurper ideologies of Christianity and Judaism, and then, of course, their turn will come.
Then, too, we can look to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who believed not in the rationality of Christendom, but in a mythical Greek paradise ruled by “Dionysian” creative forces – emotionalism and irrationality. These forces were vanquished by the rise of Socratic intellectualism and the coming of Christianity. Nietzsche argued further against a fixed reality in his unpublished work `On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense‘, claiming that what we think of as truth is merely a convention agreed upon by society, thus freeing Man from the tyranny of concrete reality.
This wild spirit, this vision of the anti-mind slithers throughout liberal thought and can be seen in numerous left-wing positions; being soft on crime, spiritual environmentalism, their admiration for dictators such as Castro and Mao, and in their current love affair with radical Islam. Terrorism is the ultimate irrational force, a violence aimed at random destruction and mayhem. It holds kinship with the bloodlust of the Marxists and Nazis, and, as such, is a “creative force“ by Nietzschean standards. (Oh, and Nietzsche also hated Christians and Jews, and was a prime inspiration for National Socialism; copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra were issued to German soldiers during World War One, gaining the interest of a certain corporal…)
A return to the “good old days” of the 7th Century, to a time before paradise was lost to the tyranny of Judeo-Christian intellectualism seems preferable to modern liberals, who have flatly rejected Hobbes` view of primitive life as solitary poor, hard, nasty, brutish, and short. We especially see this in the neo-paganism of the environmentalist movement; they dream of a lost pastoral Eden where mankind could be free of the drudgery of industrial life and the endless intellectual toil. A great many on the Left wish to overthrow the current order, replacing it with this twisted Nietzschean/Rousseauian mirage stolen from the Book of Genesis.
Of course, to those who do not believe in a concrete reality, as many liberals do not, one system is as good as another, and we have no right to judge the Moslem on how he conducts his affairs. Since the Jihadist’s reality is equally valid as the Westerner’s, we are practicing moral Imperialism if we force our Judeo-Christian moral law on them. This is exacerbated by the fact that they are Third World peoples; many liberals, deep in their hearts, are pulling for what they perceive as the underdog – in this case the terrorist murdering thug-at the expense of their own culture. A racist, sexist, homophobic, power-mad society such as ours deserves to be taught a lesson! Even if the teacher is racist, sexist, homophobic, and power-mad, they aren’t Western, Christian, or White! They aren’t Dick Cheney! Power to the people!
There is a strain of masochism involved here as well; the white liberal perceives himself as having unfairly benefited from his station in life, having lived well on the backs of the poor. Somebody must be punished for this! He will flagellate himself in his mind, and will support those who will punish his country, because justice demands retribution, and America has lived far too well. If we must endure terrorist attacks to atone for our sins, so be it! Perhaps we should do the decent thing and die; let others have their turn at the table.
Here Socialist thinking comes into play; there is only so much to go around, and we have been hogging it for too long. For those in the Arab world to live better, we must exit the stage. It’s only fair!
The Liberal ultimately believes that the culture we have built, the triumph of Judeo-Christian values, is diseased and must be erased. If Islam can do their work for them, so be it. Islam, like the State under Marx, will ultimately wither away, and the paradise which predated Christ and Abraham can be restored. At least they like to think so.
Much like Milton’s fallen angels, they believe they have been dispossessed of their rightful station by a tyrannical spiritual entity, and they are determined to repossess their native seat-the fallen pastoral paradise promised them by Rousseau and Nietzsche-via the triumph of their Collective Will. This is their prime mover, their principle motivation. It is why they were so enraged at the loss of their political power, and why they hate the “usurper“ George W. Bush; they were driven out before they could attain paradise. This concept-lifted from Christian doctrine-that History has an ultimate end in a Humanistic Eden cannot be overstressed; the Left is consumed with this. They feel that, by losing their political power, they have been cast into the Lake of Fire.
“They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
waved over by that flaming brand, the gate
with dreadful faces throng`d, and fiery arms.”Paradise Lost
(Book XVII, verses 642-644)
Timothy Birdnow blogs at Birdblog.
Do Dems Want Failure
The following article is from nationalreview.com:
The Body Democratic Fight today or occupy forever.
By Jonah Goldberg
“As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be-President
Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. ‘When comes the end?’ …
And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.” This was part of freshman Virginia Sen. Jim Webb’s much ballyhooed stentorian Democratic response to President Bush’s State of the Union address.
One wonders if the untold millions of North Koreans who’ve starved, bled, and died since then would similarly applaud Eisenhower’s courage and wisdom. For more than half a century, North Korea has been a prison-camp society beyond the imagining of George Orwell, where public executions for stealing food are familiar events. The man-made famine of the 1990s alone claimed the lives of up to 1 million people (hard data from Stalinist regimes are difficult to come by).One also wonders: When are our troops going to come home? Technically, the Korean War isn’t really over. We’re merely enjoying a ceasefire — much like the one we had with Iraq in the 1990s. While Webb favors a “formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq,” our forces in South Korea have been there for nearly six decades. Something tells me the antiwar base of the Democratic party doesn’t have that sort of timetable in mind for Iraq. So, except for the fact that the Korean War didn’t end, our troops are still there, and the outcome has been the source of humanitarian and national-security nightmares, Webb’s salute to Eisenhower’s statesmanship really strikes home. In fairness, Webb is a thoughtful man who takes foreign affairs more seriously than most politicians. But his closest-weapon-to-hand style of attack against Bush does not reflect well on him or the Democratic party that chose him to be its representative. But it is revealing. Indeed, the Democratic party’s most honest moment Tuesday night came not in Webb’s brusque words but in the Democrats’ brusquer body language. The president asserted that no one wants failure in Iraq. Understandably, the commander in chief wanted to avoid conceding how very real a possibility failure is, so he chose his rhetoric carefully. He spoke in the abstract about the bipartisan desire for victory and success.And yet the Democrats for the most part sat on their hands, refusing to applaud, never mind rise in favor of such statements from a wartime president. Then, when the president mentioned ending genocide in Darfur, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her party leaped to their feet.Perhaps such applause is mere grace on the cheap. Democrats know they can count on their beloved United Nations to prevent serious intervention in Sudan’s civil war. Or maybe the Democrats really want action in Darfur, even though that would put us smack dab in the middle of a civil war, which Jack Murtha, Joe Biden, and other war critics invoke as a classic blunder the way Vizzini referred to land wars in Asia in The Princess Bride.The 11th Commandment for liberals seems to be, “Thou shalt not intervene out of self-interest.” Intervening in civil wars for humanitarian reasons is O.K., but meddling for national-security reasons is not. This would explain why liberals supported interventions in civil wars in Yugoslavia and Somalia but think being in one in Iraq is the height of folly. If only Truman had called the Korean civil war a humanitarian crisis, Ike might not have called the whole thing off. None of this explains why Democrats are so eager to support continued U.S. fighting against the Taliban as part of NATO forces in Afghanistan, even though that puts us between two sides in what amounts to an Afghan civil war. But maybe Afghanistan is a humanitarian crisis too. Or maybe it’s an excuse for Democrats to prove they are still tough as far as foreign policy. Or maybe Democrats simply think the war in Iraq is lost, while there’s still hope in Afghanistan … assuming there’s a principle in there somewhere. There seems to be only one hope for persuading the Democrats to support staying in Iraq. Let’s just beat the rush and call Iraq a humanitarian crisis now. It surely is already. And if we leave prematurely, Iraq will undoubtedly give Darfur and Yugoslavia a run for their money as a humanitarian horror show. Why wait for calls to return to stop the bloodshed?It’s even possible that an Iraq left to fend for itself might become a national-security threat on a par with nuclear-armed North Korea. Not that national security should factor into it.(C) 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.— Jonah Goldberg is Editor-at-Large of National Review Online.
Good Immigration News
The following is from fayobserver.com. While it’s good that these illegals are afraid to go to work for fear of deportation, why are the companies that hire them face no penalties? It’s just so maddening that these illegals had no fear in the first place about breaking the law to get here, and now they are upset. They don’t think it fair for them to be arrested and deported?
Here is the article:
Scared Smithfield workers stay home
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TAR HEEL — The 21 Smithfield Packing Co. employees arrested by immigration officials while they worked Wednesday are in the process of being deported.
The 20 men and one woman arrested were moved Thursday from the Mecklenburg County Jail to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., nearly 700 miles from Tar Heel.
Meanwhile, church officials within the region’s Hispanic community and spokespeople with the United Food & Commercial Workers union said the workers’ families didn’t know where they were and other immigrant workers were terrified of more arrests.
Production at the plant was substantially diminished Thursday as workers stayed away.
“There are hundreds of immigrant families who will have to decide, ‘Do I show up to work (Friday) and risk being arrested by immigration?’” said Eduardo Pena, a spokesman for the union, which became an unofficial hub of information for workers Thursday, he said.
The workers are going through “removal proceedings,” said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Washington.
Because ICE officials arrested the employees on administrative rather than criminal charges, it will not release their names. Raimondi would not elaborate on whether the workers could also be charged criminally or whether other workers could be targeted.
“The investigation continues,” he said.
An ICE spokeswoman told The Associated Press that administrative immigration charges can include being in the U.S illegally or overstaying a work visa.
Because much of the cleaning crew didn’t show up for work Wednesday night, production was lower and got started late at the plant Thursday, said Dennis Pittman, director of corporate communication for Smithfield.
“We were so far behind because of getting started so late,” Pittman told the AP. “There were several hundred people who didn’t show up.”
The second shift seemed to have normal attendance, he told the Observer.
“It’s been a rough day,” Pittman said. “All we were trying to do today is get the product out the door.”
Pittman told the AP the company spent most of Thursday trying to persuade Hispanic workers who stayed home to return to work, an effort that included advertising on a Spanish language radio station.
Pittman has been told union members were in the parking lot Wednesday night telling workers to leave so ICE couldn’t detain them, but the union has denied that. ICE officials were gone from the plant by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Pittman said.
On Thursday, the workers were calling each other, the union and representatives from area churches.
“The wife of one of the workers who was picked up started calling his co-workers saying, ‘Don’t go to work, immigration officials are there,’” Pena said.
Salvador Salazar, Hispanic ministry coordinator at St. Francis DeSales Church in Lumberton, said several people contacted him in a panic asking for help looking for their loved ones. One was a mother with three children.
“They’re very concerned about how they’ll live,” Salazar said.
Likely on the minds of many immigrant employees is whether ICE officials will arrest more workers.
“We still have people thinking ICE is here, and they’re not here,” Pittman said. “ICE told us they got the group of people they were looking for.”
If employees don’t go back to work for three days without calling, “We would have to replace them,” Pittman said.
Not attending work is common in the region, he said.
“Everyone in the area is experiencing people not coming to work,” he said Thursday morning. “This has put a lot of fear in people in the area.”
IMAGE program
The arrests stem from information gleaned about the employees since Smithfield joined the IMAGE program last year. Under IMAGE — which stands for ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers — Smithfield must now cross reference all employees’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and genders.
Smithfield has been criticized for joining the program, but Pittman has said the company had no choice if it wanted to avoid immigration raids. He said ICE told the company it was coming on Wednesday and said it wasn’t a raid.
Immigration officials showed up in unmarked cars and plain clothes, Pittman said. The workers were then sent into a room with ICE officials, questioned and arrested, spokesman Raimondi said.
Union and church officials repeatedly pointed fingers at the pork processing plant for the arrests. Some people said the workers who were most vocal about unionization were some of those arrested.
There’s been talk of unionization at the plant for a decade.
A statement from the union Thursday said arrests are likely to continue and that ICE violated its own guidelines, “which preclude the agency from facilitating the use of immigration laws of enforcement to intervene in the course of a labor dispute,” the statement said.
“The entire community has been terrorized,” said Gene Bruskin, head of the Smithfield Justice Campaign, a national coalition backed by the union. “Parents are being torn from their young children who don’t know where they are. Many of these workers have given their life blood to this company for (years) and now are being summarily handed over to be arrested and discarded. It is unconscionable and continues Smithfield’s pattern of callous disregard for the wellbeing of its workers.”
Typically, the strongest investigative efforts by ICE are directed toward companies that have made employing illegal immigrants a “business model,” ICE spokeswoman Jaime Zuieback said Wednesday night. But Smithfield is not one of those target companies, and she commended it for cooperating fully.
Because of discrepancies with employee records found through IMAGE, about 500 more immigrant workers are expected to lose their jobs starting the second week of February, Pittman has said.
Employee unrest
In November, hundreds of workers walked out of the plant, protesting the firing of 75 employees who were unable to provide verifiable documentation that they were working legally.
After mediation with the Rev. Carlos Arce, of St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Red Springs, Smithfield rehired the 75 workers and gave them 60 days to provide verifiable documentation, or they’d be fired.
For months, Smithfield has been running employee information through the IMAGE program. Each of those workers gets 60 days to provide proof they are eligible to work in the U.S.
Zuieback said Wednesday she was unaware if the arrested workers had received letters from Smithfield telling them they would be terminated.
Some mismatches in documentation are simple to fix — such as proving a new last name because of marriage.
Those employees are in the clear, Pittman said. About 500 others are not because they likely won’t be able to provide proof.
Because about 75 reviews were conducted per week, it will take a couple of months for all the employees’ 60-day review periods to expire and for them to be terminated.
“The last thing we want to do is lose trained people,” Pittman said. “But we have to comply with federal regulations to make sure they’re eligible to work.”
Self-policing its workforce through IMAGE is supposed to reduce the company’s chances of immigration raids.
Smithfield will immediately look to replace the terminated workers, Pittman said.
“I’m hoping every one of them gets it fixed,” he said.
While there seem to be plenty of applicants who could be hired as replacements, the terminations will slow production and cost the plant substantially for new training, he said.
Any employee who leaves the company on good terms and who gives at least two weeks’ notice is eligible for COBRA health benefits and unused vacation pay, Pittman said. The workers facing termination aren’t excluded from that.
Fired workers will certainly be in a tight spot, but the local economy shouldn’t take a substantial hit, said Chuck Heustess, executive director of the Bladen County Economic Development Commission.
“You feel sorry for the individuals, but at the same time, Smithfield would be crazy to employ illegally when the federal government is cracking down,” Huestess said. “They’ll find 500 new people.”
Rumors were flying in the plant about the terminations before the arrests Wednesday.
“What is clear is there’s a lot of misinformation and fear among the workers about what’s going to happen,” Pena said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Jennifer Plotnick can be reached at plotnickj@fayobserver.com or (910) 323-4848 ext. 343
One Democrat With Balls
Here is one Democrat who is calling for congress to cut off the war funding. Sen. Feingold, D-Wis. Al least this man has the courage of his convictions. While congress votes on a cowardly, gutless, non-binding resolution to stop the troop surge this man has the courage to say stop the war now.
Of course I consider this man slime and a disgrace to the country, but who am I to say? Remember this is the man who tried to censure the president for defending our country.
I still can’t get over the fact that these people want us to lose for political gain, it is so disturbing I can’t put it into words.
Here is an article from politico.com about the aforementioned un-American scum Russ Feingold:
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Operation Return To Sender
Well, here is a little good news on the immagration front. Illegals in Calironia are afraid now that several hundred of them have been arrested. The fact that they were walking the streets without fear while stealing social security numbers, forging drivers liscences, and collecting welfare tells us where the real problem is with this issue.
Below is an article from Reuters, the last paragraph sums it all up very nicely:
By Tim Gaynor
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Cook Rosa Maria Salazar’s eyes dart anxiously to the door as customers file into the Salvadoran cafe in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles.
“We’re terrified. The police could come for us at any time and deport us,” she said in Spanish earlier this week as diners fingered maize tortillas stuffed with beans and pork scratchings and chatted softly.
The 55-year-old undocumented worker from Guatemala is among many Hispanics deeply shaken by recent immigration raids at the heart of Latino communities in southern California.
The-seven day Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep, dubbed “Operation Return to Sender,” targeted jails across five counties in the Los Angeles area, where police took 423 of what they called “criminal aliens” into federal custody for deportation, after being held on charges unrelated to their immigration status.
Federal agents from seven teams also fanned out in local communities, where they nabbed 338 undocumented immigrants, more than 150 of whom were classed as “immigration fugitives” — foreign nationals who ignored final deportation orders.
The raid was the latest in a series of get-tough enforcement measures by ICE in the United States, but the largest action of its kind in California, where more than a third of the population is Hispanic.
“We hadn’t seen anything like this here before, and it came as a shock,” said Antonio Bernabe, a community worker who runs a day labor program at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
“The police didn’t just take people with deportation orders, they took anybody … guys who were just hanging out in the street and even from a Jack in the Box restaurant … and now people are afraid to go out,” he added.
RAIDS AS BUSH BACKS OVERHAUL
The high-profile sweep netted mostly Mexican nationals, but included people from 14 countries including Ukraine, Japan, Poland and Trinidad.
It culminated on Tuesday, when President George W. Bush gave a State of the Union address that ranked immigration legislation among his top domestic priorities.
Bush called for “comprehensive immigration reform,” combining a guest-worker program with tougher workplace and border enforcement.
He remained vague, however, on the thorny issue of how to deal with the 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows, more than 2.5 million of whom live in California.
Some immigrants who followed the speech closely on Spanish-language television in Los Angeles remained hopeful of concessions in the aftermath of the sweep.
“I came here to work and help support my family, so obviously the raids were alarming,” Salvadoran construction worker Remberto Flores told Reuters in Spanish as he waited for a bus in a neighborhood of taco stands and wire transfer shops.
“But we saw President Bush talk about reforms in the Senate, so maybe there will be some breaks for us as well,” he added.
Others in the city believed that the only clear message from the raids and the speech was that the situation for immigrants in California had changed.
“We used to feel secure here,” Nicaraguan electrician Manuel Salomon told Reuters as he sipped coffee in a Mexican bakery in the city. “But it looks like that honeymoon is over.”
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Iran Must Be Stopped
Below is an article that appeared om ynetnews.com
Now, you people may think this is just the ravings of a dictator thousands of miles away, who cannot inflict any damage on the USA. Actually, I think most people in this country don’t pay any attention to much that is going on in the world as long as their little world isn’t affected.But anyway, we cannot simply sit on our hands and ignore people who are committed to destoying the west simply because we do not believe the same things as they do.
We can pretend everything is fine while we are having numerous attack on our embassies, and do nothing about it, OH wait a minute, this isn’t Clinton we are talking about here, or we can do something.
We need Americans to rally around what we are trying to do, and maybe we can save the country before it is too late.
George Bush is not the enemy, radical Islam is!
Anyway, here is the article:
Iran: Israel, US will soon dieAhmadinejad: Be assured that the US and Israel will soon end lives Yaakov Lappin
Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria’s foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report. Iran’s official FARS news agency also reported the comments.“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives,” the Iranian president was quoted as saying. “Sparking discord among Muslims, especially between the Shiites and Sunnis, is a plot hatched by the Zionists and the US for dominating regional nations and looting their resources,” Ahmadinejad added, according to the report.
The Iranian president also directly tied events in Lebanon to a wider plan aimed at Israel’s destruction. He called on “regional countries” to “support the Islamic resistance of the Lebanese people and strive to enhance solidarity and unity among the different Palestinian groups in a bid to pave the ground for the undermining of the Zionist regime whose demise is, of course, imminent.”
Ahmadinejad has threatened the State of Israel with annihilation several times in recent months, and has recently added the US and Britain to the list of countries he says will be destroyed.
Syria’s Foreign Minister, Wailed Mualem, accused the US of attempting to carry out a “massacre of Muslims” and of sowing “discord among Islamic faiths in the region.”
Mualem called on “regional states to pave the ground for the establishment of peace and tranquillity… while preventing further genocide of the Muslims,” the IRIB website said.
Quick Hits
Democrats were against “staying the course” in Iraq.Now that they are against the troops surge that means they are for “staying the course” doesn’t it?
Did anyone notice the Democrats didn’t cheer for the concept of victory in the State Of The Union speech last night? More proof they want America to lose so it will help them gain the white house in ’08.
John Kerry isn’t running again in ’08? What a shame, I was looking forward to watching him crash and burn again.
Why is it that the media is shocked by the very good poll results of the state of the union speech? Could it be they have tried their best to minimize the effects of the speech?
If the Democrats want us to stop relying on foreign oil, why can’t we drill in this country?
Alternative energy,OK, but no windfarms next to Kennedy and Kerry’s homes on the cape.
Union Leader Editorial
Liz Cheney: Hillary is ‘in to win’ the White
House, but not Iraq
By LIZ CHENEY
Commentary
19 hours, 48 minutes ago
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON declared last weekend, “I’m in to win.” Anyone who has watched her remarkable trajectory can have no doubt that she’ll do whatever it takes to win the Presidency. I wish she felt the same way about the war.
In fairness, Clinton, with her proposal for arbitrary caps on troop levels and hemming and hawing about her vote for the war resolution, has company on both sides of the aisle. Sen. Joseph Lieberman is the only national Democrat showing any courage on this issue. We Republicans — with help from senators such as Chuck Hagel — seem ready to race the Democrats to the bottom.
I’d like to ask the politicians in both parties who are heading for the hills to stop and reflect on these basic facts:
We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a “situation to be solved.” It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, “Enough is enough.” Wishing doesn’t make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can’t negotiate with them or “solve” their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.
Quitting helps the terrorists. Few politicians want to be known as spokesmen for retreat. Instead we hear such words as “redeployment,” “drawdown” or “troop cap.” Let’s be clear: If we restrict the ability of our troops to fight and win this war, we help the terrorists. Don’t take my word for it. Read the plans of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahri to drive America from Iraq, establish a base for al-Qaida and spread jihad across the Middle East. The terrorists are counting on us to lose our will and retreat under pressure. We’re in danger of proving them right.
Beware the polls. In November the American people expressed serious concerns about Iraq (and about Republican corruption and scandals). They did not say that they want us to lose this war. They did not say that they want us to allow Iraq to become a base for al-Qaida to conduct global terrorist operations. They did not say that they would rather we fight the terrorists here at home. Until you see a poll that asks those questions, don’t use election results as an excuse to retreat.
Retreat from Iraq hurts us in the broader war. We are fighting the war on terrorism with allies across the globe, leaders such as Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. Brave activists are also standing with us, fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the empowerment of women. They risk their lives every day to defeat the forces of terrorism. They can’t win without us, and many of them won’t continue to fight if they believe we’re abandoning them. Politicians urging America to quit in Iraq should explain how we win the war on terrorism once we’ve scared all of our allies away.
What about Iran? There is no doubt that an American retreat from Iraq will embolden Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making it even less likely that the Iranian president will bend to the will of the international community and halt his nuclear weapons program. A member of Lebanon’s parliament recently told me that Lebanese Sunnis, Shiites and Christians are lining up with Iran and Syria to fight against Sunnis, Shiites and Christians who want to stand with America. When I asked him why people were lining up with Iran and Syria, he said, “Because they know Iran and Syria aren’t going anyplace. We’re not so sure about America.”
Our soldiers will win if we let them. Read their blogs. Talk to them. They know that free people must fight to defend their freedom. No force on Earth — especially not an army of terrorists and insurgents — can defeat our soldiers militarily. American troops will win if we show even one-tenth the courage here at home that they show every day on the battlefield. And by the way, you cannot wish failure on our soldiers’ mission and claim, at the same time, to be supporting the troops. It just doesn’t compute.
I suppose Hillary Clinton’s announcement was a sign of progress. In 2007, a woman can run for President and show the same level of courage and conviction about this war many of her male colleagues have. Steel in the spine? Not so much.
America deserves better. It’s time for everyone — Republicans and Democrats — to stop trying to find ways for America to quit. Victory is the only option. We must have the fortitude and the courage to do what it takes. In the words of Winston Churchill, we must deserve victory.
We must be in it to win.
Liz Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is a former principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
This article appeared in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
The AP And Propoganda
How the AP helped stoke civil war in Iraq
By James Lewis
The Associated Press is among the large news organizations whose reporting in Iraq has been challenged by bloggers. Beyond the specifics of any one incident, a certain pattern and practice of news gathering has made for systematic bias. The end result is propaganda.
Michelle Malkin has a new report on the “Jamil Hussein” fiasco at the Associated Press. “Jamil Hussein” is the alleged Iraqi Police captain who has been cited 61 times by AP, recently as a source for an atrocity story that now looks mighty dubious.
What has been lost in the debate about “Who is Jamil Hussein?” is the substance of his Iraqi atrocity stories peddled by the AP. The most recent ones have been denied by the US military, which has much better sources than the Associated Press. They have also not been confirmed by other news outlets. Whether “Jamil Hussein” was a cover name, an AP fabrication, or a real person is not as important as the content of his apparent disinformation. What was the purpose of the lie about six Iraqis being deliberately burned to death by terrorists? What about the other 60 AP stories that cited “Hussein”? How many lent credibility to other atrocity tales?
Two hypotheses spring to mind. One is that “Jamil Hussein” was benefiting from being an AP source. He was smart enough to know that AP wanted horror stories, and that’s what he gave them. Maybe he was paid. Maybe he liked instant fame. But 61 citations as an AP source suggests an ongoing relationship, one with a clear and sustained purpose.
A more sinister interpretation is that “Jamil Hussein” was a political plant, whose primary goal was to feed atrocity stories to the AP. He could be an Iranian plant in the Iraqi Police, which is heavily infiltrated by Mahdi Army killers who are paid by Iran. They were the ones who shouted “Muqtada Al Sadr!” when Saddam Hussein was hanged. An Iranian mole’s purpose would be to stir up civil war, and at the same time to provide more “evidence” for the American Leftist news narrative that Iraq is a hopeless mess.
So “Jamil Hussein’s” disinformation could have served two goals.
One: to worsen ethnic warfare in Iraq, and
Two: to demoralize the American home front.
Objectively, AP has clearly served both purposes in the past and continues to do so today, whatever one believes about motive or lack thereof. This is its obsessive story line, and “Police Captain Jamil Hussein” would be seeding prepared ground. That’s straight disinformation practice. Always tell the newsies what they want to hear.
Our Organs of Propaganda — AKA the “news media” — know perfectly well that most of their sources have an axe to grind. When Saddam Hussein was still in power he arm-twisted the Western media for favorable coverage, as we now know from former CNN executive Eason Jordan. The same thing happens every day with other terror regimes like Hamas, Fatah and Hizb’allah, where the media trade access for favorable coverage. That is unbelievably cynical, profoundly corrupt and massively destructive, but it has been routine at least since Stalin’s time. That is why we have Organs of Propaganda, in Karl Marx’s phrase, and not honest news sources.
In this case, the defeatist narrative makes the Western media into propaganda tools for Ahmadinejad, Al Qaida, and the Baath fascists in Iraq.
That is the real take-home lesson about the lies peddled by the Associated Press in the name of “Jamil Hussein.” If full-scale civil war breaks out in Iraq, and if the Democrats force a military withdrawal after the next election, this kind of disinformation will have accomplished its aim.
The propaganda war is the real war.
Sundance
Below is a review from the Los Angeles Times for a “documentary” on beastiality.
This is just more proof that the moral and social values in this country are under attack.
There will be no more right or wrong as long as you are just being yourself.
It starts with the breakdown of the family that started with welfare, the government money taking the place of the father. Gay marriage further destroying the traditional family. Why stop there, next up is poligomy,pedophilia, beastiality. Why should not these people also be allowed to do what makes them happy?
The traditional family is under attack and the line has to be drawn or I am afraid of the world my children will live in.
Notice the last line of the review,” It happens, so thats who we are”. Pretty scary.
Documentary on bestiality premieres at Sundance Film FestivalBy Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
Posted January 21 2007, 6:39 PM EST
| PARK CITY, Utah — “Zoo” is a documentary about what director Robinson Devor accurately characterizes as “the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible.” But remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted.“Zoo,” premiering before a rapt audience Saturday night at Sundance, manages to be a poetic film about a forbidden subject, a perfect marriage between a cool and contemplative director (the little-seen “Police Beat”) and potentially incendiary subject matter: sex between men and animals. Not graphic in the least, this strange and strangely beautiful film combines audio interviews (two of the three men involved did not want to appear on camera) with elegiac visual re-creations intended to conjure up the mood and spirit of situations. The director himself puts it best: “I aestheticized the sleaze right out of it.”
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Devor and his writing partner, Charles Mudede, live in Seattle and were stunned, as were many in the state, by a story that broke in 2005 about a local man who died after having sex with an Arabian stallion. Though bestiality is not illegal in Washington, the subsequent revelation of the existence of an Internet-based zoophile community (the men refer to themselves as “zoos,” hence the title) was a shock. Though there was the inevitable tabloid fuss, what Devor called “the prurient spectacle,” the filmmaker was also “shocked that nobody did an in-depth look at this, that there was no investigative reporting rounding the story out with the psychology involved. I thought, ‘This is an opportunity.’ ” Though “Zoo” is intent on allowing these men to be heard, Devor’s intention was not polemical. “I’m not in there wrestling with the legal or animal cruelty issues,” he said. Rather, he envisioned a film like his others: “I count on the natural world pulling my films through. I thought the marriage of this completely strange mind-set and the beauty of the natural world could be something interesting.” In introducing “Zoo” at Sundance, Devor called it “a difficult film and a difficult film to make.” He added: “A lot of people looked at me as if I was an exploitative person, dredging up something for profit, and that bothered me. I was certainly asked many times, often with a wrinkled brow, ‘Why are you making this film?’ It was something I did resent; I thought artists had the opportunity to explore anything.” In the end, Devor ended up agreeing with the Roman writer Terence, who said “I consider nothing human alien to me.” “It happens,” the filmmaker said, “so it’s part of who we are.” |
