Newt Gingrich on the Islamist Challenge

by Greg Richards

Newt Gingrich has and excellent analysis on what we face from his book Winning the Future published in 2006:

"We have two immediate opponents, the irreconcilable wing of Islam and the rogue dictatorships that empower the radical Islamists. The irreconcilable wing of Islam considers America the great Satan. The Islamists cannot reconcile with a secular system of laws. They cannot tolerate a West that maintains a presence in the Arabian Gulf or that would defend Israel's right to survive as a country. They cannot tolerate freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or freedom for women. In short, their demands are irreconcilable with the modern world.

"Politically correct secularists cannot understand that we are participants in a global civil war between the modernizing and irreconcilable wings of Islam. While the irreconcilable wing must be fought militarily, this is also a cultural, political, and economic war (as was the Cold War). This war is not primarily about terrorism, it is about an Islamist insurgency against the modern world.

"A reasonable estimate would be that this war will last until 2070 (the Soviet Union lasted from 1917 to 1991, or seventy-four years). An optimist could make a case for winning by 2025 or 2030. Alternatively this conflict could be a fact of life for several centuries (as the Catholic-Protestant wars were during the Reformation and Counter Reformation).

"Because secular post-modern analysts refuse to take religion seriously, we describe "suicide bombers" while our opponents describe "martyrs." We see them as psychologically deranged where they see themselves as dedicated to God. We focus on body counts while our opponents see their dead as symbols for recruitment. We focus on weeks and months while our opponents patiently focus on decades and generations. We think of trouble spots while they think of global jihad. We are in a total mismatch of planning and understanding.

"We are hunting down al Qaeda (a loose grouping of 3,000 to 5,000 people) while our opponents are vastly larger. As one counter-terrorism analyst suggested to me "about the time we wipe out al Qaeda there will be five to ten new organizations of equal or greater size." We can reasonably guess that about 3 to 4 percent of the 1.3 billion Muslims on the planet are potential terrorist recruits-a pool of 39 to 52 million young men. There might be more than 10,000 potential recruits for every current member of al Qaeda.

"Virtually every expert believes the number of militants available to the Irreconcilables is growing much faster than we are killing them. We have no effective communication counter-strategy to the television stations like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya that serve as multimillion (maybe multibillion) dollar force multipliers for the insurgency. Consider the tiny cost bin Laden pays for an audio tape that these stations broadcast to more than a third of the Arab world at no cost to al Qaeda."

Obama's embarrassment at the success of the United States and his view that we are a force of exploitation rather than a force of enterprise, opportunity and freedom, make it impossible for him to understand what Newt is saying.  It is just so uncool to have real convictions about anything that he cannot imagine an entire culture steeped in them, however disgusting and repellent they are.  He doesn't take them seriously, even with the Ambassador's fate showing us what happens when you don't.

The Islamists have been successful enough to put our leaders - President Obama and Secretary Clinton - on their knees begging dispensation from our enemies for our exercise of free speech.  Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is down there with them.  What would Patton think?  What would MacArthur think?  What would Grant think?  What would Eisenhower think?  The Islamists are dictating terms to us and we haven't even lost the war - yet.

Why can't anybody in Washington say "we are going to exercise free speech in the US of A though the heavens tremble?"  The answer? They don't believe in anything enough to do it.  We've got to fire the whole crowd.

Greg Richards

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/newt_gingrich_on_the_islamist_challenge.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama's Dangerous Consistency

by Carolyn Glick

On Tuesday, Egypt's chief prosecutor issued arrest warrants against eight US citizens.

Their purported crimes relate either to their reported involvement in the production of the Internet movie critical of Islam that has received so much attention over the past 10 days, or to other alleged anti-Islamic activities.

One of the US citizens indicted is a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity.

According to the Associated Press, Egypt's general prosecution issued a statement announcing that the eight US citizens have been indicted on charges of insulting and publicly attacking Islam, spreading false information, and harming Egyptian national unity.

The statement stipulated that they could face the death penalty if convicted.

The AP write-up of the story quoted Mamdouh Ismail, a Salafi attorney who praised the prosecution's move. He claimed it would deter others from exercising their right to free expression in regards to Islam. As he put it, the prosecutions will "set a deterrent for them and anyone else who may fall into this." That is, they will deter others from saying anything critical about Islam.

This desire to intimidate free people into silence on Islam is clearly the goal the heads of the Muslim Brotherhood seek to achieve through their protests of the anti-Islamic movie. This was the message of Muslim Brotherhood chief Yussuf Qaradawi. Three days after the anti-American assaults began on the anniversary of the September 11 jihadist attacks on America, Qaradawi gave a sermon on Qatar television, translated by MEMRI.

Qaradawi struck a moderate tone. He called on his followers to stop rioting against the US. Rather than attack the US, Qaradawi urged his Muslim audience to insist that the US place prohibitions on the free speech rights of American citizens by outlawing criticism of Islam - just as the Europeans have done in recent years in the face of Islamic terror and intimidation.

In his words, "We say to the US: You must take a strong stance and try to confront this extremism like the Europeans do. This [anti-Islamic film] is not art. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is nothing but curses and insults. Does the freedom to curse and insult constitute freedom of speech?"

Both the actions of the Egyptian prosecution and Qaradawi's sermon prove incontrovertibly that the two policies the US has adopted since September 11, 2001, to contend with Muslim hatred for the US have failed. The neoconservative policy of supporting the democratization of Muslim societies adopted by President Barack Obama's predecessor George W. Bush has failed. And the appeasement policy adopted by Obama has also failed.

Bush's democratization policy claimed that the reason the Muslim world had become a hotbed for anti-Americanism and terror was that the Muslim world was not governed by democratic regimes. Once the peoples of the Muslim world were allowed to be free, and to freely elect their governments, the neoconservatives proclaimed, they would abandon their hatred of America.

As a consequence of this belief, when the anti-regime protests against the authoritarian Mubarak regime began in January 2011, the neoconservatives were outspoken supporters of the overthrow of then-president Hosni Mubarak, despite the fact that he had been the US's key ally in the Arab world for three decades. They supported the political process that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power. They supported the process despite the fact that Qaradawi is the most influential cleric in Egypt. They supported it despite the fact that just days after Mubarak was ousted from power, Qaradawi arrived at Cairo's Tahrir Square and before an audience of two million followers, he called for the invasion of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem.

In the event, the Egyptian people voted for Qaradawi's Muslim Brotherhood and for the Salafi party. The distinction between the two parties is that Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood are willing to resort to both violent and nonviolent ways to dominate the world in the name of Islam. The Salafis abjure nonviolence. So while Qaradawi called for the riots to end in order to convince the Americans to criminalize criticism of Islam, his Salafi counterparts called for the murder of everyone involved in producing the anti-Islamic film.

For instance, Salafi cleric Ahmad Fouad Ashoush issued a fatwa on Islamic websites last weekend calling for American and European Muslims to murder those involved with the movie. His religious ruling was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group on Monday.

Ashoush wrote, "Those bastards who did this film are belligerent disbelievers. I issue a fatwa and call on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to do this duty, which is to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the film.

"So, hurry, hurry, O Muslim youth in America and Europe, and teach those filthy lowly ones a lesson that all the monkeys and pigs in America and Europe will understand. May Allah guide you and grant you success."

These are the voices of democratic Egypt. The government, which has indicted American citizens on capital charges for exercising their most fundamental right as Americans, is a loyal representative of the sentiments of the Egyptian people who freely elected it. The Salafi preacher is a loyal representative of the segment of the Egyptian people that made the Salafi party the second largest in the Egyptian parliament. Qaradawi's call for the abolition of freedom of speech in America - as has happened in Europe - and to ban all criticism of Islam is subscribed to by millions and millions of Muslims worldwide who consider him one of the leading Sunni clerics in the world.

Free elections in Egypt have empowered the Egyptian people to use the organs of governance to advance their hatred of America. Their hatred has been empowered, and legitimized, not diminished as the neoconservatives had hoped.

The behavior of the Egyptian government, Qaradawi and the Salafis also makes clear that Obama's policy of appeasing the Muslim world has failed completely. Whereas Bush believed the source of Muslim hatred was their political oppression at the hands of their regimes, Obama has blamed their rage and hatred on America's supposed misdeeds.

By changing the way America treats the Muslim world, Obama believes he can end their hatred of America. To this end, he has reached out to the most anti-American forces and regimes in the region and spurned pro-American regimes and political forces.

When Obama's policies are recognized as driven by appeasement, the seeming inconsistency of his war against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi on the one hand, and his passivity in the face of the anti-regime uprising in Iran in 2009 and the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime today makes sense. Gaddafi was not a threat to the US, so he was unworthy of protection. The mullahs in Iran and Assad are foes of the US. So they deserve protection. Obama has assiduously courted the Muslim Brotherhood from the outset of his presidency.

The official and unofficial Egyptian exploitation of the Internet film as a means to intimidate and attack the US into disavowing its core principles is proof that Obama's theory of the source of Muslim rage is wrong. They do not hate America because of what the US government does. They hate America because of what America is. And it is because of this that since September 11, the rationale for Obama's foreign policy has disintegrated.

Rather than accept this basic truth and defend the American way of life, Obama has doubled down in the only way now available to him. He, his administration, his campaign and his supporters in the media have responded to the collapse of the foundations of his foreign policy by resorting to the sort of actions they accused George W. Bush, his administration and supporters of taking. They have responded with a campaign of political oppression and nativist bigotry directed against their political opponents.

Late last Friday night, law enforcement officers descended on the California home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the film that the Muslims of the newly free Arab lands find so offensive. Nakoula was questioned by federal authorities and later released. His arrest was photographed. The image of a dozen officers arresting an unarmed man for making a movie was broadcast worldwide within moments.

Beyond persecuting an independent filmmaker, the White House requested that YouTube block access to it. YouTube - owned by Google - has so far rejected the White House's request.

The Obama administration's abetment of bigoted nativism to silence criticism of its substantively indefensible foreign policy was on prominent display last Sunday. Obama's campaign endorsed an anti-Semitic screed published by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

In her column, titled, "Neocons slither back," Dowd wrote that Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are mere puppets controlled by "neocon puppet master, Dan Senor."

Neocon is a popular code for Jewish. It was so identified by Dowd's Times' colleague David Brooks several years ago.

Dowd said that "the neocons captured" Bush after the September 11 attacks and "Now, amid contagious Arab rage sparked on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, they have captured another would-be Republican president and vice president, both jejeune about the world."

One telling aspect of Dowd's assault on Senor as a neoconservative is that he and his boss in the Bush administration, Paul Bremer, were the nemeses of the neoconservatives at the Pentagon. The only thing Senor has in common with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith is that all three men are Jews.

Moreover, Dowd drew a distinction between supposed "neocons" like Senor, and non-Jewish US leaders Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who merely "abetted" the neocons.

So Senor doesn't share the same ideological worldview as Feith and Wolfowitz but he's a neocon. And Cheney and Rumseld do share the same worldview as Feith and Wolfowitz. And they are not neocons.

The Times' public editor Andrew Rosenthal dismissed claims that Dowd's column was anti- Semitic, arguing it couldn't be since she never said a word about Jews.

The Obama campaign linked to Dowd's column on its Twitter account with the message, "Why Romney and Ryan's foreign policy sounds 'ominously familiar.'" Obama's campaign's willingness to direct the public to anti-Semitic screeds against his political opponents is consistent with the administration's general strategy for defending policies. That strategy involves responding to criticism not with substantive defense of his policies, but with ad hominem attacks against his critics.

His failed economic policies' critics are attacked as "Wall Street fat cats." His failed foreign policies' critics are demonized as ominous neocon puppet masters.

There is a difference between appeasing parties that have been harmed by your actions and appeasing parties that wish your destruction. In the 1970s the US appeased the Philippines by transferring sovereignty over the Clark Air Force Base to the Philippine government. America was still America and the US and the Philippines became friends.

To appease a party that hates your way of life, you must change your way of life. The only way America can appease the Muslim world is for America to cease to be America.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Carolyn Glick

Source: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/09/obamas-dangerous-consistency.php

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Predicting Genocide

by Mitch Ginsburg

The site of a mass grave in Cambodia (Photo credit: Courtesy: International Association of Genocide Scholars)

Genocide is neither linear nor “inexorable.” It is, rather, predictable and preventable, so long as you recognize the universal signs. And Iran, in its language and action, has taken six of the eight steps on the path to genocide, according to Dr. Gregory Stanton, the world’s foremost  expert on the matter.

Stanton, the founder and director of Genocide Watch, the world’s first organization to deal 

exclusively with this issue, and the author of an historic two-page paper on the nature of genocide, spoke at the Hebrew University medical school last week. He called for an international campaign to abolish the recurring crime of genocide and for the world to take action, as Canada has, to ostracize Iran and curb its genocidal intent.

Talk of genocide, Stanton said — of removing a cancer or crushing a cockroach — is never just talk. “One of the best predictors of genocide is incitement to genocide,” he said, “and I believe that is exactly what Iran is doing today.”

Encouraging genocide is a crime. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide was signed in 1948 and fathered by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish Polish lawyer who studied the genocide of the Armenians and invented the term in 1943 – “genos” meaning race or people and “cide” to kill. The Convention states that incitement “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is illegal.

Late last week, on precisely those grounds, Canada severed its ties with Iran. John Baird, the minister of foreign affairs, announced that the Iranian regime “engages in racist anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement to genocide.”

He gave Iranian diplomats five days to leave the country.

Stanton and Dr. Elihu Richter, a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University’s medical school and the founder of the Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention, both hailed the decision.

Richter called it “mighty” and said that the Canadian declaration “sets a powerful precedent for intervening to prevent genocide and genocidal terror by going at the early predictive causes and catalysts, rather than waiting for the body count.”

The two are seeking to drag Iran before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where state actors can prosecute one another. Neither the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Prime Minister’s Office could confirm whether Israel had encouraged Canada to file charges against Iran for incitement to genocide.

The predictable pattern

Recognizing the early signs, spotlighting them and prosecuting those encouraging the killings are some of the ways to prevent a genocide. Ignoring them, dismissing them as diabolical rhetoric or as a tactic meant to advance a different goal, is to enable the perpetrators, Stanton said.

Raphael Lemkin, top row on the right, with some of the first state representatives to sign the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA)

Often, genocide goes unrecognized. In the opening slide of Stanton’s lecture three perplexed diplomats, clutching attaché cases that label them as representing the EU, the US and the UN, look around at a patch of desert, Darfur, that is stained with the bodies of the dead.  “Well…” says one; “Genocide, genocide…” says another; “Difficult question…” says the third.

Over the years Stanton realized that all genocides follow eight stages. They are, in this order: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial.

Iran, he said, had classified and symbolized Israel through exclusionary ideology and hate speech; dehumanized it – “overcoming the normal human revulsion against murder” — by portraying the potential victims as a “cancer” in need of eradication; organized fanatical militias (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps); polarized the society by repressing dissent and arresting moderates;  prepared for the killing by denying a past genocide and by constructing weapons of mass destruction; and, through global terrorism, even begun the seventh of his eight stages: extermination.

Churches, like this one in Rwanda, could have been safe havens for the Tutsi people who sought shelter, but in the weeks leading up to the genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed, the international peacekeepers were withdrawn (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/ CC-BY)

In the past century alone there have been 55 genocides, leaving 70 million people dead, Stanton said. The Armenians, the Jews and the Tutsi of Rwanda were the rare examples of one group’s campaign to destroy another group in its entirety, he said; more often, the case is that one group seeks to partially eradicate another– perhaps the educated classes or those living in a certain geographic region. For instance, in 1971, Pakistani forces killed somewhere between 300,000 and three million Bangladeshis. They did not seek to annihilate all Hindus in what was then known as East Pakistan, but the crime, Stanton said, must be considered a genocide.

The call to service

Stanton, a small-town Illinois native and the son of a Presbyterian pastor, realized he had to devote his life to the prevention of genocide in 1981, while sitting in the office of a Yale psychiatrist.

A graduate of the Harvard Divinity School with a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, he was in his second year at Yale Law School, recently back from a year in Cambodia, where he had worked for the Church World Service, bringing relief to the victims of the Khmer Rouge. He and his wife had adopted a daughter there and he should have been happy, he said, but instead he had slipped into a deep depression. His wife insisted he see a psychiatrist, who asked what was bothering him. He told of the mass graves and the survivor testimonies and the little corpse in the tattered Mickey Mouse t-shirt.

The doctor told him that if he weren’t depressed there would be something wrong with him. The doctor added that he, like many others who have studied depression, feel it is a form of repressed anger. “Then he looked at me and said: ‘What are you angry about?’” Stanton recalled.

Stanton’s response: the fact that the Khmer Rouge had organized and perpetrated the killing of 1.7 million Cambodians and still remained in power.

From that moment on the prevention of genocide became his life’s work. He founded the Cambodia Genocide Project and spent decades pushing for the indictment of those responsible. He helped establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and was awarded the American Foreign Service Association’s W. Averell Harriman Award for “intellectual courage and creative accomplishment.”

Nonetheless, in the late nineties, he was fired from the State Department. His supervisor, frustrated with his efforts to document what he called “the appalling cowardice” of the Department in April 1994 — when it voted to withdraw all UNAMIR peacekeepers in Rwanda in the face of a mounting genocide — wrote the type of evaluation that she knew would eventually terminate his career. “Greg apparently does not understand that the State Department is a hierarchal organization,” he quoted, with obvious pleasure, during the lecture.

Before leaving the State Department, he wrote the two-page paper that is at the heart of his presentation and work.

Since then, Stanton, a descendant of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Henry Brewster Stanton – a founder of the woman’s liberation movement and an abolitionist – has founded the International Campaign to End Genocide.  It rests on two fundamental principles: that genocide is “unlike a hurricane” and therefore predictable, and that the phenomenon has become wretchedly common.

“It’s like slavery,” he said, “a giant elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring.”

Mitch Ginsburg

Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/genocides-unlike-hurricanes-are-predictable-says-world-expert-and-iran-is-following-the-pattern/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Bachmann-Clinton Showdown over Blind Sheikh

by Matthew Vadum


In a dramatic confrontation with a conservative lawmaker on Capitol Hill yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flatly denied that the Obama administration is planning to send the 1993 World Trade Center bomber back to Egypt.

The face-off between Clinton and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) came after The Blaze news website started a firestorm Monday by reporting that a source close to the Obama administration said the Department of State was contemplating returning the “Blind Sheikh,” convicted terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his homeland “for humanitarian and health reasons.” The embattled Obama administration is currently in full-time damage control mode as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses.

As FrontPage Magazine exclusively reported earlier this week, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist group, Jamaa Islamiya, helped to foment last week’s deadly violence against U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya.

During a bipartisan closed-door briefing for House members on developments in the Middle East, Clinton was questioned pointedly by Bachmann, who asked if the administration intends to repatriate Abdel-Rahman, a highly placed congressional source told this writer.

Frustrated after the Department of State refused for days to confirm or deny reports about a possible transfer of the Blind Sheikh to Egyptian custody, Bachmann wanted to get Clinton on the record on the issue in front of House members. In an environment described by the source as “tense,” the lawmaker asked Clinton if anyone in any department or agency in the federal government was negotiating, corresponding, or in any way moving forward with plans to expel the terrorist from the United States.

“No,” was Clinton’s terse reply.

Later the same day Clinton gave another classified briefing to members of the Senate. Senators complained that Clinton stonewalled their requests for new information about the attack last week on the U.S. consulate in Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans including the U.S. ambassador.
“That was the most useless, worthless briefing that I have attended in a long time,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “Believe me, there is more written in every major and minor publication in America about what happened.”

Despite Clinton’s denial, evidence continues to mount that the Obama administration is seriously considering handing over the ailing 74-year-old Blind Sheikh to the Egyptian government. Diabetic since childhood, Abdel-Rahman was formerly a guest of the federal Supermax prison in Colorado. Today he resides in the medical wing of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina.

More proof of secret State Department negotiations came yesterday in the pages of the New York Post. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and an unnamed Obama administration source confirmed that the government is considering sending the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing back to Egypt where he is now a revered figure for attacking the U.S.

King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers.

Releasing “Abdel-Rahman or any terrorist who plots to kill innocent Americans would be seen for what it is — a sign of weakness and lack of resolve by the United States and its President,” King wrote.

“While considerations regarding the blind sheikh’s release would be disturbing in any context, they are particularly alarming given recent events. The 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks was marked by the assassination of America’s ambassador to Libya and an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. The violence in Egypt has been attributed, in part, to that government’s demands for the blind sheikh’s release.”

The letter was signed by other House leaders including Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), and Armed Services Committee chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.).

The new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, considers Abdel-Rahman to be a U.S. political prisoner, and has asked the Obama administration to release him. The Arabic language newspaper al-Arabiya reported more than six months ago that the Obama administration offered to send Abdel-Rahman to Egypt as part of a prisoner swap. Called the “Emir of Jihad” by some, Abdel-Rahman is a spiritual leader to al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups.

Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution team that put Abdel-Rahman behind bars, is worried about the Obama administration’s intentions. “There’s no way to believe anything they say,” he said. “I believe there may already be a nod-and-wink agreement in place.”

On September 10, the day before terrorists assaulted the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist organization demanded the release of the Blind Sheikh and all detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His group, Jamaa Islamiya (also known as al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or, in English, Islamic Group), works closely with al Qaeda, the group that ultimately succeeded in incinerating New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. At least two of the other groups that demanded Abdel-Rahman’s release — Islamic Jihad and the Sunni Group— also have al Qaeda ties.
 
 Matthew Vadum  
 
Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/bachmann-clinton-showdown-over-blind-sheikh/  

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Sexual Pathology of the Libyan Attackers

by Mark Tapson

Soon after the terrorist attack that left four Americans dead in Libya, reports began coming in that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was not only murdered by the Muslim mob, but also sodomized both before and after his death, and his corpse dragged through the streets. This grotesque defilement was willfully suppressed by the mainstream media, who were focused like a laser on a much more horrific story: presidential candidate Mitt Romney talking like a conservative at a fundraiser. Thank goodness that in these difficult times we can count on the media to cover the news we really need to know.

As FrontPage Shillman Journalism Fellow Raymond Ibrahim writes,

Sexual abuse and degradation is a common tactic used against non-Muslims, especially women, as the repeatedly raped Lara Logan found… Nor are men immune from such rapes. In fact, the photos of Ambassador Stevens—stripped of clothes, bloodied and tortured right before he was killed—very much resemble the photos of Gaddafi right before he was killed. One U.S.-supported “freedom-fighter,” for example, can be seen sodomizing Gadaffi with a rod as others dragged him along.

Ibrahim finishes by noting that “the al-Qaeda affiliated men who sexually abused and killed Gaddafi are the same men who sexually abused and killed America’s ambassador.”

This revelation about the sexual denigration of the reportedly gay Ambassador Stevens raises several questions. First, when are so-called liberals going to shed the rose-tinted goggles of multiculturalism and get in touch with a righteous anger about a pathologically anti-gay, ragingly misogynist, mob culture that sexually violates and murders innocents?

When are American progressives, who whine about a mythical Republican War on Women, going to denounce this perverse sexual pathology in Arab culture? When are leftist academics, up in arms about the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogations of hardened terrorists, going to vent their fury against a culture that routinely commits sexual torture and mutilation?

Gay rights supporters work themselves into a lather over the Chick-Fil-A restaurant chain, which discriminates against neither gay employees nor gay customers. I suppose they’re unaware that most Arab and African nations walked out of an historic UN Human Rights Council debate on gay rights earlier this year, refusing to legitimize homosexuality. When are the “liberals” going to break their monastic silence about a theocratic culture that hangs gays from cranes, as in Iran, where President Ahmadinejad famously claimed they don’t have the problem of homosexuality there?

Obviously these are all rhetorical questions designed to underscore the left’s disgusting hypocrisy, because the answer to all of them is never. Breaking free of the mental bondage of multiculturalist indoctrination would cause the entire world view of leftists to come crashing down. They must cling to their delusion or risk a complete psychological meltdown.

Another question: If suspicions of Ambassador Stevens’ homosexuality are true, why did the administration send a gay man to an unstable hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism? Did it not realize that the possible discovery of his sexual orientation could have ramped up the danger for Stevens? Kevin Dujan at Hillbuzz reports that a Serbian consulate employee named Dino

told me it was no secret that Chris Stevens was gay and that “it was stupid to send him to Libya as the ambassador when he was a known homosexual.”
Dino explained in great detail that the brutal sodomizing of Stevens’ corpse was something that Muslims do to show the “utmost disrespect to the body” and that this is “a great insult in Islam” reserved for homosexuals. ”It is like making him a woman in death and he will be a woman now after life,” the Serbian explained to me.

Women should find it pretty offensive that this process of degrading a corpse through rape is considered “making him a woman in death” and “a woman after life.” Why aren’t feminists taking to the streets to condemn this misogynist barbarism? Oh, I forgot – they’re busy picketing Washington for free birth control, costumed as vaginas.

The American left, forever screaming about gay marriage, demanding free birth control, and spewing hate at conservative Christians whom they disparage as the “American Taliban,” is shamefully silent about real evil in the world, about the most intolerant ideology on the planet and one that stands in stark contrast to the tolerance they claim to revere.

A final question: President Obama proudly announced, almost three and a half years into his tenure, that he had “evolved” far enough to support gay marriage; when can we expect him to “evolve” enough to express outrage – not just a composed, rote condemnation of violence – at a culture that condemns homosexuals to a grisly death?

Some might argue that, to avoid igniting the Middle East tinderbox, the President should stay calm and not inflame matters more. Screw that. Islamic fundamentalists have dragged an American ambassador’s mutilated body through the streets, killed three more Americans, and stormed our embassies in other countries as well. It’s long past time for the President of the United States of America to present a righteous fury to the Islamic enemy, show them not one whit of deference or appeasement, and move to protect American interests and avenge American murders.

But that won’t happen, because we have a President whose sympathies lie with the Muslim fundamentalists seeking to tear down America and the West. Because of that he will excuse their torture and killing of homosexuals, their insanely hateful oppression of women, their violent disrespect toward our embassies, and their murder of Americans. We have a President who is busy yukking it up with David Letterman, partying with former drug dealer Jay-Z at a fundraiser, and basking in the adoration of the hosts on The View to give a damn about American lives or American interests.

Mark Tapson

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/the-sexual-pathology-of-the-libyan-attackers/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Framed Filmmaker in Hiding to Escape Muslim Head Hunters

by Michael Volpe

Filmmaker and FrontPage Magazine contributor Eric Allen Bell remains in hiding, a bounty now placed on his head, after he was falsely linked to the Internet film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” which ridiculed Islam and Mohammed and has served as a pretext for unhinged Muslim violence around the world.

Bell, who recounted his terrible ordeal recently at FrontPage, spoke with us from an undisclosed location and said that he won’t be intimidated.

“If they’re trying to scare me, it won’t work. I’m more convinced than ever that the religion of peace is anything but peaceful,” said Bell.

Bell stipulated again that he had nothing to do with any of the production of “The Innocence of Muslims,” whose actual filmmaker has been questioned by authorities and has also gone into hiding.
“I didn’t make the film. If I made something that mocks the prophet I would stand behind it.”
Nonetheless, Bell has received countless graphic death threats, particularly via Facebook (from accounts that still remain in operation), as well as threats of rape to his family. One Facebook user, Zahid Fazil, said:

“eric u dont knw wht u have done we will destroy u & ur country for this aftr tht u wll regret we wll destry ur famly & fuck thm also israel u mother fuker”

Another said: “Dog i wll kill u fuck u daugther idoit”

More can be read here.

Bell has been writing articles critical of Islam since January 2012. He said that he’s written articles critical of, among other things, the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in America. This has put him in the crosshairs.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies,” said Bell.

Bell said that starting last Wednesday, he began to receive death threats. The threats gained momentum on Thursday, and on Friday, they got even more serious. Bell was advised to relocate to a safe house and he notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the threats.

The threats came, said Bell, following a series of blog posts on the website The America Muslim. The writer, Sheila Musaji, denied any involvement in linking Bell to the film.

Despite her denial, Bell said that shortly after the posts appeared he received a number of threatening messages on his Facebook page.

“Simultaneously, someone created a collage on Facebook,” linking him and others to the film, said Bell. Bell said that he repeatedly complained to Facebook about the threats but received no response. Instead, he said that following another story about him in the British newspaper the Guardian, his own access to his Facebook page was denied.

Bell said that these threats are an assault on his own First Amendment rights.

“This is a First Amendment issue, whether you agree with me or not,” continuing, “Where is Hollywood on this?”

Bell pointed out that the movie “The People Versus Larry Flynt” dealt with the free speech rights of the notorious pornographer, Larry Flynt.

“If they believe in free speech for a pornographer, why not me?” said Bell.


Michael Volpe

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/framed-filmmaker-in-hiding-to-escape-muslim-head-hunters/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

BBC Backs Down; Threats of Physical Violence

by Soeren Kern

Islam is "a legitimate subject of historical inquiry. I think there's a degree to which Muslims, far more than Christians, have felt that the foundation myths of their religion are somehow historical fact, and it seems to me that they're clearly not." Tom Holland, author, Islam: The Untold Story, cancelled by BBC, after threats.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has cancelled the screening of a controversial documentary about the history of Islam after the presenter was threatened with physical violence.

The private screening was to take place, followed by a debate, at the BBC's headquarters in London on September 13 before an audience of historians and opinion shapers.

"Islam: The Untold Story" is a documentary by historian Tom Holland, a well-known British author, who examines the origins of Islam and argues that there is little written historical evidence to verify claims about the Muslim prophet Mohammed and the origins of Islam.

In the documentary, the Cambridge-educated historian offers a critical examination of the traditional Islamic narrative that the Muslim holy book, The Koran, was transmitted directly and "fully formed" to Mohammed in the seventh century, through the angel Gabriel.

Holland says that contrary to Muslim claims, it is far more probable that the Koran and Islamic theology developed gradually over many centuries in conjunction with the expansion of Arab empires. He also says there are many "black holes" in the historical record, and suggests that Islam is essentially a "made-up" religion. "I had expected to find contemporaneous Muslim evidence," Holland says, "but there's nothing there."

Holland also questions in the film the centrality of Mecca in the origins of Islam: "Aside from a single ambiguous mention in the Koran itself, there is no mention of [the Muslim holy city of] Mecca, not one, in any datable text for over a hundred years after Muhammad's death."

The documentary, which was previously aired on the BBC's Channel 4 on August 28, generated more than 1,000 complaints by Muslims, who accuse Holland of distorting the history of Islam.
The London-based Islamic Education and Research Academy published two papers (here and here) denouncing the program. The Academy accuses Holland of "recklessness," of making "baseless assumptions" and of engaging in "selective scholarship."

The British telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, after it received more than 100 complaints that the documentary is biased and offensive to Muslims, says it may launch an investigation.

Holland insists that Islam is "a legitimate subject of historical inquiry." The documentary follows on the heels of a growing number of scholarly and popular books (here, here, here, here, here, here and here) that challenge some of the most fundamental assumptions about the origin of Islam.

In an interview about the origins of Islam with the London-based The Spectator, Holland states: "I think there's a degree to which Muslims, far more than Christians, have felt that the foundation myths of their religion are somehow historical fact, and it seems to me that they're clearly not. There must be a bedrock of fact, but it is more 'sacred history' than it is history...." Holland also says: "There's a sense in which I think as Islam evolves and as, let's say, Muslims start to realize that they are in competition with Jews and Christians, they need to have their Prophet have a revelation from an angel...."

Holland's documentary has earned him an online flood of abusive messages. According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, one message reads: "You might be a target in the streets. You may recruit some bodyguards, for your own safety."

A spokesperson for Channel 4 said: "Having taken security advice, we have reluctantly canceled a planned screening of the program Islam: The Untold Story."

The dust-up follows a similar controversy over a new BBC comedy series called Citizen Khan, which confronts issues faced by a modern Muslim family.

The six-part series, which aired for the first time on BBC1 in August, was created by British Muslim Adil Ray, who also plays the lead role.

After its first episode, the BBC received more than 600 complaints from Muslims who claim the program is guilty of "stereotypes about Asians" and is "disrespectful to the Koran." Some of the angry reactions have been compiled here.

Muslims were particularly angered by a scene where an actress who plays Khan's glamorous daughter rushes to put on a hijab and pretends to be reading the Koran when her father comes home.

According to the Union of Muslim Organizations of UK and Ireland, a London-based Muslim umbrella organization, "a large proportion of Muslims will be un-amused by the negative stereotypes because it leads to misrepresentation." British Muslims are not, apparently, allowed to laugh at themselves. 

Soeren Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3352/bbc-islam-untold-story

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Where Are the Muslim Protests for... ?

by Khaled Abu Toameh

They are driven by their blind hatred for the US and all non-Muslims.

Muslims who are outraged by an amateur film produced by an Egyptian Christian do not seem to be equally offended when many crimes are committed in the name of Islam.

There are only three reasons why Muslims could be speaking out against the terrorists. First, fear of retaliation. Second, indifference to what is happening. Third, identification with the goals of the terrorists.

For these radical Muslims who are rioting in Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum and Sydney, the film was just an excuse to vent their anger and hatred toward the US, Israel and the entire Western world and civilization.

What has been happening in most of the Arab and Islamic countries in the past few days is more about hating the US and Israel than defending Islam and Prophet Mohamed.

The violent protests should serve as a reminder that radical Islam, which has been hugely boosted by the "Arab Spring," remains a strategic threat to all those who believe in freedom, democracy and equality.

The anti-US protests were just another episode in the war that radical Islam has declared on the West. The US is hated mostly because of its support for Arab dictatorships as well as its support for Israel. The extremists also hate the US because they see it as an obstacle to their efforts to conquer the world and establish an Islamic caliphate.

Instead of staging demonstrations against Muslim extremists who kill innocent civilians every day, Muslims are directing all their anger against a poorly produced trashy film instead of protesting against terrorists who have hijacked Islam, committing some of the most heinous crimes.

Shouldn't Muslims be more worried about all the jihadi groups that have sprung up in the Arab and Islamic countries in recent years and whose members are imposing a reign of terror and intimidation on moderate and peaceful Muslims?

When was the last time Muslims took to the streets to protest against suicide bombings that have killed thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan?

When did Muslims ever stage demonstrations to protest against Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 civilians were killed in the name of Islam? Perhaps because many Muslims do not believe that Muslims carried out 9/11, or because they believe it is alright to kill infidels.

Why aren't Muslims demonstrating in the streets of Cairo and Benghazi over the daily massacres that are being perpetrated in Syria by Muslim jihadis and the regime?

What happened to those Western-educated liberal Muslims who reportedly triggered the "Arab Spring" protests in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt? How come they haven't taken to the streets to demand an end to the violence and crimes that are being perpetrated every day in the name of Islam?

What are Muslims doing to protect the rights of women in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and the Gaza Strip?

What have Muslims done to stop the phenomenon of young Syrian girls who are being sold for "pleasure marriages" to wealthy men from the Gulf?

Where are the street protests against human rights and media violations in the Arab and Islamic countries? Aren't most of these violations and abuses being committed in the name of Islam?

Most of the Muslims who have been protesting the defaming of Islam and Prophet Mohamed in the Arab and Islamic countries have most likely not even seen the film; they are driven by their blind hatred for the US and all non-Muslims.

Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3354/muslim-protests

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Stevens Video: Dancing With Corpses, Dancing in Blood

by Phyllis Chesler

I have been looking at the photos and the brief video of Ambassador Stevens and I have spoken to two different Arabists, who assure me that the mob dragging Steven’s body are chanting a song of victory over one’s enemies and are praising God for it.

In my day, when we spoke about “two cultures,” we were talking about the unfortunate divide between the hard sciences and the humanities.

Today the phrase “two cultures” means something entirely different.

Here is one among thousands of similar examples. The lead editorial in the New York Times on 9/20/12 was titled: “The United States and the Muslim World” and sub-titled “Despite the attacks, Americans must remain engaged with struggling Arab democracies.”

The editorial goes on to praise President Obama and to condemn “Mitt Romney and the Republicans who have leveled preposterous charges that Mr. Obama has been weak and apologetic.” The editorial believes that Libyans tried to save Ambassador Stevens.

Let’s compare this editorial with an article in the Wall Street Journal which appeared on the exact same day and is titled “U.S.A. Names al- Qaeda in Attack” and is sub-titled “Protests Rage on in Pakistan; Counterterrorism Chief Publicly Links Terror Network to Libya Assault.”

The article says that “U.S. intelligence officials are investigating indications that al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate is connected with militants involved in the attack…intelligence agencies had issued reports about the growing unrest in the area in recent months.” The article goes on to question whether American Embassies are adequately protected.

Things have gone way beyond two cultures. Now, we are talking about two different worlds, perhaps parallel or alternate universes.

It is already 9/20, a full ten days after the Muslim mob tortured and murdered the American Ambassador and three other American personnel in Libya; and still, the loyal and avid NYT’s reader is being told that it was an “anti-Islam video that set off attacks against American embassies and violent protests in the Muslim world.”

That is not true. Here’s what’s happening.

America is now experiencing what Israel has had to live with, unaided, disbelieved, for decades.
Remember the ghoulish lynching of the two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000? And how the Palestinians danced for joy in the streets on 9/11? In 2012, the Arab Street, the Islamist Muslim Street, is again dancing in blood, dancing with corpses.

People have cautioned me not to write about mob mass rape without proper sources. They are right. But today, what constitutes a credible source? Would one turn to the New York Times (or Huffington Post or NPR) or to The Wall Street Journal, National Review, or the Weekly Standard?
What constitutes irrefutable proof—the kind accepted by all?

Remember the Mumbai massacre? Islamist terrorists forced hotel guests to strip naked to humiliate them before they killed them. Remember the Chabad Rabbi and his very pregnant wife in Mumbai? They were both tortured in full sight of each other and their genitals were mutilated.

I know of many instances of Islamist Muslim mobs on a rampage. They have attacked civilians, including women and children, with axes, swords, knives, whips, chains, and rocks and they hacked, stabbed, lashed, and stoned their victims to death. The mob also be-headed their victims and sexually mutilated them, both while they were still alive and after death. They have also been known to gang-rape and gang-grope their victims.

As yet, we have no autopsy reports about our American dead in Libya, nor do we have any eyewitness accounts of the possible sodomizing of Ambassador Stevens.

However, I have been looking at the photos and the brief video of Ambassador Stevens and I have spoken to two different Arabists.

The Arabists both assure me that the mob dragging and photographing Ambassador Steven’s body are chanting a song of victory over one’s enemies and are praising God for that victory.
The photos and video show a mob of men photographing a half-naked, facially battered man as they drag him through the streets. They do not look like Good Samaritans who are rushing him to the hospital for treatment. Ambassador Stevens looks quite dead.

According to one of my Arabists, the Arab language media reported that Ambassador Stevens had been gang-raped before he was mob-murdered. He sent me a link to an Arab media venue. (And no, I am not referring to the Lebanese source which recanted this information).

Thousands of years ago, the first Jewish King, Saul, choose to fall on his sword rather than be captured alive by his enemies, the “Plishtim.” They be-headed his corpse and hung his body (and head) on the city wall of Bet Shean for all to see. Valiant soldiers from Jabesh-Gilead risked death in order to retrieve his corpse which they then burned—after which they buried King Saul’s bones under a tamarisk tree and mourned for him for seven days.

One commentator says that although cremation was and is not a Jewish custom, nevertheless, “the (decomposed) flesh had to be burnt as it was considered an affront to the dead to bury them in that state.” Another source suggests that Kings and their possessions were to be burned.

In my view, the valiant men of Jabesh-Gilead burned his corpse because they did not want the Plishtim to dig it up and display it again or to mutilate King Saul’s corpse any further.

Nothing has changed in the region. Barbarism still reigns. Israel is an island under siege.

Israel is also America’s only stable and militarily ready ally in the Middle East. I am so angry by how President Obama has treated Israel that in the midst of the anti-American uprisings, I clenched my fists and thought the unthinkable: “When the time comes, Israel should not help America. No landing rights, no refueling, no intelligence.

And then I paused and thought: “No. The price for Israel’s help has just gone way up.”

Prof. Phyllis Chesler is the author of fifteen books, including Women and Madness (Doubleday, 1972), The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and most recently, The New Anti-Semitism. She is the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12208#.UF4IHFHD7_g

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A Muhammad Cartoon a Day

by  Daniel Pipes


When Salman Rushdie mocked Islamic sanctities in 1989 in his magical realist novel The Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini did something shockingly original: He pronounced a death edict on Rushdie and all those connected to the production of his book. By doing this, Khomeini sought to impose Islamic mores and laws on the West; we don't insult the prophet, he effectively said, and neither can you.

That started a trend of condemning those in the West deemed anti-Islamic that persists to this day. again and again, when Westerners are perceived as denigrating Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam, Islamists demonstrate, riot and kill.

Khomeini's edict also had the unexpected side effect of empowering individuals – Western and Islamist alike – to drive their countries' policies.

On the Western side, Fleming Rose, a newspaper editor, created the greatest crisis for Denmark since World War II by publishing twelve Muhammad cartoons. Florida pastor Terry Jones caused panic for American commanders in Afghanistan by threatening to burn a Koran. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and friends prompted a crisis in U.S. relations with Egypt with an amateurish video, Innocence of Muslims. By publishing vulgar pictures of Muhammad, French weekly Charlie Hebdo is causing the French government temporarily to shut down diplomatic missions in twenty countries. Plans by the German satirical magazine Titanic to publish attacks on Muhammad have likewise caused German missions to be closed.

On the Islamist side, an individual or group took one of these perceived offenses and turned it into a reason to riot. Khomeini did this with The Satanic Verses and Ahmad Abu Laban did likewise with the Danish cartoons. Hamid Karzai goaded Afghans to riot over burned Korans by American soldiers and Egyptian preacher Khaled Abdullah turned Innocence of Muslims into an international event.
In brief, any Westerner can buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the democratized Western / Muslim divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other and confrontations occur with increasing frequency..

Kurt Westergaard's 2005 image of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

Which prompts this question: What would happen if publishers and managers of major media reached a consensus, "Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoon every day until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot"? What would happen if instances of Koran burning happened recurrently? Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause?

I predict the latter, that a Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, will make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Were that the case, Westerners could once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values.

So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: display the Muhammad cartoon daily until the Islamists get used to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/11965/a-muhammad-cartoon-a-day

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Mordechai Kedar: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Thus Passes the Glory of the World

by Mordechai Kedar

Photo credit: Hubert J. The sculpture stands in the Old Powazki Cemetery, Warsaw, Poland

Read the article in the original עברית
Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)
Read the article in français (translated by Danilette)

In the past, the United States was the "glory of the world", mainly after it came to the aid of Europe in the Second World War, the victory over Germany and Japan in 1945, and the American success in establishing a democratic state in South Korea (1953) following the war against the communists, who were allied with China and the USSR. However, the glory of the United States has faded during the last generation. Historians point to Vietnam as the beginning of the process of decline; the war lasted 16 years (1959-1975), cost the lives of almost 60,000 American soldiers and ended in a disastrous American rout and Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, falling to the Vietcong, the militia of communist North Vietnam.

The Vietnam War left parts of American society with a lack of will to fight for the values of freedom and democracy, especially if it's a question of fighting in countries outside of the United States. The U.S. army took part in several wars since 1975, but in the Middle East its performances were not always satisfactory. As a result of this, the military strength of the United States does not make much of an impression in the Arab and Islamic world, and even back in September of 1970 the terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine did not hesitate to hijack American and British jets to Jordan and blow them up for all the world to see.

In 1973 the American ambassador, his deputy and the deputy ambassador of Belgium were kidnapped in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan by the Palestinian organization "Black September", and were executed on the personally telephoned orders of Yasir Arafat. Despite the fact that the Americans recorded the discussion and knew all of the details in real-time, the humiliation by the terrorist silenced them and Arafat subsequently became (with the help of a few bleeding-heart Israelis who were taken in by his charisma and his lies) a "darling of the peace groupies". He mocked the Americans, fooled them without blinking an eye, and they believed him. The Iranian audacity towards the United States knows no bounds: In October 2011, Iran attempted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, no less than the capital of the United States. The Iranians have no problem calling the United States "the Great Satan", which has only one meaning: that holy war must be waged against the United States - a jihad for the sake of Allah, which will only end with the destruction of the government of the United States and the conversion of its citizens to Shi'ite Islam.

 In April 1983 Hizb'Allah - the long arm of Iran in Lebanon - blew up the embassy of the United States, in another breach of its sovereignty, and killed 63 people, and in October of that same year demolished Marine headquarters in Beirut killing 241 American soldiers and citizens. The American reaction was to flee from Lebanon, which very much encouraged Hizb'Allah and its patrons in Iran and Syria, and caused the United States to appear as a country without a backbone. A month before this, in March of 1983, Hizb'Allah attacked the United States embassy in Kuwait, and in June, 1985 Hizb'Allah organized the hijacking of an American passenger jet of TWA. In June, 1996 Hizb'Allah carried out an attack on an American military base in Saudi Arabia, and all of these attacks carried out by Shi'ite Hizb'Allah with Iranian inspiration were left unanswered by the Americans.

Qadhaffi's Libya also contributed its part in aggression against the U.S., with the attack on the disco in Berlin where a number of American soldiers were killed as they were enjoying a night out in 1986. The aggression was answered with an attack on Qadhaffi's palace, and although his adopted daughter was killed, he did not stand down: In 1988 he organized a revenge attack on a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing almost 300 people. What was his punishment? Nothing, until 2011, when the United States was dragged into attacking Libya, almost reluctantly.

On the Sunni side of the Islamic equation, they saw the American weakness toward Iran and Hizb'Allah, and also  decided to increase the pressure on the United States: in August, 1990, Saddam Hussein disregarded the warnings of the United States and invaded Kuwait, one of the West's main suppliers of oil, claiming that Kuwait is a province of Iraq. In this case, the West became outraged, and led by the U.S., in January, 1991, entered a war that successfully liberated Kuwait, but did not liberate Iraq and the world from Saddam Hussein. This war caused the detractors of the U.S. to draw two conclusions: One is that the West goes out to war not for idealism but rather for interests, and in the case of Kuwait, oil was the causative factor. The second conclusion is that the West is afraid of causing regime change, no matter how bad the regime may be, because of the fear that the successor will be even worse. However, in this war there was an additional American failure: there were Americans, perhaps CIA operatives, who hinted to the Shi'ites in Southern Iraq that if they rebel against Saddam, the United States will support them and overthrow him. In March 1991 the Shi'ite rebellion against Saddam (who had been  vanquished in Kuwait) began, but he put down the rebellion with great cruelty, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Shi'ites, and the United States did not lift a finger. The effect of the American betrayal of the Shi'ites of Iraq at that time continues until today to influence the way the Shi'ites in Iraq relate to the United States.

In October 1993 an American commando force entering the city by helicopter, tried to capture two terrorists in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The helicopter was shot down by the Somalis, who then killed 18 American soldiers and defiled their bodies.  All of this was recorded on camera without fear of enraging the Americans.

Bin Laden, after his mujahedin succeeded in throwing out the Soviets from Afghanistan and accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union, decided to turn the American weapons against the United States, "the world leader of heresy, permissiveness and materialistic culture" according to bin Laden's description of the U.S.. In December 1992 jihadists attacked hotels near the port of Aden where soldiers of the United States were housed. In February 1993 the first attempt to collapse the twin towers was carried out in New York. In August 1998 the United States embassies in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and Dar as-Salam the capital of Tanzania, were blown up, killing 224 and leaving thousands of wounded.  In 2000 al-Qaeda attacked the frigate USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 soldiers. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda organized a series of attacks in the United States on symbols of commerce and government, which caused about 3000 fatalities.

In the aura of  the beginning years of the 2000's in which the United States was perceived as vulnerable despite its great strength, Islamist terrorists did not hesitate to slaughter American citizens and soldiers on camera, for example Daniel Pearl in 2002; Nick Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley in 2004.

As a result of the attacks of September 11, 2001 the United States entered into an all-out war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which sponsored the organization. A blitz war brought about the collapse of the regime and the dismantling of hundreds of al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. The coalition led by the United States achieved total control of the entire area of Afghanistan within months, but today - after more than eleven years of  Sisyphean fighting, and at the cost of much blood and treasure - the soldiers of the United States and their allies control only about 5 percent of the area of the state. It seems that Afghanistan is about to become the second Vietnam.

Later, an international coalition led by the United States conquered Iraq in 2003, but since then, organizations who adopted the ideology of al-Qaeda, challenged the stability that the United States tried to create in Iraq, by carrying out hundreds of attacks that killed thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens. Iran, its eastern neighbor, also entered into the Iraqi turmoil, training, arming and financing Shi'ites who remembered well the American betrayal of March 1991, and between the years 2003 and 2008, caused many American fatalities. American intelligence had innumerable proofs of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, but the United States never ventured to even the account with Iran for this, because of the fear that it would have to open a new front, in addition to those of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Indeed, the greatest American failure to date is Iraq: the president of the United States, George W. Bush, announced on May 1, 2003 - five weeks after the war in Iraq broke out - "Mission Accomplished". The number of American fatalities was then about 170. After another five years had passed, four thousand five hundred Americans had fallen by the time the war was indeed more or less over, and the Iraqi political system that the Americans created is unstable and fragile. Over all, American taxpayers poured into Iraq more than a trillion (a thousand billion) dollars. President Obama, as he promised, withdrew the United States soldiers from Iraq in December 2011, and as a result of the American flight, Iraq today is effectively controlled by Iran: Despite the international ban on Iran to export weapons, and on Syria to import them, Iran supplies the murderous regime in Syria with weapons, ammunition and fighters who are air-lifted over the skies of Iraq. The Americans know this and don't do a thing.

Another American failure, no less important than the failure in Iraq, is the failure to stop the military nuclear program of Iran. We only need remember the Soviet missile crisis in Cuba (1962) to see the difference between then and now: Then, the determination shown by John F. Kennedy, president of the United States, caused the Soviets to fold up within two weeks, while today, the softness that the world presents - led by the United States - vis à vis Iran, has enabled the state of the Ayatollahs to progress in their military nuclear program for more than 15 years.

In the past, Iran has conducted exercises where missiles were shot from submarines, and with the use of these missiles equipped with a nuclear warhead under the waters of the ocean it will be able to dictate to the whole world the conditions of its surrender. The world condemns, denounces, warns and threatens, but all of these threats are just empty talk, as long as there is not a credible threat behind it. Economic sanctions are not effective when dealing with fateful questions of dictatorial regimes, because they know how to shift the painful effect of the sanctions onto the citizens, thus the ruling elite remains untouched. Nevertheless, the United States under Obama is afraid of drawing red lines for the regime of the Ayatollahs, who are hurtling ahead towards acquisition of the bomb, which may be able to reach as far as New York, not just Tel Aviv.

Thus, in a continual process of declining strength, the United Stated has become a paper tiger in dealing with the Arab and Islamic world. The Islamic bandits draw strength from American weakness, and it is precisely Obama's attempts to engage the Islamists, beginning with the Cairo speech (June 2009), that increases the Islamists' demands from him. Obama also took the opportunity to openly reveal his political ineptitude: On the same day that he was Mubarak's guest of honor, he met in Cairo with the bitterest rivals of the president of Egypt, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and this was no less than a knife in the back of his host. Insulted and hurt, Mubarak did not attend Obama's speech, offering the weak excuse that his grandson had died a short time before.

On this background of American weakness are additional facts, which the people of the Middle East see well: North Korea does as it pleases with its nuclear plans and missiles, despite Western and Japanese objections. In the past the United States acceded to the nuclearization of India and Pakistan, and even forgave the head of the Pakistani nuclear program, Abdul Qader Khan, for establishing a black market for nuclear instrumentation, materials and knowledge, and distributing his wares to the highest bidder. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, its nuclear scientists searched for a livelihood in other countries, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Pact became an almost worthless piece of paper, mainly because the United States under Clinton "fell asleep on guard duty" for the years of the 90's.
The murder of the American ambassador in Libya this month was only another link in the chain of American failure to understand the Middle East: ironically, the ambassador who was the liaison between the American government and the rebels against Qadhaffi was the target of the automatic fire of the Libyan Islamists who dragged his body through the streets of Benaghazi.

And here comes the ridiculous film, produced in the United States, that no one with minimal  taste would continue to watch after the first minute. In the United States, freedom of creativity, freedom of speech and freedom of expression are protected by law, and these freedoms are considered of utmost value in the eyes of most Americans. These freedoms afford the creators of films the full right to create and say in them whatever they want (short of libel), including criticism of historical figures and religious ideas. Despite this, the authorities of the United States quickly arrested the creator of the film, only because of the current storm and turbulence in the Muslim world. The United States has again proved that it is vulnerable to extortion and  will surrender to violence if it comes from a Muslim source.

Islamic zealots sense the American weakness and increase their pressure. The Americans have adopted the culture of "political correctness" that makes them "be nice" even if the one they are dealing with is not nice at all. They enable Islamic organizations to act freely in the United States, to establish mosques almost without limitations and preach violence against the "infidel" in these places, under the right of freedom of expression, of course. People who are identified with radical Islam come and go in the White House and serve as "advisers" to the president and the secretary of state. During the past generation, the State Department has led the conciliatory and defeatist policy of the United States, which has brought the superpower of  the past to be only a paper tiger in the eyes of the Arab and Islamic world.

Since last year, by instructions from above, all American investigative authorities - CIA, FBI and others - have been  forbidden to ask people whom they are investigating questions about their faith, and all training programs for investigators have undergone censorship by an obscure committee, whose members are not known. Islam, which has an ideological platform for many of the terror activities that were carried out against Americans in the the United States, has ceased to be a matter that can be investigated or to asked about or related to in any way. Thus - for example - the terrorist event at the Fort Hood base (November 2009) in which Nidal Hasan (a Palestinian Muslim) murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded 31, has become "violence in the workplace", and the attempt of a Pakistani to set off a car bomb in Times Square in New York (May 2010) has become a "traffic accident". There are Americans who believe that the attacks of September 11 2001 were unexplained "flight accidents" in the best case, and a conspiracy of the CIA in the worst case. Accuse a Muslim of terror?  G-d forbid, because this is a collective accusation; it is not "politically correct" and the Muslims might be insulted or even become irritated.

The ignorance of the administration in the eyes of the Middle East has been proven over the past three years, when more than once, people of the government issued statements such as, "The Muslim Brotherhood is mainly a secular movement", "Iran can be persuaded by diplomatic means to stop enriching uranium", "There is no proof of the existence of a military nuclear program in Iran" and "Islam is a religion of peace". When the heads of the American government speak thus, the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sunni side of Islam, and the Iranians on the Shi'a side, know that they have nothing to worry about. The "Great Satan" has lost its teeth and its will to use its horns. Usama bin Laden is gone, but his ideology is alive and kicking in the hearts of far too many people, in the world in general and in the United States in particular. Ask Shaikh Awlaki.

The processes of erosion that American society is undergoing are clear: On the day that the United States ambassador was murdered in Libya it was mostly the news programs that dealt with it, but interspersed with these, it was business as usual: shallow reality shows, cooking programs, interviews about trivial matters, and of course, programs dealing with business and the stock market. The fact that the sovereignty of the United States had been violated in the break-in of the embassy, and the terrible murder of the United States ambassador, were not enough to shake the United States from its routine of "eat, drink and be merry".

The United States is quickly losing its will to defend its values, and in the Middle East this fact is clearly evident: The Kuwaiti parliament held a meeting on the subject a year ago: "Should Kuwait become part of Iran or not?" The discussion was based on two assumptions: One is that the day may come when Iran may try to take over Kuwait either militarily or by "persuasion", and the second is that in the situation of ideological weakness that characterizes the United States, and the economic crisis which is burdening Europe and the United States, there is no chance that the Western world will again arrive with all of its armies to rescue Kuwait from conquest, as was done in January 1991. Therefore Kuwait is today considering whether to join with Iran, in order to spare itself from the horrors of war and the suffering of occupation, and to achieve better conditions by willingly joining with Iran. Then what would happen with the Kuwaiti oil? Would the United States honor the "free will" of Kuwait to join Iran? And what would happen afterward to the other Emirates?

The conclusion that Israel must draw from all of this is clear: It's security must not depend on the ever-dissipating American determination, because some Americans who determine policy have the tendency to throw their friends - as in the case of Mubarak - under the bus. There are more than a few people in the American political community who are not at all convinced that Israel's existence serves the interests of the United States, and especially if  their support of Israel might anger the Muslims. Therefore, Israel must place before her neighbors a real, concrete and credible threat, because in the Middle East peace is given only to those who can not be vanquished, and freedom is given only to him who is ready to fight for it. The Middle East is no place for bleeding hearts, and especially those whose glory has passed and is no more. The Arab and Islamic world knows how to appreciate and honor only those who honor themselves, who know how to draw a clear red line and then be willing to battle anyone who desires to harm them, to go to battle in order to guard the freedom of their region and their global glory.

However, the malaise of the United States is not terminal: In the times of Ronald Reagan, George Bush the father and George W. Bush the son, there was in the United States a different image, because then at least, there was the will to cope with the problem-makers, not to appease them and not to surrender to them. Those were the days and those were the people. Are there any left like these? Where are they?

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Dr. Kedar is available for lectures in the U.S. and CanadaDr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav.

Links to Dr. Kedar's recent articles on this blog:

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• Christians of the Middle East - Endangered Communities
• Total Destruction
• On Academia, Politics and Survival in the Middle East
• Tribal Democracy
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• What's Next for Saudi Arabia?
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• What Drives Turkey?
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• The Syrian Crisis Spills Over into Lebanon
• The Frustrated Intellectual
• Syria, Iraq, the Gulf and the Iranian Tentacles
• The Failure of the Palestinian Venture
• Is Islam the Solution?
• Radical Islam in Africa
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• The Alternative Homeland
• The Real Thing
• The Division of Syria
• The Death Throes of the Lion
• An Old Governmental System in Formation
• Frustration and Extortion
• Thank You, Hamas
• Drums of War in the Gulf
• 2011: The Year of the Arab Winter
• And This is the Gate of Heaven
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• Who Stole My Revolution
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Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.