Refuse to choose
Sign in the crowd at the Ahmadinejad speech at Columbia:
“We refuse to choose between Islamic fundamentalism and American imperialism.”
Yep, we’ll just sit here until all of you go home. Have your war. Bomb Israel. Kill all the Jews. Execute the gays and the adulterers. Immolate the world waiting for the twelfth Imam. Go ahead. And you, U.S. warmongers, go ahead and bomb them back. Use your cruise missiles and your Stealth Bombers. Obliterate Tehran. Send in your troops and just occupy the whole frickin Middle East.
Go ahead. But we will not be a part of it. We refused to choose.
Israel, incoming!
We’ve found the WMDs … in Syria … surrounded by Iranian engineers, many of whom are now dead. Iran wasn’t kidding the other day when it said that its escalating investments in Syria were “strategic.”
Jane’s Defense Weekly said the July 26 explosion took place at the site of a joint Iranian- Syrian project to fit short-range ballistic missiles with chemical warheads. It cited Syrian defense sources as saying that fuel caught fire during a test to fit a Scud C missile with a mustard-gas warhead.
“The blast dispersed chemical agents across the storage facility and outside,” the publication quoted the sources as saying. The chemicals included VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard blister agent.
On the day of the explosion, Sana, Syria’s state news agency, said [lied, claimed, alleged, asserted?] the blast struck a military complex outside the city of Aleppo, killing at least 15 soldiers and wounding 50. The agency said the blast was caused by “the combustion of sensitive, highly explosive material caused by extremely high temperatures” at a military weapons depot.
Jane’s said that in addition to the 15 Syrian troops killed, “dozens” of Iranian weapons engineers died. It said the chemical weapons program was part of a strategic cooperation accord between Syria and Iran that was signed in November 2005.
But then, as the Left keeps telling us, Iran is not fomenting violence in Iraq and Syria does not present an immediate threat to Israel. I suppose it’s time to get Nancy Pelosi back out to Damascus in her hijab to see if she can leverage her botox smile and talk the off the ledge. Because it never hurts to talk …
[Note above that when the rogue Syrian regime announces what Janes Defense Weekly exposes as a lie –about chemical weapons, no less — the Syrian statement is “said.” But when a U.S. official announces that violence is down in Iraq, and no one offers any data to counter it, the U.S. statement is “claimed.”]
Don’t worry; be happy
Carter: Iran not yet a realistic threat to Israel
Can you be disciplined for practicing statesmanship without a license? Surely this man had his revoked years ago.
“Iran is quite distant from Israel,” said Carter, 83. “I think it would be almost inconceivable that Iran would commit suicide by launching one or two missiles of any kind against the nation of Israel.”
Surely it is not lost on him that Syria — now engaged in ruthlessly clearing out all opposition to Syrian domination of Lebanon — is an Iranian proxy, and that Hezbollah is a Syrian proxy and that Hezbollah and Lebanon are not “quite distant” from Israel, and that Hezbollah would welcome the immolation that would come from Israeli reprisal, while Iran would maintain (im)plausible deniability.
Or did he miss that the pre-emptive Israeli strike occurred on Syrian soil?
The man is a blithering idiot.
Syria knocks off another one
It ain’t easy being an anti-Syrian politician in Lebanon. Not advisable. That’s the message Syria is sending, rather emphatically:
An anti-Syrian lawmaker who had just returned to Lebanon two days ago from refuge abroad was killed today along with six other people by a bomb that rocked a Christian neighborhood of the capital, security officials said.
Antoine Ghanem is the eighth prominent anti-Syrian figure to be assassinated since 2005.
Which explains why Nancy Pelosi visited Damascus, rather than Beruit. Much safer there.
We’ll take it
Middle East: Palestinian politics a “menopause”
Heh, with the Everyready Rabbit of terror running Gaza, we’ll take any pause we can get.
Nonsense
The headline reads,
Iran ‘reaches nuclear target’
Which is, of course, nonsense. Last I checked the state of Israel had not been blown off the map.
Innocently playing with rocket launchers
The latest Israeli atrocity, killing children who were innocently playing, is sure to become a cause celbre for Israel haters everywhere. What could be more appalling than soldiers firing on chidren swinging on a swing set, right?
Meanwhile, the Israeli army admitted that three Palestinian children it killed this week in the Gaza strip were innocently playing when they died and not, as it claimed earlier, involved in firing rockets at the Jewish state.
Yahya Ramadan Ghazal, 12, Mahmud Mussa Ghazal, 10, and Sara Suleiman Ghazal, 9, who were all members of the same extended family, died after Israeli forces fired into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
But wait, something doesn’t add up here. The Israelis were firing on rocket launchers that it appeared someone was working with and about to launch. The Israelis have this unreasonable little fetish about people firing rockets into their neighborhoods:
Israel opened fire after aerial surveillance located launchers - crude, metal tripods - used to fire qassam rockets across the Gaza perimeter fence.
In the aftermath of the attack the Israeli armed forces issued a statement saying it opened fire after surveillance had identified “several suspicious looking people fiddling with the rocket launchers”.
But after an internal inquiry, the army changed its position, admitting that in this case the three children had not been servicing the weapons but simply playing nearby.
So you’ve got a people who heave deadly rockets into their neighbor’s yards every day, and leave rocket launchers set up for the sake of convenience. You have neighbors who take umbrage at this, and open fire when they see someone hunching over the ghastly little contraptions.
So Israel, the victim of countless terror attacks, investigates and apologizes when it accidentally hits children playing with terror weapons aimed at her, but the Hamas thugs in Gaza don’t show any embarrassment about leaving the launchers out for children to play with.
Welcome to the ethics of the 21st century.
Hamas is not the IRA. Duh.
There are actually people who think that useful parallels can be drawn between Hamas and the IRA. That Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Zion [with a given name like that, you’re not going to have a productive dialogue with Hamas] Evrony, actually felt he needed to address this canard is weird:
Such expectation is rooted in the assumption that when two parties with diametrically opposing views engage in a dialogue, the dynamic created changes the chemistry of the conflict, moderates the positions of both sides and makes a compromise possible. Although this theory may be valid in some cases, unfortunately it is not in the case of Hamas.
One of the main differences between Hamas and the IRA is the role played by religion in their ideologies. While most IRA members were Catholic and religion was a factor, its political platform and vision was the unification of the island of Ireland, not defined in religious terms. The religious beliefs of its members did not block the way to a political compromise.
By contrast, the ideology of Hamas is defined in absolutist religious terms, that of a radical version of Islam, which is not open to influence or change. The political vision and religious belief of Hamas are one and the same; therefore, change is unlikely.
I’ll add that Catholicism–in whatever sense it was part of the IRA–is not an ideology that glorifies death. In fact, it is one of the most forceful organized opponents of what John Paul II called “the culture of death,” formally opposing abortion, the death penalty, and most armed conflicts, and thereby ticking off just about everyone. It was very restrained of Evrony to skirt this difference, which is closer to the essence.
Hamas needs “boundaries education”
Scott Johnson at Powerline reports the following:
Kassam rockets fired on the Israeli town of Sderot have caused the deaths of several innocent civilians. In May, for example, Shirel Friedman and Oshri Oz were killed by Kassams in the space of a week. I wrote about my visit to Sderot in in “A view from the fence.” Two days after my vist to Sderot, two Israelis were wounded in another Kassam rocket attack. These rocket attacks have no object other than the murder of innocent civilians. Hamas continues to rain the rockets down on Sderot. UPI headlines its most recent story on the continuing warfare “Hamas harrasses Israel with rockets.”
Harassment? Prosecutors in Oregon have just the thing. It’s called “boundaries education,” and they are currently using it with hormonal 7th graders to contain butt slap Fridays, but it may be just what Hamas needs. Condoleeza, call your office.
Why not bomb it?
Joe Lieberman has kept his eye on the ball. While many are focused on perceptions of progress from the Surge, he’s thinking ahead. In WSJ today, he argues that we need to choke off the Damascus airport to stop the flow of suicide bombers into Iraq:
Syria is a police state, with sprawling domestic intelligence and security services. The notion that al Qaeda recruits are slipping into and through the Damascus airport unbeknownst to the local Mukhabarat is totally unbelievable.
This is not the first use of the Damascus airport by terrorists. It has long been the central transit point for Iranian weapons en route to Hezbollah, …
Now the Damascus airport is the point of entry into Iraq for most of the suicide bombers who are killing innocent Iraqi citizens and American soldiers, and trying to break America’s will in this war. It is therefore time to demand that the Syrian regime stop playing travel agent for al Qaeda in Iraq.
His suggestions seem a bit tame, however, mainly persuading major carriers to boycott the airport. My proposal might be a little more compelling: cut it out or we will cut down, i.e., your control tower, and we will pockmark your runways with cruise missiles. We will make your airport unusable and keep it that way.
Then if Nancy Pelosi wants to visit the terror-fostering dictator she can go by boat or helicopter.
Oil, dictatorships & terror
Almost all money we spend on foreign oil goes to subsidize ideologues and dictators ranging from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela. I’ve wondered why this isn’t more of an issue in our politics and why we haven’t launched a Manhattan project for alternative fuels or advanced carburetors.
Andres Oppenheimer has a piece in the Miami Herald on Chavez’ power grab in Venezuela, including some thoughts on how it might be successfully opposed. He finishes with an appeal for energy independence:
The United States could do more than anybody to stop Chávez’s megalomania if it stopped subsidizing it. Indeed, the United States is spending $34 billion a year on oil imports from Venezuela.
The White House should impose a $2 a gallon tax on U.S. gasoline imports from petro dictatorships around the world, or a 50 percent tax on Hummers and other needlessly gigantic SUVs, or demand Detroit carmakers double the fuel efficiency of American cars.
Reducing America’s foreign oil addiction should be the single most important issue in the 2008 presidential election. In addition to being the most effective U.S. weapon against Middle Eastern countries that support terrorism, it would weaken oil-rich autocrats like Chávez, and would help reduce global warming.
Muslims don’t kill muslims
Those reading between the very transparent lines on the Turkish plane hijacking found a familiar theme lurking there. It’s a theme that is so familiar that we hardly even notice it any more:
Hakki Dogusoy, another passenger, said they had promised not to harm those on board. “They said ‘We are Muslims. You are Muslims too. We will not do you any harm‘,” he said.
Just imagine, and try to suppress a smile as you do, a Christian or Hindu hijacker. “We are Christians. You are Christians too. We will not do you any harm.”
Where does this come from? You might start with the Koran, and its wholly undeniable pervasive pulse of hostility toward unbelievers. Culture matters. Texts matter. And texts help shape culture.
Just good clean fun
So a Turkish airline full of Turks gets hijacked by two guys who want a free trip to … [Drumroll. Which rogue regime do these lunatics want to visit today?] If you guessed IRAN, you are correct, sir!
Who were they? What did they want? No one seems quite sure.
Turkish Cypriot authorities said the two hijackers were Iranians protesting against the policies of the US, but Turkish media said one of the hijackers was Turkish and the other was a Palestinian.
And this:
“The adventure that started early in the morning finally came to an end,” said Tuncay Doganer, the CEO of Atlas-Jet. “With the two hijackers having surrendered, the incident ended with no bloodshed.”
A good time was had by all.
Trying to grasp alien psychology
I’m talking space alien, not foreign national. Hamas’ Palestinian TV has provoked the wrath of PETA, and I’m with PETA on this one.
This stuff is beyond belief. Under the thin guise of teaching children to be nice to animals, this creepy hornet runs around a zoo lifting cats by the tails and dropping them. [Cats in a zoo, you ask? Sadly, apparently, yes.] Then he goes to a lion cage [tragically 19th century] and … throws rocks at the lions. All of this is done to the titters and giggles of the studio audience children. Then this sycophant automaton host comes on and says, “we did this skit to show you to be nice to animals.” Watch the video here.
Anyone who can explain this will have uncovered the key to the Palestinian psyche. Please call Condoleeza Rice immediately. She needs you.
On compartmentalizing insanities
The U.S. is designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Read the description of this group–its financial web and its competitive posture toward the regular Iranian army. It’s a bona fide regime within the regime.
It’s also shipping missiles and IEDs to Iraq and Afghanistan, and fomenting mayhem in Gaza and Lebanon. It’s the power and ideology that produced the current Iranian president, who looks forward to the apocalypse that will wipe Israel off the map and usher in the frickin twelth Imam. Now look at this bland statement by Joseph Cirincione:
The administration’s move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. “It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. “It would tie an end to Iran’s nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach. … [The designation] will convince many in Iran’s elite that there’s no point in talking with us and that the only thing that will satisfy us is regime change.”
A grand bargain would means that the Revolutionary Guard stops exporting mayhem and that the Iranians stop trying to build nuclear weapons to usher in the apocalypse. But Cirincione thinks we can compartmentalize insanities and persuade them to stick to suicide bombing, assassinations and kidnappings sans nuclear? The insane hateful ideology is the problem. If you can’t address that, your nuclear nonproliferation project will be stillborn, as, indeed, it is.
Cirincione can’t see the forest fire for the trees.
What he said
So Karzai in Kabul is making nice with the Jew-hating Holocaust-denying Apocalypse-inviting president of Iran. Understandable. Iran will be there long after we leave. This account in the Times of London reporter, though, acts puzzled as to why the U.S. is not making nice as well. She ticks off the issues on her fingers in a puzzled fashion:
One issue is Iran’s nuclear ambitions, although Britain, which shares America’s concern, has not found that a barrier to dealing with Tehran on Afghanistan. A second, harder to pin down, is the US’s suspicion that Iran is supplying weapons to the Taleban, including a particularly lethal form of roadside bomb, with the aim of undermining Western efforts at stabilisation. US officials say that Iranian weapons are entering Afghanistan in such quantities that it is hard to believe that Tehran is unaware, even if it is not ordering the deliveries.
Asked about the accusations, Ahmadinejad said yesterday: “I strongly doubt that — there is no truth in it”. He has previously pointed out that Shia Iran nearly went to war with the profoundly Sunni Taleban in the late 1990s and has no interest in seeing them back.
I’m with you Ahmi: I strongly doubt that there is no truth in it.
What you can’t get from the written word
Sixteen minutes of riveting television. Roughly half of it death eaters spewing anti-American and anti-Jewish hate, from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon, etc.. Utterly, utterly beyond caricature. The latter half is calm voices of reason expressing frustration at the hate. My teenage son glanced over when the first voice of reason came on and said, “He doesn’t sound angry.” I watched for a minute more to be sure, and replied, “He isn’t.”
I don’t know what the ratios are here. I fear that the reasonable voices are far outweighed by those of hate. But we need to immerse ourselves in this more often.
You can’t absorb the essence of this in prose.
Vindication for Obama on Pakistan? Maybe not.
Dennis Ross gives a very measured analysis of the dilemma with the terror bases Pakistan, ultimately concluding that something must be done–it’s hard to disagree–but that it must begin with carefully phrased, gradually escalating language, where the language itself is part of the diplomacy.
Before going public in such a manner, however, the administration would be wise to try to hold quiet military-to-military discussions about how both the United States and Pakistan can act to combat the threat posed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Such talks might sensitize both sides to the actual nature of the threat and the steps we might take that would make it easier for the Pakistani military to act. But if private diplomacy and communication continue to prove ineffective, more public statements are also part of statecraft. It is appropriate for us to call attention to the growth of Al Qaeda and the Taliban as forces that are threatening to the well-being of Pakistan, its neighbors, and to us–and ultimately to the fact that someone is going to have to deal with this threat.
But this does not vindicate for Obama, for two reasons. First, he is a fool to think that abandoning Iraq and plunging into Pakistan will solve anything. The bases for terror will just shift to Iraq. Second, Ross emphasizes the role of signaling, and calls for a mature staging of quiet diplomacy and public statements. Obama is mixing foreign policy with his his own political urgency–his need to demonstrate that he had gonads after Hillary’s emasculating critiques. That is a toxic mix, and one that does not bode well in a would-be president.
Musharraf admits the obvious
Which moves him a step ahead of Russia on the frankness scale. The story is here:
General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, made a rare admission on Sunday before hundreds of Pakistani and Afghan delegates at a grand tribal assembly here, saying that support for militants emanating from Pakistan had caused problems for Afghanistan, and that his country should work to secure peace on its side of their mutual border.“I realize this problem goes deeper, there is support from these areas,” Musharraf told delegates on Sunday. “There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil. The problem that you have in your region is because support is provided from our side.”
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan nodded in agreement.
Duh. [Did Obama’s loose cannon shake something loose?]
Queen fiasco at BBC echoes TNR stunt
Editors around the world seem perfectly happy with the “fake but accurate” excuse of 60 Minutes, as long no one fights back. The BBC continues to squirm over its manipulation of footage of the queen for their troubled documentary:
The BBC apologised to the Queen last month after admitting that a trailer had been manipulated to make it appear as if Her Majesty had angrily walked out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, the celebrity photographer.
The reality was that the footage showed the Queen striding purposefully through the corridors of Buckingham Palace as she arrived for the shoot.
And this:
The dispute has already had major repercussions for the BBC because it triggered a crisis over “faked” programmes.
But surely the queen has stormed out of a photo shoot, or stormed out of something? And surely U.S. soldiers have sometimes killed dogs or laughed at skulls or made fun of injured women? And surely Israelis do sometimes massacre Palestinians, even if the film footage here is artfully manipulated?
