ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. . . .

Looks like I'll have to hibernate the ol' blogs for a while. My micro-business has become mega-time-consuming lately. In the meantime, please peruse the Featured Posts section and check out the Companion Sites. Be sure to visit the recommended blogs, all of which are eminently worth your while, hosted by some very smart, hardworking folks.

Barbarians With Nuclear Weapons Update

Iran's chief psychopath dreams of a world without America:

"[W]e shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt."

An achievable goal, if the regime is allowed to develop nuclear weapons (or if it already has).

Bashing Bad Religion

I'd like to know who originated the asinine notion that it is the equivalent of racial discrimination to criticize a religion. We've all seen some variation of this boilerplate: "No discrimination based on race, color or creed."

Creed?

God forbid we criticize someone's fanatical, homicidal, supremacist creed.

Fortunately, as to Islam, our civilization's opinion leaders seem to be abandoning the naive "religion of peace" chestnut. This Investor's Business Daily editorial is an encouraging example:

Continuing to pretend that terrorism is a distortion of Islam's supposedly "peaceful" and "tolerant" nature -- and not a predictable outcome of jihad, its 6th pillar -- may soothe the savage beast of political correctness. But it's no way to win a war against real savages. That can only come from frank national discourse over what is motivating them, where they are getting that motivation, and how to implement effective methods to disrupt it.

A must-read.

Will Iran Strike First? - Part 2

No, no cause for concern here. Back to sleep everyone.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Under pressure over its nuclear programme, Iran flaunted its ballistic missiles and warned any nation considering attacking the Islamic republic would face a "destructive and fiery" response.

On show at an annual military parade on Thursday were thousands of troops and a range of hardware including six of Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missiles -- which sported banners saying "Death to America", "We will crush America under our feet" and "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth".

The slogans prompted a diplomatic protest by European military attaches.

The event marked the start of "Sacred Defence Week" -- the anniversary of the outbreak of a destructive eight-year war with Iraq in 1980 -- and began with another tough speech by hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Will Iran Strike First?

Michael Ledeen pulls no punches and (unfortunately) is mostly correct:

The mullahs are altogether capable of deciding that events are now running strongly in their favor, and that they should strike directly at the United States. They look at us, and they see a deeply divided nation, a president who talked a lot about bringing democratic revolution to Iran and then did nothing to support it, a military that is clearly fighting in Iraq alone, and counting the days until we can say "it’s up to the Iraqis now," and — again based on what they see in our popular press — a country that has no stomach for a prolonged campaign against the remaining terror masters in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Osama bin Laden came to similar conclusions, and ordered the events of 9/11. Why should the Iranians — who have been major supporters of the terror network ever since the 1979 revolution — not do the same?

Innocent Moslems and a Terrorist Flight Attendant

No, this is not satire. It's the key plot point in the new Jodie Foster movie.

A Providential Warning

I'm ashamed to admit I only yesterday discoverd Tony Blankley's fine Sept. 7th column on the most important lesson from Katrina:

Collectively, the country: 1) failed to listen to credible warnings, 2) assumed that our good luck would continue unabated, 3) failed to adequately assess the magnitude and likelihood of the danger, and 4) permitted the compelling pressures and benefits of business as usual to drive from its mind a serious consideration of a radical, bad change from the status quo.

. . .

Because, as heartbreaking, appalling and disgraceful as this event covering an area the size of Kansas is, it is merely a warning, writ small, of the danger facing the entire country (indeed, our entire Western civilization) if we continue to face the Islamist threat with the same complacency with which we have faced the threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

. . .

I happen to think that regarding the Islamist threat, President Bush has shown more concern and provided more action than most of politicians and journalists. But even the president's actions and thoughts are very dangerously short of what is needed. As much as he has done, it still falls within the category of complacency if one seriously thinks about the threat.

The mortal danger we face comes not merely from Osama bin Laden and a few thousand terrorists. Rather, we are confronted with the Islamic world -- one-fifth of mankind -- in turmoil and insurgent as it has not been in at least 500 (if not 1,500) years.

We don't yet know whether this passion has touched 1 percent, 10 percent or 50 percent of over a billion souls. But combined with the sudden and untimely availability of weapons of mass destruction to any sufficiently determined large group of people -- and facilitated by the dangerously interconnected globalized world -- the threat to us all must be as urgently dealt with today, as New Orleans should have been last week and last year and last decade.

I argue that across the board -- from cargo containers searched, to Arab translators hired, to borders guarded, to domestic and foreign intelligence collected, to rational scrutiny of Arab and Muslim young men, to political correctness snubbed, to the size of our military, to our (and Europe's) willingness to defend our culture from Islamist intimidation, to our international diplomacy -- we remain as complacent and exposed to mortal threat today as were the poor dead souls of New Orleans last week.

But at least we, the still-living, have been given a providential warning.

Just one question: What would happen had Harry Smith said this to a Moslem?

Jihad Watch features a rather lame attempt at Stalinism by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

9/11 and the Death of Art

Among the fine insights in the latest issue of the American Enterprise Online:

Militarily and diplomatically, an enormous amount has been accomplished across different parts of the globe since September 11, 2001. Back home, though, in our own politics and culture, much of America has been surprisingly little changed by the most deadly attack ever on our homeland.

You can see this in many places. For instance, for more than two years now I’ve been trying to gin up an article for TAE cataloguing some worthy art inspired by 9/11. Surely, I assumed, an event of this historical moment and psychological impact must have hatched lots of powerful poems and plays and pictures. I was wrong.

Here was a cataclysm whose Ground Zero was literally a stroll away from the main centers of American painting and sculpture, music composition, filmmaking, literature production, and other imaginative work. You would think the sheer magnitude of this event in their own backyards would have grabbed the imagination of many artists (not to mention editors and producers and gallery owners) and sent cadres of long-haired men and short-haired women running to their studios to produce arresting works.

Yet this hasn’t happened. There is no “Guernica” painted for 9/11. Nothing like The Red Badge of Courage, or All Quiet on the Western Front, or Slaughterhouse-Five has been written. No "Music for Prague 1968," or anything close, is now being played. The Manhattan creative class hasn’t produced even a Forrest Gump to capture in popular form the circumstances and emotions of that searing day.

Why not? My conclusion, after watching this odd black hole spread through America’s creative communities over several years, is that most contemporary artists are unwilling to absorb the hard lessons of this event. They’d rather not face the implications. [Or maybe it would cut into their work for the Leftist-Islamist alliance's fifth column - ed.]

Lord knows, the creative class mobilized their artistry in response to the AIDS epidemic. Remember the endless AIDS Quilt projects? The interminable string of Broadway plays documenting the personal horrors of HIV?

But recognizing that America has ruthless and evil Third World enemies who will kill us unless we kill them first? Umm, I think I’d rather work on my novel about the secret repression of gay pastors in Dallas, or polish my screenplay assailing greedy corporations for selling infant formula in Africa.

C.S. Lewis on Katrina

I think it was Dostoyevsky who once noted that humans are three dimensional beings in a four dimensional universe, meaning there is a dimension only God's mind can comprehend. Devastating events like 9/11 and Katrina always seem to generate discussion of the "How could God let this happen?" question. Our small human minds may be unable to arrive at a satisfying answer, but I find C. S. Lewis' explanation to be as good as anyone could formulate:

That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behaviour of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of the Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore, stable, world, demands that these occasions should be extremely rare. In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you concede everything that at any moment happened to suit him - if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking - then you would have no game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

The Problem of Pain, P. 21-22

More insight from Robert Spencer:

When will official Washington stop mistaking wishes for facts? When will there come a politician, Republican or Democrat, with the guts to call jihad what it is and do what is necessary to fight it? When will the outmoded, inadequate models of realpolitik, constructed for other wars against other foes, be discarded?

Or will we simply continue on this path of concession and negotiation with those who would subjugate us until they succeed in reducing us all to dhimmi status, and only then will we finally realize that they all along considered the willingness to negotiate a weakness to take advantage of, rather than a sign of good will?

The Retreat

I'm shocked, shocked that Abu Mazen is not satisfied with the Gaza giveaway. The always pithy Robert Spencer sums it up:

Neville Chamberlain, call your office: it seems the Sudetenland won't be enough.

It's The Profile, Stupid

Lefties, please excuse Charles Krauthammer for thinking clearly:

The American response to tightening up after London has been reflexive and idiotic: random bag checks in the New York subways. Random meaning that the people stopped are to be chosen numerically. One in every 5 or 10 or 20.

This is an obvious absurdity and everyone knows it. It recapitulates the appalling waste of effort and resources we see at airports every day when, for reasons of political correctness, 83-year-old grandmothers from Poughkeepsie are required to remove their shoes in the search for jihadists hungering for paradise.

The only good thing to be said for this ridiculous policy is that it testifies to the tolerance and good will of Americans, so intent on assuaging the feelings of minority fellow citizens that they are willing to undergo useless indignities and tolerate massive public waste.

Assuaging feelings is a good thing, but hunting for terrorists in this way is simply nuts. The fact is that jihadist terrorism has been carried out from Bali to Casablanca to Madrid to London to New York City to Washington by young Islamic men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin.

This is not a stereotype. It is a simple statistical fact. Yes, you have your shoe-bomber, a mixed-race Muslim convert, who would not fit the profile. But the overwhelming odds are that the guy bent on blowing up your train traces his origins to the Islamic belt stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia.

Yet we recoil from concentrating bag checks on men who might fit this description. Well, if that is impossible for us to do, then let's work backward. Eliminate classes of people who are obviously not suspects.

We could start with a little age-pruning -- no one under, say, 13, no one over, say, 60. Then we could exempt whole ethnic populations, a list that could immediately start with Hispanics, Scandinavians and East Asians. Then we could have a huge saving, a 50 percent elimination of waste, by giving a pass to women, except perhaps the most fidgety, sweaty, suspicious-looking, overcoat-wearing, knapsack-bearing young woman, to be identified by the presiding officer.

You object that with these shortcuts, we might not catch everybody. True. But how many do we catch now with the billions spent patting down grandmothers from Poughkeepsie?

You object that either plan -- giving special scrutiny to young Islamic men, or, more sensitively, just eliminating certain demographic categories from scrutiny -- will simply encourage the jihadists to start recruiting elderly, Norwegian women.

OK. We can handle that. Let them try recruiting converts, women and non-usual suspects for suicide missions. That will require a huge new wasteful effort on their part. And, more important, by reducing the pool of possible terrorists from the hundreds of millions to the, at most, tens of thousands, we will have reduced the probability of an attack by a factor of 10,000. Those are far better odds at far less cost to us in money and effort. And infinitely less stupid.

What Could Happen Here

In the brief period since the 7/7 attack, there has been a lot of pundit rumination on whether what happened in London could happen here. The fact is that what could -- and probably will -- happen here will be much worse. In his column a year ago, Charles Krauthammer summarized it well:

There is no gradualness and there are no countermeasures to a dozen nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously in American cities. Think of what just two envelopes of anthrax did to paralyze the capital of the world's greatest superpower. A serious, coordinated attack on the United States using WMDs could so shatter the United States as a functioning advanced industrialized society that it would take generations to rebuild.

The chances of stopping this civilization-shattering attack are looking increasingly slim. Yet we must go down fighting. Here's my partial list of what we should be demanding from our government:

Strict, wartime-level control of our borders, including military patrols, an Israeli-style fence, and sustained, redundant and comprehensive immigration law enforcement.

A sensible policy of ethnic and religious profiling for would-be entrants to the US.

The willingness to use coercive means, including military, to eliminate the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats, and the other nuclear threats that are sure to arise.

More should be done, but these would at least be a start.

The World War II generation was the last one to achieve psychological adulthood. If its members were running our country, these steps would have been implemented on 9/12/2001. True adults know they must face challenges, not hide from them.

Are there enough adults left to save our civilization? Probably not, but the odds against success do not absolve us of the moral obligation to fight for its survival.

Update: Michelle Malkin's new column contains her agenda. Including that:

A true state of "heightened alert" would mean immediate deportation of illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring and terror-supporting nations, increased National Guard dispatches on both the northern and southern borders, aggressive police-federal cooperation to catch illegal border crossers and overstayers on the interior, and vigorous encouragement of volunteer border security efforts like the Minuteman Project.

Don't Go About Your Business

Today, in response to the 7/7 attack, US public officials will of course once again tell us to fight Al Qaeda by going about our normal lives, to demonstrate we are not frightened by terrorism.

I disagree. If we continue to "go about our normal lives," we're dead. Today, interrupt your normal life and tell your elected representatives what you think about this, this, this and this. Links for doing so are here.

Yes, we need to defy the jihadists by continuing with our lives. But our foremost duty is to fight, to burn the evil out from our midst.

Become informed. Act. Don't be normal.

Atrocious Yes, Surprising No

No one should be surprised* that Al Qaeda has managed to attack London, home of the infamous Finsbury Mosque and posters celebrating the "Glorious 19" 9-11 hijackers. We are too soft on our jihadists here in the US, but in Britain the situation is ridiculous.

If the Brits want to respond properly, they should double their troops in Iraq, wish them good hunting, and increase by tenfold their efforts to kill and capture the jihadists who are so at home within Britain's own borders.

I hope this attack serves as a warning to the US, but then again we have been warned before.

It will be interesting to see if the MSM reports on the inevitable delight and celebrations among the "Palestinians" and other Arabs and Moslems at the murder of infidel children.

*via Jihad Watch

The brilliant Thomas Sowell has turned 75. Among other wisdom his column offers this reminder:

After Churchill was appointed Prime Minister, he said to his chauffeur: "I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best." He had tears in his eyes.

The war would be more than three years old before the British -- or anyone else -- won a major battle against the Nazi war machine. When the British finally won a battle against the German army in North Africa near the end of 1942, Churchill declared frankly, "we have a new experience. We have victory."

Quite a quagmire, that World War II.

A Good Man and a Bad Doctrine

Billy Graham's embrace of the Clintons, though troubling, is a minor transgression compared to his embarrassing and lethal interpretation of Romans 13, as manifested in his 1982 trip to the Soviet Union:

These verses of Jesus may explain why as prominent and personally fine a Christian as the Reverend Billy Graham, the most widely listened to Protestant in the world, failed to call evil by its name when he visited the Soviet Union in 1982. Indeed, true to Martin Luther's teachings, Graham called on Soviet Christians to obey the Soviet authorities, and did not publicly side with persecuted Christians. Rather than refer to the Soviet Union as an enemy of Christianity, the Reverend Graham only referred to "the common enemy" of nuclear war. At the time of the visit, George Will wrote:

Graham's delicacy [about the Soviet Union] is less interesting than his "common enemy" formulation.... His language suggests a moral symmetry between his country and the soviet Union.

The Washington Post reports that when Graham spoke in two churches, both "were heavily guarded, with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents . . . were in the congregation." Graham told one congregation that God "gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities." How is that for a message from America;

Graham is America's most famous Christian. Solzhenitsyn is Russia's The contrast is instructive.2

Nobody's perfect, I suppose. But the imperfections of the powerful can have some very grave consequences, such as possibly prolonging the tenure of the most evil empire mankind has seen (thus far).

***

This site has the original Washington Post article:

MOSCOW, May 9 Evangelist Billy Graham preached a message for disarmament in Moscow's only Baptist church today as a hymn-singing overflow crowd held an extraordinary service behind the police barricades in the street outside.

In his sermon Graham told the 1,000 worshipers that while their first commitment was to Jesus Christ they must also remember that the Bible calls on them to "obey the authorities." Speaking on a major Soviet public holiday, the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, he sought to use the memory of U.S.-Soviet wartime friendship for a new joint disarmament effort. "At that time the United States and the Soviet Union were allies against Nazi Germany," he said. "Now we have another common enemy, the possibility of a nuclear holocaust."

At the end of his 45-minute sermon, which was simultaneously translated into Russian, a woman in her early twenties unfurled a banner from the balcony reading, in English, "We have more than 150 prisoners for the work of the Gospel." The banner apparently referred to Baptists who have been imprisoned for preaching and holding services without permission. Another banner, also in English, was simultaneously raised in the aisle directly in front of Graham. It read, "Deliver those who are driven away to death."

Graham said later he did not read the messages. He also declined to approach about 250 people outside the church, many of whom said they traveled hundreds of miles to hear him speak but could not enter the church without tickets. An aide to the evangelist said privately that Graham did not want to offend his hosts during his one-week visit because "he wants to develop this relationship," implying that he expects to return to the Soviet Union presumably for a preaching tour.

Religious services outside registered churches are forbidden in the Soviet Union, and several believers said a service in a Moscow street had not been heard of since the 1917 Communist Revolution.

The woman who unfurled her banner in the church was detained by plainclothes officers after the service. It was not known whether she was released. The service, originally planned for this evening, was rescheduled for 8 a.m., apparently because that was the time Voice of America erroneously announced it would be held.

During his sermon and later in an address at services at the Yelohovski Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Graham did not mention religious or human rights. Instead, he told the audience, "God can make you love people you normally would not love. He gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities."

Both churches were heavily guarded with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents, mostly young and well dressed, were in the congregation that included a large number of foreigners. Only about one-third of the people were local worshipers; most of them were women. Graham and numerous other churchmen are here for a conference opening Monday that will discuss reducing the threat of nuclear war. The conference is organized by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is paying the bills for more than 400 foreign visitors representing many religious groups from all parts of the world. Perhaps because of his prominence in the United States, Graham is regarded as a star attraction at the conference. He has been allotted 20 minutes for his speech instead of the 10 minute slots all other churchmen were allowed. He also is being driven around Moscow in a Chaika limousine while the others are shepherded around in a fleet of buses. In contrast with the somewhat austere atmosphere at the Baptist church, Graham spoke at a splendid service in the Yelohovski Cathedral with bearded bishops in rich vestments led by Pimen, patriarch of all the Russians, in attendance. It is unclear whether Graham plans to see six Russian Baptists who took refuge in the U.S. Embassy here more than three years ago. They are seeking to emigrate on grounds that they were victims of religious persecution. There are 500,000 Baptists in the Soviet Union, many of whom are members of unregistered and therefore illegal congregations. Moscow's official Baptist community numbers about 5,000.

Chances are the KGB did not haul that woman away in order to treat her to a foot massage and some herbal tea. Could Graham have intervened and helped her and others? Yes. Did he? Well, (please excuse the lawyer-esque phrasing) to my knowledge, no, he did not.

Are we to believe that Romans 13 dictates brave souls like Corrie ten Boom should have "obeyed the authorities"? George Washington & Co. should have shut up and submitted to King George, I guess.

Absurd.

The moral idiots at the National Council of Churches call the war to liberate Iraq (and thus protect the US) dishonorable. Jesus.

Update: Meanwhile, the Anglicans libel Israel and attempt to destroy it. How Christlike. Not. (Via LGF)

Lest We Forget

In a post on Zbigniew Brzezinski's arrogant response to President Bush's weekly radio address, Powerline gives us a concise refresher on why Jimmy Carter is the top contender for the title "Worst President in American History":

Carter/Brzezinski presided over our greatest setback ever in the Middle East, the rise of a fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran, which they basically invited by signaling their lack of support for Shah knowing that his strongest enemies were fundamentalist clerics. They also presided over and basically invited a Communist takeover in Nicaragua. Under Brzezinski's tutelage, Carter was shocked, betrayed, and unprepared when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And who can forget what may be the worst piece of incompetence the U.S. has been associated with in its modern history, the failed rescue attempt of our hostages in Teheran?

This is disturbing.

A Spine Installation for Congress, Please

Powerline makes a poignant observation on the House's risible action to amend the Patriot Act to forbid its use to subpoena records from libraries or booksellers:

The upshot of this, if it becomes law, will be that the FBI can obtain an order permitting it to obtain possession of any tangible object whatsoever, from any person or organization, except the records maintained by libraries and bookstores. I, as counsel of record for any party in any civil lawsuit venued in any state or federal court in the United States, can obtain records from libraries and bookstores. But the FBI can't, at least not if it is conducting a terrorism investigation.

These weasel politicians will do anything to escape being labeled "anti-civil liberties."

Noonan on Narcissism

The political kind, that is:

People who charge into burning towers are heroic; nuns who work with the poorest of the poor are self-denying; people who volunteer their time to help our world and receive nothing in return but the knowledge they are doing good are in public service. Politicians are in politics. They are less self-denying than self-aggrandizing. They are given fame, respect, the best health care in the world; they pass laws governing your life and receive a million perks including a good salary, and someone else--faceless taxpayers, "the folks back home"--gets to pay for the whole thing. This isn't public service, it's more like public command. It's not terrible--democracies need people who commit politics; they have a place and a role to play--but it's not saintly, either.

I don't know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.

Ladies and Gentlemen . . .

Please enjoy: The Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes

(Via Michelle Malkin)