Daily Roundup
Al Gore graduates from Concordia and doesn't know if he's getting heckled from left or right. The interesting part here is that he allows for the possibility for heckling from the left. That means he's not in a media bubble and has undoubtedly heard the criticism of his mansion and it's energy consumption. The hard left is hardening and will cast out those who are insufficiently pure enough.
Pajamas Media is reporting heavy armor rolling in. I've been thinking about the "surge" for some time. Some are piling on as this is long overdue a view I used to share but now I'm not so sure. If the "surge" had been around since the outset or even earlier than now it may well have had a detrimental effect rather than a positive one. An overweening presence in the beginning would have made for more targets available and more friction with the locals. Continued large numbers of troops would have engendered support for the insurgents/terrorists. By waiting until the Sunni front cracked and splinted gave us an opportunity. Al Qaeda in Iraq (et al.) started to attack not only Shia but Sunnis. This gives the Americans the chance to show that while they may not like us, those lunatics will be taking over if we leave now. So either get on board and help us or we'll leave you to fight them on your own.
If we stayed home they'd leave us alone. Or not.
The refrain from the left is that jihadis hate us and want to kill us only because we support Israel and our other nefarious foreign policies. If we were nicer on the world stage, we could all BFF! I wait with baited breath for exactly how that explains the jihadis wont to kill the Dalai Lama.
money quote:
"The assassination threat picked up by Indian authorities is thought to be based on bin Laden's denunciation and the extremist jihadi movement's hatred for anything and anyone that is not Muslim."
This list is actually incomplete as it forgets to mention a great many people who are Muslim but are also on that list. Roughly 215,959,328. That's just shy of the total population of the United States.
http://eddriscoll.com/archives/010734.php
Zing!
Omar receives a visit from some Americans. He is cool calm and collected about the whole thing. His critics insist he's a Bush plant or apologist. I'll grant his experience is likely outside the norm but that doesn't negate it.
“Evacuate all houses in the area around the Americans’ base for we shall attack it soon… Those occupiers will soon be gone from this land. Who will protect you then?”
These were roughly the words in a leaflet the “mujahideen” distributed in Adhamiya a few days ago. A distant relative who lives there received one.
If you need further proof that the terrorists are waiting until we leave to really wreak havoc you are beyond help. This is precisely the reason why the discussion of timetables is counterproductive. We need benchmarks and goals not timetables.
Best sub-hed of the day:
SENSE OF UMMAH
key excerpt:
It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong...
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.
That's might strong stuff coming from a one-time jihadist of the first order. I don't know much about the man but we, as a nation, would be wise to recruit him to wage the ideological war against radical Islam.
The End of History (again)? Or just a continuation of Jihad vs. McWorld?
Fukuyama posits that the future is not democratic capitalism but socialistic statism more like the EU than the US. God help us if he's right. I'll side with Barber on this one. They're not direct opposites so it's not a zero sum choice. I think Fukuyama is (partly) right that democratic capitalism is likely the endstate for government. The libertarian ideal of anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism or what have you will remain a pipe dream. The realities of the world preclude us from living that way while tyrants and dictators can threaten us from across the oceans. YMMV.
Michelle Malkin is annoyed (her natural state) about the border fence with Mexico that exists in name only. There is a much cheaper and faster solution. Mine the border. Spend a few weeks putting up fences and putting out press releases and the rest can be done by air dropping vast quantities of mines along the border. A very effective and inexpensive solution. It is also, never going to happen. Every liberal, leftists and landscaper in the nation would go positively bonkers at the very idea. My point is (and I do have one) that securing the border is easy if we have the stomach to do so. We don't.
Sure we support the troops. We just don't want to honor them. The anti-troop war types in the story are pointing to the big scary gun they're planning for the statue. As if it's removal would somehow make this more palatable. Please. You could make it a statue of the man giving a flower to an Iraqi child and they'd complain it was somehow counterfactual or promoting the Bush Agenda or whatever.
Go die in a hole you miserable wretches.
Pajamas Media is reporting heavy armor rolling in. I've been thinking about the "surge" for some time. Some are piling on as this is long overdue a view I used to share but now I'm not so sure. If the "surge" had been around since the outset or even earlier than now it may well have had a detrimental effect rather than a positive one. An overweening presence in the beginning would have made for more targets available and more friction with the locals. Continued large numbers of troops would have engendered support for the insurgents/terrorists. By waiting until the Sunni front cracked and splinted gave us an opportunity. Al Qaeda in Iraq (et al.) started to attack not only Shia but Sunnis. This gives the Americans the chance to show that while they may not like us, those lunatics will be taking over if we leave now. So either get on board and help us or we'll leave you to fight them on your own.
If we stayed home they'd leave us alone. Or not.
The refrain from the left is that jihadis hate us and want to kill us only because we support Israel and our other nefarious foreign policies. If we were nicer on the world stage, we could all BFF! I wait with baited breath for exactly how that explains the jihadis wont to kill the Dalai Lama.
money quote:
"The assassination threat picked up by Indian authorities is thought to be based on bin Laden's denunciation and the extremist jihadi movement's hatred for anything and anyone that is not Muslim."
This list is actually incomplete as it forgets to mention a great many people who are Muslim but are also on that list. Roughly 215,959,328. That's just shy of the total population of the United States.
http://eddriscoll.com/archives/010734.php
Zing!
Omar receives a visit from some Americans. He is cool calm and collected about the whole thing. His critics insist he's a Bush plant or apologist. I'll grant his experience is likely outside the norm but that doesn't negate it.
“Evacuate all houses in the area around the Americans’ base for we shall attack it soon… Those occupiers will soon be gone from this land. Who will protect you then?”
These were roughly the words in a leaflet the “mujahideen” distributed in Adhamiya a few days ago. A distant relative who lives there received one.
If you need further proof that the terrorists are waiting until we leave to really wreak havoc you are beyond help. This is precisely the reason why the discussion of timetables is counterproductive. We need benchmarks and goals not timetables.
Best sub-hed of the day:
SENSE OF UMMAH
key excerpt:
It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong...
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.
That's might strong stuff coming from a one-time jihadist of the first order. I don't know much about the man but we, as a nation, would be wise to recruit him to wage the ideological war against radical Islam.
The End of History (again)? Or just a continuation of Jihad vs. McWorld?
Fukuyama posits that the future is not democratic capitalism but socialistic statism more like the EU than the US. God help us if he's right. I'll side with Barber on this one. They're not direct opposites so it's not a zero sum choice. I think Fukuyama is (partly) right that democratic capitalism is likely the endstate for government. The libertarian ideal of anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism or what have you will remain a pipe dream. The realities of the world preclude us from living that way while tyrants and dictators can threaten us from across the oceans. YMMV.
Michelle Malkin is annoyed (her natural state) about the border fence with Mexico that exists in name only. There is a much cheaper and faster solution. Mine the border. Spend a few weeks putting up fences and putting out press releases and the rest can be done by air dropping vast quantities of mines along the border. A very effective and inexpensive solution. It is also, never going to happen. Every liberal, leftists and landscaper in the nation would go positively bonkers at the very idea. My point is (and I do have one) that securing the border is easy if we have the stomach to do so. We don't.
Sure we support the troops. We just don't want to honor them. The anti-
Go die in a hole you miserable wretches.
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