Did my matzos come?

Lee Smith at WeeklyStandard.com:

Maybe Islam is not essentially fanatical, but Middle Eastern minorities, like Christians, Jews, and various syncretic sects, have had to assume that is the case to ensure their survival. I have quoted from a 1943 letter by Soleyman al-Asad, an Alawite notable and grandfather of the current Syrian president, in these pages once before and it is worthwhile to do so again.

The spirit of hatred and fanaticism imbedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion. There is no hope that the situation will ever change.

(Via NRO.)
 

Fouad Ajami had a piece yesterday that's worth reading in full. I'm tempted to quote a lot of it, but I'll restrain myself (somewhat):

The declassified portions of the NIE are not particularly profound in the reading of Islamism. . . . I dare guess that were Ayman al-Zawahiri to make his way through this report, he would marvel at the naïveté of those who set out to read him and his fellow warriors of the faith. . . . We upended an order of power in Baghdad, dominated as it had been by the Sunni Arabs; and we emancipated the Shiite stepchildren of the Arab world, as well as the Kurds. Our innocence was astounding. We sinned against the order of the universe, but called on the region to celebrate, to bless our work. More to the point, we set the Shia on their own course. We did for them what they could not have done on their own.

. . . We should not try to impose more order and consensus on the world of Shiite Iraq than is warranted by the facts. In recent days a great faultline within the Shiites could be seen. . . . A bitter struggle now plays out in the Shiite provinces between the operatives of the Badr Brigade and Sadr's Mahdi Army. The fight is draped in religious colors--but it is about the spoils of power.

. . . For their part, the Iranians will press on: The spectacle of power they display is illusory. It is a broken society over which the mullahs rule. A society that throws on the scene a leader of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's derangement is not an orderly land. . . . Iran's is a deeper culture than Iraq's, possessed of a keen sense of Persia's primacy in the region around it. What Iranians make of their own history will not wait on the kind of society that will emerge in Iraq. . . . And, crafty players, the Iranians know what so many in America who guess at such matters do not: that Iraq is an unwieldy land, that the Arab-Persian divide in culture, language and temperament is not easy to bridge.

. . . This is a region with a keen eye for the weakness of strangers. The heated debate about the origins of our drive into Iraq would surely pale by comparison to the debate that would erupt--here and elsewhere--were we to give in to despair and cast the Iraqis adrift.
 

(Via NRO.)
 

Thomas Sowell:

The drive to extend Geneva convention protection to terrorists who are not covered under the Geneva convention is one of a number of dangerous self-indulgences by people who seem to think that being morally one-up is the ultimate and survival is secondary.

Senator Lindsey Graham's comment that we are going to win in our struggle with terrorists "because we are better" was all too typical of this mindset.

. . . Those in the United States and in other western nations who are urging dialogue with Iran are repeating the tragic mistakes of the 1930s that led to World War II. People say talk is cheap but it can be enormously costly when it becomes just a way to forestall action while an enemy nation builds up its military threat.

Since Iran is not letting the idle chatter at the U.N. delay their rush to get nuclear weapons, they are more dangerous than the Nazis were -- while we remain as gullible as those in the west who blundered into World War II and almost lost it.
 

Andrew C. McCarthy:

[T]here is an incontestable connection between Iraq policy and al Qaeda terrorism. We don’t need a leaked NIE to persuade us of it because Osama bin Laden stated it quite unabashedly. We don’t hear much about it from the mainstream media, though, because it was Bill Clinton’s Iraq policy.

It was over eight years ago, in February 1998, that bin Laden issued his infamous fatwa calling for Muslims to murder any and all Americans — soldiers or civilians — wherever on earth they could be found. As al Qaeda’s emir put it, “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”

This instruction section of the fatwa has gotten much attention over the years. Yet, the justification section has hardly been examined at all. To do so, after all, would not just call attention to the Clinton security failures; it would destroy the left’s favorite narrative: “Bush’s Iraq War Has Caused More Terrorism and Made Us Less Safe.”
 

McCarthy highlights several passages, and continues:

If we’re to be honest, however, it would be preposterous to claim that anything President Clinton did — in Iraq or anyplace else — “caused” jihadist terrorism. Just as it is inane to argue now that our current Iraq policy is the “cause.” . . . Grievances are just rhetoric. If the bin Ladens did not have Iraq, or the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or Pope Benedict, or cartoons, or flushed Korans, or Dutch movies, or the Crusades, they’d figure out something else to beat the drums over. Or they’d make something up — there being lots of license to improvise when one purports to be executing Allah’s will.

. . . Jihadists hate us because they hate us, not because of Iraq.
 

Whenever a few days pass without a Corner post from Michael Ledeen, I find myself possessed of a wistful hope that he's at the White House, with President Bush and Bush's advisers listening attentively to his recommendations on how to deal with Iran.

I know, I know, but I did call it a "wistful" hope.
 

Caroline Glick:

The Chavez and Ahmadinejad show ensured that the Bush administration's gamble in permitting the two entry to the United States had paid off. Given a platform, the dictators demonstrated the gravity of the threat they posed, as the administration had doubtless hoped they would.

Yet laying out a gangplank and hoping the enemy will be stupid enough to walk it is hardly a winning strategy in war. The stark reality of the global Islamist jihad and its strong support from European appeasers to third world dictators makes it necessary for the US to enact an information campaign capable of effectively advancing the stated American war aim of destroying jihad as a governing ideology and social force.

The potential for victory in the information warfare arena is great, and the failure of the US to meet this challenge is a great shame.

* * * * *

The world stands today on the edge of a potential upheaval. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas are poised to retake power in elections in November. In the US, on November 7, voters will decide the composition of the Congress and Senate and so, in many ways, decide whether the war will continue to be fought to victory or will be abandoned.

Israelis have awoken from the fantasy of appeasement and are poised to bring in a government capable of defending them. In Britain, Tony Blair's heirs operate with the knowledge that they will be better off politically if they abandon the US.

Information operations that expose liberal democratic civilization's foes and support its allies - be they states or individuals - have never been more vital. Yet unless the Bush administration finds the courage to properly identify those foes and allies, its message will do more to confound than to clarify, and US policies will continue to be plagued by confusion - to the detriment of America and humanity as a whole.
 

David Pryce-Jones on the saga of George Blake, who while working for MI-6 spied for the Soviet Union and whom the European Court of Human Rights, "a European body that sits in Strasbourg and makes up its law as it goes along," has awarded more than four thousand pounds:

This whole travesty arises because the present Blair government incorporated lock, stock and barrel into British law the European Convention on Human Rights, a monument to political correctness at its zenith. The Strasbourg Court is thus in a position to go against British law, to trump it, dictating to British citizens who have no possible recourse or appeal in their own courts. . . .

Americans, free people everywhere, be warned! Have nothing to do with international courts.
 

Philip Johnston, in the Telegraph (UK), on plans to build a mosque in London near the site for the 2012 Olympic stadium:

[T]his is not any old mosque built to serve the local community. It will be the largest place of worship in Europe, a gigantic three-storey Islamic centre, with schools and other facilities, able to hold at least 40,000 worshippers and up to 70,000 if necessary.

. . . When television viewers around the world see aerial views of the stadium during the opening ceremony in six years' time, the most prominent religious building in the camera shot will not be one of the city's iconic churches that have shaped the nation's history, such as St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but the mega-mosque.
 

Via Melanie Phillips, who comments,

In the war being waged by radical Islamism against the west, such symbolism is of the utmost importance and significance. It is itself a strategic weapon of cultural and religious demoralisation. As Johnston observes, when people look at the Olympic village, itself a showcase for Britain, the dominant image will be not a church but a mosque towering over it. It will be a symbol of Islamic domination of Britain and Britain’s cultural surrender to the jihad, and as such will inspire many more jihadists on the basis that Britain has given up the cultural ghost.
 

Furthermore,

The mosque is being funded by the Tablighi Jamaat, which the French secret service and the FBI have both identified as one of the biggest recruiters for the jihad in Europe.
 

Phillips also points to this astonishing news in the Sunday Telegraph:

Police are to alert Muslim community leaders about anti-terrorism raids against suspected Islamic terrorists in future.
 

Her reaction:

Can one imagine any police force doing such a thing anywhere in the world? What this policy implies is that Britain now has a two million-strong no-go area for the police labelled The Muslim Community, subject to quite different rules of engagement from everyone else because it is calling the shots. Step by shameful step, the police are being led by the nose into repudiating their role as our front line of defence against terrorism. Britain has simply taken leave of its senses.
 

In his 9/27 "Impromptus." On the Clinton interview:

[T]here was Clinton’s conspiracy-mindedness. The New Democrat sounded like Michael Moore, talking about how Wallace was trying to distract viewers from the fact that Rupert Murdoch is hot on global warming.

Did you hear that? I thought that this legendarily brainy man had gone cuckoo. But the Democratic party has been like that, since about the election of George W. Bush. Recall how many of their leading figures — Daschle, McAuliffe, et al. — attended the Washington premiere of Moore’s movie.

Finally, Clinton didn’t really comport himself much like a democratic politician. I have noticed that at Davos, too. Clinton goes around like a king, more than like a democrat, shielded from anything unpleasant, not facing any disagreement. I imagine he hadn’t been put in an uncomfortable position in a long, long time.
 

And on the proposed requirement that people show proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote:

I’m quoting from an AP story, found here. . . :

“Democrats assailed the legislation, saying it could hurt minorities, the poor and the elderly — groups that tend to vote Democratic — who might have trouble producing a photo identification.”

Steny Hoyer, a Democratic House leader, said, “This bill is tantamount to a 21st-century poll tax. It will disenfranchise large numbers of legal voters.”

I will ask an old, old question, repeated many times in this column: Why do blacks, Hispanics, and others never take offense at this talk — at these accusations? Or do they?

They are repeatedly told that, for example, they are unable to produce an ID — or that they are less able to do so than their white neighbors. I long to hear someone — lots of someones — say, “Hey, wait a minute! How dare you say that about me! Like I can’t show an ID just as well as somebody else?”
 

Peter Butler offers a list of ten programs for PC, "all standalone applications that do one thing and do it well, without taxing your system." Those I've tried are excellent.
 

Mark Steyn recounts a conversation with lyricist Irving Caesar (1895-1996):

"'Swanee'? Wrote it in 11 minutes," he said proudly of his first big hit, with George Gershwin. "'Tea For Two'? Wrote it in ten minutes. I write fast. Sometimes lousy, but always fast."
 

And Tim de Lisle compiles 70 things the reader may not know (I didn't) about Leonard Cohen:

40 Asking him where the songs come from is fruitless. "If I knew, I'd go there more often."
 

(de Lisle link via Eugene Volokh.)

Two reports from MEMRI. 9/26/06:

The following are excerpts from a July 29, 2006 Iranian news channel (IRINN):

TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1277.

Reporter: "While John Stith was busy in the laboratory testing various medications and substances, he discovered an essence that creates a [unique] flavor in the mouth, and this is how the cola drinks came into being. Since then, following fast-growing industrial production, these new drinks went beyond their country of origin. Due to our insatiable appetite, the manufacturers have become commercial giants and have managed to cross all borders worldwide, from the hotels and casinos of Las Vegas to the slums of Darfur in Sudan and of Afghanistan, reaching the winding alleys of all the cities of the world.

"If only it were that simple... The Zionists are the largest shareholders in the world's drink manufacturers. They make hundreds of thousands of billions of dollars from this annually. This way, they export their colonialist schemes with this product, at no additional cost.

"Take, for example, the Pepsi drink. Do you know what Pepsi stands for? 'Pay Each Penny Save Israel.'"
 

9/27/06:

The following are excerpts from an Iranian TV report on Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean," which asserts that the film is a "Zionist" conspiracy to exert cultural influence by the Disney Company. The report aired on the Iranian news channel (IRINN) on July 27, 2006.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1278. [. . .]

Anchor: "Zionist ideology uses all means to impose its cultural control. Cinema, as an attractive and popular form of art, has always interested the Zionist circles."

Reporter: "The hot news of cinema circles worldwide is: The Pirates of the Caribbean attack the silver screen. The example of Pirates of the Caribbean - Hollywood's latest effort to gain control - is all the more striking if we bear in mind the name of its producer: the Walt Disney company. Disney and its productions have been associated, more than anything, with the Zionist lobby in Hollywood. In 1995, when the pro-Zionist Jews were 2.5% of America's population, they made up 7.7% of Disney's board of directors. This clearly influences the content of this large company's productions, as well as its policies and guidelines. The Aladdin animated film series is one example of Disney creations that present Arabs in a negative light.

"In 2004, Disney supported the Bush administration's expansionist policies, and refrained from screening the film Fahrenheit 9/11, which harshly criticized Bush's policy in attacking Iraq. This film, which won the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes film festival, became the bestselling documentary in the history of the film industry. Disney's move brought it nothing but disgrace.

"In any event, Zionism is not restricted to the capitalistic weapons companies, such as Lockheed and the banks that support it. Cinema is considered another, subtle, weapon in the hands of those who support this corrupt ideology. In Hollywood, Disney is the manufacturer of this weapon, and Pirates of the Caribbean is its newest ammunition.["]
 

Roger Scruton on Noam Chomsky:

[I]t is his ability to excite not just contempt for American foreign policy but a lively sense that it is guided by some kind of criminal conspiracy that provides the motive for Prof. Chomsky's unceasing diatribes and the explanation of his influence. The world is full of people who wish to think ill of America. . . . The Middle East seethes with such people, and Prof. Chomsky appeals directly to their envious emotions. . . .

Success breeds resentment, and resentment that has no safety valve becomes a desire to destroy. The proof of that was offered on 9/11 and by just about every utterance that has emerged from the Islamists since. But Americans don't want to believe it. They trust others to take the kind of pleasure in American success that they, in turn, take in the success of others. But this pleasure in others' success, which is the great virtue of America, is not to be witnessed in those who denounce her. They hate America not for her faults, but for her virtues, which cast a humiliating light on those who cannot adapt to the modern world or take advantage of its achievements.

Prof. Chomsky is an intelligent man. Not everything he says by way of criticizing his country is wrong. However, he is not valued for his truths but for his rage, which stokes the rage of his admirers. He feeds the self-righteousness of America's enemies, who feed the self-righteousness of Prof. Chomsky. And in the ensuing blaze everything is sacrificed, including the constructive criticism that America so much needs, and that America--unlike its enemies, Prof. Chomsky included--is prepared to listen to.

That passage reminded me of something Thomas Sowell has often expressed, for example here:

What also serves the interests of black “leaders,” but not of the black community, is their paranoid vision of the world, in which all economic or other disparities are grievances—grievances that can be dealt with only by relying on “leaders” to get goodies for blacks from the government. . . . Far worse than the self-serving actions of black politicians is the vision of the world that they present—especially to the rising generation of young blacks. It is a vision of a world in which everything they don’t have is the fault of whites.
 

In each case a line of argument that harms nearly everyone, perceived victim and villain alike.

(Scruton link via John J. Miller.)
 

This piece by Robert Spencer deserves, but won't get, wider readership than the column by Ralph Peters that it rebuts:

Peters says that “the world’s only hope for long-term peace is for moderate Muslims - by far the majority around the globe - to recapture their own faith.” Fair enough. But his underlying assumption here is that the Islam of moderate Muslims is the genuine Islam, and all they need to do is “recapture” their faith. In fact it is not for Peters or any other non-Muslim to say what genuine Islam consists of, and there is no Pope of Islam to rule on what is Islamic orthodoxy and what isn’t. What we can do is look at the teachings of the various sects and schools of law -- which I have done, and have found that all mainstream Sunni and Shi’ite sects and madhahib (schools of jurisprudence) teach that it is the responsibility of the umma to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Sharia. Can Peters point to a sect or school that ever existed in any period of Islamic history that represents the Islam that moderates must “recapture”? Perhaps the Mutazilites? If so, can he explain how a modern revival of such a movement would escape the charges of Islamic heterodoxy that scuttled it in the first place?

. . . [V]iolent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is an element of the teaching of all Islamic sects (except the Ahmadiyya, who are persecuted as heretics as a result). This is simply a question of fact. Its truth or falsehood can be established by anyone who examines the teachings of the sects and madhahib. I invite all to do so -- and if you do, you will see that I am stating this accurately.

. . . [L]ike Peters, many . . . people apparently believe that it would be a species of bigotry to suggest that Islam is more likely to inspire violence than Christianity. But here again, this is simply a question of fact. The Bible contains no open-ended, universal command to make war against and subjugate unbelievers, a la Qur’an 9:29. Muhammad commanded his followers to wage war against unbelievers who refused to convert to Islam, and to subjugate them as dhimmis (Sahih Muslim 4294). When did Jesus ever say anything like that?

As I have said many times, I am all for encouraging and working with moderate Muslims. But for their moderation to be effective, they have to confront, repudiate, and help other Muslims to repudiate the elements of Islam that are giving rise to violent fanaticism. Most self-proclaimed moderates instead simply deny those elements exist, while the mujahedin continue to use those same elements to recruit new members. In the run-up to 9/11 there has been an avalanche of articles in the mainstream media bemoaning the “victimization” of Muslims and Islam – thus taking the focus off efforts Muslims need to make to clean house if they can and if they will. And now Ralph Peters, in his fog of confusion, has contributed to that destructive denial.
 

Mark Steyn, in a piece prompted by John Tirman's book 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World:

Let us grant that America is a most unusual superpower. Unlike its predecessors, it is a non-imperial power, for good or ill. That presents a problem for those who insist on pretending that Bush "scares" them. If you lived in, say, 1930s Poland between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, you had good reason to be scared. Both powers coveted your state, and they weren't averse to killing large numbers of people to get it. By contrast, barely does America set foot on foreign soil than its politicians and media are bleating about how the country needs an "exit strategy." That's one reason why the likes of Tirman have embraced environmental doom-mongering. If Washington were a conventional great power, the intellectual class would be arguing that the U.S. is a threat to Poland or Belgium or the Gambia or some such. But because it's so obviously not that kind of power, the world has had to concoct a thesis that the hyperpower is a threat not merely to this or that rinky-dink nation-state but to the entire planet, if not the entire universe. ("We are," warns Al Gore portentously, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe.")

America is the first power in history to be a threat not because of its geopolitical designs but because -- even scarier -- of its "consumption," its way of life. It's not the bombs and tanks, it's those terrifying soccer moms in the big SUVs, it's the ozone-depleting emissions from the triple cheeseburgers. Those supersized carbonated beverages are screwing up the world in ways that old-school small-time genocidal conquerors like Hitler and Stalin could never have dreamed of.
 

Roger Scruton examines Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, "which, on one plausible interpretation, made the issue of immigration undiscussable in British politics for close to forty years":

Powell’s fantasy vision of Britain was absolutely necessary to him. The truths that he wished to put across were uttered in defense of Old England, and it was unthinkable to him that he might be speaking into the void. Powell’s England was a place made sacred by Chaucer and Shakespeare, by the Anglican settlement and the anointed monarch, by the common law and the Great Offices of State. It was the very same England that Churchill had invoked in his wartime speeches: a country whose past was lost in Arthurian mists, whose title was as God-given as that of the Israelites and whose patriotism outshone that of Rome. Those who silenced Powell therefore believed that it was not he but they who were on the side of truth. They were introducing realism and sobriety in the place of dangerous romantic dreams.

. . . In the Platonic scheme of things, Powell’s vision of England might be seen as a noble lie. He was exhorting his countrymen to live up to something, and that thing was an ideal image of their country, shaped by myth in the style of Hesiod. The England of Powell’s dream was fashioned from heroic deeds and immemorial customs, from sacred rites and solemn offices whose meaning was inscrutable from any point outside the social context that defined them. By fixing their sights on this vision, the British people would be in some way perfecting themselves, and establishing their right to their ancestral territory.

Also:

[T]he truth about immigration is beginning to show itself in Europe, notwithstanding all the liberal efforts to conceal it. It is not an agreeable truth; nor can we, in the face of it, take refuge in the noble lies of Enoch Powell. The fact is that the people of Europe are losing their homelands, and therefore losing their place in the world.
 

Claudia Rosett reports on Karnit Goldwasser, "the wife of Ehud Goldwasser — one of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped July 12 into Lebanon by Hezbollah":

On behalf of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, there have been no signs of urgency from [Kofi] Annan; no howls of righteous outrage from the otherwise verbose UN humanitarian emergency coordinater, Jan Egeland; and of course no visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Karnit Goldwasser has yet to receive any sign that her husband, or Regev, are even still alive.

So, agonizing though it must be, she continues to seek in other quarters the help that the UN promised but has not delivered. Speaking softly, briefly, she told us that back in Israel she and Ehud have “one dog and two cats,” that they had “big plans” for a life together, and that since he was kidnapped, “I don’t count the days, because for me, time stops.”
 

"To forgive and forget is to surrender dearly bought experience."

—Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted by Florence King