The Most Enduring Legacy Of Nazi Hate

April 23, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, History, Islam, Islam and the West, Israel and Palestinians, Middle East, Presidents, U.S. History, UK Politics, War on Terror | 6 Comments 

On February 1, 1944, two unlikely allies in the United States Senate—Robert Wagner (D-New York) and Robert Taft (R-Ohio)—introduced a resolution that caused shockwaves around the globe. Their initiative advocated American support for “free and unlimited entry of Jews into Palestine for the creation of a Jewish commonwealth.” This was a bold move and one that put the Roosevelt administration on the spot.

Nearly five years earlier, the British government had released a White Paper on the issue of Palestine—one that largely abandoned the Jewish people in that region. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and during the period of the British Mandate they had been largely supportive of Jewish migration to Palestine and the idea of a Jewish state there. In essence, the White Paper changed all of that. It advocated severe limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine—this at a time when European anti-Semitism was reaching critical mass.

The gang in Berlin was pleased.

Interestingly, at the time of that 1939 White Paper, two men who would later strongly support the creation of the modern state of Israel saw things differently. Winston Churchill spoke to the House of Commons on May 22, 1939 “as one intimately and responsibly concerned in the earlier states of our Palestine policy,” and insisted that he would not “stand by and see the solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside.”
And here at home, Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri—who had no clue at the time that he’d be a major player on the world stage in a few years–also issued a forthright condemnation that was inserted into the Congressional Record:

Mr. President, the British Government has used its diplomatic umbrella again,(this being an unmistakable dig at Neville Chamberlain) …this time on Palestine. It has made a scrap of paper out of Lord Balfour’s promise to the Jews. It has just added another to the long list of surrenders to the Axis powers.

But instead of embracing the ideas put forth by Taft and Wagner in 1944, the White House, State Department, and other powerful entities in the government pulled out all the stops to make sure that the idea of proposing a homeland in Palestine for Jews went away. They did this even though they knew very well about the ongoing mass extermination of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

The standard answer to the obvious question as to why the Holocaust evoked little official response from our government until near the end of the war has been to cite “isolationism,” or “economic Depression,” or “xenophobia” in our nation. Presumably, the idea of doing anything overtly “pro-Jewish” was politically untenable—so goes the argument.

But a closer look reveals something else going on at the time—and ever since.

The most lasting legacy of the toxins that created an epochal global conflict is the fact that elements of Nazism in many ways survive to this day in Islamism. The short-sightedness of FDR’s cronies was corrected in part by his successor, a man of courage who chose to recognize the new State of Israel eleven minutes after its birth in May of 1948. But the question remains: Why did FDR and company not get on the bandwagon, even while millions of Jews were being slaughtered?

Sadly, the real reason has a lot to do with U.S. surrender to Nazi propaganda—its power and content.

Largely overlooked or dismissed in the years since is the fact that the Nazi propaganda machine, the distortion factory that shaped attitudes in Germany throughout the duration of the infamous Third Reich, had its most lasting impact far away from the boroughs and beer halls of Deutschland. In fact, Hitler’s nightmarish vision of ridding Europe of Jews was only the beginning of what he wanted to do—he wanted to extend The Final Solution to Palestine.

And he had been preparing the hearts and minds of the Muslim world for many years.

Jeffrey Herf, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, has written an eye-opening book about the effectiveness of Nazi ideas in the Middle East during the Second World War called, “Nazi Propaganda For The Arab World.” In it, he describes the Nazi campaign for the minds and hearts of the Arab world in great detail—particularly the Axis radio programs that ran in Arabic around the clock from late 1939 until March of 1945.

These broadcasts spewed venomous anti-Semitism and pushed every demagogic button imaginable. They were also highly effective. In fact, long after the last vestige of Nazi rhetoric faded from consciousness in Europe, the poisonous seeds planted back then are still bearing deadly fruit.
The mind-set that gave way to the Third Reich is very much alive and well in the Muslim world of the Middle East.

When those two senatorial strange-bedfellows offered their visionary resolution in 1944 about a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” were way ahead of the story. Mr. Herf has accessed a significant cache of transcripts and leaflets produced by the Nazis during the war—materials that have not been adequately examined—until now.

So back in 1944, any hopes a couple of well-intentioned voices in Washington might have had to garner widespread national support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine were dashed by forces largely influenced by the hate-speak of Nazi propagandists. Berlin, broadcasting in Arabic, referred to Taft and Wagner as “criminal American senators,” while announcing, “a great tragedy is about to be unfolded, a great massacre, another turbulent war is about to start in the Arab countries.”

And in phraseology that sounds eerily familiar to what we still regularly hear from Islamists, the Nazis described the stakes as kill or be killed:

Arabs and Moslems, sons of the East, this menace threatens your very lives, endangers your beliefs and aims at your wealth. No trace of you will remain. Your doom is sealed. It were better if the earth opened and engulfed everybody; it were better if the skies fell upon us, bringing havoc and destruction; all this, rather than the sun of Islam should set and the Koran perish…Stir up wars and revolutions, stand fast against the aggressors, let your hearts, afire with faith, burst asunder! Advance your armies and drive out the menace.

Bear in mind that this is a Nazi broadcast to the Arab/Muslims in Palestine. Of course, the relationship between Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, is well known and documented (see my article: “Hitler’s Favorite Jihadist”), but the broadcasts from Berlin to Palestine are just now beginning to be examined. And what is being found is further evidence that to refer to Islamists as Nazi or Fascist-like is no smear—or stretch.

The rhetoric broadcast to the Middle East 70 years ago is still being noised about—and even more pervasively and effectively. Back then, the attitudes it reinforced, complete with distortion, hate, and prejudice, caused U.S. officials, from FDR on down, to “go wobbly”—as Margaret Thatcher would say.

It is sadly clear that the most lasting impact of the Nazi propaganda machine is that murderous ideas espoused back then are alive and well in our day and age and still being used to threaten and kill Jews—while nouveau wobblers turn away.

A Vital Political Question For 2010

February 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Intelligence, International Affairs, Iran, Islam, National Security, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Terrorism, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

In the waning days of the 1980 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Ronald Reagan used his allotted time in the closing moments of his only debate with President Jimmy Carter to ask a question. It was one of the most effective rhetorical devices in American history.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

Because most Americans answered a resounding “No” that night, Mr. Reagan was able to pull the line out again four years later, this time as President and against Walter Mondale, who ran a quixotic campaign to oust him. And Americans answered by electing Reagan to a second term.

Over the years, the question about being “better off” has been used to great affect by many politicians, including later aspirants to the White House. It became, in effect, a rhetorical trump card.

Now there is another question in the room—one that was asked, in a manner of speaking, during several recent special elections and will be commonplace this November as all of us go to the polls in the “off-year” ritual. The question is: “Are you safer than you were four years ago?”

It is hard to find anything about President Barack Obama’s first term—at least anything of substance—that can be realistically characterized as successful. And by successful, I mean accomplishing one’s stated goals. Whether it was the healthcare bridge too far, cap-and-trade, or dramatically improving the economy, this administration has simply not delivered on what it promised. Of course, in the area of national security they have tried to make good on pledges, but have found the resistance to every move to be surprising strong.

And one gets the feeling that not only did they not see failure coming in the euphoria of those early halcyon days in charge—but they really don’t have a clue as to where to go from here. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of national security and dealing with the very real threat of Islamist terror. And nowhere are the stakes any higher.

The other day, Leon Panetta, Director of CIA, in concert with other leaders in the national security community, told Congress that a terror attack (the indication being that this would be an attempt of significant magnitude) is likely during the next three to six months. It was also suggested that this warning is based, at least in part, on information gleaned from the man who tried to blow up an American airplane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Presumably, this so-called “underwear-bomber” has been cooperating with authorities lately, following the intervention of some of his family from Nigeria, such intervention being prompted by FBI visits to that country.

With its too-sad-to-be-farcical “you-could-have-had-me-at-enemy-combatant” Miranda prolonged delay, this episode is in a real sense a window into the thinking—some would say, lack thereof—of the Obama administration on the whole issue of terror, Islamism, “detainees,” and national security. It seems that there is this naïve insistence on seeing and framing the issues as something nuanced—an almost “shirts versus skins” game—instead of a very grave matter of life and death.

A President is sworn to protect and defend the Constitution and by extension, therefore, those under its cover. The founders and framers did not fashion a document for global governance, nor did they seek to extend its protection beyond “we the people.” But these days we are witnessing the most ambitious attempt ever to broadly interpret its provisions.

On the domestic side, “we” the people is giving way to “for” the people, as those wiser-than-the-rest-of-us seek to “fundamentally transform” (to use Mr. Obama’s words) America. And when it comes to foreign policy and international issues, apparently now this new-improved understanding of our Constitution—one that makes Franklin Roosevelt look like a paleo-conservative in comparison—reads, “they” the people. It covers not only illegal aliens, but also non-U.S. citizen enemy combatants, giving them more rights than any of us would ever receive in some Islamist majority country.

“Are you safer than you were four years ago?”

Iran moves arrogantly and confidently forward to develop the materials and technology to soon become a nuclear power. Just the other day, its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, talked of delivering a blow to “global arrogance” as that nation marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on February 11.

Sure we protest, but words from a teleprompter don’t make much impact on a man who thinks he gets his ideas directly from Allah. And at any rate—the whole first year of Mr. Obama’s administration and its mea culpa “we like you” overtures to the Islamic world, notwithstanding—there is no evidence that anyone who hated us when George W. Bush was in town, hates us any less now.

In fact, someone in the White House should take a look at something else the mahdaviatist President of Iran said the other day in that same speech:

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles.”

Did you see that? The enemy is “liberalism and Marxism.” So as the current administration tries to pursue some kind of rapprochement with Iran and other Islamist nations, while at the same time trying orchestrate a decidedly more liberal agenda domestically—one that smacks of “Marxist” thinking at many turns—something ironic is happening. The new “good guys” who tell us that America is now going be loved more around the world because bad old George Bush and the cranky conservatives are gone, have missed a key plot-point: Islamists hate democratic liberalism—with its socialist vision—even more than they hate militaristic neo-conservatism.

Oops.

Of course, I hope and pray that we are spared any such terror attack this, or any, year. And I pray that there remains a sufficient remnant of discerning men and women in key areas of expertise and responsibility across the land, people who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of liberal statism and diplomatic naïveté, in place to forestall such a disaster.

But I must admit, there seems to be an inexplicable zeitgeist, combining lackadaisical apathy with arrogance that makes me feel anything but safe.

Someone talked to me recently about how, if we are attacked, people will rally around our new president like they did George W. Bush in 2001. I countered that I wasn’t so sure. That was a different time—before we really knew what terrorism meant on these shores. Post game analysis back then revealed so many areas of weakness leading to that dreadful day of terror on Sept. 11.

If such a thing, or anything similar, were to happen these days, I am not sure that those in charge now would get the kind of good will that translates into a political pass—or future.

Buck Or Hot Potato?

January 8, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, History, Intelligence, International Affairs, Islam, National Security, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror, economy | 3 Comments 

In the old West, when the boys played poker at the saloon, or wherever, along with the cards, chips, money, and various beverages, the table was also adorned with a knife–one with a buckhorn handle. The knife was moved from place to place, depending on the person dealing. If a player didn’t feel like dealing the cards, he could pass the responsibility to the next guy, along with the knife.

It was called “passing the buck.”

The phrase is, of course, most commonly associated with President Harry Truman–in fact, his desk on display at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, has a famous sign bearing the words: “The Buck Stops Here.” One of his aides, Fred Canfil, had seen the phrase on a desk in El Reno, Oklahoma, and had the sign made for his boss. Interestingly, and largely lost to the legend according to biographer David McCullough, the 33rd President only kept the sign on his Oval Office desk for a short time while in the White House.

But the metaphor stuck.

It has been used by leaders–particularly presidents–ever since as the ultimate way of saying: “I’m in charge, it’s my responsibility.” Most recently, the phrase was brought out of White House mothballs and used by President Barack Obama in remarks about the Christmas Day 2009 foiled Islamist terrorist attack.

It remains to be seen whether or not the latest pronouncement about the proverbial buck will be remembered as Truman-esque, or more like the nervous stammer of Alexander Haig the day President Reagan was shot. I believe the President said the right things the other day–but will he and his administration really follow through, taking steps, making the tough calls, and keeping the issue of Islamist terror on their political radar screen?

A good indicator would be the willingness to call it what it is. We are not just fighting Al Qaeda as some kind of generic syndicate of bad guys, as with The Man From Uncle and “THRUSH” or Maxwell Smart’s “KAOS.” There is no way for us to win over an ideology, while being afraid or hesitant to call it what it is: Islamism.

To my mind, Mr. Obama is still not comfortable in his role as Commander-in-Chief, with its implied responsibilities of protecting the nation from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He is now saying many of the right things, but I wonder if his vocabulary and America’s dictionary are in sync? He forms phrases now like “we are at war” – but I can’t help but get the feeling that this is based more on manufactured energy than real passion. Does the President view what happened on Christmas and the whole megilla of security, intelligence, and such as important as, say, the economy, healthcare, and jobs?

In fairness, most presidents bring dreams to the job. Lyndon Johnson wanted to build a Great Society and Richard Nixon wanted to focus on foreign affairs, but both had to contend more than they would have liked with their less-favored part of the domestic-international presidential paradigm. Bill Clinton wanted it all to be about “the economy, stupid.” But the first priority of any president is to keep us safe so we can actually have an economy.

A strong sense of national security is, in itself, a potent economic stimulus.

Only time will tell if the new-found-but-pretty-darn-late war-speak (better: war-whisper) will really be about the buck stopping with the President, or mere words.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy faced the press and talked about victory having many “fathers,” but defeat being an “orphan.” He also acknowledged that he was “the responsible officer” in the government. It was, as was Mr. Obama’s recent admission, a statement of the obvious.

But accepting responsibility as a leader does not abrogate systemic culpability.

The old 1970s sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, had a character named Lou Grant (played by Ed Asner)–an irascible man who ran a newsroom. Mary’s boss once said: “Leadership is the art of delegating blame.” Actually, good leadership is somewhere between taking full blame and delegating it all away. Where there are mistakes there is blame to be found. To miss this is to ignore a vital piece of the puzzle preventing something else bad from happening.

Frankly, what needs to happen throughout the government is for various leaders in key areas to think about letting the buck stay with them for a while. When a president has to say “The Buck Stops Here,” it is at least a tacit acknowledgement that the buck has been aggressively mobile.

I think the buck stops every bit as much with Attorney General Eric Holder, as it does with the President. After all, haven’t we been given the impression that the whole send-the-Gitmo-gangsters-to-New York idea is really his and the President is above it all? Or does that buck make its way to Mr. Obama’s desk, too?

And how about Dennis Blair, our Director of National Security (DNI–one of the dumbest ideas to come out of the Bush administration)? Following Mr. Obama’s speech on Thursday, he issued a statement saying, in part:

The Intelligence Community has made considerable progress in developing collection and analysis capabilities and improving collaboration, but we need to strengthen our ability to stop new tactics such as the efforts of individual suicide terrorists. The threat has evolved, and we need to anticipate new kinds of attacks and improve our ability to stay ahead of them and protect America.

We can and we must outthink, outwork and defeat the enemy’s new ideas. The Intelligence Community will do that as directed by the President, working closely with our nation’s entire national security team.

Really? What has the guy been working on up to now–health care reform?

One of two things has been happening, as clearly indicated by the foiled Christmas Day Islamist terror attack: either subordinates are keeping bad or inconvenient details from the President of the United States, or the information has not, until now, been marked or received with requisite urgency. Whatever the case, heads should roll. Blair’s words are akin to those uttered by an erudition-challenged player after a football game, “Well, we needed to score more points to win.” Duh.

There really is no buck to pass in the Obama administration when it comes to National Security, there is only a hot potato few want to deal with or even acknowledge. Attorney General Holder, Janet Napolitano, and so many others in key roles these days have regularly dismissed or minimized the danger of our times, while forging ahead with the even-more-now absurd sending of Gitmo detainees back to Yemen (6 on December 20th), and making sure that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (pronounced: Abdulmutallab) is told he has the right to remain silent and to the full protection of the American justice system, as opposed to being treated as he should be: as an enemy combatant.

Sure, the President of the United States made a speech and said many of the right things, but what we need to figure out is if what we are really bearing witness to is a dynamic described to reporters by Former Attorney John Mitchell, back in 1969: “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

Wake Up Calls And Snooze Buttons

January 1, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, History, Intelligence, International Affairs, Islam and the West, National Security, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 2 Comments 

On December 7, 1941, United States Senator Gerald Nye looked over his notes for a speech he was about to deliver to a packed house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nye was a Republican, but part of a progressive element in the GOP and he was no-doubt influenced by the politics of the late Robert M. La Follette. In other words, he was a fiscal liberal in domestic matters and a fierce isolationist when it came to foreign entanglements.

So speaking before a group known informally as the “America Firsters” (sponsored by the America First Committee, of which he was a member) was a piece of cake for him and he knew the lines that would draw the biggest applause. He only wished his hero could be there: Charles A. Lindbergh.

These men were part of a highly popular movement in those days, this success being reflected in Gallup Polls showing that less than a quarter of Americans favored entering the fires of war then engulfing much of the world. This group was largely anti-Semitic (and therefore, pro-German), and was joined by other luminaries of the day, including: flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and movie actress, Lillian Gish.

During the first days of the last month of that tense year, their present preoccupation was the potential of war with Japan. To them, this was merely an excuse to enter the war in Europe through a back door. Therefore, the headline of their then-very-popular tabloid, the America First Bulletin, on December 6, 1941 was: “BLAME FOR RIFT WITH JAPAN RESTS ON ADMINISTRATION.”

After a glowing introduction, followed by furious applause, Nye, the Senator from North Dakota, plunged into his theme. But before he had gotten very far, he noticed someone in his peripheral vision approaching him from the stage wing bearing a piece of paper. He paused and read the note, which informed him of the breaking news about a Japanese attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Buzz kill.

After fumbling and hemming and hawing for a moment he mumbled: “I can’t somehow believe this…” – and then proceeded to finish his speech. Telling the crowd about what the note said, the Senator ventured his own take, which included the predictable: “We have been maneuvered into this by the President,” and the old reliable: “This was just what Britain had planned for us.”

A few days later, on December 11th, members of the America First Committee met in Chicago and decided to disband. Lindbergh didn’t attend, but sent a telegram begging them not to go out of business. He was now isolated himself, though – by his own ignorant bias.

Pearl Harbor was many things: an infamous attack, an example of unspeakable treachery, a telling moment of vulnerable denial, but ultimately it was the one thing the Japanese had not counted on – a wake-up call.

Literally overnight, opinions changed and so did the course of history, because in moments of great peril, it is foolish, immoral, and ignorant to hit the snooze button when the alarm rings.

September 11, 2001 was a wake-up call, one that kept us vigilant for a period of time roughly equivalent to the length of our involvement in World War II. We had been attacked, we knew who the enemy was, and we were resolved to find and annihilate him.

But that was then.

Some understandably suggest these days that we are in a “pre-Sept. 11” mindset. This is, of course, somewhat true, but the cliché doesn’t tell the whole story. Because before that dreadful day when the world changed forever – or as so many of us thought – there had been other ominous moments and indications of terror to come. The bombing of the USS Cole and attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, for example. However, these obvious acts of war were preceded by one on our very soil – the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. And the very mistakes we made following that attack (and those that followed before Sept. 11, 2001) we seem to be determined to make again.

History rhymes one more time.

The day after – September 12, 2001 – Daniel Pipes, director of The Middle East Forum, wrote passionately about how, though the moral blame for what happened fell upon those who planned and carried out the attacks, the tactical blame actually fell on the U.S. government, “which has grievously failed in its topmost duty to protect American citizens from harm.” His list of mistakes back then included:

• Seeing terrorism as a crime
• Relying too much on electronic intelligence
• Not understanding the hate-America mentality
• Ignoring the terrorist infrastructure in this country

Can anyone with a brain possible grade our efforts in these areas, now more than eight years later, as anything higher than, say, a D+? Bear in mind that self-given marks don’t count and in matters of life and death there is no grading on a curve.  It’s the same principle that says “almost” only works in horseshoes or hand grenades.

We are not really just in a “Pre-Sept.11th” mindset, we are actually approaching current Islamism-driven horror in ways reminiscent of how we did things in the 1990s.

How’s that working for you?

Provocative Nonsense

December 5, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Afghanistan, Annals of the Obama Administration, Democratic Party, War on Terror | 13 Comments 

At the Huffington Post, Tom Shachtman writes:

Former Vice President Richard B. Cheney in a recent interview with Politico labeled President Barack Obama’s drawn-out process of deciding on a troop surge for Afghanistan as projecting “weakness,” and charged that this and other “signs of weakness” would embolden our adversaries in the world. In articulating this position, Cheney embraced the concept of “provocative weakness” promulgated many years ago by the mysterious Pentagon civilian adviser Fritz G. A. Kraemer.

Schachtman identifies Kraemer as the “shaper” of Henry Kissinger and a neoconservative guru.  Kraemer was one of Kissinger’s mentors, but so was William Y. Elliott of Harvard, an apostle of realism.  In suggesting that Kraemer was responsible for the idea of provocative weakness, Schactman is being ridiculous.  The notion that weakness invites aggression has been around for a very long time.  Consider:

• ” There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.” — Andrew Jackson, special message to Congress, February 22, 1836
• “Weakness and unpreparedness invite aggression” — 1940 Democratic Platform
• “The disintegration of our military forces since the surrender of Germany and Japan is an encouragement to nations who regard weakness on the part of peace-loving nations as an invitation to aggression. And the countries whose people share our ideals, and who look to us for leadership, but who are weak in resources or manpower, lose faith in our ability to support the principles for which we stand.”  — Harry Truman, June 7, 1947
• “Weakness invites aggression. Strength stops it.” — Dwight Eisenhower, October 9, 1956

Will Mr. Obama Seize His Big Mac Moment?

November 27, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Afghanistan, American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, George W. Bush, History, Military, National Security, Obama administration, Presidents, Republican Party, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

This Tuesday, Barack Obama will travel to the United States Military Academy at West Point to deliver the most important address of his young presidency. He has obviously chosen the site for the speech with great care and in the hope that the backdrop – a storied scene on the Hudson – will engender an image of him as a strong and effective commander in chief.

It is probably a smart move, but one not without a measure of risk.

The President of the United States will be treated with respect and be received enthusiastically – all very appropriate and quintessentially American. But when the fanfare fades and the applause lines become fewer, he will have the tough job of articulating a compelling vision for the future of a war that has lost its name, if not its way.

Though Mr. Obama’s White House predecessor spoke at West Point twice – once in each term – not all presidents make this trip. Eisenhower, one of the two graduates of the academy who went on to become Commander in Chief (the other being fellow Republican, Ulysses S. Grant), never made a major speech there during his two terms as president. And his predecessor, the man from Missouri, avoided the place like the plague. President Truman saw West Point as a breeding ground for “stuffed shirts” – and at any rate, his firing of the academy’s former commandant – Douglas MacArthur – probably kept the presidential welcome mat in storage in the basement of the Thayer Hotel.

As Mr. Obama’s team prepares for this important speech, I wonder if the wordsmiths are taking time to consult the history of what has been said there by other presidents and prominent Americans?

Franklin Roosevelt gave the commencement address in 1939 to graduates who would soon be in harm’s way in Europe and the Pacific. He told that class:

During recent months international political considerations have required still greater emphasis upon the vitalization of our defense, for we have had dramatic illustrations of the fate of undefended nations. I hardly need to be more specific than that. Recent conflicts in Europe, the Far East and Africa bear witness to the fact that the individual soldier remains still the controlling factor.

However, when John F. Kennedy spoke to another graduating class on June 6, 1962 (inexplicably, for a president who prided himself on his sense of history, never mentioning that date as the 18th anniversary of D-Day), he shared a vision about changes in warfare, telling his honorable audience:

Your responsibilities may involve the command of more traditional forces, but in less traditional roles. Men risking their lives, not as combatants, but as instructors or advisers, or as symbols of our Nation’s commitments.

He, though, never lived to see how quickly “instructors or advisors” would become “combatants.”

The most recent president to make a major speech at West Point was George W. Bush, a man who usually does not fare well in the eloquence department, especially when compared to President Obama. Yet, what he had to say back in 2002 should be reviewed, not only by White House speechwriters, but also by all Americans – because the words still ring true:

Because the war on terror will require resolve and patience, it will also require firm moral purpose. In this way our struggle is similar to the Cold War. Now, as then, our enemies are totalitarians, holding a creed of power with no place for human dignity. Now, as then, they seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life.

America confronted imperial communism in many different ways – diplomatic, economic, and military. Yet moral clarity was essential to our victory in the Cold War. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles, and rallied free nations to a great cause.

Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem – we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.

However, if I were on Mr. Obama’s speech writing team (corpulent opportunity), I would spend some time going over another famous speech made at West Point. It just may be the most relevant to current realities, not to mention one that we all need to hear again.

The date was May 12, 1962 and the speaker was retired General Douglas MacArthur. The Old Man was 82 years of age and his frail movements reflected it. But there was a spark of eloquence left in him; one that he fanned that day into a brilliant rhetorical flame.

When I watch Mr. Obama’s speech this Tuesday, it will be Big Mac’s speech that I use as the gold standard reference point. Here are some excerpts. The words speak for themselves:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

The Fertile Crescent

November 13, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Cold War, Culture, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Ethics, Faith, History, Islam, Islam and the West, Military, National Security, Religion, Terrorism, War on Terror | 2 Comments 

Every time I read, view, or hear the latest attempt to portray Nidal Malik Hasan as a “loner” or “victim of racism” or “psychotic” – or (this may be my favorite) someone suffering from something called “PRE-traumatic stress disorder,” I am torn between the desire to scream or laugh. My internal conflict increases when I hear Chicago Mayor Daley suggest the problem is that Americans love guns too much.

And then there’s the granddaddy of all recent rhetorical absurdities when Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey uttered the incredibly clueless thought: “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”

Can someone explain to me how the death of 14 (one of the victims was pregnant) can be trumped by the importance of a particular political agenda? The General should include a very real apology in his resignation letter.

It would be funny if not for the fact that it is all so dangerously sad. As I take it all in, it’s like the ghost of Groucho Marx is sitting on one of my shoulders making me smile at the outrageousness of such comments with his famous, “Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your own eyes?” This is all balanced by the difficult to ignore presence of the ghost of Gen. George S. Patton, who sits on the other shoulder and regularly fills that ear (this would be the right ear, by the way – in every sense of that word) with words I am not completely able to translate in this column.

Psychologists use the term “denial” to describe a way some people interpret reality. This manifests itself in denying something ever actually happened, or that it happened but it wasn’t to big of a deal (the “isolated event” approach), or even in something called “projection” which admits that something has indeed happened, but deflects blame and responsibility. We are a nation in official and pervasive denial.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis (c. 1962), if an American soldier would have opened fire on his comrades while wearing a Che Guevera T-shirt and yelling, “Long Live Lenin, Khruschev, and Castro,” it is doubtful that the guy’s communist sympathies would have been dismissed as irrelevant and peripheral. The commies were the enemy. And, if an investigation into his background would have yielded clues to his political feelings and fanaticism, there is no doubt that the case would have been a slam-dunk. And those who should have picked up on his radicalism before the awful fact would have been held accountable.

In fact, if some white-hooded fool were to open fire on a group today in the name of a fiery cross and a virulent racist perversion of certain passages in the Christian Bible, it is unlikely that such a terrorist would have any apologists reluctant to tie what he did to what he believed. Religious violence, be it of the cross or crescent, is always worthy of condemnation and contempt.

But when it comes to Islamism, the various contortions some use to distance what a Jihadist did from the ideology that so-obviously informed his actions are very difficult to watch.

Of course, I very much understand the complexities of this issue. We are a free society and among the most precious of those freedoms is that of religion. But as with another vital right – the freedom of speech – there are clear limits. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. And religious liberty notwithstanding, you cannot advocate the violent overturning of our constitutional way of life in this country in the name of any God.

Anyone, therefore, who embraces Sharia law and believes that it should become the code of a new America, should be disqualified from serving in the military. At any rate – how can they really take the required oath? Clearly one day long ago, the Fort Hood terrorist said:

I, Nidal Malik Hasan, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

We are told “officially” that there are 3,572 Muslims in our military ranks. Although it’s interesting to note that The American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council has that number much higher, in fact, four times higher – at more than 15,000. What do they know that those in the barracks don’t?

Some might want to counter that bad things have been done – violently so – in this country and the world throughout history, in the name of my religion – Christianity. And, sadly, I must confess that this has been the case, on occasion. But it has never been the norm. And those who do such stuff certainly don’t get their instructions from Christian doctrine.

To get from the teachings of Jesus to murderous evil requires a tortured, twisted, ignorant, and monumentally long journey. Yes, people have done bad things in Christ’s name – but in doing so they have, in effect, denied him.

Some ideologies, however, are much more friendly to the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. For example, when it comes to economic theory, you are hard pressed to find any possible pathway from Milton Friedman’s monetary ideas to killing a bunch of people. On the other hand, when you take a look at the writings of Karl Marx (no relation to Groucho), history has shown that the distance from theory to bloodshed is not all that far. In fact, Marxism and violence are close cousins because you really have to force people to turn from self-interest – all for their own good, of course.

The thing that too many in our nation are simply ignoring is that when it comes to Islam, as opposed to any other religious idea extant, the journey from ideology to what happened at Fort Hood is also not a very long one. For any Christian to become so radicalized as to open fire people in the name of his or her religion would require a virtual repudiation of the faith. Could it happen? Sure – anything can happen. And if it did, the mainstream media in this country would have no qualms about wrapping the deed around the doctrine.

But the quantifiable fact is that such things really don’t happen with Christians the way they do with Muslims. And even when certain violent acts by professed Christians, such as the killing of a doctor who has performed abortions, make the news, usually among the first and loudest expressions of condemnation and outrage are from Christians.

Does anyone hear all that many Muslim voices condemning Hasan?

Much has been made of the fact that the Fort Hood Jihadist/Terrorist was harassed for his beliefs. First, let me be clear – I think it is wrong, un-American, and certainly un-Christian to at all persecute someone for what is believed and practiced in the context of our Constitutional freedoms. And when it comes to Christians – who have known the pain of persecution throughout the centuries – there is no Biblical mandate for a follower of Jesus to ever persecute another human being. If fact, in our way of thinking, and from the wonderful Jewish scriptures that inform our faith, we are ever admonished to love neighbor as self.

The Christian response to persecution is never to be that of reactive violence. The Apostle Peter gave instruction near the end of his life on this matter:

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. ‘Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.’ But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. – I Peter 3:13-16 (NIV)

Gentleness, respect, hope, and love – these are the watchwords of the follower of Jesus. But there is no “turn the other cheek” stuff in Islam. And at some point people in this country need to stop ignoring the obvious.

So I respect my Muslim neighbors and want them to be treated justly. This means, when there is peace, community, love of law, love of country, all will be well. And when these values are violently violated there must be justice of another kind – to punish evil, especially the egregious wickedness of terrorist murder.

But I also, taking another cue from Jesus, must be “wise as a serpent,” and this means I need to be aware that certain ideologies are more fertile when it comes to hate and violence. And, like it or not, they – and those who espouse such teachings – need to be watched very carefully.

Too many people have been looking the other way in America. It’s time to focus.

The November Chronicles

November 6, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, Europe, History, International Affairs, Iran, Islam, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

Mark Twain often suggested that history doesn’t always repeat itself, “but it does rhyme.” This chronological cadence is particularly true when you note some of the key events in the past century that happened in early November.

November 7, 1917 was when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, unleashing a still too-often ignored and dismissed era of tyranny and terror (the idea of an “October Revolution” has to do with the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars). Long since discredited by the verdict of history, the ideas that formed the basis of what Ronald Reagan aptly called an “evil empire,” have found new adherents – some in high places in our land. But ignorant neo-Marxists in our midst notwithstanding, the reality of what took place under the czars-of-all-things-Soviet for more than seven decades was horrifying.

Much is rightly made of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Germany and we are regularly reminded that we must never forget. I agree. But while remembering all the depravity wrought by Hitler and his henchman, why do Communist leaders and regimes so often get a pass these days? Even by conservative accounts, more than 100 million people died via Communist oppression. Yet some apparently feel that the ideas behind the system are somehow still valid. Really?

Fast forward to November 4, 1956, and see Soviet tanks penetrating the Pest side of the Danube in Budapest, Hungary, in their offensive to put down a nationwide revolt against the so-called Peoples Republic of Hungary. Brave patriots sought to wrest control of their nation from the grip of Soviet-style Stalinism.

Meanwhile, America stood sadly down. The great General, who had led the allies to victory 11 years before, sent mixed signals. Freedom fighters were emboldened by what we were saying on Radio Free Europe, but the official policy turned out to be nothing more than impotent ambivalence. Within days, the courageous movement was crushed.

Speaking of the 4th day in November and presidential impotence, let us now move ahead to the year 1979 – the moment Iranian “revolutionaries” seized control of our embassy in Tehran, initiating a 444-day Hell for 52 American hostages. This was the moment when many average Americans first came face to face with the ugly egregiousness of Islamism. Jimmy Carter lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in those days, but his presidency would languish due to lack of foresight, insufficient resolve, and malaise-driven methodology.

Exactly one year later – yep, you got it – right smack dab on November 4, 1980, Ronald Wilson Reagan trounced Mr. Carter, who vainly sought re-election, with the networks calling the race even before many Americans had voted. The hostages would thereafter celebrate the very moment of Reagan’s inauguration the following January 20th as their moment of liberation. Clearly, the nuts running the show in Tehran had the requisite lucidity to know that they did not want to deal with the Gipper.

Another November 4th, this one in 1989, saw a crowd of nearly 1,000,000 people cram Alexanderplatz in East Berlin, rallying for freedom. This would lead in less than a week to something for many years thought to be unthinkable – the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. A little more than two years earlier, that same Ronald Reagan had challenged his Soviet counterpart-though-no-real-match, Mikhail Gorbachev, to “tear down this wall.” Those words penetrated hearts, minds, not to mention concrete that day, leading to the barrier’s ultimate demise as a metaphor.

Eventually, we came to yet another November 4th – this one in 2008, with Barack Obama’s election as U.S. President, an event that to many heralded a whole new world to come. But the “change we can believe” soon began to appear more and more like an awkward combination of antiquated socialism and naïve geopolitics. Frank Gaffney, president of The Center for Security Policy in Washington, suggests that the “Obama Doctrine” can be summed up in nine words: “Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Diminish our country.”

You see, the toxins of Lenin’s bunch in 1917, and those of the gang in Tehran in 1980, share common and deadly DNA. To miss this leads to the very real potential for unparalleled peril.

Once we had leaders who instinctively understood the danger of sinister ideology. Now, all evidence seems to indicate that people in key roles overestimate Marxism and underestimate Islamism. The welfare state, once nearly dismantled after we had apparently learned its dark lessons, is now expanding exponentially once again with a vengeance. Our government preaches stimulation, but practices hegemony. Mr. Reagan always reminded us about the virtue of creating wealth. Mr. Obama seems dead set on redistributing it.

And this Monday, November 9th, on the 20th anniversary of the day Reagan’s instruction about that wicked wall was enthusiastically followed by a Berlin crowd, our new president will be a no-show. He has nothing against speeches in Berlin. Been there; done that. It’s not the venue that makes him uncomfortable. It’s the message.

When the wall came tumbling down, it was the most dramatic demonstration of the inherent bankruptcy of the ideas of Marx in actual practice. Sure, the doctrine promises hope, change, and the idea that human self-interest will one day “wither away,” but it has never really delivered – simply because it can’t. Harvard professor Richard Pipes has suggested the Soviet system collapsed because of “the utopian nature of its objectives.”

And when it comes to Islamism, the continued and persistent minimizing of its threat is not only misguided, it approaches political malpractice. The president, this past November 4th, reached out to Tehran seeking “a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based on mutual interests and mutual respect.” In response, leaders there vow to continue to show “unquenchable anger against the Great Satan.”

That, by the way, is how a clenched fist responds to an extended hand.

So here we are in another November in time and a 39-year old Army major – a psychiatrist and lifelong Muslim – climbs onto a table crying, “Allahu Akbar,” and opens fire on fellow-soldiers. Many die, while others cling to life. But will anything be learned?

It seems that the history of the past 100 years has been, in many ways, a battle of Novembers. At times, tyranny has temporarily triumphed; at other times freedom’s flag has flown. Yes, Mark Twain said that history could rhyme. But often these rhymes – so simple and clear – come across as riddles to those who are apparently determined to miss the obvious.

Learn Or Repeat

September 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Afghanistan, History, Obama administration, Overseas Contingency Operation, War on Terror | 2 Comments 

Byron York’s column in today’s Washington Examiner is too powerful to paraphrase and too important to excerpt.

He examines some recent stories and finds a disturbing pattern:

There was an international uproar when, on Sept. 4, in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, an American fighter jet under NATO command bombed a group of Taliban fighters who had hijacked two fuel tanker trucks. The trucks exploded, the fighters were killed, and so were a still-undetermined number of Afghan civilians.

The civilian deaths sent shudders through the American military command, already fearful that civilian casualties would further alienate the Afghan public. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, was said to be angry and determined to tighten the U.S. force’s already-strict rules of engagement even more to avoid future civilian deaths.

Then something odd happened. When McChrystal met with local leaders in Kunduz, a few days after the bombing, he got an earful — but not what he expected.

According to a detailed account in The Washington Post — a story that has received too little attention in the ongoing debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan — the local Afghan leaders told McChrystal to stop being so fussy and to go ahead and kill the enemy, which they said would help bring stability to the region.

Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran was given extraordinary access to the bombing investigation. According to his account, McChrystal began the meeting with a show of sympathy for those who had been killed or wounded. The general didn’t get very far before he was interrupted by the provincial council chairman, Ahmadullah Wardak.

The security situation has been getting worse in Kunduz, Wardak told McChrystal. American and NATO troops haven’t been aggressive enough in pursuing and killing the Taliban. In Wardak’s view, the bombing of the fuel tankers, rather than a mistake, was the right thing to do.

“If we do three more operations like was done the other night, stability will come to Kunduz,” Wardak said, according to the Post account. “If people do not want to live in peace and harmony, that’s not our fault.”

Chandrasekaran reported that McChrystal “seemed caught off guard.” Wardak clarified a bit more: “We’ve been too nice to the thugs,” he said.

So instead of receiving an angry lecture on America’s disregard for Afghan life, the general received an angry lecture on America’s hesitance to go after the enemy.

Cut from that scene to a letter written to Sen. Susan Collins last July. It was from a New Portland, Maine, man named John Bernard, father of Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, then serving with the Marines in Afghanistan.

John Bernard, himself a 26-year veteran of the Marines, was enraged by the military’s new, restrictive rules of engagement in Afghanistan. The rules are “nothing less than disgraceful, immoral and fatal for our Marines, sailors and soldiers on the ground,” Bernard wrote. Under those rules, U.S. forces “without reinforcement, denial of fire support and refusal to allow them to hunt and kill the very enemy we are there to confront are nothing more than sitting ducks.”

The letter, disturbing at the time, became heartbreaking three weeks later, when Joshua Bernard was killed fighting the Taliban in Helmand province.

His death became national news when the Associated Press published a clearly inappropriate photo of Bernard as he lay wounded. But the bigger news should have been his father’s concerns about the rules of engagement.

Now cut again, this time to Sept. 8, when four U.S. Marines were killed when the Taliban ambushed their patrol in Kunar province. The Marines were taken completely by surprise and pinned down under heavy Taliban fire. McClatchy reporter Jonathan Landay was with them and wrote a harrowing account of their desperate battle to survive.

The rules of engagement again played a role. “U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and treelines,” Landay wrote, “despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.”

President Obama is in the middle of a new reassessment of his original reassessment of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. The big question consuming the press is whether Obama will send more troops, and if so, how many. But what American troops are actually doing in Afghanistan is even more important.

Will the president listen to John Bernard, to the troops who are fighting under tight restrictions, and even to Ahmadullah Wardak? Will he let them fight the fight? It’s simply wrong to place Americans at risk otherwise.

The controversy over the publication of the photograph of  Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard’s battlefield death, against the wishes of his family,  ignored the letter written by his father to Senator Susan Collins a few weeks before.  John Bernard, a USMC veteran, had written that the rules of engagement in Afghanistan were “nothing less than disgraceful, immoral and fatal for our Marines, sailors and soldiers on the ground”.

It Aint Over Til It’s Over

September 11, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Healthcare, History, Intelligence, National Security, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

By the autumn of 1944, and in the wake of the very successful landings in Normandy the previous June, Allied troops and commanders in the field, and civilian authorities in Washington, D.C. and London, were confident of victory in Europe.

It was just a matter of time.

In fact, as our forces moved like a juggernaut across France and into Belgium en route to the Rhine and Germany itself, the Nazis were in full-scale retreat, ceding back territory they had aggressively devoured four years earlier. There was even some talk – and it was surely well received – that some of our boys might be home by Christmas. People had been crooning about it in a popular song for more than a year.

But all that changed when the Germans launched a massive, unexpected winter offensive that December, and a fierce conflict known famously to us as the Battle of the Bulge disabused the Allies of the notion of an expeditious victory. The war was by no means over and the enemy not at all vanquished. This brings to mind a musing from the mind of the great philosopher Yogi Berra, when he said: “It aint over til it’s over!”

You see, while many were prematurely preoccupied with postwar dreams, the good guys were given a brutal, bloody, and costly reminder that the ravages of war are ever possible until an enemy has actually been completely defeated. Eight years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was pretty easy for Americans to remember what had happened without fear, because the threat was no longer there.

Eight years after the attacks on Sept. 11th, we have no such luxury. We must remember with resolve. We must remember through vigilance.

Have you ever watched a movie where the bad guy gets away at the end or enough loose ends are left hanging that you just know the producers are going to make a sequel? Well, our enemies have been longing for just that. Whether or not they can do it, or will, is, of course, a fair and open question. But for anyone to suggest that such a thing can never happen again is not only ludicrous; it is perilous.

I certainly think that this eighth anniversary of that horrific day in 2001 should be remembered – but not as a long ago, of a different time and place, event. It must be remembered in the way a Marine on Guadalcanal would have remembered Pearl Harbor in late 1942, or as an Army Ranger would have while scaling the cliff at Ponte Du Hoc, two years later.

It’s a holy day in the sense of bearing witness to the terrible loss of life and the noble and heroic actions of so many in their diligent response. But there should be a fervency attached to it all. The armor of war should not be put away abroad, nor should the home front be lulled into ominous complacency by political distractions or naïve pronouncements.

The threat is still there. It will not go away by ignoring it anymore than a cancer in the body will. It will not go away by giving it a new name – or no name. It will not go away because we have smarter people in charge who supposedly never overreact to crises and keep their heads when all others are losing theirs.

The threat is still there in spite of the fact that there is a systematic undermining of our intelligence capacities in the nation, born of a petty and cynical desire for political gain. We are tying the hands of people who are charged with helping to keep us safe.

The chief role of government is to protect us and keep us free. Instead we live in a time when all the energy in the executive and legislative branches seems to be directed at creating a society of dependent sheep. We’ll be fed, burped, bandaged, and entertained – until we wake up one day and face the sad news that something bad has happened again via the hands of an enemy we have ignored for too long.

There is still a war on. It is a terror war, driven by Islamism – a pernicious ideology that uses religion as a pretext for world domination. There are very bad people out there – and here at home; people who despise us, our constitution, and our way of life. They must smile and roll their eyes as they watch us try to wrestle with issues such as healthcare reform; anything just as long as we don’t look too closely at what they’re doing.

But we hear less and less about it. Oh, occasionally a great communicator makes an offhand remark related to such a conflict, but usually only in the context of reminding us how sad it is to have wasted all that money “over there” when we could have used it to make everyone healthy and happy here at home.

In a time of war, you don’t make your side safe by marginalizing the conflict, minimizing the threat, or demoralizing those who are charged with crucial responsibilities.

In the century before the birth of Jesus Christ, a Syrian man named Publilius Syrus, who became popular in the days of Julius Caesar as a mime and actor, was known for his maxims and many survive to this day. Among the best is this:

“He is most free from danger, who, even when safe, is on his guard.”

In July of 1927, the New York Yankees were on the road and well on their way to one of the greatest seasons ever experienced by a baseball team. The biggest crowd drawn that month at their famous stadium, however, had nothing to do with baseball. It was the scene of a boxing match between two contenders for the heavyweight title: Jack Dempsey and Jack Sharkey.

Dempsey, of course, had already been a legendary champ, only beaten the year before by savvy boxer and bookworm, Gene Tunney – the smartest guy ever to hold the title. This fight was to see who would face Tunney next. And by all accounts Sharkey took the battle to Dempsey for several rounds, cutting him up and beating him to the punch.

So Dempsey went to work on the body and some of the punches strayed low – Okay several of the punches were south of the border. And at one point Sharkey turned to the referee to complain. At that moment, while Sharkey was looking at the official, Dempsey hit him with what he later referred to as the best punch he’d ever thrown.

It was over.

When in a fight, never drop your guard.

Who You Gonna Believe? Me Or My Book?

August 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

Charles Barkley famously admitted that he hadn’t read his autobiography.  Now former (and first) Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge presents prospective readers with a new twist to the old punchline of the cheater caught in flagrante delicto: Who are you gonna believe — me or your lying eyes?

USA Today reports Mr. Ridge’s complete fold —which the paper’s headline generously describes as packpedaling— regarding his recent headline-grabbing (and, more to the point, book-launching) “revelation” that Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft vigorously urged him to raise the nation’s security threat level shortly before the 2004 election in order to help George W. Bush’s re-election.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush’s approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a “vigorous” discussion.

“Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld,” he writes. “There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?’ ”

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge’s accusations, Rumsfeld’s spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them “nonsense.”

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. “I was never pressured,” Ridge said.

The Folly Of Blind Compassion

August 21, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, History, Obama administration, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

Leon was a short, thin, 28-year old man. A self-described anarchist – a term that would translate today as terrorist – he determined to commit an act of murder. His target was the President of the United States.

Almost 100 years to the day before the 21st century faced the murderous terror of Sept. 11, 2001, Leon F. Czolgosz (pronounced: “Cholgosh”) waited his turn in a receiving line at the Temple of Music, part of the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York. Everyone wanted to shake the hand of President William McKinley who had presided over a national economic recovery via a sturdy conservative approach.

A secret service agent locked eyes with Czolgosz briefly, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary he didn’t linger. Too bad, because when Leon found himself face to face with the president, McKinley reached out his right hand, which the would-be assassin batted away while bringing his own handkerchief-draped right hand up toward McKinley’s abdomen. He fired two shots from the .32 caliber Iver-Johnson “Safety Automatic” revolver he had purchased just two days before for $4.50.

President McKinley at first seemed to defy the assassin by appearing to survive, only to succumb to his wounds eight days following the shooting. The 25th President of the United States died on September 14, 1901. Czolgosz was swiftly arraigned and indicted. He was brought to trial on September 23rd – a proceeding that lasted a little more than eight hours from start to finish. Found guilty by a jury, he was sentenced to death by Judge Truman C. White three days later. There is some dispute as to whether or not the jurist added the perfunctory “May God have mercy on your soul” addendum.

That very day, as the nation’s newspapers carried news about the death penalty sentence for the presidential assassin, newsreels were released showing McKinley’s Canton, Ohio burial. It was all very real and very fresh in the minds of Americans.

Sometimes a rush to judgment is better than deferred injustice born of misguided compassion.

Czolgosz was the 50th criminal to sit in New York’s electric chair, doing so on October 29, 1901 – less than two months after his sordid act. His brother witnessed the execution and asked for the body – presumably on “compassionate grounds” – but was denied. As Leon Czolgosz was buried, jailers at the Auburn, New York facility poured liberal amounts of sulfuric acid on the body. The remains diffused into the prison-ground soil.

Sure there were some at the time who protested all of this, even suggesting that Czolgosz was a victim of social conditions. But empathy wasn’t the big debate-ending trump card back then. Even the new president, Theodore Roosevelt – a man who was actually known for his progressive leanings – denounced anarchism as “evil.” In his first message to Congress he described the anarchist as “a malefactor and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, a ‘product of social conditions.’” He added that it was “no more an expression of ‘social discontent’ than picking pockets or wife-beating.”

Fast forward to our day and age and the ghastly sight of Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi being freed from prison in Scotland, with Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill citing compassionate grounds for the release and saying al Megrahi was “going home to die.” Never mind that the terrorist is responsible for the death of 270 people who died when the bomb he placed on Pan Am flight 103 exploded earlier than he planned over Lockerbie, Scotland in December of 1988.

Time may heal some wounds, but it also tends to play tricks on memory and good judgment. Blind justice is one thing; willfully blind compassion is quite another. Where is the compassion for the victims and their families in this matter?

We are witnessing the fruit – an extreme example, I know, but an example nonetheless – of what happens when empathy becomes a serious factor in the pursuit and practice of justice. Compassion that becomes myopic and gets lost in the distortions and nuances of the small, subjective picture, will not result in justice, but instead will often fly in it’s very face.

This so-called compassionate act by the Scottish government is very much an in-your-face offense against the families of those who died on that fateful flight, as well as the world at large. The man who was set free the other day had already received a boatload of compassion in the fact that there was no death penalty in the system where he was tried and convicted for his horrific deed.

The difference between the two scenarios I have written about here is time. When a wound is fresh, when an injustice or evil deed is recent, there is reactive vigilance. But as time goes on and life defaults to a measure of normality, issues become blurred and memories become faulty. Things cease to be as clear-cut.

So we find ourselves at a moment, when our nation is outraged – appropriately so – at the release of a terrorist, while at the same time we are moving away from any semblance of actual vigilance at breakneck speed.

Why should some in our government denounce the action of the Scots, when in a real sense they are declaring at nearly every turn that there is no war on terror, no war against jihad, and that we are in a narrow conflict with one small group of rascals. I find the finger pointing at Scotland by some of those in our midst who want to make life easier for the bad guys to be blatant hypocrisy and mere political expedience.

Frankly, what Scotland has done, as objectionable as it is – as unthinkable as it seems – is the fruit of the kind of thinking that demonizes Gitmo and suggests that we are not at war with a murderous ideology. Even though that ideology is, in fact, very much at war with us. Liberal notions in our nation about justice for those poor misunderstood Islamists are ascendant in our culture these days. How are they really any different from the mindset in Scotland?

In the 1957 film classic, Bridge On The River Kwai, the brilliant actor Alec Guinness plays a Colonel by the name of Nicholson. The Colonel eventually becomes preoccupied with the successful building of the bridge, at the expense of his better judgment and soldierly loyalty. He develops rapport with the enemy – rapport that clouds his better judgment.

In the end, he comes to his senses, uttering “what have I done?” and blows up the bridge he labored so diligently to create.

It seems that some in our national leadership today have allowed time and other considerations to dull their senses about danger and real threat. And they have been spending more time building a bridge – one that will be used with relish by our enemies when the time comes – than they have creating and maintaining our vigilance against a powerful and persistent enemy.

One would hope that seeing Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi climb the stairs Colonel Gaddafi’s airplane recently, en route to a hero’s welcome in Libya, would be enough to bring some of our leaders to a Alec Guiness-like “what have I done?” moment.

But I suspect it will take many more examples of jihadist hubris and western civilization’s gullibility to bring any possible change about. Of course, by then the bridge of peace and friendship we have been building to span the chasm between us and the Islamists will be under the enemy’s complete control.

For You TNN Early Birds

August 4, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Islam, Islam and the West, Terrorism, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

I will be on FOX & FRIENDS, on the FOX NEWS CHANNEL, tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at approximately 6:50 a.m. (eastern) to talk about issues related to the subject of a recent column I wrote about the expansion of a Saudi-funded school in Fairfax County. 

Support Your Local Sharia

July 31, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, Cold War, Europe, Immigration, Islam, Islam and the West, Religion, Terrorism, War on Terror | 2 Comments 

It is pretty clear at this point that barring some kind of last minute reality check the Fairfax County (Virginia) Board of Supervisors will approve the Islamic Saudi Academy’s application for a special exemption this Monday, August 3rd.   This will enable the Saudi-funded madrasa to expand and plant even deeper roots in America’s backyard, teaching in the anti-democratic traditions of wahhabism.

It will happen despite the fact that neighboring home owners associations are opposed, the land use and legal issues argue against the school and would have been a death knell to any other application, and the academy in question has on many occasions failed to honor previous county agreements, not to mention state law.  

Oh, and the wise ones on the panel defiantly refuse to factor in the fact that the Saudi curriculum taught at ISA is filled with hateful things that most Americans would find repugnant – even dangerous.   We’re not talking about mere religious ideas.  What has been taught there in the past should have caused the powers that be to shut the place down years ago.

Interestingly, just a few days ago one of the academy’s past students – in fact, a former valedictorian and a young man voted “most likely to be martyred” (really) named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali – was resentenced to life in prison for plotting with al-Qaeda and trying to kill President George W. Bush.  As the cool song says: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.”  He graduated in 1999, bounced around for a bit and wound up in Saudi Arabia in 2002.

In his written confession, Abu Ali said: “It was decided that I would go [to the United States] and live a normal life [overtly] to keep attention away from me, marry a Christian woman, and at the same time I would prepare as best I could for operations.”  If all this seems decidedly inconsistent for someone who practices a religion of virtue and peace, bear in mind that there is an Islamic doctrine called taqiyya.  What it basically means is that deceit is a legitimate weapon when dealing with infidels (read: “We the People”).

Grasping the fact that our determined enemies will at times use monumental deceit to further their cause is imperative right now.   The members of the Fairfax County panel seem oblivious to this. More than a quarter of a century ago the board of supervisors denied a similar application by a Christian school, citing traffic concerns.   Of course, the traffic is much better now.  Right.

“I cannot put the safety of the American citizenry at risk,” said U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, when he handed down Abu Ali’s sentence.  Good call, your honor.  Now, would you ever consider becoming a county supervisor? 

Christopher Caldwell, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, has written a book called, Reflections On The Revolution In Europe.  In it he notes: “In the middle of the 20th century, there were virtually no Muslims in Western Europe.  At the turn of the 21st century, there were between 15 and 17 million.”  Now in many major European cities the most common baby names Mohamed, Ayoub, Hamza, etc.

He suggests that these Muslims have not assimilated, but rather have formed “a parallel society.”  And they are bringing anti-Semitism back big time.

“Imagine that the West,” Caldwell writes, “at the height of the Cold War, had received a mass inflow of immigrants from Communist countries who were ambivalent about which side they supported.  Something similar is taking place now.”

And it’s not just happening over there.

The expansion of the Islamic Saudi Academy may not seem to be that big of a deal to some and certainly the members of the board of supervisors see no threat in allowing them to get a better foothold.   But such things are, in fact, part of a pattern of denial and outright stupidity on the part of people who should be intelligent enough to know better. 

Convinced, though, of the liberal notion of “enlightened tolerance,” such political leaders are playing a dangerous game of mindless appeasement.   There is a growing subculture in this country, a network of nefarious groups sharing a common theo-political vision for taking over everything.  Operating under the aegis of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and so many others, they all say one thing, while doing another.  

Ignore what they say; watch what they do.

Their unmistakable goal is the dominance of Sharia-law in this country – the world for that matter.   In other words, they envision a political overthrow and remaking of everything we know, love, and hold dear as Americans.  And they are using the Bill of Rights and opportunities created by a systemic decrease in vigilance to gain ground toward their objective. 

I believe in the Christian faith.  I therefore do not believe in the tenets of Islam.  Nor am I into Buddhist doctrine.   I do, though, believe in religious liberty and free speech.  But what we are seeing is a case where religious liberty and free speech have become weapons in the hands of would-be terrorists and tyrants.  

I will defend with all my heart the right of any Muslim to pray and live according to the precepts of that faith.  I will also do all in my power to bear witness about Christianity in the free marketplace of ideas.  But if anyone, in the name of religion, or under its cloak, seeks the overthrow of the very system that grants us those freedoms, that’s where the line is drawn. 

Free speech ends with the cry of fire in a crowded theater.   Religious freedom ends when there is deception en route to coercion that would ultimately lead to an end of liberty for all.   And no municipality or government entity should deliberately ignore the toxicity of certain ideas that would undermine the Constitution.
 
What if the Ku Klux Klan wanted to put a school in Fairfax County?  How about if Kim Jong-il decided to put a nice North Korean institution in our backyard – fully funded?   I imagine such enterprises would not even get a hearing.   Why then the Saudis?  The wahhabism taught at the Islamic Saudi Academy should be every bit as objectionable to freedom-loving Americans as what some other enemy might espouse.  

But some might ask: What about “moderate” Muslims?   Well, as Bruce Bawer points out in his book, Surrender: Appeasing Islam – Sacrificing Freedom, “that while there are such things has moderate and liberal Christianity, there is no such thing as a moderate or liberal Islam.  Yes, there are millions of good-hearted individuals who identify themselves as Muslims and who have no enmity in their hearts for their non-Muslim neighbors and coworkers.  Some of these Muslims are religiously observant, some are not; but their moderation is not an attribute of the brand of Islam to which they officially subscribed but is, rather, a measure of their own individual character.” 

In other words, their moderation comes not from a particular interpretation or variant, but rather “they have chosen to put a certain distance between their own religious thought and practice and the strict tenets of institutional Islam.”

Those of us in Fairfax who oppose the expansion of the Islamic Saudi Academy will likely have to concede defeat this Monday. But in doing so we will long remember – at least until the next county election – where the supervisors stood on the issue.   Stay tuned.

It appears that many liberal-minded types want us to be more like Europe and their views may be ascendant these days, but those who see European-socialistic-democracy as a model for our future should pay attention to how it is being threatened by an enemy within. 

As Mr. Caldwell says in his new book about what is happening there, “When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture (Europe’s) meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines (Islam’s) it is generally the former than changes to suit the latter.”

 

On The Verge Of An Intelligence Purge?

July 17, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, History, Intelligence, National Security, Presidents, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror, economy | 4 Comments 

The current climate of suspicion, accusation, and posturing surrounding the relationship between various entities in our intelligence communities and two of three branches of the federal government should be a source of grave concern to Americans. While games are being played, we must ask: Are we safer today than we were two years ago, or four, or eight?

There are many indications that good people, who have been doing good – though sometimes necessarily unseemly – work, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the politicization of their jobs and careers. It’s witch-hunting season on Capitol Hill.

A few weeks ago, former Central Intelligence Agency Director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post entitled, Defenders At Risk. He decried a “troubling reality. A whole swath of intelligence professionals – the best we had, the ones we threw at the al-Qaeda challenge when the nation was in extremis – are suffering for their sacrifice, being held up to recrimination for many decisions that were never wholly theirs and about which there was little protest when we all believed we were in danger.”

That last phrase is haunting: “when we all believed we were in danger.”

Are we acting like a nation in danger? Well, when it comes to economics, yes we are. With a mind-boggling willingness to suspend rational thought and reason, not to mention our Constitution to fix things, we are all czared-up. The American economy is being reinvented and may one day soon become something even Fidel Castro could admire, should he live so long. Of course, the new super-important-political-potentates are virtually unaccountable to the same people who spend an inordinate amount of time these days insisting on knowing everything about everything from those who must, by the nature of their work, operate in the shadows.

But it’s the economy and yes, we are stupid.

In the 1930s, Josef Stalin conducted a paranoiac purge that impacted all segments of Soviet society, notably the military. Having killed off most of his best generals and military minds, he and his nation paid the price in the early years of World War II. He bought time with his pact with Hitler in 1939, but was still nearly defeated two years later at the beginning of the Nazi invasion of his country. Some of those dead, but smart and experienced generals might have helped old Uncle Joe.

Are we on the verge of a “soft” purge in our intelligence and national security communities? Are beginning to lose people – citizens who have sacrificed and served with excellence – people we would certainly need if, God forbid, we found ourselves dealing with a major terrorist offensive here at home?

The answer is yes.

When it comes to the economy we will do virtually anything to get “the best and the brightest” into key posts because they are indispensable. But are we playing by the same rules when it comes to national security? The answer to that one is no.

All indications are that morale is low – and understandably so – in the intelligence and national security communities. Why? Likely, it’s because we have allowed for the polarizing stigmatization of these patriots and their noble work, driven by misguided and malicious self-righteousness.

The heirs to “the best and the brightest” of the 1960s are now running things. The torch has been passed to a new generation of experts who want to remake America in their image. One result may be that the most competent and experienced people, those who have been in often-dangerous trenches keeping us safe and free, may be squeezed out feeling largely unappreciated and woefully disrespected.

Ironically, and largely overlooked by a nation increasingly disconnected from its history, the way our federal government is working these days with respect to the fundamental issues of the economy and national security is completely at odds with how things were done back at the beginning.

Early on, this nation was a place for people to fulfill dreams and live lives without a nanny-state. Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, articulated the spirit of that age during his first inaugural when he said: “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”

When it comes to national security however, more than two centuries ago men of vision understood the concept of danger. Why do you think it was that when those guys came up with oaths of office for various leadership roles they tended to talk about “all enemies, foreign and domestic?” It’s because there were then – as there are now – people who just don’t get us and who would really like to hurt us.

During the American Revolution, John Jay – later of Federalist Papers fame – wrote to Robert Morris (often referred to as “the financier of the revolution”): “Communicate no other intelligence to Congress at large than what may be necessary to promote the common weal [well-being], not to gratify the curiosity of individuals.”

In fact, in The Federalist, No. 64, Jay argued: “There are cases where the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from apprehensions of discovery. Those apprehensions will operate on those persons whether they are actuated by mercenary or friendly motives; and there doubtless are many of both descriptions who would rely on the secrecy of the President, and would not confide in that of the Senate, and still less in that of a largely popular assembly.”

These days that last phrase might read: “a largely un-popular assembly.”

Now, I want to make an observation. I may be quite wrong on this, but stay with me anyway. While all the punching and counterpunching is going on between Congress and the intelligence communities, President Obama has been sending mixed signals. He certainly wants to please those who put him where he is, and his campaign promises with respect to national security issues were pretty clear.

But since taking office, his rhetoric has toned down, at least a bit. And there is no doubt that he has shown some willingness to act counter to what he said while running for office. Gitmo’s in; Gitmo’s out. We’ll release the photos; no we won’t. Shifting gears is part of par-for-the-course-political-speak in Washington, but logic suggests something else may be involved.

Why would a man who was elected on a platform that was decidedly critical of the outgoing president’s intelligence and national security record ever be tempted to change his mind and act contrary to the will of his core constituencies?

There is only one logical answer: Because he has since learned some things that have changed his mind. Things he didn’t know while he was running for office. Details he didn’t have.

Additional facts tend to influence subsequent behavior. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Obama’s “softening” on some once-ridiculed Bush administration policies and practices. The man now knows what he did not know before. How he deals with the stuff he now knows and how he responds to political pressure from those who got him elected in the first place will define his presidency and impact us all.

It would be better for the economy and for our actual physical safety if those running the show these days would read their American history and learn from the founders. Let people live their lives in freedom without being tortured with excessive taxation and tyrannical statist intrusion. And let those who have been tasked with keeping America safe alone to do their honorable work – without having to have a lawyer on speed dial.

I write this from a conservative perspective, but even a liberal writer such as Evan Thomas, editor of Newsweek, can make the point. He said in February of 2004, on a local Washington, D.C. television show:

“I really fear these investigations, if they turn into witch-hunts. The worst things that can happen is a demoralized CIA that’s back on its heels, that thinks everybody is against them, that they have to hire lawyers [and] testify before Congress. If you’re constantly pulling up the flowers to see if they’re growing, you could do more harm than good.”

The County And The School Of Hate

July 10, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under History, Islam, Islam and the West, National Security, Religion, Terrorism, War on Terror | 2 Comments 

Last month, a Saudi Arabian man named Raed Abdul-Rahman Al-Saif, placed three bags on the Tampa, Florida airport security conveyor belt as he made his way toward his gate to board US Airways flight 1077 to Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon. He never made it to the gate.

A Transportation Security Administration representative saw something on his screen that made him curious. Upon further investigation, TSA officers found a knife “artfully concealed between the outside fabric and the expandable pull handles of the bag.” This bag, by the way, would have been easily accessed by Al-Saif had he made it on his flight.

It was a butcher knife.

It turns out that he has been living in the U.S. illegally for a while and had been previously arrested on drug-related charges and for driving without a license. He had been a student at the University of Tampa, but was dismissed this past May due to poor academic performance. Word is, though, that he was a much better student back in high school. In fairness, that likely had to do with where he went to school and what he was learning.

Raed Al-Saif is a 2003 graduate of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), the same institution that gave us the likes of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was the school’s valedictorian in 1999. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he’s the guy who was convicted in 2005 on charges that included “providing material resources to Al-Qaeda” and “conspiracy to assassinate President George W. Bush.”

Then there were Mohammed Osam Idris and Mohammed el Yacoubi, both former ISA students, who were denied entrance to Israel in 2001. It turns out that they had written farewell letters before the trip for some kind of “suicide mission in the name of jihad.” And, let’s not forget Mr. Abdall I Al-Shabran, the ISA director who was arrested last year for failing to report child abuse.

Islamic Saudi Academy operates under the direct authority of the Saudi embassy, one of 20 or so such institutions around the world. It is also funded by the Saudi government and uses Saudi government “curriculum, syllabus, and materials.”

It is also virtually in my backyard – at least part of it. And they want to grow, that is, if the Fairfax County Government Planning Commission continues down its current path of blind accommodation and politically correct assuagement.

There is another meeting on the subject this Monday, July 13th at the county government center, and it should prove to be interesting. Last March, a handful of concerned citizens tried to speak over the disconcerting protests of about 600 ISA supporters. The few brave souls argued against a “special exemption” to zoning regulations that would allow “for the building of an expansion to the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax.” By the way, the school now operates on property leased directly from the county.

As the pastor of a church in Fairfax County, and having for many of those years managed a private Christian School in the area, I can speak first-hand about how difficult it usually is to navigate the processes of county government here on behalf of a religious institution. But in the case of ISA, there appears to be an almost fawning and subservient approach on the part of many county leaders. Perhaps they are afraid of being politically incorrect. Perhaps they are just afraid.

Most likely, however – they are simply naïve.

Some of those arrayed against ISA are doing so simply out of concerns about traffic and other logistics on a particularly picturesque stretch of Popes Head Road. But most opponents are involved because they see ISA as a training institution for Wahhabism, an ultra-dogmatic and extreme form of Islam. They see ISA as “a hate training academy.” One detractor has said of the school: “We feel that it is in reality a madrassa, a training place for young impressionable Muslim students in some of the most extreme and most fanatical teachings of Islam.”

Of course, one of the great challenges when dealing with issues like this is to think and work through it in the context of religious liberty and tolerance. But what happens when our best intentions to preach freedom and tolerance wind up being used as a cover for something more sinister – even deadly?

The Nazis twisted a cross and developed a quasi-religious cult, but such a group would be hard pressed to lease property directly from any county in America. Hitler and his henchmen, by the way, came to power in Germany by using their constitution, then once in power they shelved it.

The Ku Klux Klan used a fiery cross as its symbol of hate and preached a sordid synthesis of misapplied Christianity and mysticism. But the religious element of it all was clearly a cover story. Are Islamists today using our Bill of Rights as a weapon against us en route toward the goal of a nation governed by Muslims, Islam, and Muslim law?

The answer appears to be all too clear – at least for those who are really watching.

Islam may indeed be one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, but Islamism is better compared to Nazism and the Klan in a religious sense, not to Judaism and Christianity in general. Are there fanatical people who hate in the name of Christianity and Judaism? Probably, but they would be statistically insignificant and considered criminally insane. Not so, when you compare Islam itself with Islamism.

Daniel Pipes is a widely read expert on the threat of radical Islam. He is a director of the Middle East Forum and calculates that, “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.” Let’s do the math: Estimates of the global Muslim population range between 1.3 and 1.6 billion – roughly one in five human beings. This means, if Pipes is right (and it is possible his estimates may be on the conservative side) – that there may be between 130 and 240 million people in the world who, in the name of Islam, hate America. These are the people who had a party on that sad September day seven years ago.

By the way, the total combined population of an earlier axis of evil enemies – Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in September of 1939 – was approximately 194 million. That’s total – as in every man, woman, and child.

How about the statistics right here in the U.S.? Well again, the estimates are all over the place, but it is generally accepted that between three and five million of our neighbors are Muslim. Applying the Pipes formula to here at home, we come up with the potential for anywhere between 300,000 and 1,200,000 people in this country who may be less-than-enamored of the rest of us. Or worse, some may be longing for the day when the fruited plain becomes a Muslim caliphate.

At what point, if ever, will some Americans awaken to the idea that a fair amount of what is passed off as Islam is, in fact, a cloak of unrighteousness – designed to use the guise of religion to gain cultural and ultimately political hegemony here?

Sure, not all Muslims are advocates of the kind of hate that would overthrow a government and superimpose Sharia-rule over the rest of us. But the evidence is growing that the number of Islamists in the Islamic fold is significant. And the battles are now being fought with the issues blurred.

What is needed now in America more than ever is an emergent group of leaders who are discerning – people who are wide awake to the threat from within.

Multiple Choice

June 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

Is this:

(a) a run of the mill red herring?

(b) an irrelvant detail richoceting off the wall?

(c) the sound of another shoe dropping?

Night At The Supermax

May 22, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, History, National Archives, National Security, Obama administration, Presidents, Terrorism, Vice President Biden, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

When Harry Truman was whistle-stopping his way into political history en route to his upset of Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential election, he used many set pieces again and again from the back of his train. And they always worked. One example was to accuse the Republicans of misleading the American people. Harry said that the GOP lived by the philosophy, “If you can’t convince them; confuse them.”

I wonder what Truman would make of his distant Democratic successor in the White House. Would the man known for his plain talking sign off on President Obama’s brand new method of communication – one that would impress even George Orwell?

It might be best called transcendent-speak – the art of talking above-it-all.

Our president describes things like abortion and his approach to national security in language that defines the new administration as kind of “hovering-yet-right-in-the-middle,” with just about everyone else described as finger-pointing partisans and fear-mongering extremists.

Barack Obama’s recent speech about national security, delivered against the backdrop of all things historic and constitutional, was a case in point. By now, we all know that while Mr. Obama was speechifying at the National Archives, former Vice President Dick Cheney was weighing in with an address of his own at the American Enterprise Institute. It was split-screen heaven for policy junkies. I am now waiting for someone to YouTube some sound bites from both men, with the music of “Dueling Banjoes” from the movie Deliverance playing. This analogy works on several levels.

Mr. Cheney, by the way, won that one on points. And don’t even get me started on how well he’d do against Joe “da-bunker’s-dis-way” Biden.

Digging through all the rhetoric in President Obama’s speech – trying to separate wood, hay, and stubble, from yet more wood, hay, and stubble, I found one true thing. He said: “My single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe.” He indicated that it is always on his mind (cue Willie Nelson song here).

Understanding responsibility and accepting responsibility are, however, two very different things. I find myself hoping against hope that he is not telling us everything – that deep down he gets it, or that he has his fingers crossed, or something. I want to believe that Mr. Obama is as much of a realist as most presidents quickly become on matters of national security (Jimmy Carter doesn’t count, of course). I am praying that he holds a few tough trump cards in reserve. But, let’s say I have my doubts.

You see, the president has a hard time even really talking about the enemy we are supposed to be vigilant against. He refers almost vaguely to “an extremist ideology” and talks about the high-tech threat from “a handful of terrorists.” And he says, in an effort to show how full his presidential-plate is, we are fighting two – count ‘em – two wars.

Two wars? Were we fighting two wars from 1941 to 1945? Or were the European and Pacific theaters possibly somehow related by a toxic affinity? When Italy was against us, were we then fighting three wars?

Of course not – there may have been several fronts, but it was the same war. And the leaders back then didn’t have a problem with naming the ideology. Roosevelt railed against the Nazis. Though Mr. Churchill talked about “Narzees” – raising the possibility that there was yet one more war, if you count it all that way.

In fairness, Mr. Obama did mention our historical success in overpowering “the iron fist of fascism,” even though in order to actually win, in those now long gone days, required a fist of our own – as opposed to an outstretched hand. But when he talked about us being “indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates,” I found myself thinking: “Affiliates? Affiliates?”

That’s it. Out with the war on terror, in with a war on those pesky “affiliates.”

Mr. Obama again defended his position on the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. He reminded us of his oft-used assertion that, “the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.” It’s a cool line, but impossible to prove.

“If you can’t convince them; confuse them.”

One of the president’s great ideas would be to send many of the current Gitmo detainees to one of our “federal, supermax prisons.” But if his goal is to see that these misunderstood men escape unpleasant confines, anyone who knows anything about Gitmo and the federal prison system will tell you that conditions and treatment are worse in a supermax facility than at Gitmo. How will this play when the “affiliates” find out how bad the new home is and then use the new conditions as a recruitment tool. Where next?

People who have been to Gitmo tell me that the detainees there are treated better than anyone in our federal system. In fact, some tell me that those bad guys have it better than many of our nation’s fighting heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan!

The biggest irony of all as Mr. Obama’s policies evolve, is that he is apparently acknowledging that some of the more dangerous detainees may have to be held indefinitely. So much for absolute principles – there is some wiggle room after all. But of course, it’s all part of the “mess” he inherited.

On the flipside, Mr. Cheney seemed to speak with a good deal more of the “common sense” the guy on the other side of the screen (presumably, the left side) talked about. He said: “In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.” He decried what he described as, “Recklessness cloaked in righteousness.”

This week, the Senate voted to deny $80 million for the closure of Gitmo. There is also legislation in the pipeline with wide support that would require a “threat assessment” for all of the remaining 240 detainees before any other decision about their future is made.

As for President Obama, he calls opposition to his approach fearmongering. He says that some are using, “words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them.” And he adds, “Bear in mind the following fact: Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal ‘supermax’ prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists.”

He’s right. But the insertion of new and dangerous terrorists, complete with some of the structural changes that would be needed to create the image that these men will not be treated badly, raise the possibility of rendering the facilities a little more vulnerable. Not to mention the idea that some of the terrorists might be treated better than the other inmates because of political considerations, might just create, shall we say, unrest on the part of the all the regular criminals. In other words, it could all lead to a really bad night at the supermax.

Fearmonger – that’s an interesting term. It’s all the rage these days, like pandemic. The word, “monger,” means “a dealer in a specific commodity.” One can be a fishmonger, for example. Of course, using the suffix with fear is designed to create the idea that someone is spreading something destructive, even devilish.

Was it fearmongering when the government had us all freaked out a few weeks ago about the swine flu? Most of us would say “no.” Disease is serious stuff and we are wise to take heed to warnings and wisdom.

I suggest that a little fear in a dangerous world is quite wise. The problem, as I see it, is not fearmongering, but rather, pipe-dream-mongering. Americans should not be paralyzed by fear, but we should be concerned enough to know that we are not even close to being out of the terror-filled woods. When there is a toxic virus, you don’t send those infected to school with the other kids. When it comes to terrorist detainees, Gitmo is their home.

There’s no place like home.

Damned If She Did. Now Damned If She Didn’t.

May 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Congress, Domestic issues, Intelligence, National Security, Obama administration, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

James Kirchick’s provocative lede in his piece —“Is Nancy Pelosi a liar or a hypocrite?”— on today’s Politico pretty much tells the story that follows:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accomplished two unusual feats last week: She got the head of the CIA to call her a liar, and she implicated herself in what her left-wing base must, by dint of its own contrived logic, consider a war crime.

And today in “The Swamp,” Mark Silva reports a new CNN Opinion Research Corp. Poll that can’t have gone down too well in the Speaker’s Office:

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken a fall in public opinion, according to a new CNN Opinion Research Corp. poll showing that nearly half of all Americans surveyed do not approve of the way the California Democrat is handling her job as speaker of the House.

The newest results come from a survey taken after the speaker accused the CIA of misleading her about the interrogation tactics that were being used on suspected terrorists several years ago. The CIA maintains that it briefed Pelosi on water-boarding and other tactics in September 2002, but the speaker maintains she was not told waterboarding was being used then. House Republican Leader John Boehner, siding with the CIA on the credibility question, accuses Pelosi of changing stories.

In the May 14-17 survey, just 39 percent said they approve of the job that Pelosi is performing as speaker and 48 percent said they disapprove. Only 12 percent voiced no view. In January, 51 percent had said they approved of the speaker’s performance and just 22 percent voiced disapproval.

And in his column today, Rich Lowry examines the tortuous logic of the Speaker’s position (or at least of one of her several positions) on this subject:

For Pelosi’s account to be accurate, the CIA must have engaged in one of the most baroque and ineffectual conspiracies in the history of Washington. Remember: Pelosi claims that the CIA lied to her in a September 2002 classified briefing and told her that it hadn’t waterboarded high-level al Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah. To support her version, Pelosi needs to stack implausibility on top of implausibility in a precarious Jenga tower of self-justification.

The CIA must have convinced Porter Goss, the Republican congressman (and subsequent CIA director) who was present at the 2002 briefing, to lie and pronounce himself “slack-jawed” at Pelosi’s account. It must have forged the “contemporaneous records” CIA Director Leon Panetta has cited that show Pelosi was told of the waterboarding. It must have either pulled the wool over Panetta’s eyes or enlisted the active engagement of the Obama nominee in a monstrous machinery of deception.

The Speaker’s Tangled Web Begins Unraveling

May 8, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Emily Litella “Never mind” moment regarding her definitive denials of any knowledge of the CIA EIT program may not be that far off now.   Perhaps her selective, convenient, faulty will be refreshed by the wave of documentation that is beginning to break.

Indeed, by the time all the relevant documents have been released or leaked, the question may turn out to be: Who in the Congressional leadership and intelligence hierarchy didn’t know all about the CIA’s EIT techniques and the individuals on whom they were used.

Last night ABC news revealed, and this morning Politico confirms, that forty briefings were held informing the congressional leadership, committee chairs, and ranking members, about techniques and subjects.

An intelligence report sent recently to Capitol Hill shows that members of Congress were briefed 40 times since 2002 on aspects of the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. Many have decried the techniques used in the program as torture.

The list seems to undercut the claim by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then-minority leader and ranking member on the House intelligence committee, that she was never told at a 2002 briefing that waterboarding and other aggressive techniques had been used or would be used, only that legal opinions approving of their use had been issued.

The document describes a September 24, 2002 briefing to Pelosi and then-intelligence chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) this way: “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.” 

The Speaker may not be able to slough this off with a mere “Never mind.”  She may have to turn to Captain Renault for inspiration and plead misinformation.

Here is a link to the report.   You may get a crick in your neck reading it, but it raises a lot of questions for some Solons —including Senator Jay Rockefeller— whose capacity for righteous indignation is now exposed as being conveniently untethered to the pesky reality of biography.

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