Dreams Into Lightning

Joe Lieberman: "This was the Democratic Party."

Joseph Lieberman in the Wall Street Journal:

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

Via Neo, who adds:

Will he be heard? I think the answer is, “Fat chance.” Now that the Democrats have committed themselves to nominating Barack Obama, they have embraced the exact wing of the party about which Lieberman warns.

But I think the Democrats are not really so reluctant to make themselves offensive to their enemies, after all. The thing is: how do they define “enemies?” It’s become more and more apparent as time goes on that many Democrats today and most of their leaders (i.e. Pelosi and Reid), consider the Republicans to be a greater enemy than any country or group on earth—with the possible exception of oil companies.

Go to the links to read it all.

What's wrong with the Jews?

Muslims Against Sharia:

When Muslims criticize Jews chances are it's Islamists. You rarely see moderate (an I do mean real moderate, not Islamists like CAIR who claim to be moderate) Muslims saying unflattering things about the Jews. So, normally, when I see the Jews do dumb things i.e., supporting an Islamist congressional candidate because of partisanship (American Jewish World's support for Keith Ellison) or providing utilities to a terrorist enclave (Gaza), I try to keep my mouth shut. For obvious reasons. But not this time.

I thought I've seen everything: Cuban missile crisis, fall of Berlin wall, 9/11. Until recently, I thought that the father of modern terrorism getting awarded a Nobel Peace Prize was the most peculiar event in my lifetime. But a recent, largely unnoticed event, could take the cake in peculiarity contest.

On December 15, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, the president of the Union of Reform Judaism (one of the largest Jewish organizations in America), gave a sermon in San Diego in front 5,000 Jews in which he announced URJ's alliance with Islamic Society of North America (ISNA - one of the largest Muslim organizations in America).

As a part of the sermon, Rabbi Yoffie stated that "[ISNA] has issued a strong and unequivocal condemnation of terror, including a specific condemnation of Hizbollah and Hamas terror against Jews and Israelis. It has also recognized Israel as a Jewish state and supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But has it really? The statement Rabbi Yoffie refers to reads: "ISNA rejects all acts of terrorism, including those perpetrated by Hamas, Hizbullah and any other group that claims Islam as their inspiration." While there appears to be forward progress in this statement, there are several problems with it:
- ISNA does not say it condemns but says it "rejects" acts of terrorism. What does reject mean? Why not say "condemn"? Rejection is not synonymous with condemnation.
- Yes, ISNA seems to be acknowledging that Hamas and Hizballah carry out acts of terrorism but nowhere do they say come out and say that Hamas and Hizballah are terrorist groups. Only the other day we saw witnesses on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation in Dallas claim that Hamas can be divisible by its "military (terrorist) wing" and its "social-humanitarian wing." The failure to unequivocally condemn Hamas or Hizballah as a terrorist group is like me saying that I reject the tactics used by anti-abortion doctors who "claim to be inspired by Christianity." The use of the term "claim Islam as their inspiration" is another attempt by ISNA to deny the unequivocal fundamental Islamic basis for groups that carry out acts of terrorism. This is in line with ISNA's statement which claims the use of the term "Islamic terrorist" is racist. Now, how can one be said to condemn Hamas or Hizballah while simultaneously denying the existence of "Islamic terrorism"? ISNA's statement "condemning terrorism" from http://balancedIslam.org quotes approvingly the European Council of Ifta and Research. This is a council that has justified suicide bombings by Hamas. One of its leaders is Yousef Al-Qardawi who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of Jews (not Israelis) and Americans in Iraq.

We all remember bogus fatwa issued by Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA). The same FCNA whose chairman, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Gihad (PIG). Is ISNA's rejection of terrorism any different?

Prior to his praise for ISNA, Rabbi Yoffie stated the following: "Islamic extremists constitute a profound threat. For some, this is a reason to flee from dialogue, but in fact the opposite is true." I am a bit confused. Does this mean that the Rabbi realizes that ISNA is an extremist organization? ...

Zero Dimensional

“No, I mean they would kill me.”

There are problems, and then there are problems.

Nicholas Kulish, writing in the New York Times' Berlin Journal, tells us about the lives of gay Muslims in Europe, as seen at a gay dance club in Berlin.

But most of the people filling the dance floor on Saturday at the club SO36 in the Kreuzberg neighborhood were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and of Turkish or Arab background. They were there for the monthly club night known as Gayhane, an all-too-rare opportunity to merge their immigrant cultures and their sexual identities.

Well, that's nice. But there are a few harsh realities to be dealt with. Here's how Kulish explains it:

European Muslims, so often portrayed one-dimensionally as rioters, honor killers or terrorists, live diverse lives, most of them trying to get by and to have a good time. That is more difficult if one is both Muslim and gay.

Our friend Nicholas Kulish wants you to know he won't have any of this nasty stereotyping; far be it from the New York Times to portray Muslims - one-dimensionally or otherwise - as honor killers or terrorists. So we learn that

To be a gay man or lesbian with an immigrant background invites trouble here in two very different ways.

“Depending on which part of Berlin I go to, in one I get punched in the mouth because I’m a foreigner and in the other because I’m a queen,” said Fatma Souad, the event’s organizer and master of ceremonies.

And these two things are exactly equal to one another, right? But there's something odd going on here:

But gay men and lesbians from Muslim families say they face extraordinary discrimination at home. A survey of roughly 1,000 young men and women in Berlin, released in September and widely cited in the German press, found much higher levels of homophobia among Turkish youth.

You don't say?

Hatin Sürücü was shot dead at a bus stop in Berlin, Germany, on February 7. The 23-year-old Turkish woman was mourned by the lesbian and gay community, but not by her family. Deutsche Welle reports:
To the people who came to this bleak part of Berlin's Tempelhof district for Tuesday's solemn vigil -- called not by the city's Muslim community but a gay and lesbian organization -- the image of the young woman in a headscarf, a baby in her arms, was familiar from newspapers and television. A few notes at the memorial read, "Hope you get a better deal in your next life," and "Live a life on your own terms."

"It's a scandal," said Ali K, 33. "All Muslims in Berlin should take to the streets to protest." Yasemin, 22, said, "It's horrific. All Hatin was doing was leading her life the way she wanted."

But it was a choice she paid for with her life. On Feb. 7, 23-year-old Hatin Sürücü was gunned down at the aforementioned bus stop. She died on the spot. Shortly afterwards, three of her brothers -- who reportedly had long been threatening her -- were arrested. Investigators suspect it was a so-called "honor killing," given the fact that Sürücü's ultra-conservative Turkish-Kurdish family strongly disapproved of her modern and "un-Islamic" life.

Sürücü grew up in Berlin and was married off at 16 to a cousin in Istanbul. ...

Here's more from the DW article on Hatin Sürücü:

Days after Hatin Sürücü was killed, some male students of Turkish origin at a high school near the scene of the crime reportedly downplayed the act. During a class discussion on the murder, one said, "She (Hatin Sürücü) only had herself to blame," while another remarked "She deserved what she got --the whore lived like a German." The school's director promptly dashed off a letter to parents and students, castigating the students and warning that the school didn’t tolerate incitement against freedom.

Oh, but wait. Silly me. I've gotten distracted. We were talking about the wonderful gay night life in Berlin. Let's get back to Nicholas Kulish. Now where were we? Ah, yes, "... much higher levels of homophobia among Turkish youth."

“These differences are there,” said Bernd Simon, who led the study and is a professor of social psychology at Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. “We can’t deny them. The question is how do we cope with them.”

“The answer is not to replace homophobia with Islamophobia,” he added, pointing out that homophobia is also higher among Russian immigrants and in other, less urban parts of Germany.

Well that certainly is enlightening. "The answer is not to replace homophobia with Islamophobia," the good professor instructs us. Homophobia, islamophobia ... six of one, half a dozen of the other. And we may not know what the answer is (Professor Simon hasn't even attempted to answer his own question) but at least we know what it is not. I feel better already.

But what are those gay Muslims themselves saying?

Kader Balcik, a 22-year-old Turk from Hamburg, said: “For us, for Muslims, it’s extremely difficult. When you’re gay, you’re immediately cut off from the family.”

He had recently moved to Berlin not long after being cut off from his mother because he is bisexual. “A mother who wishes death for her son, what kind of mother is that?” he asked, his eyes momentarily filling with tears.

Hasan, a 21-year-old Arab man, sitting at a table in the club’s quieter adjoining cafe, declined to give his last name, saying: “They would kill me. My brothers would kill me.” Asked if he meant this figuratively, he responded, “No, I mean they would kill me.”

And so, at the end of his 1100-word opus, Nicolas Kulish has his epiphany. Like a sort of reverse Balaam, he wanted to say only nice things about gay life for Muslims in Germany. But reality had other ideas.

***

Last week, two young lives were snuffed out in Texas.

Yaser Abdel Said, 50, was wanted on a warrant for capital murder after police say he shot the girls Tuesday and left them to die in his taxi, which was found parked in front a hotel in Las Colinas, a suburb north of Dallas. Police said Mr. Said should be considered armed and dangerous.

Friends of Amina Yaser Said, 18, and Sarah Yaser Said, 17, described the girls to the Dallas Morning News as "extremely smart — like geniuses," saying the slain sisters had been enrolled in advanced placement classes and were active in soccer and tennis at suburban Lewisville High School.

While police refused to discuss a possible motive for the crimes, family and friends told reporters that the girls' Westernized lifestyle caused conflict with their Muslim father, who immigrated from Egypt in the 1980s.

This comes on the heels of the murder of Aqsa Parvez in Canada last month.

A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.

Aqsa Parvez, a student at Applewood Heights Secondary School, had been on life support in hospital since yesterday morning.

Police went to the family's two-storey home on Longhorn Trail about 8 a.m. yesterday after receiving a 911 call in which a man allegedly claimed to have killed his daughter.

Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.

Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.

Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.

Here's Phyllis Chesler:

Just yesterday, an Egyptian Arab Muslim father in Dallas, Texas allegedly shot his two beautiful teenage daughters to death because he disapproved of their American-style ways. Their names were Amina and Sarah Said and their father’s name was Abdul Said. The girls looked sassy and full of life; they looked like Dallas teenagers. They were 17 and 18 years old and their friends considered them “geniuses.” Abdul was a taxi driver. (In parts of Europe, taxi drivers are known to aid and abet honor murders).

Perhaps how Amina and Sarah dressed, and how they thought, shamed their father Abdul. He was no longer in control of his women—a mark of shame which provoked his need to kill them. Perhaps their flowering sexuality enraged him because it made him desire them—and from this he concluded that other men might desire them too and if he could not have them, no man could.
The blogs and the local Texas media (the Dallas Morning News) were all over this. Hot Air, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, were too. The only national coverage of this story was contained in the Washington Times. Why did the national and international media so far shy clear of this story? Perhaps they chose to dig deeper first or maybe they were waiting for an arrest to be made. But one also wonders: Were they afraid of being accused of “Islamophobia” if they reported the truth?

There's that word again. Where is all this islamophobia coming from, anyway? Via Muslims Against Sharia, here's an article in the Yemen Times arguing unironically that there must be violence against women:

This title may sound strange, but it’s actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic because I really do mean what it indicates. Violence is a broad term, especially when used regarding women. In this piece, I want to shed light on those instances where violence against women is a must. ...

Perhaps Abdul Said, fine upstanding chap that he is, was just doing his Islamic duty. We know he was a good Egyptian Muslim; perhaps of the same moral fiber as those Egypt-based internet users who populate my site statistics with searches like "egypt women fuck", "pics of egyption woman for fuck", "egyptian fucking pictures", "fucking girls from egypt", "fucking egyptian girls", and similarly inspiring sentiments. Or perhaps there's some profound cultural and moral value that's being upheld by the sexual harassment of women in Egypt. But I'm digressing again.

And I'm probably being unfair by picking on the Egyptians, so I'll turn now to Irshad Manji, a lesbian Muslim of South Asian background, on Aqsa Parvez:

Aqsa Parvez told friends and adults at her public high school that she feared what her father would do if she stuck by her decision to reject the hijab — the Islamic headscarf. She also said it’s better to live in a shelter than at home.

Nobody listened. Now she’s dead.

Moderate Muslims have warned that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Who knows what other dynamics infected her family, spout hijab-hooded mouthpieces on Canadian TV. Not once have I heard these upstanding Muslims say that whatever the “family dynamics,” killing is not a solution. Ever. How’s that for basic morality?

Irshad goes on to make an important point: even "progressive" non-Muslims fall into the trap of confusing the hijab (which Irshad contends is itself of pre-Muslim, tribal origin) with the basic Muslim injunction to "dress modestly".

And this brings us to the idea expressed in the title of Irshad's post - "Covering up the diversity of Muslim women." By refusing to see women in the Muslim world as individuals with hopes, needs, fears, dreams, and faces of their own, the self-styled "progressive" left buys into the notion of women as objects - expressions of an exotic oriental culture more primitive, and yet somehow ineffably wiser, than our own, decadent, materialistic, industrialist Western world.

***
Times Online reports: Woman artist gets death threats over gay Muslim photos.

THE Dutch were debating the limits of freedom of expression last week after an artist who photographed gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding and her work removed from a museum exhibit.

Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, an Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym of Sooreh Hera, said she had been threatened with “execution”. She accused the director of the municipal museum in The Hague of cowardice for caving in to Muslim extremists.

Her story is a reminder of the tensions that have put the Netherlands and other European countries on the front line, sending dozens of people threatened by extremists into hiding since 2004, when a Dutch film-maker was murdered on the street and his collaborator driven into exile. [That's Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for those of you who may need a reminder. - aa]

This leaves Hera, 34, in no doubt that she is in real danger. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth’,” she said, referring to menacing e-mails.

“They say, ‘Now you are locked in your home and you cannot go out any more’.”

She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct. ...

I can picture Sooreh Hera patiently explaining the death threats to the Dutch police: "No, I mean they would kill me."

Read the rest at the link. You know, when the words "woman", "artist", "gay", and "death threats" all occur in a single headline, you'd think this would be just the kind of thing the liberal left ought to be on top of. Well ...

Wouter Bos, the deputy prime minister, seemed to take a stand for freedom of speech, saying: “In a democracy, we do not recognise the right not to be insulted.” The left wing de Volkskrant newspaper, by contrast, praised the museum for its “great professionalism” in excising the images.

Gateway Pundit has a roundup; and here's a link to Sooreh Hera.

***

To worry, as the journalist quoted in the first section above did, about the "one-dimensional" portrayal of terrorists and honor murderers, is to forget the victims. Not merely to forget, but to deliberately blot out of memory. As if it was only the aggressor, and not the victim, who had any reality to begin with. Then one must dance, so to speak, around the reality of violence and fear that rules the lives of so many dissidents, women, and gay people in the Muslim world.

Ironically it's exactly these people - folks like the well-meaning journalist - who help to create the "one-dimensional" picture of Islam, while ignoring the lives of those who sought to reimagine, reinvent, reform, question, rebel against, or abandon Islam entirely.

I am not going to split hairs over whether these atrocities were committed "by Islam", "in the name of Islam", "by extremists who hijacked Islam", or whatever. The common thread is a hatred of joy, creativity, diversity, and life itself. It is a nihilistic desire to reduce the rich flower of the living world to a zero-dimensional state of uniformity and nothingness.

This time last year, Aqsa Parvez and Sarah and Amina Said were active, healthy, determined young women. Now all that's left of them is a collection of pixels on the screen of your computer, and the memories they left behind with those who knew them.

Remember their faces. Remember their names.

Aqsa Parvez

Sarah and Amina Said

Hollywood Ex-Liberal

From Jeremayakovka, here's a post from Ex-Liberal in Hollywood: What's in a name?

I was born into the lower-middle class neighborhood of Pacoima, California in 1957. My mom was an undocumented immigrant from Porto Alegre, Brazil; my Dad was a mechanic from Ohio. I grew up hearing stories of LAPD brutality and racism during the 60s. I always loathed bullies and heard that change was in the wind during the early 1970s. I wanted to be part of the new LAPD.

I joined the Marine Corps in 1975 to prepare myself for the Academy. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

By 1978, I was a sergeant working at the US Embassy in El Salvador, a country where the military junta committed as many as 100 murders, kidnappings and torture of local dissidents each month. "Death Squads" seemed to act with impunity while then-Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher oversaw Latin American affairs. ...

Read the rest of his fascinating story at the link.

Against "White Europe"

Epaninondas on Vlaams Belang:

Shall we assert PRECISELY that we can't help it if white power is among our allies?

Shall we assert that white power is a natural cultural defense because europe was all white, against all demographic perils as we fight off sharia and 9:29 and 9:5? [link added - aa]

This is precisely what I have been told in the last few days, and precisely what David Duke says. He just likes the jews less than Mr. DeWinter. ...

Is there anyone who thinks the mantle of god's blessing will fall on them simply because they are NOT anti semitic?

I assert that it is the GOOD FIGHT to oppose those who believe these things. I assert that to be for white europe as a metaphor or in reality is equal in every single way equal to what Stormfront and David Duke proselytize, regardless of what one thinks of the existence of Israel, and as a jew I can tell you IT SHAMES ME PERSONALLY to have the support of these people in the belief that Israel must exist. ...

Go read every word.

HT: Israel Matzav.

Daniel Pipes on James Piereson: The Assassination of Liberalism

Daniel Pipes:

In a tour de force, James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute offers an historical explanation both novel and convincing. His book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (Encounter), traces liberalism's slide into anti-Americanism back to the seemingly minor fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was neither a segregationist nor a cold warrior but a communist.

Here's what Piereson argues:

During the roughly forty years preceding the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, progressivism/liberalism was the reigning and nearly only public philosophy; Kennedy, a realistic centrist, came out of an effective tradition that aimed, and succeeded, in expanding democracy and the welfare state.

In contrast, Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower lacked an intellectual alternative to liberalism and so merely slowed it down. The conservative "remnant" led by William F. Buckley, Jr. had virtually no impact on policy. The radical right, embodied by the John Birch Society, spewed illogical and ineffectual fanaticism.

Kennedy's assassination profoundly affected liberalism, Piereson explains, because Oswald, a New Left-style communist, murdered Kennedy to protect Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba from the president who, during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, brandished America's military card. Kennedy, in brief, died because he was so tough in the cold war. Liberals resisted this fact because it contradicted their belief system and, instead, presented Kennedy as a victim of the radical right and a martyr for liberal causes.

Fascinating stuff. As always, get the whole thing at the link.

"They hated it because it exposed them."

John Weidner at Random Jottings:

You would think that removing Saddam, one of the cruelest fascist tyrants ever, would have at least a partial appeal for people who call themselves "liberal?" (Or "progressive," or whatever this month's term is.) Fascist dictators are what they are against, right?

But the Katies [Katie Couric] of our world hated the idea from the start. They did NOT express themselves as "torn" between wanting to free Iraq and worrying that we might get into difficulties. And they still don't.

They hated it because it exposed them. Their liberalism is a fake. Not all liberals perhaps, but a lot of them. That's why I can never pin them down in arguments. There's no there there. There's nothing inside, no liberal philosophy or core values. Or any sort of philosophy. They are nihilists.

"I support gay marriage and the War on Terror."

Roger L. Simon:

I support gay marriage and the War on Terror and I believe my views on both to be linked in a matter that is not tenuous. But I’ll get to that – first allow me to discuss marriage. I am not going to deal here with current legislation like DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act), nor with the “let’s leave it to the states” doctrine, which seems more like the premise for a sitcom given the millions of people commuting daily between places like New York and New Jersey. Nor will I get into my views on how gay marriage should be achieved – legislative versus judicial. Although I recognize valid arguments on both sides, I don’t feel qualified. I am going to express my gut on the matter.

For me gay marriage is a human rights issue. It is a natural development of the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, part of extending to gay people what was extended to African-Americans at that time. Simple equality. To hold those beliefs, of course, you must believe that homosexuality is not an evil, but another part of nature. I see homosexuality that way for two reasons. One - personal: I have lived most of my life in New York and Los Angeles and known and worked with countless homosexuals, a number of them now with children. I found these people to be good and bad human beings, good and bad parents, to the same degree heterosexuals are – no difference. In other words, they are normal people. Two - scientific: It is becoming increasingly clear that sexual preference, although in part environmentally influenced, is largely fixed at birth chemically (fetal baths, etc.). It is also clear that it is virtually immutable. Attempts to change sexual preference have been utter failures. Meanwhile, homosexuality appears in animals with some frequency. It seems safe to conclude it is, in essence, part of nature. ...

Those of us concerned about human rights, about the separation of church and state, about gay rights and women’s rights, about democracy itself, have bigger fish to fry – the War on Terror. And here is the connection in my belief system.

Because I am such an adamant adherent of gay rights, women’s rights, human rights – the values that evolved out of the Enlightenment – I have to vote for the candidate I think will best carry forth that war (by whatever means appropriate at the moment) to defend those Enlightenment values. This means, unless I am very lucky, that I will not always love that person in all areas. Indeed, I may have to swallow some very bitter pills, but these are serious times, by far the most serious of my lifetime. And I was born at the end of World War II.

I never cease to be amazed – and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. ...

Read the whole thing at the link.

Turning Point

Matthew Continetti at The Weekly Standard:

Antiwar Democrats immediately started dancing the Iraq shuffle, in which you ignore your opponent's arguments, shift the terms of the debate, and attack his motivation and character. Witness the left's reaction to a recent interview Petraeus gave to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Rather than rebutting Petraeus's findings, lefty bloggers accused the general of being a partisan political actor. Or consider the liberal, antiwar Center for American Progress's "Progress Report" of July 31, entitled "Bush's Enablers." The email newsletter is sent to left-wing political operatives, activists, and journalists throughout the country and is a reliable barometer of progressive opinion.

Rather than rebut O'Hanlon and Pollack's evidence of progress in Anbar, the reduction in (still high) civilian fatality rates, and the growing capability, integration, and accountability of Iraqi army units, the Progress Report said the authors were "cherry-picking anecdotal signs of progress in order to justify continuing a war they supported from the beginning." Rather than acknowledge the extraordinary alliance between coalition forces and the tribal sheikhs who rule Anbar, the Progress Report redirected attention to the problems facing the Iraqi national government--problems O'Hanlon and Pollack acknowledge in their op-ed. And rather than assuming its opponents argue in good faith, the Progress Report accused O'Hanlon and Pollack of "providing political cover for the administration's misguided war policies."

And so it goes. In recent days, however, surge critics seem to be performing the Iraq shuffle more frequently. A well-publicized instance came on July 27, when Democratic congresswoman Nancy

Boyda of Kansas stormed out of a House Armed Services Committee hearing in which Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, and Lawrence Korb, an analyst at the Center for American Progress, gave divergent takes on the surge. Keane reported on the progress he had seen in mixed Sunni/Shiite neighborhoods during a recent trip to Baghdad. It is Gen. Petraeus's strategy of securing the Iraqi population that is responsible for such progress, Keane said.

"There was only so much you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while," Boyda said when she returned to the hearing. ...

Go read the whole thing at the link.

HT: TNR / The Plank.

Yearly Kos: Military Progress Not Welcome

Ezra Klein at The American Prospect blog:

AN ODD CLOSE. As the Military and Progressives panel came to an end, a young man in uniform stood up to argue that the surge was working, and cutting down on Iraqi casualties. The moderator largely freaked out. When other members of the panel tried to answer his question, he demanded they "stand down." He demanded the questioner give his name, the name of his commander, and the name of his unit. And then he closed the panel, no answer offered or allowed, and stalked off the stage,

Wes Clark took the mic and tried to explain what had just occurred: The argument appears to be that you're not allowed to participate in politics while wearing a uniform, or at least that you shouldn't, and that the questioner was engaging in a sort of moral blackmail, not to mention a violation of the rules, by doing so. Knowing fairly little about the army, I can't speak to any of that. But it was an uncomfortable few moments, and seemed fairly contrary to the spirit of the panel to roar down the member of the military who tried to speak with a contrary voice.

In the Comments, a response to JoeCHI produces this memorable quote:

"Since when is it a progressive principle to act as the "thought police"?"

Shut up, troll. you have become tiresome.

UPDATE. LGF has video. The soldier's (I'm assuming that the person is in fact a soldier) words are inaudible here.

For the record, I'm not sure I think the moderator was "shouting down" the questioner, and I think there's some reason for concern as to whether the questioner violated DOD policy by participating in a political rally in uniform. This Ain't Hell quotes the relevant regulations, and concludes that

the guy was within his rights to be there and in uniform. It’s just a lame excuse to keep people from hearing that current operations have improved life in Iraq, while hiding behind a DoD policy that the Left doesn’t agree with when it suits them.

I'll follow up on this as more information becomes available.

A New York Jewish Liberal Votes for Bush

An anonymous writer in The Command Post, October 12, 2004: A Liberal Votes for Bush

When I pull the lever on November 2nd for George Bush, I will be voting with more passionate conviction than I have ever mustered in a lifetime of voting Democratic.

My motive is simple: I believe the moral imperative of our time is to fully prosecute the War on Terror. As a Jew, I believe this sacred fight embodies the deepest Jewish values, so eloquently expressed by the ancient sage Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Let me explain.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” How do we make sense of the violence engulfing our world since September 11th? We reel from one barbaric slaughter to the next, unable to understand the horrors unfolding in front of our eyes: office workers jumping from burning buildings in New York, school children shot in the back in Russia, families exploding in pizza parlors and busses and seder tables in Israel. What unites these disparate acts of terror? Who is the enemy we face?

The phrase, “War on Terror,” studiously avoids naming our foe. Some have proposed calling this fight the War on Radical Islam or the War on Islamo-Fascism. I suggest the term the War on Islamic Terror for what binds together these acts is a religiously-inspired frenzy to destroy. Fueled by the fiery theology of jihad, or global holy war, the terrorists define every non-Muslim, including women and children, as enemy combatants who must be annihilated. They seek no compromise or negotiation. They seek our death.

We therefore face an existential challenge: Do we have the right to exist? Does our civilization merit continuing? Do we claim our freedom? On the most basic, inescapable level, as Rabbi Hillel asked us 2,000 years ago, are we for ourselves?

If we answer yes, we must answer with our actions. No one will stand with us if we do not stand for ourselves. We must commit to a long, difficult battle that will inevitably encounter agonizing setbacks along the way to victory. This fight will assume many guises as we seek to deter, disarm, and demolish the shifting forces intent on our murder. We will disrupt and weaken free-floating terror groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. We will depose incorrigible terror masters like Saddam Hussein, who lobbed Scud missiles into Israel, publicly conferred fat checks on the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and invited Abbu Abbas, the murderer of the wheelchair-bound American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, to live out his days as an honored pensioner in Baghdad. And we will deny nuclear capabilities to the mad mullahs of Iran, whose Defense Minister this week vowed to “crush America” and “wipe Israel off the map.”

The task may be complex, but the morality is straightforward. We believe that both our lives and our way of life are worth preserving. And although we carry the heavy burden of protecting liberty, our steps are lightened by the rewards of meeting Hillel’s second challenge.

"But if I am only for myself, what am I?" On October 9th, Afghanistan conducted the first one-person, one-vote democratic election in its history. Out of 10 million eligible Afghanis, an astonishing 9.9 million registered to vote for president, including the former king. 42% of the registered voters are women. Under the Taliban, Afghani women were prisoners in their homes, many literally starving to death. Today Afghani women compete in the Olympics, attend Kabul University, and open craft-based businesses, while their daughters constitute one-third of the 4 million Afghani children enrolled in school. 2,200 child soldiers have been demobilized; platoons of ex-combatants are being trained to build and maintain roads; electrification is spreading throughout the country, and the famous Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban are being reconstructed. And in an overwhelming sign of optimism, 3 million Afghani refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran, eager to rebuild their lives in their newly-freed homeland.

In a country successively tormented by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban’s brutal theocracy, hope is alive. Democracy is being born. Human dignity is taking root.

These inspiring developments are no accident: They have been purchased with American blood, sweat and treasure, and those of our allies, and they reflect our truest national character. With every illiterate adult taught to read, every young girl heading off to school for the first time, every boy trained to earn a living, we prove our deepest desire is to spread the blessings of freedom.

In Iraq, too, our painfully hard work of implanting democracy is proceeding. (You won’t find full portraits of either country’s progress in The New York Times or on CBS. Read for the bigger picture.) Sovereignty has been passed from the American-led Coalition Authority to the Iraqis, who are now preparing for nation-wide free and democratic elections in January. Meanwhile, on a local level, democracy is springing up through newly-elected town councils. Ahood Aabass, the first woman elected to the new governing council in Basra, reports that under Saddam, children went to schools without windows, doors and toilets, and the local water had worms. Now she praises the “great strides” that have been made in education, human rights, health care and the infrastructure. 20 million Iraqis now enjoy clean water and improved sanitation. Schools have been renovated and reopened. 159,000 new school desks have been distributed, millions of new textbooks have been printed, thousands of children have been vaccinated, and teachers now make between $300 and $500 a month, instead of the $3 they were paid by Saddam. The new Iraq Stock Exchange is now open for business (ISX) and commercial ties are increasing between Iraq, Europe and Japan. A newly-accessible internet is allowing Iraqis to openly exchange ideas, and a free press is flourishing.

A country once brutalized by a sadistic dictator who filled its earth with mass graves, tortured its dissidents, raped its women, and starved its children, is striving mightily to transform into a prosperous democracy. American resolve has let freedom reign.

"If not now, when?" Senator Kerry has decried “the rush to war,” stating that America “has lost its moral authority” because we overthrew Saddam without a sufficient number of allies. 34 countries joined us in our military endeavor there; Senator Kerry preferred to wait until we secured the co-operation of France, which means we would still be waiting today.

If we went to Iraq too early to please Senator Kerry, we are now lingering too long for his taste. Dismayed by the hopeless “quagmire” he perceives, he has declared his intention to bring our troops home as soon as possible, preferably in six months.

Too early, too late: It’s never quite the right time to do battle on Senator Kerry’s calendar. There is always another ally to consult, resolution to be passed, conference to be convened, process to be perfected, obstacle to be avoided.

And yet history has appointed the hour of our challenge, and however much we wish to turn back time, our moment has come. When the World Trade Center was attacked the first time in 1993, we chose to ignore the true seriousness of its implications. But on September 11th, 2001, with the Pentagon in flames, the World Trade Center collapsing, and a hijacked plane speeding towards Congress, we finally began our generation’s rendezvous with destiny.

“You can not escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today,” said President Lincoln at another decisive moment in our nation’s history. The War on Islamic Terror must be waged fully, humanely, and successfully. This monumental battle is both our burden and our privilege, for as Thomas Paine said when our country was born, “If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

On November 2nd, I will choose to honor my heritage as a Jew and as an American by voting for George Bush.

Remarks. The essay is almost four years old, and the wisdom behind it is even older. Last week, my girlfriend Georgianne was in my apartment and she noticed a poster on the wall with that famous quote from Rabbi Hillel; she commented on how liberal - and how modern - it sounded.

Great ideas never go out of date.

Mark Daily: Why I Joined

Lt. Mark Daily (1983-2007):

About me:

Why I Joined: This question has been asked of me so many times in so many different contexts that I thought it would be best if I wrote my reasons for joining the Army on my page for all to see. First, the more accurate question is why I volunteered to go to Iraq. After all, I joined the Army a week after we declared war on Saddam's government with the intention of going to Iraq. Now, after years of training and preparation, I am finally here.

Much has changed in the last three years. The criminal Ba'ath regime has been replaced by an insurgency fueled by Iraq's neighbors who hope to partition Iraq for their own ends. This is coupled with the ever present transnational militant Islamist movement which has seized upon Iraq as the greatest way to kill Americans, along with anyone else they happen to be standing near. What was once a paralyzed state of fear is now the staging ground for one of the largest transformations of power and ideology the Middle East has experienced since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to Iran, Syria, and other enlightened local actors, this transformation will be plagued by interregional hatred and genocide. And I am now in the center of this. Is this why I joined? Yes.

Much has been said about America's intentions in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and seeking to establish a new state based upon political representation and individual rights. Many have framed the paradigm through which they view the conflict around one-word explanations such as "oil" or "terrorism," favoring the one which best serves their political persuasion. I did the same thing, and anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me). I joined the fight because it occurred to me that many modern day "humanists" who claim to possess a genuine concern for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their fellow "global citizens" to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and conditions.

Their excuses used to be my excuses. When asked why we shouldn't confront the Ba'ath party, the Taliban or the various other tyrannies throughout this world, my answers would allude to vague notions of cultural tolerance (forcing women to wear a veil and stay indoors is such a quaint cultural tradition), the sanctity of national sovereignty (how eager we internationalists are to throw up borders to defend dictatorships!) or even a creeping suspicion of America's intentions. When all else failed, I would retreat to my fragile moral ecosystem that years of living in peace and liberty had provided me. I would write off war because civilian casualties were guaranteed, or temporary alliances with illiberal forces would be made, or tank fuel was toxic for the environment. My fellow "humanists" and I would relish contently in our self righteous declaration of opposition against all military campaigns against dictatorships, congratulating one another for refusing to taint that aforementioned fragile moral ecosystem that many still cradle with all the revolutionary tenacity of the members of Rage Against the Machine and Greenday.

Others would point to America's historical support of Saddam Hussein, sighting it as hypocritical that we would now vilify him as a thug and a tyrant. Upon explaining that we did so to ward off the fiercely Islamist Iran, which was correctly identified as the greater threat at the time, eyes are rolled and hypocrisy is declared. Forgetting that America sided with Stalin to defeat Hitler, who was promptly confronted once the Nazis were destroyed, America's initial engagement with Saddam and other regional actors is identified as the ultimate argument against America's moral crusade. And maybe it is. Maybe the reality of politics makes all political action inherently crude and immoral. Or maybe it is these adventures in philosophical masturbation that prevent people from ever taking any kind of effective action against men like Saddam Hussein.

One thing is for certain, as disagreeable or as confusing as my decision to enter the fray may be, consider what peace vigils against genocide have accomplished lately. Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics. Often times it is less about how clean your actions are and more about how pure your intentions are. So that is why I joined.

In the time it took for you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny. Every tool of philosophical advancement and communication that we use to develop our opinions about this war are denied to countless human beings on this planet, many of whom live under the regimes that have, in my opinion, been legitimately targeted for destruction. Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq. Others have ironically decried the war because it has tied up our forces and prevented them from confronting criminal regimes in Sudan, Uganda, and elsewhere. I simply decided that the time for candid discussions of the oppressed was over, and I joined.

In digesting this posting, please remember that America's commitment to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his sons existed before the current administration and would exist into our future children's lives had we not acted. Please remember that the problems that plague Iraq today were set in motion centuries ago and were up until now held back by the most cruel of cages. Don't forget that human beings have a responsibility to one another and that Americans will always have a responsibility to the oppressed. Don't overlook the obvious reasons to disagree with the war but don't cheapen the moral aspects either. Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction. So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include "Good Luck"
- Mark Daily

Who I'd like to meet:
MUQTADA aL-SADR: CLICK CLICK BOOM

Remarks. 2nd Lieutenant Mark Daily was killed in action in Iraq on January 15, 2007. This posting - written shortly before his death - is a little old, but I think it's worth re-posting now.

Why Liberals Should Love the Iraq War

Bryan at Hot Air:

The truth is, liberals should love the war in Iraq, since it’s being fought to a great extent along notions of soft power over hard power. It’s much less about firepower than it is about the power of basic services to bring about peace. It’s about bringing “good government” and civil liberties and human rights to war torn Baghdad, a city that has seen none of those things in decades, if ever. At least half the war’s most vital action takes place in meetings like this one in Al Salam to discuss works projects, school re-buildings and urban renewal. It’s all part of the complex mission in Iraq, a mission that morphed from the defeat of an entrenched dictatorship to one focused on building a civil society that will survive after the Americans leave. CPT Bare and the rest of the US military are trying to build a nation that Saddam Hussein broke, both by keeping the Iraqi people under his boot heel for 35 years and by leading it into needless wars to establish himself as a latter-day Nebuchadnezzar. In Saddam’s rule by fear, the basic idea of taking care of one’s own community broke down in favor of the daily need to survive by avoiding attracting the Baathist government’s attention. The Americans have to remove the fear that built up over decades, restore hope and help the Iraqis rebuild their lives and nation. Hard power may clear and hold Baghdad’s rough streets, but it will be CPT Bare’s relentless application of soft power that will win the war.

This is how the conflict in Iraq will be won, or lost. There won’t be an Iwo Jima flag raising to signal that the fight has turned in our favor for good. The American people will have to understand and accept that little things like a neighborhood council finding a contract garbage collector, and the re-opening of an elementary school, represent the end state of a community’s recovery and therefore signal battlefield victory. Our leaders in Washington need to teach us that that’s what victory in Iraq looks like. Our press needs to show us that that’s what our troops are doing in between the brief and often bloody firefights, but instead it’s busy picking up where the insurgencies leave off in delegitimizing the US mission and the Iraqi government. Peaceful, secure communities have no interest in the militias and despise the al Qaeda terrorists and insurgents. Beyond the fighting of Haifa Street, the war in Iraq will be won or lost by injecting good government in place of Saddam’s republic of fear. Which is why liberals, if they understood the ground realities of the war in Iraq, should embrace it instead of incessantly demanding retreat and defeat.

HT: Wizbang.

Open Letter

Dear Martin Peretz and Franklin Foer:

Please cancel my subscription to The Nation.

Sincerely,

Hitchens in Berkeley

Wow. Just wow.

Via Gateway Pundit, Zombie has a report on the Christopher Hitchens vs. Chris Hedges debate in Berkeley. This is Hitch at his absolute best, and you won't want to miss it.

Irshad Manji: State of the Ummah

Irshad Manji, writing in the Wall Street Journal, sees good news in the recent Pew poll on Muslim Americans.  In particular, she contrasts Muslim attitudes - that is, attitudes both of and toward Muslims - in Europe and America.  My friend Michael Totten recently expressed curiosity as to why the Muslim population in Europe was so radicalized - even more so than Muslims living in the Middle East.  Irshad Manji's comparison of Muslim life in Europe and the United States might offer some clues.

Here are the main points:

In Berlin recently, an audience buzzed nervously when I suggested that Europe can learn from America about integrating Muslims. Afterwards, several people confided to me that they know the U.S. is getting something right. What is that something? As I engage with young Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic, I see three factors: economics, diversity and faith.

• For plenty of Muslims in the United States, ambition and initiative pay off. The Pew survey reinforces this lesson, telling us that 71% of Muslim Americans believe most people in the U.S. "can make it if they are willing to work hard."

Meanwhile, in Europe, young Muslims face blatant discrimination in employment, educational and social opportunities, even when they are citizens. Many subsist on welfare, which only gives them time to stew and surf the Web for preachers who spew a rigid identity. This is the path that led Mohammed Bouyeri to murder Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

• In much of America, diversity is a reason to intermingle. The Pew study reveals that most Muslims are close friends with non-Muslims.

In much of Europe, diversity has become an excuse to self-segregate. Many of Europe's mosques, and the Muslims who attend them, refuse to communicate in the language of their new surroundings. As a result, young Muslim men drift away from moderate religious authorities and fall for online opportunists. That is how Mohammad Sidique Khan, mastermind of the London transit bombers, fell under the sway of "Sheikh Google," the collective nickname for Islamist Web sites.

• To Americans, it is not the fact of having faith that invites scrutiny, but what one is perceived to be doing with that faith. Western Europeans, still steeped in a backlash against the Catholic Church, often show suspicion or outright contempt to people of faith. Such "secular fundamentalism" leads some Muslims to believe that they will never be accepted by their adopted countries. So why integrate?

Small wonder that young Muslims in Western Europe whisper to me, "I wish I lived in the United States." The honesty doesn't end there. Muslim men in their twenties have complained to me that, in an effort to appear sensitive, Europeans downplay shared values. This confuses many Muslim youth and creates a vacuum that radical clerics can exploit.

Translation: A common aspiration such as the American Dream is crucial to giving Muslims a sense of belonging to something larger and more dynamic than cultural enclaves.

Go read the rest.

The Dream Palace of the Liberals - Part 2.

Liberals, being idealists by temperament, wish for a day when war will be abolished.  This wish is noble in itself, but is not the basis for a sound defense policy.  Albert Einstein's famous quote, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war," is factually wrong and was proved so by the effectiveness of deterrence in the Cold War. But still there persists a wish to do away with warfare, or at least to make it disappear. The Democrats' obsession with "special forces" as a military cure-all, as described in this Michael Fumento's Weekly Standard article on the Democrats' Special Forces fetish, is an example of this kind of wishful thinking.  In this view, America's Special Forces troops are X-Men.  They are superheroes with magical powers.  They can overcome evil without the messiness of regular warfare.  And best of all, they operate in secret - hey, that's what makes 'em special! - so the rest of us don't have to know too much about what they are doing.  Pelosi's New Direction for America promises on page 10 to "double the size of our Special Forces".

Here's Fumento:

If you like SOF, you love the SEALs. They are the stuff of legend, and I'm proud to be among the few journalists to have been with them in combat in Iraq, thereby allowing me to say with firsthand experience that the legend is deserved. They truly fight like machines. So we want a lot more SEALs, right? Ideally, yes. But Special Operations Command is already "mandated to create two entirely new SEAL Teams by 2010," notes 14-year SEAL veteran Matthew Heidt (who blogs as "Froggy" at www.blackfive.net). Attrition in the would-be SEALs' first round of training, the BUD/S course, "is 70 percent or more," according to Heidt, and even to man the two new authorized teams by 2010 "will be difficult . . . unless training standards are radically lowered." Capt. Larry Bailey, a SEAL for 27 years, vouches for the difficulty of expanding the teams. He's best known for tirelessly exposing men who fraudulently claim to have been SEALs (of which there is a virtual epidemic). But he commanded the BUD/S School at Coronado, Calif., for three years in the 1980s. He was given a mandate to graduate more SEALs without lowering the quality and did so temporarily. Nevertheless, "the Naval Special Warfare Center, which runs BUD/S, has been for years doing everything it can, short of lowering standards, to increase the number of graduates from this most difficult course," he told me. "There are just so many souls that can withstand that stress." Go to www.navyseals.com and click on "training" and you'll wonder that even 30 percent survive. "Doubling the size is impossible," Bailey told me. "But there's something about special ops that appeals more to Democrats than GOP," he added. "There's almost like there's a craving to be accepted by real men. I don't know any liberal Democrat who doesn't like special ops." Expanding other units will prove more doable because their attrition rates are lower. But few if any Special Operations Forces units could be doubled, much less the overall force. "Doubling SOF is a joke," says Heidt.

Utopianism is a form of perfectionism.  In the perfectionist or utopianist mindset, only two conditions exist:  perfect and not-perfect.  In this view, whatever is "perfect" has no faults, and whatever is "imperfect" has no value.

The Dream Palace of the Liberals - Part 1.

Liberals by nature are idealists.  It is our blessing and our curse. Here is Amir Taheri on liberalism, east and west.

In much of the Middle East, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left is part of these new alliances. - In Iraq, two rival Communist parties, along with Social Democrats and other center-left groups, supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and continue to play a significant role in the new pluralist system. They are resolutely opposed to a premature withdrawal of American and allied forces, as demanded by the U.S. Congress. - In Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party is at the heart of the democratic movement to against the Islamic Republic's attempt to dominate the country through its Hezbollah surrogates. The Lebanese democratic movement includes other parties of the Left, notably the Socialist Salvation Movement (Inqadh) and the Movement of the Democratic Left. - In Iran, virtually the whole of the Left rejects President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Americanism and calls for normalization of ties with the United States. The recently created independent trade-union movement is emerging as a vocal challenger to Khomeinism.

Now here's Michael J. Totten on Iran's revolutionary liberals :

The Communists hosted us warmly and kindly gave us a tour of their camp. But the liberals who split with them in the late 1980s proved to be far and away their intellectual and political superiors.

(UPDATED TO CLARIFY: There are two separate Iranian parties here who both call themselves Komala. One is communist, the other is liberal. The people interviewed in this article are the ex-communists. The people interviewed in the previous article are still communists.)

Secretary General Abdullah Mohtadi and Political Bureau member Abu Baker Modarresi sent two men to pick us up from our hotel – just to make sure we made it to the right place. They drove us to their safe house under armed guard less than an hour away from the Iranian border. We met over coffee and cigarettes.

MJT: You are both from Iran?

Mohtadi: Yes, yes we are.

MJT: How long have you been here?

Mohtadi: The first time our headquarters came inside Iraqi Kurdistan was in late 1983, when we lost the last liberated area in Iranian Kurdistan. So we moved our headquarters to Iraqi Kurdistan at that time, which was under Saddam Hussein. For some months they were reluctant to accept us, but they realized, okay, we are against the Islamic regime.

MJT: Did you ever have any problems with Saddam’s government?

Mohtadi: Yes. They shelled us. Also, we are the only Kurdish Iranian party that has been gassed by Saddam Hussein. ...

MJT: You had a split with the Komalah Party down the road at some point. We know about that because, as you know, we accidentally met them a few days ago instead of you.

Mohtadi: That Komalah Party was established as an underground organization in 1969, under the Shah. We were a leftist organization. It was the 60s and 70s. It was a struggle against the Shah, against oppression, dictatorship, for social justice, and against…the United States. Sorry. [Laughs.]

MJT: Well, that’s alright.

Lasswell: My father was working pretty vigorously against aspects of the United States at the same time.

Mohtadi: We were also inspired by the anti-war movement in the 70s.

MJT: We wouldn’t expect you to have any other position. You’re a leftist, so…

Mohtadi: Yeah, ok. So, members of Komalah were arrested several times. Every other political dissident in Iran…there was no political freedom, especially in the 1970s. A system of very harsh and brutal torture was carried out in Iran, in the prisons. The dictatorship intensified. The Shah paved the way for his overthrow.

So many organizations in Iran were crushed and disintegrated. Komalah was not. We survived. ...

Mohtadi: There were two different groups, religious and secular leftist guerilla groups who were influential at that time. People thought they were the way out of the dictatorship. Many many intellectuals and students and political activists joined them. But we wrote different pamphlets criticizing their methods. And that made us people who had something, a kind of political theory for a movement.

MJT: What do you think of PJAK? [The Iranian wing of the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Worker’s Party, the PKK, from Turkey.] Are they the kind of people you just described? Or are they more…popular than that?

Mohtadi: No, no, no, they are not popular. They are part of the PKK. When they cross the border [from Turkey] they change their name.

The problem with the PKK…I mean, the Kurdish toilers have every right to fight for their rights and their freedom. But the PKK as an organization is not reliable. They are very fanatic in their nationalism. They are very undemocratic in nature. They have no principles. I mean, they can deal with Satan. They can fight the Kurds. ...

Lasswell: The people down the road [referring to the estranged and unreconstructed Communist faction of the Komalah Party] said the PKK has a lot of money.

Mohtadi: They do.

MJT: Where do they get this money? Do they get it from these other regimes?

Mohtadi: The Kurdish-Turkish community in Europe is a huge community, unlike the Iraqi Kurds who are a few thousand or tens of thousands. They are millions. And they tax people. They impose taxes on people, on every business that Kurds have in Europe. They cannot fail to pay.

MJT: So it’s basically a mafia now. In Europe.

Mohtadi: I think so, yes. Unfortunately, they are. They also have bases on the border between Iran and Turkey. They help people smuggle drugs and they tax them. It is a huge source of raising money.

PKK ideology is a mixture of Stalinism, Kurdish tribalism, patriarchalism.

MJT: I thought they were opposed to tribalism.

Mohtadi: They exploit the tribal culture. They have mobile phones, walkie talkies, satellite stations, but I don’t consider them to be a modern party in the real sense of the word. Like the mafia. The mafia was modern in a sense, but they exploited the medieval culture that was there in Italy, the family connections, the family loyalties. The PKK did not start the struggle against Turkey until they had eliminated other Kurdish groups and achieved a monopoly of the Kurdish movement. ...

MJT: If I describe you as social democrats, is that accurate?

Modarresi: We won’t be angry. [Laughs.]

Mohtadi: We haven’t decided to take that name or not. But we are for democratic values. We are for political freedoms, religious freedoms, secularism, pluralism, federalism, equality of men and women, Kurdish rights, social justice. We are for a good labor law, labor unions. There is an element of the left in our political program.

MJT: You sound like the mainstream left.

Mohtadi: But as a leftist and as a Kurd I thought the left discredited itself by associating itself with Saddam Hussein and with the political Islamist groups. The left, the genuine left, should have been the real defenders of democracy, of political rights, of political freedoms, of overthrowing dictators, no matter if the United States government is or is not against them.

 

 

Taheri: The Liberal Betrayal

Already linked at Morning Report, but worth a post of its own, here's a selection from The Liberal Betrayal by Amir Taheri:

BEFORE the U.S.-led inter ventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, much of the Middle Eastern Left shared the views of its U.S. and European counterparts with regard to America. "We looked to the Left in the West and imitated it," says Awad Nasir, one of Iraq's best-known poets and a life-long Communist. "We heard from the United States and Western Europe that being Left meant being anti-American. So we were anti-American. And then we saw Americans coming from the other side of the world to save us from Saddam Hussein - something that our leftist friends and the Soviet Union would never contemplate." Mustafa Kazemi, spokesman for the new Afghan front, expresses similar sentiments. "Our nation is still facing the menace of obscurantism and terror from Taliban and al Qaeda," he says. "Thus, we are surprised when elements of the Left in the United States and Europe campaign for withdrawal so that our new democracy is left defenseless against its enemies." IRAQ'S parties of the Left were shocked when the new So cialist government in Spain decided to withdraw from the U.S.-led coalition in 2004. "We had hoped that with a party of the Left in power in Madrid we would get more support against the Islamofascists, not a withdrawal," says Aziz al-Haj, the veteran Iraqi communist leader. Tareq al-Hashemi, vice president of Iraq, has also gambled his impeccable progressive record on the success of the pluralist experiment in his country. "Our enemy is al Qaeda, not the United States," he says. ...

Go read it all, and then take a trip down memory lane with this article describing what happened when Iraqis tried to speak at an anti-war rally in 2003:

I spent part of last Saturday with the so-called "antiwar" marchers in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been to persuade the organizers to let at least one Iraqi voice to be heard. Soon, however, it became clear that the organizers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The Iraqis had come with placards reading "Freedom for Iraq" and "American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti tyranny!"

But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and distributed among the "spontaneous" marchers, were allowed. These read "Bush and Blair, baby-killers," " Not in my name," "Freedom for Palestine" and "Indict Bush and Sharon."

Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war.

The goons also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people to death in 1988.

We managed to reach some of the stars of the show, including Reverend Jesse Jackson, the self-styled champion of American civil rights. One of our group, Salima Kazim, an Iraqi grandmother, managed to attract the reverend's attention and told him how Saddam Hussein had murdered her three sons because they had been dissidents in the Ba'ath Party; and how one of her grandsons had died in the war Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990.

"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" 78-year old Salima demanded.

The reverend was not pleased.

"Today is not about Saddam Hussein," he snapped. "Today is about Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq." Salima had to beat a retreat, with all of us following, as the reverend's gorillas closed in to protect his holiness. ...

Go read the rest at the link.  Now, putting it all together, here's Cinnamon Stillwell:

It's gotten to the point where one would be hard pressed to tell the difference lately between the foreign policy of so-called liberals and that of so-called realists. Both are in favor of the sort of isolationism that would leave dictators and theocratic regimes to their own devices, not to mention the oppressed people living under their thumbs. To the extent that engagement with these foreign powers is encouraged, it's in favor of meaningless negotiation in the craven hope that they can save their own skins in the process.

And let it be lesson to those who still don't understand why some of us no longer wish to associate ourselves with Western leftism. There's nothing "progressive" about it.

Beinart on the Liberal War on Terror at FrontPageMag

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23176

TNR Discovers Socially Moderate Republicans

Thomas B. Edsall's article on Rudy Giuliani in The New Republic (registration required) indicates that someone at TNR has figured out what many of us have known for some time: that the Republican Party of today is no longer the domain of unchallenged social conservatism that it was in the 1970s - and that this bodes well for the Giuliani campaign.

What if we are witnessing not Rudy moving toward the rest of the Republican Party, but rather the Republican Party moving toward Rudy? What if the salience of a certain kind of social conservatism is now in decline among GOP voters and a new set of conservative principles are emerging to take its place? What if Giuilianism represents the future of the Republican Party?

I haven't had the chance to read the article carefully yet, but it looks fairly positive and appears to hit some of the main points that the liberal media have generally missed: that social moderates are now a strong force in the GOP; that Republicans see in Rudy Giuliani a much-needed managerial competence; and that Giuliani's no-nonsense manner and his 9/11 "street cred" are strong assets in his favor.

Here's one more snip from the article:

In brief, among Republican voters, the litmus test issues of abortion and gay marriage have been losing traction, subordinated to the Iraq war and terrorism. According to the Pew Research Center, 31 percent of GOP voters name Iraq as their top priority, and 17 percent choose terrorism and security. Just 7 percent name abortion and 1 percent name gay marriage.

The roots of this transformation predate September 11 and are partly the result of demographics. The lions of the Christian right--Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson--no longer dominate Republican politics as they once did. Their grip is slackening as their older followers are slowly replaced by a generation for which the social, cultural, and sexual mores that were overturned by the 1960s are history, not memory. In retrospect, these men reached the height of their power in the late '80s, when, by a 51-to-42 majority, voters agreed that "school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals." Now a decisive 66-to-28 majority disagrees, according to Pew. In 1987, the electorate was roughly split on the question of whether "aids might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior." Today, 72 percent disagree with that statement, while just 23 percent concur.

Giuliani is on the cutting edge of these trends, seeking to exploit new ideological lines between conservatism and liberalism. ...

Related.
Desperately seeking Archie Bunker.
Mary Cheney's baby.

Phyllis Chesler Unedited

What The Times didn't print:

For example, I was invited by Cambridge (UK) to deliver a keynote address at an international feminist conference to be held on March 9th of this year. When I raised questions about security and about the utter absence of kindred spirits, and despite the fact that I had stressed that neither factor would keep me away—I was summarily dis-invited. (These feminists subsequently invited me to lecture alone, to a smaller British-only group; however, as yet, nothing definite is planned). This coming summer, I will be denounced as a white supremacist and a collaborator with “the imperial imaginary” in the pages of the British-based academic journal: Feminist Theory. To their credit, the journal’s editorial board invited me to rebut these accusations which I have done. (Interestingly, the attacker also condemns two other American feminist thinkers. We are all, coincidentally, Jews.)

Read the rest of the unedited text of Phyllis Chesler's column at Cinnamon Stillwell.

Related. Phyllis Chesler: Islam, enlightenment, and evil.

Democrats: Desperately Seeking Archie Bunker

"Once again, the Democrats attempt to define the GOP not as it is, but as they wish it were."

Gay Patriot West is talking here about the DNC's desperate attempt to weaken Rudy Giuliani's candidacy for the White House by "highlight[ing] Giuliani’s stance on gay issues in order to play on the bias of social conservatives, assuming that these Republicans would never support a candidate with such a record."

GPW goes on:

They even feature quote by Pat Buchanan. It’s amusing that while nearly all Republicans, including social conservatives, have distanced themselves from that angry man, the Left continues to define him as “Conservative Leader.” Buchanan’s politics have increasingly come to resemble not those of the conservative mainstream, but those of left-wing activists.

Once again, the Democrats attempt to define the GOP not as it is, but as they wish it were.

What this release really shows is that Democrats fear Giuliani’s candidacy. They want bring his differences from social conservatives to the fore in order to heighten divisions within the GOP and prevent his nomination.

To be sure, the former New York City Mayor will not have an easy time winning over many social conservatives. But, he has impressed the party’s rank and file with his leadership and resolve.

Read the rest here.

Remarks. Watch for the Democrats to keep trying to play this losing hand. Whenever a strong, sensible, social moderate like Giuliani comes up in political conversation, count the number of nanoseconds it takes the Democrats to start talking about the GOP conservative "base".

Wherefore "base"? Because when the DNC talk about the "conservative base", they want you to picture bible-thumping rednecks. As I noted in my post on Mary Cheney's baby, the liberal Left needs Archie Bunker. The Democrats can't win a debate on the real issues, so they have to create a caricatured image of their opponents and hope that you, the public, will be too dumb to see through it.

But as Gay Patriot West observes,

Instead of Rudy snubbing the conservative base, as the Democrats contend, he has been reaching out to them, highlighting areas of common ground, notably his intention, once elected, to appoint strict constructionist judges to the federal bench.

This is a real issue, and a real conservative issue. But it's not what the Democrats want to talk about. So they'll throw a bunch of stuff at Giuliani and hope something sticks.

I won't duplicate Gay Patriot's effort in dismissing the irrelevant Pat Buchanan, so let's take the DNC's quote from David Frum. Here is Frum as quoted in the DNC press release:

Frum Said Giuliani Can't Win. Neoconservative David Frum, ex-speechwriter to President Bush, put it bluntly when asked about Giuliani's shot at the nomination. "He has one obstacle in his way: the social conservatives. And he shouldn't just assume he can get past it," Frum said. [New York Daily News, 11/15/06]

Emphasis in original. Now here is the quote as it appears in the New York Daily News:

Neoconservative David Frum, ex-speechwriter to President Bush, put it bluntly when asked about Giuliani's shot at the nomination.

"He has one obstacle in his way: the social conservatives. And he shouldn't just assume he can get past it," Frum said.

It is, of course, the same quote. But I'm repeating it because I want you to see what it looks like without the DNC's all-important interpolation: "Frum Said Giuliani Can't Win." Frum certainly did not say Giuliani can't win, at least not in the quoted text. What he said was that Giuliani "should not assume" that the social conservatives will not present "an obstacle". In other words, Frum said exactly what GPW is saying here:

To be sure, the former New York City Mayor will not have an easy time winning over many social conservatives.

But as GPW explains,

If he can focus on those issues which unite our party, he could persuade those currently opposed to (or skeptical about) his candidacy to support him, particularly given the alternative of a Democratic president beholden to the far left.

And this is what the Democrats are afraid of.

Related. Mary Cheney's baby.

A Force for Good

I actually lost a girlfriend because I had the audacity to believe this very thing:

"I genuinely believe the United States Army is a force of good in this world"
The immortal words of 2LT Mark Daily live on. The Los Angeles Times has picked up the story: "Mark Daily wrote on MySpace that he joined the Army to help the suffering people of Iraq. In death, his words have become a call to service."

A small sample:

In a 2005 videotape of his officers' commissioning ceremony, Daily told the crowd that the U.S. Army is one of the few militaries in the world that teach not only tactics but also ethics. "I genuinely believe the United States Army is a force of good in this world," he said. ...

In Mark Daily's own words:

So that is why I joined. In the time it took you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny.

Don't forget that human beings have a responsibility to one another and that Americans have a responsibility to the oppressed. Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction.

So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include "Good Luck."

Go to Michelle Malkin for more.

Remarks. It gets better. Here's more from the LA Times story:

"Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception."

Mark Daily, born on the Fourth of July, grew up in Irvine's Woodbridge Village, on a street of spacious homes and well-manicured lawns. His father, John, is an aerospace project manager; his mother, Linda, an audiologist.

His family says he became a registered Democrat who read voraciously and delighted in fervent debate. He read liberal intellectual Noam Chomsky, conservative Sen. John McCain of Arizona and everything in between.

His first passions were animal rights and environmental protection, prompting him to become a vegetarian and Green Party member in high school for a few years. He defended American Indian rights so loudly in one backyard debate that Linda Daily imagined the neighbors would think it a family brawl. His heroes were immigrants because "they risk their lives to achieve better ones," he wrote on his MySpace page.

Damn. I think I know this guy.

After the 9/11 attacks, Daily was not convinced that a military response was the best option. In his MySpace essay, he runs through the gamut of reasons he used at one time or another to argue against confronting the Taliban and Saddam Hussein: cultural tolerance, the sanctity of national sovereignty, a suspicion of America's intentions. Weren't we really after their oil? he wondered.

Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him. A 2003 phone conversation with a UCLA ROTC officer on the ideals of commitment and service impressed him.

Ultimately, his family says, Daily came to believe that his lifelong altruistic impulses and passions for the underdog had to extend to Iraqis crushed under decades of oppression. It was time to stop simply talking about human rights and actually do something to help secure them.

"There was no epiphany" - only a gradual, reasoned evolution of views. He considered every viewpoint in the debate, and he took the time to inform himself about the facts. Are you listening, Jay Dixit?

Daily touched down in Iraq on Nov. 19 and was sent to the northern city of Mosul. In calls and e-mails home, he began asking for presents for his new Iraqi friends: cigars for the soldiers, candy and soccer balls for the children. He vividly described his adventures with them: a Thanksgiving Day game of musical chairs, a rooftop cigar session; his first Kurdish meal, his first local haircut.

In one video he sent, Iraqi soldiers surround him with grins, crowning him with a turban as a gesture of friendship.

In typical fashion, he sought out new points of view. In one discussion, he wrote that he asked a Kurdish man whether the insurgents could be viewed as freedom fighters. The man cut him off. "The difference between insurgents and American soldiers," Daily said the man told him, "is that they get paid to take life — to murder — and you get paid to save lives."

"That Kurdish man's assessment of our presence means more to me than all of the naysayers and makeshift humanists that monopolize our interpretation of this war," Daily wrote in a Dec. 31 e-mail.

Daily was killed by a roadside bomb on January 15, one day after sending an e-mail to his parents saying, "All is well. More war stories then I can fit in this e-mail. Having the time of my life!"

Update. A belated thank-you to Jane at the Jawa Report for the link.

Mary Cheney's Baby: Answering TNR