Betraying our dead...Forgetting the vows we made

from The New York Post
by Ralph Peters
9/11/2009

Eight years ago today, our homeland was attacked by fanatical Muslims inspired by Saudi Arabian bigotry. Three thousand American citizens and residents died.

We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot.

We've learned nothing.

Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we've excused it.

Instead of killing terrorists, we free them.

Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them.

Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil -- and who counts among his mentors and friends those who damn our country or believe that our own government staged the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

Instead of insisting that freedom will not be infringed by terrorist threats, we censor works that might offend mass murderers. Radical Muslims around the world can indulge in viral lies about us, but we dare not even publish cartoons mocking them.

Instead of protecting law-abiding Americans, we reject profiling to avoid offending terrorists. So we confiscate granny's shampoo at the airport because the half-empty container could hold 3.5 ounces of liquid.

Instead of insisting that Islamist hatred and religious apartheid have no place in our country, we permit the Saudis to continue funding mosques and madrassahs where hating Jews and Christians is preached as essential to Islam.

Instead of confronting Saudi hate-mongers, our president bows down to the Saudi king.

Instead of recognizing the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi cult as the core of the problem, our president blames Israel.

Instead of asking why Middle Eastern civilization has failed so abjectly, our president suggests that we're the failures.

Instead of taking every effective measure to cull information from terrorists, the current administration threatens CIA agents with prosecution for keeping us safe.

Instead of proudly and promptly rebuilding on the site of the Twin Towers, we've committed ourselves to the hopeless, useless task of rebuilding Afghanistan. (Perhaps we should have built a mosque at Ground Zero -- the Saudis would've funded it.)

Instead of taking a firm stand against Islamist fanaticism, we've made a cult of negotiations -- as our enemies pursue nuclear weapons; sponsor terrorism; torture, imprison, rape and murder their own citizens -- and laugh at us.

Instead of insisting that Islam must become a religion of responsibility, our leaders in both parties continue to bleat that "Islam's a religion of peace," ignoring the curious absence of Baptist suicide bombers.

Instead of requiring new immigrants to integrate into our society and conform to its public values, we encourage and subsidize anti-American, woman-hating, freedom-denying bigotry in the name of toleration.

Instead of pursuing our enemies to the ends of the earth, we help them sue us.

We've dishonored our dead and whitewashed our enemies. A distinctly unholy alliance between fanatical Islamists abroad and a politically correct "elite" in the US has reduced 9/11 to the status of a non-event, a day for politicians to preen about how little they've done.

We've forgotten the shock and the patriotic fury Americans felt on that bright September morning eight years ago. We've forgotten our identification with fellow citizens leaping from doomed skyscrapers. We've forgotten the courage of airline passengers who would not surrender to terror.

We've forgotten the men and women who burned to death or suffocated in the Pentagon. We've forgotten our promises, our vows, our commitments.

We've forgotten what we owe our dead and what we owe our children. We've even forgotten who attacked us.

We have betrayed the memory of our dead. In doing so, we betrayed ourselves and our country. Our troops continue to fight -- when they're allowed to do so -- but our politicians have surrendered.

Are we willing to let the terrorists win?

Ralph Peters' new thriller, "The War After Armageddon," goes on sale next Tuesday.
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America, Canada , all Europe Needs a President like this!

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - Australia

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques.

Quote: 'IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It.

I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians'.

'This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom'. 'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society . Learn the language!'

'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.'

'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'

'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom,

'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.'

'If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.'

Maybe American citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths. And the same goes for other groups of people that do not embrace the “American Way of Life”

After Obama Speech - Israel is still a "cancerous tumor in the heart"

Cairo Candy
By Investor's Business Daily

Middle East: While declaring that "America and Islam . . . need not be in competition," President Obama called on Islamic countries to embrace Western ways. But Islamic hard-liners see no "new beginning."

In his much-hyped speech at Cairo University on Thursday to promote "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world," the president came armed with apologies and compliments.

The West is guilty of anti-Muslim "colonialism," not to mention "a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations."

The left often accused Ronald Reagan of naivete for believing the Soviet Union could be relegated to "the ash heap of history"; here we are 20 years later apologizing for defeating the Evil Empire.

According to President Obama, Islam can be thanked for everything from "Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment" to "algebra," "our magnetic compass," "pens and printing" and "our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed."

And as if speaking on the set of Dr. Phil, he claimed "we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors."

In fact, the Muslims that America has a problem with — i.e., Islamofascists — seldom have trouble expressing what they hold in their hearts. Often it's sheer hatred for the West.

Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for instance, immediately called the Obama speech "sweet and beautiful talks to the Muslim nation . . . that will not create a change," adding that Israel is still a "cancerous tumor in the heart" of the Muslim world.

After the flattery and the mea culpas, however, came an internally inconsistent message.

After saying "no system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other," the president added — rather dictatorially — that "you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise . . . ."

Sounds like the U.S. system to us.

The real diktats, however, were saved for the Israelis. "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," the president said.

And instead of rallying the Islamic world against a would-be nuclear Iran, he made the pronouncement that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons."

Does that mean we've given up on stopping Iran from having a nuclear bomb? If so, that's a very dangerous signal to send.

Compare that with another Democratic president, Harry Truman, after the bombing of Hiroshima: "Having found the bomb, we have used it. . . . It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies."

This president said he seeks the day "when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together, as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer."

He intends to establish that paradise-on-earth by having U.S. taxpayers finance initiatives such as "new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, grow new crops."

Sweet talk and the Almighty Dollar can buy a lot, it's true.

But only a fairy-tale mind-set could think it possible to bribe and cajole the Middle East into becoming a land of peace, love and understanding.
Click to read this and other great articles at IBD

Obama Gives Speech To Fellow Muslims

Obama's Own Speech Confirms He Is A Muslim!

from Andrew McCarthy:

In fact, even President Obama’s cordial greeting of “assalaamu alaykum” to his Egyptian audience conveys (no doubt unintentionally) something of basic Islamic intolerance. Under sharia (Islamic law), as Spencer explains, “a Muslim may only extend this greeting — Peace be upon you — to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, ‘Peace be upon those who are rightly guided,’ i.e., Peace be upon the Muslims.”

Obama’s speech was deep in fable, short on fact.

from The National Review
By Andrew C. McCarthy
June 5, 2009

The Islamic world has heard the much anticipated speech about the relationship between Islam and America from “Barack Hussein Obama” — emphasis added by the president himself, who until recently considered the use of his middle name a right-wing smear. The oration was called “A New Beginning.” “A Pretend Beginning” would have been a more accurate.

Though President Obama has won plaudits from some surprising quarters — including from National Review — the speech was warmed-over leftist dogma sprinkled with a fictional accounting of Islam and its history. NR’s editors forgive this as the “obvious consideration” that a presidential address must “stress some truths more than others and soften the harsher ones.” This is a promiscuous conception of truth. What the president did was promote various fictions about Islam while airbrushing truths that are not merely harsh but are the facts behind the rampage that has victimized us for much of the last three decades. That rampage, moreover, was substantially discounted in a haze of moral equivalence.

It would be bad enough to do this under any circumstances, but it is inexcusable to do it while paying only lip-service to one of the few truths the president did speak: namely, that any “partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.”

“What it isn’t” is a religion of peace with a legacy so overflowing with achievement in science, philosophy, and the arts that civilization, as President Obama claimed, owes a great “debt to Islam.” In fact, the ledger runs heavily in the other direction.

Islam was spread by the sword — not by the allure of its still problematic message — and many of the cultural achievements within the Muslim world that the president glossed occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are more properly understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better-educated peoples whom Muslims conquered. The president rehearsed the claim that Islam single-handedly “carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is a myth. As Robert Spencer has ably recounted, it is not true that Muslims alone preserved the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates, and other pillars of Western enlightenment. More significantly, arrested development in the Islamic world owes to an anti-intellectualism that persists to this day in enclaves holding that no education beyond the study of the Koran is necessary.

The president, moreover, insisted on pulling from the Muslim apologists’ playbook the expurgation of Islamic scripture in order to render it congenial to Western sensibilities. We were treated to the hidebound claim that terrorist violence is anti-Islamic because what Obama takes pains to call “the Holy Koran” teaches that “whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.” This conveniently decoupled Sura 5:32 from the next verse (5:33), which, though unmentioned by Obama, is well known by Muslims to read: “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter.”

Noting a bowdlerization even this egregious does not do justice to how misleading the president’s tactic was. Though Obama portrayed Islam as having a “proud tradition of tolerance,” it has a far more consequential legacy of intolerance. Islam strives for hegemony, seeking not to co-exist but to make all the world the realm of the Muslims (dar al-Islam) while regarding those parts not under its dominion as the realm of war (dar al-Harb). What Obama means by “an innocent” and what many Muslims take the term to mean are different.

Sura 5:33 is far from aberrant, and the “Holy Koran,” quite apart from its several other commands to violence, dehumanizes Jews in several places as the children of monkeys and pigs. It admonishes that Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors” (5:51). The hadiths of the prophet are replete with tales of non-Muslims slaughtered, forced into slavery, and reduced to humiliating dhimmitude. Mohammed’s vision of the end of the world foresaw Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, “Muslim, there is a Jew behind me — come and kill him!” In fact, even President Obama’s cordial greeting of “assalaamu alaykum” to his Egyptian audience conveys (no doubt unintentionally) something of basic Islamic intolerance. Under sharia (Islamic law), as Spencer explains, “a Muslim may only extend this greeting — Peace be upon you — to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, ‘Peace be upon those who are rightly guided,’ i.e., Peace be upon the Muslims.”

To be sure, no sensible person would suggest that a U.S. president rehash these and other unpleasant facts in order to provoke Muslims gratuitously. But it was Obama’s idea to give this speech — it’s not as if he were put, through no fault of his own, to the awkward choice of telling a few little white lies or insulting his hosts. More to the point, the president takes the risible position (as did his predecessor) that “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.” Islam, however, is palpably a huge part of the problem in combating violent extremism, which is serially committed by Muslims under the influence of notable religious scholars (including more than a few educated at al-Azhar University, the “beacon of Islamic learning” that co-hosted the president’s speech) who invoke some of the many scriptures the president elected not to mention.

It is true enough that Islam must be part of the solution to the promotion of peace, but for two reasons alone. First, while it is possible to ignore Islamic doctrine’s nexus to terrorism, the nexus cannot credibly be denied, and therefore the need to deal with it is unavoidable. Second, and related, there can be no peace unless Islam reforms — unless it purges its savage elements and compellingly condemns the violence committed in its name. This can’t be done as Obama and others would like to do it: by telling Muslims everything is fine, that their religion is wonderful as is, while making believe the bad scriptures don’t exist and radicals are merely a tiny fringe of crazy people. That is a strategy designed by liberals to convince other liberals who don’t need convincing, so desperate are they to believe all is well. It does nothing to discredit the violent fundamentalists in the eyes of other Muslims; in fact, it enhances their credibility because it ignores their doctrinal justifications of terror rather than offering a credible counter-construction.

Worse, assuming there is no credible counter-construction (which may very well be the case), there is an enormous amount of reform to be done — work that can only be done by Muslims. We cannot rouse them to the task by telling them we think Islam, as it currently exists, is promoting peace.

All this would require a commitment to come to grips with “what Islam is, not what it isn’t.” It’s too bad we don’t have that commitment.
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Muslims gave us zero

from Don Surber
June 4, 2009

Barack Obama delivered the same myths about Muslim math that English lit professors have passed along for decades — and Rush Limbaugh called him on it.

The idea that their is a unified Muslim world (just down the road from the Buddhist community, but before you cross the Hindu Street) is as absurd as a unified Christian world. I mean 500 years after the Diet of Worms, Protestants and Catholics still argue over the wording of the Lord’s prayer.

The pandering by Obama in Cairo, though, showed the misinformation that college professors have passed along to their students for year after year. Obama was a bright student.

OBAMA: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam at places like Al-Azhar that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s renaissance and enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra, our magnetic compass and tools of navigation, our mastery of pens and printing, our understanding of how disease spreads and how it could be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires, timeless poetry and cherished music, elegant calligraphy, and places of peaceful contemplation — and throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

Sure, Mr. President, we have seen that religious tolerance in 60 years of refusing to diplomatic acknowledge the state of Israel, and your wife’s ancestors saw that racial equality in the Muslim auctions of African slaves.

This is to history what Al Gore’s global warming phrenology is to science.

RUSH: “OK. I know we’re not supposed to criticize Obama’s speech here. I know it’s going way off the reservation here to do this. But, folks, that is outrageous. This is simply outrageous. It was absurd, in fact. Let’s see. here do we start here? ‘It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra.’ No. The origins of algebra trace back to the ancient Babylonians. They were not Muslims. Algebra was temporarily developed by the ancient Greeks and later the English. ‘Our magnetic compass, tools of navigation,’ Islam gave us these? No. Recent research suggests that the compass may have been discovered by Central Americans, but if they didn’t do it, the Chinese are then its discoverers. In either case, be it the Chinese or the Central Americans, the compass was discovered centuries before the advent of Islam.

“Now, what am I supposed to say? I’m not supposed to say this stuff. Now, let’s see, let’s see. ‘Our mastery of pens and printing…’ Has anybody ever heard of Gutenberg? I didn’t know Gutenberg was a Muslim. ‘Our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed…’? Are there Nobel Prizes for Medicine awarded to Muslims I have missed? ‘Islamic has given us some majestic arches and soaring spires…’ Well, sorry, folks, but arches and spires predate the arrival of Islam by centuries. I mean, come on, folks. Arches? Anybody heard of Rome? He also talked about the great gift, ‘timeless poetry and cherished music.’ The only problem there is that music — and musical instruments especially — are forbidden in most Islamic traditions. And it should be unnecessary to have to note Islam’s ‘religious tolerance’ has been demonstrated.”

Rush is right. The fact is socialist professors have idealized the Islamic faith and created out of midair this ridiculous fantasy about Spain being a great place for other religions under Moorish rule.

I am glad someone in the American media called Obama on this. More Rush is here.
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Obama Speech: Koran, Quran, Bible are Holy - but not the Torah

In Obama's speech he uses the word 'Holy' 7 times. It precedes the words Koran, Quran, Bible and Land. He doesn't apply it to the word Torah. I don't know why he used both Koran and Quran, and not just used one spelling of the Muslim book.

Holy Koran 2
Holy Quran 3
Holy Bible 1
Holy Land 1

Torah is used once, but the word 'Holy' does not precede it.
Coincidence? I think not
Rees

Links to 30+ Blogs reviewing Obama's Speech - Gorge yourself

My summary is that Obama's appearance in front of the world was more important to him than his so-called speech to the Muslim World. Obama is a megalomaniac with ZERO humility. Obama thinks he knows everything and has all the answers. I believe that's dangerous, because he believes he can do no wrong and that he is above being second-guessed.

He again raped Israel on the world stage. He says he is a friend of Israel, but his actions prove otherwise.
Rees

Links provided by the Bookworm Blog
June 4, 2009

Grading Obama’s speech

The voice of the blogosophere about Obama’s speech

You can read what I wrote about the speech here. Others have been writing too.

The Anchoress, in addition to her must-read Ich bin ein Muslimer takedown of the speech, has a list of blogs thinking about what he said, which I’ll just copy wholesale:

Andy McCarthy: Koranic text Obama left out
Andrew Bolt: Islam, I am your savior!
Fausta: What was missing from the speech
David P. Goldman: Why Couldn’t Obama’s writers find a peace quote from the Koran?
Abe Greenwald: Not too good on Women’s Rights
Jennifer Rubin: Abudullah is not charmed by Obama
Bookworm: Gives the speech a C and wonders about specifically Muslim formulations
Ed Morrissey: Not so bad; not much different from Bush
Michelle Malkin: Not having any; didn’t like Bush’s speeches here, either.
Rich Lowry: On the whole not bad
Max Boot: Could have been a lot worse
Ann Althouse: Commenters parse the speechJ
ake Tapper: President finds himself in Hieroglyphs
Hugh Hewitt: The World is Worse for this dishonest speech“Yes we can” in Hieroglyphics
Mike Allen: Kinda common rhetoric
Confederate Yankee: Obama’s Brilliant Delusion
Andy McCarthy: Founding Fathers Friends to Islam?
Dana Perino: Comparing two presidents, two speeches
Damian Thompson: Watch out for Christian Terrorists
!Noisy Room: United Under AllahObama’s Nixon China Speech
Flopping Aces: Charm Offenses & History
Gateway: US President won’t stand for democracy

Here are some more reads I recommend:
Joshuapundit summarizes all the of ill-informed, fatuous and foolish statements that surrounded the nuggets of smartness and decency buried in that mess.

Rick Moran about the sadness the deliberately or foolishly misinformed speech engendered in him, and Sammy Benoit chimes in.

Ira Stoll, who hoped for better when it came to Obama and the Jews, confesses that the speech brings him to a different point of view.

Peter Daou also caught that strange obsession with the hijab.

Max Boot notes that the speech could have been worse, and explains what was good. He also highlights all the false equivalencies Obama drew between the Muslim world and the west. He also deconstructs the little misuse of history, by which Obama implied that Tripoli and the US have always been partners in freedom. (I bet Boot would give the speech the same C I did.)

Jennifer Rubin also sounds many of the same notes I did.

And Abe Greenwald agreed with me on the bizarre fact that Obama kept harking back to those hijabs.

Here are John and Paul from Power Line, each of whom also damn it with faint praise and praise it with faint damns.

Reading all of these views shows that the issues I picked up upon — the vague mea culpas, the hostility to women, the hostility to Israel, the apparent willingness to protect America (thank God), the false moral equivalences, the bastardized history, etc. — were not products of my own anti-Obama imagination but were, in fact, truly present in an anything-but-earth-shattering speech to the Arab world.

Laer thinks the speech was as good as it could get, considering both audience and speaker.

Muslims Mad About Upcoming Religious Book - so shat else is new?

From The Sunday Times
May 31, 2009
by Christine Toomey

Fears of Muslim anger over religious book

'Does God Hate Women' by Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson cites attitudes to women and criticises Mohammed's marriage

An academic book about religious attitudes to women is to be published this week despite concerns it could cause a backlash among Muslims because it criticises the prophet Muhammad for taking a nine-year-old girl as his third wife.

The book, entitled Does God Hate Women?, suggests that Muhammad's marriage to a child called Aisha is "not entirely compatible with the idea that he had the best interests of women at heart".

It also says that Cherie Blair, wife of the former prime minister, was "incorrect" when she defended Islam in a lecture by claiming "it is not laid down in the Koran that women can be beaten by their husbands and their evidence should be devalued as it is in some Islamic courts".
This weekend, the publisher, Continuum, said it had received "outside opinion" on the book's cultural and religious content following suggestions that it might cause offence. "We sought some advice and paused for thought before deciding to go ahead with publication," said Oliver Gadsby, the firm's chief executive. The book will be released on Thursday.

A recent novel that also dealt with Muhammad's relationship with Aisha provoked an outcry.

The Jewel of Medina caused such anger that a Muslim extremist was convicted earlier this month of trying to firebomb the office of its publisher.

Continuum's book may cause a backlash because it sets out to be a factual examination of religious attitudes to women. British writer Jeremy Stangroom and his American co-author Ophelia Benson, whose previous books on philosophy and science have received favourable reviews, cite ancient Islamic scholars to support their case. They roundly attack previous attempts to "soft-soap" the controversial episode in Muhammad's life. In the aftermath of 9/11, the authors argue, a wave of political correctness aimed at building bridges with the Muslim world has meant accusations of "Islamophobia" have been used to silence debate about the morality of social conduct, past and present.

Through a gruesome catalogue of abuses carried out against women in the name of Islam as well as other major religions, including Hinduism and Catholicism, Stangroom and Benson conclude that most of the world's great faiths are essentially misogynistic.

Among the many tragedies they cite are the deaths of 14 young girls in a fire at a school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in March 2002. The girls died after being herded back into a blazing classroom by the country's religious police because they had neglected to don black head-to-toe robes in their rush to flee to safety.

However, the most contentious section of their book is likely to be their conclusions concerning the age at which Muhammad first slept with Aisha.

While it is widely accepted that the girl's father first offered her for betrothal to Muhammad when she was just six, many argue that Muhammad married Aisha when she was nine and the union was not consummated until she reached puberty years later.

However, Stangroom and Benson cite extracts from a highly regarded historian of early Islam, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, who quotes Aisha as saying: "The Messenger of God consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old". The authors conclude "religious authorities and conservative clerics worship a wretchedly cruel unjust vindictive executioner of a God. . . a God who thinks little girls should be married to grown men".
Such assertions could invoke the ire of some Muslims. Anjem Choudary, a self-styled sharia judge and former leader of the banned British group Al-Muhajiroun, said: "Talk of Aisha as a child when she married is not true.

"At nine she reached her menses and in those days a girl was considered to be mature when that happened. No one will swallow talk about child brides. It would lead to a huge backlash, as we saw with The Jewel of Medina."
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Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

Barack Obama and the CIA
from The Telegraph.co.uk
By: Gerald Warner
image by rees

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.

Obama promised his CIA audience that nobody would be prosecuted for past actions. That has already been contradicted by leftist groups with a revanchist ambition to put Republicans, headed if possible by Condoleezza Rice, in the dock. Talk about playing party politics with national security. Martin Scheinin, the United Nations special investigator for human rights, claims that senior figures, including former vice president Dick Cheney, could face prosecution overseas. Ponder that - once you have got over the difficulty of locating the United Nations and human rights within the same dimension.

President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. The former vice president believes documents have been selectively published and that releasing more will prove how effective the interrogation techniques were. Under Dubya's administration, there was no further atrocity on American soil after 9/11.

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
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U.S. Ready to Take out Pakistani Nukes

from the blog Islam In Action
Saturday, May 16, 2009

As the violence has escalated in Pakistan since the inception of Sharia law in the Swat Valley, many of us have wondered about the nuclear arsenal within Pakistan. Here is what one Pakistani news organization had to say.

Hat tip to The Religion of Peace.

‘Plans ready to take out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal’
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Monitoring Desk

WASHINGTON: The US has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan and securing its mobile arsenal of nuclear warheads if it appears the country is about to fall under the control of the Taliban, al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremists, a leading TV network reported.

“American intelligence sources say the operation would be conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command, the super-secret commando unit headquartered at Fort Bragg, NC,” a report by Rowan Scarborough of the FoxNews said on Friday. The report has also been posted on foxnews.com, the website of the TV channel.

It said: “The JSOC is the military’s chief terrorists hunting squad and has units now operating in Afghanistan on Pakistan’s western border. But a secondary mission is to secure foreign nuclear arsenals — a role for which the JSOC operatives have trained in Nevada.

“The mission has taken on added importance in the recent months, as Islamic extremists have taken territory close to the capital of Islamabad and could destabilise Pakistan’s shaky democracy. “We have plans to secure them ourselves if things get out of hand,” said a US intelligence source, who has deployed to Afghanistan. “That is a big secondary mission for the JSOC in Afghanistan.”

The source said the JSOC had been updating its mission plan for the day President Obama gave the order to infiltrate Pakistan. “Small units could seize them, disable them and then centralise them in a secure location,” the source said. A secret Defence Intelligence Agency document, first disclosed in 2004, said Pakistan had a nuclear arsenal of 35 weapons. The document said it planned to more than double the arsenal by 2020.

FoxNews quoted a Pakistani official as saying the US and his country had an understanding that if either Osama bin Laden, or his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, was located, the US troops and air strikes might be used inside the borders to capture or kill them.

“What makes the Pakistan mission especially difficult is that the military has its missiles on the Soviet-style mobile launchers and rail lines. The US intelligence agencies, using satellite photos and communication intercepts, is constantly monitoring their whereabouts. Other warheads are kept in storage. The US technical experts have visited Pakistan to advise the government on how to maintain and protect its arsenal.

“Also, there are rogue elements inside Pakistan’s military and intelligence service, who could quickly side with the extremists and make the JSOC’s mission all the more difficult.“It’s relatively easy to track the rail-mounted ones with satellites,” said the intelligence source. “Truck-mounted are more difficult. However, they are all relatively close to the capital in areas that the government firmly controls, so we don’t have to look too far.

“The JSOC is made up of three main elements: Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs and a high-tech special intelligence unit known as the Task Force Orange. The JSOC was instrumental in Iraq in finding and killing Abu Musab Zarqawi, the deadly and most prominent al-Qaeda leader in the Middle East.

“There is speculation in the intelligence community that a secondary reason for Army Lt-Gen Stanley McChrystal being named the next commander in Afghanistan is that he headed the JSOC in 2006-08 and is read-in on its contingency missions in Pakistan.

“Adm Michael Mullen, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, this month said that based on the information he had seen, Pakistan’s nuclear warheads were safe. “I remain comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure, that the Pakistani leadership and, in particular, the military is very focused on this,” it said. “We, the United States, have invested fairly significantly over the last three years, to work with them, to improve that security. And we’re satisfied, very satisfied with that progress. We will continue to do that. And we all recognise obviously the worst downside of — with respect to Pakistan is that those nuclear weapons come under the control of terrorists.”
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Unbelievable Quote by by a U.S. General...

Lt. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, a U.S.-based Marine commander, suggests that General McChrystal who is replacing General McKiernan as the commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, "will do things differently."

"He really does understand that you're not going to win the war by killing all the enemy. That's just not going to work," he said.

Are you kidding me??? I think it would be quite obvious that if you killed all the enemy, the war would be over! Who would you still need to fight???

What war college did he graduate from? I believe they usually teach you that the object is to kill all of the enemy. This is just an unbelievably bizarre statement to make. Are these the new talking points from Obama? Are we going to fight a war where the object is not necessarily to kill the enemy? Obama has turned this world upside down.

I would like to recommend this quote from General Patton:

"There is one tactical principal which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."- General George S.
Patton Jr.

As long as there are Taliban left standing, there will be a war.
Rees

Analysis: Obama seeks effective war innovations

By Robert Burns
Ap National Security Writer

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is struggling to confront a central reality of the Afghanistan war it inherited — that more troops, more aid and a retooled strategy alone are not enough.

It wants to energize the effort with new ideas, too — and do it before American public patience runs out.

It's a grim given that U.S. casualties are likely to increase in the months ahead as additional soldiers and Marines arrive to take on the Taliban in their southern strongholds. Already some prominent members of Congress — including from Obama's own party — are questioning whether Afghanistan is a lost cause.

That concern may explain, in part, the decision Monday to sack Gen. David McKiernan as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and replace him with an officer known for innovative action, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Pentagon chief Robert Gates said it was time for "new thinking and new approaches."

Yet it seems unlikely the switching of commanders portends a new U.S. war strategy. Obama announced a revised plan just two months ago. Instead the administration is hoping that a military command shake-up will lead to a more effective implementation of the existing strategy, which is aimed at defeating al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and preventing their return to either country.

William Fallon, the retired Navy admiral who was responsible for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and the broader Middle East in 2007-08, is optimistic that new leadership will make a difference.

"I have the highest confidence in his judgment," Fallon said of McChrystal. "He gets it."

The change at the top in Afghanistan won't mean new marching orders for arriving Marines, said Lt. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, a U.S.-based Marine commander. However, Hejlik, too, suggested that McChrystal will do things differently.

"He really does understand that you're not going to win the war by killing all the enemy. That's just not going to work," he said.

McKiernan recently described the war as "stalemated, at best" in the southern part of Afghanistan where the Taliban are strongest. For months he has called for an increase in U.S. forces, but during the Bush administration his requests went unmet as Iraq dominated the White House's focus.

Obama entered the White House promising to make Afghanistan and Pakistan the higher priority, arguing that stopping al-Qaida from launching new attacks was of greater strategic importance than the task in Iraq. He also said he would "not blindly stay the course" in Afghanistan and would regularly review his approach. Since then the situation — militarily and politically — has arguably gotten worse.

The boldness of the insurgency was underscored Tuesday. Eleven Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in a daylong assault in the eastern city of Khost. The assault led to running gunbattles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people and wounded three Americans.

At the heart of Obama's approach to the war is his view, shared by senior commanders, that military power alone will not lead to success — and that stability in Afghanistan is not possible without stability in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the radical Taliban movement has been on the rise.

That means Obama will look to McChrystal to find more effective ways of linking military action with an accelerated effort to build workable Afghan government ministries, to expand and improve Afghan security forces, to promote Afghan reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban, and to improve the U.S.-led coalition's ability to overcome remarkably effective propaganda efforts by the Taliban and al-Qaida.

It also means that turning around the war in Afghanistan will require changes beyond Obama's control — perhaps most importantly a more effective Pakistani government response to the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.

Two months after announcing his new strategy, Obama has little to show for it, although the extra 21,000 troops he approved as reinforcements are only now beginning to arrive and there is the prospect of a further restructuring of the U.S.-NATO command in Afghanistan. Also, the new U.S. ambassador in Kabul, retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, just arrived in the capital last week.

The outlook is not bright. At a hearing Tuesday, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, painted a grim picture, saying he was stunned by a lack of progress in Afghanistan, which he called a "black hole" with no bottom.

"It is just breathtaking, the amount of money, the American lives we've spent there, and you have a government that has control maybe to the outskirts of the capital," Risch said.

The man to whom Risch was speaking, Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat who is coordinating the administration's policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan, responded that his own initial assessment was not much different. Holbrooke insisted, however, that the administration has a workable strategy and that dismantling the terrorist network that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 is too important not to press ahead.

Obama needs Congress to go along with the piece of his strategy that calls for providing billions more in aid to Pakistan with the aim of preventing a collapse into chaos that could spill over into Afghanistan. But it was evident from Holbrooke's appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that some of the most skeptical and reluctant members of Congress are from Obama's own party.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he feared that adding U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan would only expand the trouble in Pakistan.

"You are absolutely correct that an additional amount of American troops, particularly if they are successful in (southern Afghanistan), could end up creating a pressure in Pakistan, which would add to the instability," Holbrooke said. He said this would require closer coordination with the Pakistani government.

Another obstacle to progress in Afghanistan that has seemed beyond U.S. efforts to overcome is the recurrence of civilian casualties. It's a problem that has undercut Afghan public support for the U.S. mission and assisted the Taliban in promoting the notion that the Afghanistan government is a U.S. puppet.

One more problem demanding an innovative solution.
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A Perfect Storm? Will Pakistan Implode?

By Investor's Business Daily
Posted Monday, May 11, 2009

Terrorism: After long demanding that Pakistan get a legitimately elected president, Democrats now threaten to abandon his war efforts. Meanwhile, the Taliban and al-Qaida eye Islamabad's sizable nuclear arsenal.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto and leader of her Pakistan People's Party, has come to Washington, but he hardly conquered it.

After meeting with Zardari for 90 minutes, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, threatening de-funding, were grumbling he said little about his game plan on defeating the Taliban, whose forces have made inroads into more populated areas.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House panel, remarked that Zardari "did not present a coherent strategy for the defeat of this insurgency." When confronted with Berman's complaints on NBC's "Meet the Press," the best Zardari had to offer was to say he has "always have been of the view that democracy is the answer to the problem."

He spent much of the interview complaining that his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, was a dictator and that the United States had supported him.

But as flawed and heavy-handed as Musharraf was, at least while he was in power the Taliban and al-Qaida were not making inroads toward overthrowing Pakistan's government — and gaining possible access to as many as 100 nuclear weapons.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the U.S. Central Command, confirmed that "the location of al-Qaida's senior leadership is, indeed, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of that very rugged border region of western Pakistan just east of Afghanistan."

And according to U.S. and Pakistani officials, al-Qaida operatives seek "to sow chaos in Pakistan and strengthen the hand of the militant Islamist groups there," the New York Times said Monday.

In a March Washington Post interview, David Kilcullen, top counterinsurgency adviser to Petraeus during the surge in Iraq, described the situation as "reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state . . . ."

Kilcullen noted that "the Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state."

Former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, now leading the Nuclear Threat Initiative group, recently pointed out that Pakistan's "generals aren't guarding those weapons. The privates are — the young people are . . . . And that's . . . a big question mark, as the country becomes more subject to revolutionary-type zealots."

Pakistan, the only Islamic nuclear power, now has a president who, while possessing democratic bona fides, seems weak, has questionable control of and respect from his military, and has cultivated a reputation for obfuscation.

Meanwhile, a resurgent Taliban may threaten the Islamabad regime's very existence; al-Qaida, headquartered in Pakistan, sits perched, ready to take advantage; and Democrats in Congress seem eager to pull the financial plug.

Is a perfect storm gathering that will empower al-Qaida or its allies with nuclear weapons?
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Gates (Obama) Tosses A General Under The Bus For The Civilian Air Raid Deaths - and blames Bush again

Obama via Gates, conveniently tosses General McKiernan under his bus. He's doing this to deflect criticism arising from the large number of civilians that were killed in the recent U.S. bombing raid. Obama is making McKiernan the scapegoat. He's asked for McKiernan's resignation so he can replace him and then say the problem has been resolved. From this point on, Obama will not want to hear any more criticism.

Gibbs in his press conferences will just say we investigated what transpired and we've taken corrective action. Cased closed. No more questions.

I'm not disappointed that he's being replaced. I made a post back on April 10, 2009, after General McKiernan made a statement where he was apologizing for past U.S. mistakes and saying he is was studying the Quran. He was doing the Obama goose step feel good approach with the Taliban. Well, it doesn't look like it worked out very well for him and the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. Imagine that!.

The picture is of Stanley McChrystal. Here is Stanley McChrystal's Joint Chiefs of Staff biography. He is the new commander for all U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. His resume is very impressive. I like the fact that he has a Specials Forces background. Here is his Wikipedia biography.
Rees

from Yahoo News.com
By Pauline Jelinek And Anne Gearan
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon replaced its top general in Afghanistan Monday as President Barack Obama tries to turn around a stalemated war. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he asked for the resignation of Gen. David McKiernan. Gates said new leadership is needed as the Obama administration launches its strategy in the seven-year-old campaign.

The change is aimed at "getting fresh thinking, fresh eyes on the problem," Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

The move comes as more than 21,000 additional U.S. forces begin to arrive in Afghanistan, dispatched by Obama to confront the Taliban more forcefully this spring and summer.

Replacing McKiernan will be Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has had a top administrative job at the Joint Chiefs of Staff for less than a year. He is a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.

McKiernan held the command in Afghanistan for about 11 months.

Gates recommended to Obama that McChrystal be nominated for the top job and that Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez be McChrystal's deputy. He urged the Senate to confirm the two quickly.

Obama had approved 17,000 additional combat forces for Afghanistan this year, plus 4,000 trainers and other non-combat troops. By year's end, the United States will have more than 68,000 troops in the sprawling country — about double the total at the end of Bush's presidency but still far fewer than the approximately 130,000 still in Iraq.

McKiernan and other U.S. commanders have said resources they need in Afghanistan are tied up in Iraq.

Asked if McKiernan's resignation ends his military career, Gates said, "Probably."

Gates visited Afghanistan last week to see firsthand what preparations and plans are under way to set the president's counterinsurgency strategy in motion.

"As I have said many times before, very few of these problems can be solved by military means alone," Gates said Monday. "And yet, from the military perspective, we can and must do better."
He noted that the Afghan campaign has long been shortchanged of the people and money needed in favor of the Bush administration's focus since 2003 on the Iraq war.

"But I believe, resources or no, that our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders," he said. "Today we have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission, and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership also is needed."

In June 2006 McChrystal was congratulated by then-President Bush for his role in the operation that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. As head of the special operations command, his forces included the Army's clandestine counterterrorism unit, Delta Force.

McChrystal also came under fire for his role in the furor surrounding the friendly fire shooting of Army Ranger Pat Tillman — a former NFL star — in Afghanistan. An investigation at the time found that he was "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions" contained in papers recommending that Tillman get a Silver Star award.

McChrystal acknowledged he had suspected several days prior to approving the Silver Star citation that Tillman may have died by fratricide, rather than enemy fire. He sent a memo to military leaders warning them of that, even as they were approving Tillman's Silver Star. He told investigators that he believed Tillman deserved the award.

The Army overruled a Pentagon recommendation that he be held accountable for his actions.
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Top U.S. General in Afghanistan apologizes for past mistakes and says he is now studying the Quran!

This is absolutely unbelievable. General McKiernan must be following an order from Obama, because if he isn't, he should be removed immediately.

This apologizing phenomena has got to stop. This just continues the attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands. Our brave soldiers cannot fight under this kind of situation. The President has tied one of their arms behind their back. Our suicidal rules of engagement have just gotten worse.
Rees

Top US General Meets Tribes Ahead of Afghan Surge

from The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 10, 2009
Filed at 7:39 a.m. ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- The top U.S. general in Afghanistan reached out to influential Afghan tribesmen in regions where U.S. troops will soon deploy, apologizing for past mistakes and saying he is now studying the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Gen. David McKiernan met with villagers in Helmand and Kandahar -- two of Afghanistan's most violent provinces -- in an attempt to foster good will ahead of the U.S. troop surge that will send 21,000 more forces here this summer to stem an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.

McKiernan said he wanted to show respect to tribal elders by traveling to Kandahar on Wednesday to explain some of the mistakes U.S. forces have made in the past -- such as arresting people based on information taken from one side in a tribal fight, or killing civilians during operations.

''I'm trying to connect to the local population in a bottom-up way and try to explain what the new U.S. strategy means and why they're going to see an increased force presence where they live,'' McKiernan said during the trip to Kandahar aboard the seven passenger jet he flies in.

McKiernan for the first time disclosed precise locations where the combat troops arriving this summer will deploy. The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, expected to arrive in May or June, will deploy in eastern Farah province and from Lashkar Gah -- the capital of Helmand province, the world's largest opium producing region -- south toward Garmser.

An Army Stryker brigade from Fort Lewis in Washington state expected in July and August will deploy in Kandahar province, in the eastern districts around Spin Boldak and northern regions around Arghandab, Khakrez and Shah Wali Kot, he said.

Some 250 tribesmen traveled to a sparkling new Afghan army base just outside the main NATO base in Kandahar for two separates sessions with the four-star general on Wednesday.

McKiernan explained to elders from Spin Boldak how the U.S. is training the Afghan army and police so that U.S. troops can one day leave, apologized for past mistakes committed by U.S. soldiers and said the Iraq war had diverted resources from Afghanistan that were needed to fight the Taliban.

''Until (militant) safe havens are eliminated across the border in Pakistan, there cannot be peace in Afghanistan,'' he said, generating enthusiastic applause from the elders.

U.S. and Afghan officials say that Taliban militants use lawless areas in northwest Pakistan as safehavens to train, arm and rest. Insurgents then travel back over the Afghan-Pakistan border to launch attacks.

Afterward, several Afghan elders spoke. One picked up on McKiernan's Pakistan message.

''When you come here and the Taliban is pushed out, why doesn't the violence stop? Destroy their safe havens,'' the Afghan said.

McKiernan told the Afghans that President Barack Obama's new strategy is to combat instability in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as a whole. He said that in the future, Afghan forces will enter villagers' homes if necessary, a pledge that brought another round of applause. He then said he was studying the Muslim holy book.

''I'm reading a very good book now about this part of the world. It's written in English, but it's all about you -- it's the Quran,'' McKiernan said to applause. Moments later an Afghan man stood up and gave McKiernan a bright purple, red and green cloth in which to wrap the translated version of holy book.

Government leaders from Kandahar province were not invited to the meeting. McKiernan said he wanted to talk straight to the tribal leaders in the hope their words weren't influenced by the presence of possibly corrupt government officials. Government leaders were invited to a similar session in Helmand last week.

During a second session with Afghans from Arghandab, Khakrez and Shah Wali Kot, which has seen more violence than the Spin Boldak region, McKiernan faced a tougher audience.

No one applauded during his speech. Afterward, Haji Saran Wal praised McKiernan for admitting past U.S. mistakes and for saying the Iraq war depleted resources. Then he asked McKiernan to prohibit house searches by U.S. forces.

Back in Kabul, while driving to NATO's headquarters, McKiernan called the day ''pretty positive.''

''I think it was a good give-and-take session,'' he said.


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UN panel passes a One religion-defamation resolution

from Hot Air

March 27, 2009

by Ed Morrissey

The UN Human Rights Council (oxymoron) has passed the resolution calling for an end to critcism of religion around the world. Actually, to be fair, that’s not entirely accurate. They want an end to criticism of one particular religion — and we all know which religion that will be:

The U.N.’s top human-rights body approved a proposal by Muslims nations Thursday urging passage of laws around the world to protect religion from Criticism.

The proposal put forward by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic countries — with the backing of Belarus and Venezuela — had drawn strong criticism from free-speech campaigners and liberal democracies.

A simple majority of 23 members of the 47-nation Human Rights Council voted in favor of the resolution. Eleven nations, mostly Western, opposed the resolution, and 13 countries abstained.

Opponents of the resolution included Canada, all European Union countries, Switzerland, Ukraine and Chile.

“It is individuals who have rights and not religions,” Canadian diplomat Terry Cormier said.

India, which normally votes along with the council’s majority of developing nations, abstained in protest at the fact that Islam was the only religion specifically named as deserving protection.

I wrote about this earlier in the month, so this resolution comes as no shock to Hot Air readers. Nor should its passage surprise anyone who has kept abreast of the UN’s efforts on “human rights”. The HRC and its predecessor have obsessed themselves with anti-Israel and pro-Islam initiatives, and have made a mockery of efforts to oppose racism at its Durban conferences.

Cormier provided one of the few voices of sanity at the HRC. As I noted on March 3rd:

Where does this stop? Will the UN next declare monarchy as a protected class of beliefs, about which criticism should be treated as a hate crime? Fascism? White supremacy? How about American exceptionalism? What about Hinduism, a polytheistic belief system that Islam frequently and bitterly criticizes? …

The notion that ideas and belief systems have “rights” goes against
every step towards liberty that mankind has taken. Individuals have
rights; ideas and belief systems have values and policies that should remain
open for debate, criticism, satire, and ridicule. Without that essential
freedom, people will fall under the thrall of whatever belief system or ideology
can exert the most force over them — a strategy practically designed by and for
the radical Islamist extremists to whom the UN panders in this declaration.

This also gives us another reason to oppose initiatives like Kyoto and Copenhagen. Along with endemic corruption and a chronic lack of accountability, the UN’s values are flat-out antithetical to America’s. We value individual rights and free speech, and the rights of people to speak trump the nonexistent right to be free from offense — as they must, if we value free speech at all. Pakistan and the other Islamic nations want to silence the opposition to Islam. They’re not interested in “human rights” in the sense that Westerners see them (as individually based).

The resolution carries little effect, but it reveals the wide chasm between the West and those who hate freedom and liberty. The latter won at the HRC, but they can only beat us here if we let them.

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Islamic States Push to Criminalize 'Defamation of Islam'

from American Thinker
By Peter C Glover
March 25, 2009

A powerful bloc of 57 Islamic states is again pushing for the UN to make it a criminal offense to criticise or ‘defame' Islam. In a new resolution circulated at a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 11, a paper entitled "Combating Defamation of Religions" was circulated ahead of the Council's next meeting on March 26-27, when the resolution will be voted on.

Though the 57 nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a bloc which also dominates the UN's Human Rights Council, have been lobbying for the move since 1999, the signs this time are that the resolution could well be made binding. While the resolution calls for protection against "defamation" of all religions, it only mentions Islam by name.

The resolution deems offending Islamic sensitivities a "serious affront to human dignity" which could lead to "social disharmony", "violations of human rights" and "incitement to religious hatred in general and against Islam in particular". If passed, the resulting binding resolution would find its way into various UN documents all of which would require that UN member states at "local, national and international levels" start restricting the free speech of citizens to prevent public criticism of religious beliefs, particularly Islamic belief.

Such is the domination of the UN HRC by Islamic states, backed by non-democratic members including Russia and Cuba, that the human rights agency UN Watch believes the "adoption of the regressive resolution is a foregone conclusion". Last December, Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch told Radio Free Europe that Islamic states were pursuing "the diplomatic battle with a vengeance" because of the post 9/11 war on terror and the issue of the Danish depictions of the prophet Mohammed. As Neuer pointed out, "The resolutions pose a major threat to the premises and principles of international human rights laws and harm Muslims as much as non-Muslims." Neuer went on to cite the failure of the Islamic states to address human rights violations in Muslim countries. He also pointed out that the latest resolution is "not really trying to protect individuals from harm" but is attempting "to shield a set of beliefs from question or debate."

The resolution's use of the phrase ‘defamation of religion' is also misleading. Under the terms of human rights law there is no such legal concept. Laws on defamation, in most Western countries, exist to protect the reputation of individuals, not belief systems or religions.

UN Watch's Neuer describes the resolution's text as "Orwellian" and warns that it distorts the meaning of human rights, free speech and religious freedom. He also points out that a binding resolution would first target "moderate Muslims" and that: "Next to suffer from the UN-sanctioned McCarthyism will be writers and journalists in the democratic West." The text singles out the freedom of the Western media which allows for ‘deliberate stereotyping of religions, their adherents and sacred persons.'
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