ANDREW McCARTHY ON RACISM, ALQAEDA, KENYA AND MORE
NRO — The Corner
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Re: Al Qaeda is Racist [Andy McCarthy]
Jonah, Jen Rubin had a very different take on this at Contentions, and she directs her remarks at President Obama’s spin on the intelligence community’s theory.
I think this is more revealing about our government than it is about al Qaeda. A few points:
1. The race obsession of the Obama administration is a sight to behold. Remember, these are people who adamantly refuse to see the Islamic underpinnings of jihadist terror, although those underpinnings are obvious and undeniable to anyone willing to look. Yet, racism, their unified field theory for interpreting all human phenomena, somehow explains al Qaeda. Sure.
2. I think all this “hearts and minds” stuff is way overdone. But if I were a believer in it, I would say that it does us no good to make stupid arguments. Al Qaeda is not a racist organization, it is an Islamist organization. The goal of Islamism is to establish a global caliphate in which all people either convert to Islam or accept the authority of the Islamic state (and, as the Koran puts it in Sura 9:29, “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued”). Over the years, al Qaeda has shown itself willing to work with anyone who can be persuaded to support that goal — including Shiites, even though Sunnis actually do bear animus against them. Al Qaeda has never had any problem working with black people, whether in Africa, America, or anyplace else. The audience the administration is trying to reach knows that — better, apparently, than the administration does. So once again, our government ends up looking clueless.
3. Along the same lines, the president is either misstating or misunderstanding al Qaeda’s argument. As Jen relates, Obama said (in reference to the Uganda bombings), “What you’ve seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself….” Well, of course they don’t, but that has nothing to do with its being African life. Islamist groups (not just terrorist organizations but all Islamist entities) do not regard any kind of life other than one lived in accordance with sharia to be valuable in and of itself — they regard all other forms of life as an affront to Allah. They don’t care about nations or continents; it’s all about the umma, the global Muslim Nation. Ayatollah Khomeini famously said of his own country, “I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” That’s what al Qaeda means by deriding “African life,” just like they deride every other kind of life besides sharia life.
4. I’m always fascinated by the Left’s penchant for projection. Obama faults al Qaeda’s strategy in Africa for being blindly ideological, and for being willing to sacrifice the entire African community to al Qaeda’s agenda, without any regard for the harmful “long-term consequences.” Hmmmm.
07/14 12:23 PM
NRO — The Corner
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Yes We Kenya, Cont’d [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Readers of Andy McCarthy’s Grand Jihad won’t be particularly surprised by current U.S. intervention in Kenya — where the proposed constitution we’re pushing would codify a separate sharia justice system for Muslims. He provides the backstory in the book. Here’s our recent conversation about it:
LOPEZ: You’ve done a number of interviews about Grand Jihad already. Is there anything you’re surprised no one is asking you (including me!)?
McCARTHY: Yes, I thought one of the most remarkable episodes covered in the book is the ties between President Obama and Kenya’s Communist faction, and, in turn, the alliance recently forged between that same faction and the Islamists. To me, everything about this is endlessly fascinating. Obama’s father (whose work Obama often lauds) was a Communist. The American media suppressed the father’s work during the campaign: There was one story gently mentioning, in passing, that Barack Obama Sr. had written an essay that “criticized the government’s approach to economic planning.†I was startled when I found the article, which is called “Problems Facing Our Socialism†and champions an alternative, “scientific socialism†— i.e., Communism — approach.
Obama Jr., as a sitting U.S. senator, spent six days in Kenya barnstorming on behalf of Raila Odinga, the anti-Western, radical Leftist presidential candidate — a move that outraged the incumbent, pro-American Kenyan government. Later, it emerged that Odinga had made a secret agreement with Kenyan Islamists to impose sharia law. Moreover, when Odinga lost the election, the Islamists rioted, with the result that thousands were displaced and many were killed. Far from reproach, this extortion resulted in his installation as prime minister, a position that had to be created (Kenya hadn’t had a prime minister since Kenyatta, during the year or so when it was still in the process of severing ties with England — after which Kenyatta became president).
I just think that is a stunning set of events, and it’s gotten almost no attention.
07/14 10:27 AM
NRO — The Corner
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Re: A No [Sen. Scott Brown announces opposition to the DISCLOSE act] [Andy McCarthy]
K-Lo, I’m glad Sen. Brown is a no, and I’m glad he is occupying that seat. But, though he’s no Ted Kennedy, he seems to be the Senate version of Anthony Kennedy. He likes being the deciding vote, you get the sense that being the deciding vote is often more important to him than how he gets there intellectually, and he’s going to infuriate both sides about half the time.
07/14 09:07 AM
NRO — The Corner
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Another One for the ‘Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing’ File [Andy McCarthy]
The most transparent president of all time made his most transparent move yet in the recess appointment of an unabashed socialist, Dr. Donald Berwick, as his new healthcare rationing czar (i.e., administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services at HHS). That is, Mr. Obama could not more clearly have told Senate Republicans to go pound sand if he had held up a sign, live on C-SPAN, that said “Go Pound Sand!”
Roll Call (subscription only) reports that, upon returning to session, our redoubtable GOP senators reacted by taking to the floor to denounce the recess appointment in the harshest terms and to issue “stern warnings” that, as one staffer put it, all future Obama nominees would be viewed through the “prism of Berwick.” They then bravely closed ranks to unanimously … wait for it … join with Democrats to approve, by an 86-0 vote, the nomination of Sharon Coleman, Obama’s choice to serve as a district judge in his home state of Illinois.
In related news, Sen. Scott Brown (R, MA) announced that he will join with the Maine ladies, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to break Republican ranks and give Democrats to votes they need to pass Obama’s horrific, 2300-page strangulation of the financial sector.
A few months back, when Republicans in droves abandoned Sen. Jim Bunning’s effort to make Democrats pay for the interminable extension of unemployment benefits (that exacerbate the problem of unemployment), I took some flak for being such a pessimist over the following:
I think the Left has already factored in the inevitability of setbacks — perhaps heavy setbacks — in the next few election cycles. While our side swoons over the prospect, the statists coldly calculate that these losses are a price well worth paying in order to impose a transformative takeover of the economy. It is a perfectly rational calculation for two reasons.
First, with a significantly bigger and more powerful government bureaucracy, there will be many avenues for leadership to reward Democrats who lose their seats after casting the unpopular votes necessary to enact the Left’s program. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who spent his post-Clinton wilderness months in a lucrative sinecure at Freddie Mac, knows well how this game works — and, under Obama’s command, the economy is becoming one big Freddie.
Second, and more important, Democrats know the electoral setbacks will only be temporary. They are banking on the assurance that Republicans merely want to win elections and have no intention of rolling back Obamacare, much less of dismantling Leviathan.
For my money (while I still have some), that’s an eminently sound bet. The Bunning battle, in which the GOP was nowhere to be found, is the proof. Bunning just wanted Congress to live within its gargantuan means. Yet, the Washington Post ridiculed him: “angry and alone, a one-man blockade against unemployment benefits, Medicare payments to doctors, satellite TV to rural Americans and paychecks to highway workers.†That’s outrageously unfair, but it is a day at the beach compared to the Armageddon that would be unleashed upon any attempt to undo Obama’s welfare state on steroids.
As it turns out, Republicans didn’t have the stomach for a fight over wealth transfers that plainly exacerbate the problem of unemployment. Why would anyone think they’d take on a far more demanding war, in which Democrats and the legacy media would relentlessly indict them for “denying health insurance to millions of Americans�
Even if the GOP gets a majority for a couple of cycles, even if President Obama is defeated in his 2012 reelection bid, Obamacare will be forever. And once the public sees that the GOP won’t try to dismantle Obamacare, it will lose any enthusiasm for Republicans. Democrats will eventually return to power, and it will be power over a much bigger, much more intrusive government.
I don’t see that anything has changed.
07/13 07:16 AM
NRO — The Corner
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Re: Now That’s Unconstitutional [On Reactions to the Arizona Immigration Law] [Andy McCarthy]
Mark, you lost me on that one. It’s not possible for a state to legalize anything that federal law has properly criminalized (i.e., to legalize any behavior that, like illegal immigration, is a proper area of federal regulation). All the state would be doing, if this cockamamie Sutherland proposal were ever adopted, is making the ballyhooed “sanctuary” status some jurisdictions confer a little more formalistic. But surely it is within the discretion of states to choose not to enforce federal laws, just as they are allowed to promote federal laws by enacting enforcement measures that are consistent with federal law (such as the Arizona immigration law). Medical marijuana laws don’t eviscerate the federal drug laws, and all those places that declared themselves “Patriot Act-Free Zones” had no effect on the lawfulness of the Patriot Act.
Even if the Sutherland proposal were made state law, illegal immigration would still be illegal under federal law, and the feds would still be entitled to enforce the federal law inside the state. And while I agree with your point about how bad the think tanks can be, I must say I actually like these sorts of proposals. They sharpen the debate for the public, demonstrate in concrete terms the wages of failing to enforce sensible laws, and make our federal and state representatives choose sides. This has much to commend it in comparison to the Alinskyite practices that are in vogue today, under which officials tell the public what the public wants to hear while working against the public will.
07/12 06:26 PM
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