http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356306/attacking-enemies-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy There is a reason why it is often said that there are no good choices for the United States in Egypt. In my weekend column, I argued that there are only two realistic alternatives at the moment. The first is the self-defeating option popular with the Obama administration and the GOP’s erratic McCain wing: […]
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/21/why-the-failure-of-egypts-secular-army-to-protect-coptic-churches-matters/ Expatriate Egyptian Coptic Christian writer Samuel Tadros has just observed how Egypt’s Copts—the country’s indigenous, pre-Arab Islamic jihad inhabitants—have been under siege by a recent spate of Muslim Brotherhood inspired and led church burnings, which punctuates the worst outbreak of anti-Coptic Muslim violence since the era of Muslim Mamluk rule (i.e., […]
If You Like Syria, You’ll Love ‘Palestine’ With the ongoing revelations about Syrian regime atrocities, regional and global attention has seemingly shifted from more usual concerns about Palestinian statehood. Nonetheless, the two issues are closely related, especially in their common reflection of irremediable fragmentations in the Arab world and in their resultant propensities for escalating […]
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/aug/21/egypts-army-pharaoh-we-can-cheer/ NEW YORK, August 21, 2013 — Morsi is down. Mubarak is up. Welcome to the Middle East. An hour from now it could go the other way. But as of the moment, Islamist and former president Mohamed Morsi is still in jail. Meanwhile, non-Islamist and former president/strongman Hosni Mubarak is being released from jail. […]
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/08/21/arab-spring-worst-soap-ever/ I didn’t care for the “Arab Spring,” but the “Arab Summer” is a blockbuster!Liberals’ rosy predictions for Egypt’s Islamic revolution didn’t turn out as planned. Who could have guessed that howling mobs in Tahrir Square in 2011 would fail to produce a peaceful democracy? Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had supported U.S. policy, used his […]
http://sarahhonig.com/2013/08/22/running-the-gauntlet/
Just a few days ago, mobs of Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked a Franciscan school in suburban Cairo. They demonstratively pulled down the cross, smashed it to bits and replaced it with a black al-Qaida flag. That was just the beginning.
They looted the school, gutted it meticulously for hours and later burned down what remained of the classrooms. Then came the climax as three nuns were grabbed and paraded through the streets like humiliated prisoners of war.
The frenzied throngs, spat on the helpless female captives, poured refuse on them, slapped and groped at them and heaped abuse and scorn. This too lasted for hours during which the nuns literally ran the gauntlet, not knowing where they are headed and why they are at all going.
The sacking of the school wasn’t unique or unexpected. Egypt’s Christians, who comprise ten percent of the 80-million population, have long been hounded and persecuted. Their lot grew alarmingly dire after Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow and during the short-lived tenure of Mohamed Morsi.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/21/pipes-obamas-foreign-fiasco/
It’s a privilege to be an American who works on foreign policy, as I have done since the late 1970s, participating in a small way in the grand project of finding my country’s place in the world. But now, under Barack Obama, decisions made in Washington have dramatically shrunk in importance. It’s unsettling and dismaying. And no longer a privilege.
Whether during the structured Cold War or the chaotic two decades that followed, America’s economic size, technological edge, military prowess, and basic decency meant that even in its inactivity, the U.S. government counted as much or more in world developments than any other state. Sniffles in Washington translated into influenza elsewhere.
Weak and largely indifferent presidents like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton mattered despite themselves, for example in the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 or the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 1990s. Strong and active presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had greater impact yet, speeding up the Soviet collapse or invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
But now, with Barack Obama, the United States has slid into shocking irrelevance in the Middle East, the world’s most turbulent region. Inconstancy, incompetence, and inaction have rendered the Obama administration impotent. In the foreign policy arena, Obama acts as though he would rather be the prime minister of Belgium, a small country that usually copies the decisions of its larger neighbors when casting votes at the United Nations or preening morally about distant troubles. Belgians naturally “lead from behind,” to use the famed phrase emanating from Obama’s White House.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/08/17/Diana-West-American-Betrayal
David Horowitz has recently leveled grave charges at Breitbart against my credibility as a writer based on my new book, American Betrayal. Indeed, according to Horowitz, I “should not have written this book.” Thankfully, he is not in charge of free speech in this country, and St. Martin’s Press, which also published my first book, The Death of the Grown-Up, had other ideas.
Horowitz bases this stunning statement on the “extreme claims” he alleges are contained in my book, which, he says, “not only serve to discredit her work but lead her into insoluble dilemmas.” He says the problem – my problem — is “intellectual.”
It’s difficult to tell what he’s talking about, at least with regard to what I have actually written. He goes on to list a series of historical fragments related in some way to events covered in my book – for example, the debate over whether to invade Europe in northern France vs. Churchill’s favored strategy to expand from the Italian front into the Balkans.
I do treat this debate at length, particularly with regard to the machinations of Harry Hopkins, FDR’s top wartime advisor and undeviating booster of what would be the famed Normandy invasion. Readers of the following excerpt from American Betrayal (below) should know that there is a case to be made from varied sources that Hopkins was an agent of Stalin’s influence inside the FDR White House. I lay that case out in detail in American Betrayal.
If the work that went into my book is solid, even more history needs rewriting – regardless of whether, as David Horowitz says about my book, “this is not how anyone should think about history-making events and the political forces that shape them.” The fact is, if the record I have assembled (citing 900-plus endnotes) is correct, FDR might not be as great as we think he is, and, to address the flip side, Sen. Joseph McCarthy might not be as awful as we think he is, and just that changes almost everything about what we “know” as a people.
I believe it is this explosive topic that seems to be driving my critics to ad hominem attacks, perhaps unexpectedly, at conservative sites from Frontpage Magazine to The American Thinker, to National Review Online and the New York Sun. Instead of discussing the contents of my book, they attack my accuracy, honesty, even my sanity; also, instead of just ignoring my book, they try to make me radioactive so readers won’t even to think about the ideas inside it for themselves.
This becomes a question readers will have to make up their own minds about. To that end, I am happy to provide to Breitbart Chapter 9 of American Betrayal in full, including its 84 endnotes. I look forward to reading comments from people who have, for a change, read at least part of my book.
The endnotes for the following excerpt can be found here. Diana West is the author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, available now.
http://www.americanthinker.com/karin_mcquillan/ President Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before saying yes, because he got cold feet about the possible political harm to himself if the mission failed. Instead of listening to advisors from the U.S. military, Defense, or even State, Obama was acting on the advice of White House […]
