RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/war-terror-over_640620.html
“Bush said on November 6, 2001. “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”For President Barack Obama, it would seem, one can be both with us and against us–or not with us, but not quite against us.”

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration is grappling with how to handle Islamists, radical adherents to Islam. Particularly, the issue has come to the fore in regards to Egypt, which, as Reuel Marc Gerecht notes, “is now certain” to elect “an Islamist” as its leaders the next time the Egyptian people go to the polls.

But some in the Obama administration are now seeing things differently.

“The war on terror is over,” a senior official in the State Department official tells the National Journal. “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304299304577350200925769444.html
The Islamist Road to Democracy Muslims cannot be dragged to an embrace of secularism and the liberal values that spring from it. They have to arrive voluntarily at this understanding. BY REUEL MARC GERECHT
C.K. RESPONDS: “This sort of crap evidently passes for deep thinking in the US intelligence community. Islamism, however, isn’t a road to anything. It’s a roadblock manned by a mob of bloodthirsty lunatics.
It derives what credibility it has from the fact that the individual hallucinating it is a neocon.”……

For many on the American left and right, the “Arab Spring” has become the “Arab Winter” of triumphant fundamentalists. In Egypt, where Arab liberalism was once strong, religious parties overwhelmed secularists in recent parliamentary elections. An Islamist is now certain to be elected president, provided the military does not intervene, and a referendum that would likely down the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is probably in the future.

But Westerners should resist nostalgia and depression. Given the awfulness of post-World War II Arab lands, where even the most benign regimes had sophisticated, torture-happy security services, Islamists who braved the wrath of rulers and trenchantly critiqued the moral breakdown of their societies were going to do well in a postsecular age. What is poorly understood in the West is how critical fundamentalists are to the moral and political rejuvenation of their countries. As counterintuitive as it seems, they are the key to more democratic, liberal politics in the region.

The case for a separation of mosque and state has been harder to make in the Middle East because most Muslims have not been burned by internecine strife. The West has become an unrivaled liberal paragon in part because its past savagery was so intense. Westerners now instinctively compartmentalize their faith and temper its expression because their Christian forefathers killed each other zealously over religious differences.

Islam hasn’t seen the sustained barbarism that plagued European Christian and post-Christian—communist and fascist—societies. Reform-minded Muslims have usually critiqued their faith with an eye to the West, to the secrets of European power, without appreciating both the highs and lows of Occidental history.

A hundred years ago, the most consequential Muslim intellectuals were mostly progressive men who tried to work out a synthesis between the West and Islam. The Middle East’s post-World War II rulers, however, merely dictated that the Muslim clergy and the faithful change their ways. Against the seductive power of nationalism, socialism and communism, which in the hands of military men ran roughshod over much of the Middle East, Islam stood as a barrier to “progress.”

The Lessons of the Eisner Affair

http://yoelmeltzer.com/.

Although watching a young Danish tourist getting whacked in the face by an M16 rifle is certainly not a pleasant site and tends to make one cringe, viewing the slightly extended video of the incident simply made my blood boil. For rather than being engaged in the normal activities that soldiers are engaged in, Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner and his comrades had to deal with what appeared to be an obviously planned provocation: crowds of people all around, large signs saying “Stop Ethnic Cleansing”, flashing cameras everywhere and sneering cyclists refusing to disperse. Thus, it came as no surprise that when one of these “innocent” young chaps decided to bump into a soldier with his bicycle and initiate the whole fracas, a very good soldier fell for the trap.

The whole incident is sickening for several reasons. For starters, these people take advantage of the fact that only in Israel – not in America, not in a European country and certainly not in an Arab country – can they get away with such nonsense. They know this and they flaunt it in our face. However, much more infuriating is the fact that we even let such people into our country in the first place. Don’t we have any self respect? Then on top of this, rather than having the police who are trained for such ordeals deal with the whole mess, we foolishly dump it on our soldiers. However the most irritating of all, especially in light of the above, is how several of our illustrious political and military leaders were quick to condemn Shalom Eisner. One can only wonder in cynicism if these same people, as well as the others who quickly denounced Eisner, lifted a voice in protest or shed a tear when viewing the events in Amona a few years back, a particularly gory affair that in comparison made the recent event with Shalom Eisner look like a Lassie episode.

Russia and the Communist Past — on The Jamie Glazov Show
by Frontpagemag.com
Russia expert David Satter joins Frontpage’s radio program to take your calls for the full hour.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/24/russia-and-the-communist-past-on-the-jamie-glazov-show/
Egypt’s Civil War? — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau goes to-to-toe with Dwight Schultz and Evan Sayet on Frontpage’s television show.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/24/egypts-civil-war-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3030/germany-pirate-party “I recognize we have a Nazi problem in the Pirates,” Harmut Semken, head of the Berlin Prates’ Party said.” It is, however, a strange for a party not to allow any criticism of immigration and religion, such as Islam, while at the same time condoning anti-Semitic activities under the pretext of freedom of expression. […]

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Have you ever asked yourself why, despite more than 10 years of effort – involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well over $1 trillion spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given […]

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/4/23/main-feature/1/the-first-lady-of-fleet-street/e “The Lady stomped every precept of authority, only to be trampled by the juggernaut of misogyny and madness.” Her story is as old as Eve—lust for knowledge and power, disillusion, tragedy and rebirth—and as new as the modern world’s technologically based global empires. It begins in the ghettos of Frankfurt and the cities of […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1767

The false fatwa against Iranian nukes

In the world of Western foreign policy, when you are trying to get your enemies to put down their weapons for no other reason than that you have been pleading with them to do so, you have to bow down a bit. Then you have to give your appeasement a name that has a nice diplomatic ring to it, because it is going to be referred to in official press releases, and subsequently quoted in the media.

One especially favored phrase for this form of groveling is “goodwill gestures.” It is through such “goodwill gestures” that representatives of the P5+1 countries (Britain, France, the U.S., China, and Russia plus Germany) got Iran to grace the group with its presence at a summit in Istanbul earlier this month. At the close of the meeting, about which much cautious optimism was expressed, all the participants agreed to have another powwow, this time in Baghdad.

Holding these “discussions” on the true nature of Iran’s uranium enrichment in Turkey and Iraq was just the kind of “goodwill gesture” that was supposed to make the regime in Tehran feel at home. Proof that it had the desired effect was in the pudding: A flunkie from the Islamic Republic turned up to assure everyone present that Iran had no intention of ceasing its – uh – peaceful nuclear program.

Trying hard not to offend Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the other representatives made sure to agree with their Iranian counterpart that possessing nuclear plants for “peaceful purposes” was certainly acceptable. The only teeny-weeny problem was that perhaps Ahmadinejad was not on the same page, as he seemed to have indicated on a number of occasions. You know, like the time he announced that the 12th Imam was on his way, and that the whole world would be subjugated to Islam – as soon as the Islamic Republic’s atom bombs finished wiping Israel off the map.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/23/lost-sense-of-duty

If the Secret Service can’t get it back, it might as well merge with the GSA.

The mindless gnomes of the General Services Administration and the highly-trained agents of the United States Secret Service have one thing in common: they are all federal civil servants. But the difference between them, and the import of the scandals now hanging heavily over both agencies, are symptoms of something bigger that we ignore at our peril.

We expect very little from the GSA, and we get it. The GSA culture on display in the planning, execution, and celebration of their infamous $800,000 Las Vegas conference was the inevitable result of the permissive “you’ll die before you can get fired” culture that predominates many federal bureaucracies. The GSA’ers are fat, dumb, and happy in their jobs and have no interest in being responsible stewards of the public purse. Like so many other dysfunctional agencies, GSA should be disbanded entirely, which can be done without much effect on anything else.

The GSA scandal gives the lie to the liberal ideology. More government isn’t better government. More government, and an ever-expanding unaccountable bureaucracy, means more waste, fraud, and misbehavior by civil servants who don’t believe they’ll ever be fired for bad job performance.

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2012/04/23/newsmax-pretends-to-buy-into-it-all/

I was barely finished with my recent blog “A Tired Script: Tampa Terrorist from Pro-American Kosovo,” which asked journalists to notice their own words about Albanians loving us because we bombed their turf rivals, and mocked their rote exercise of inserting the requisite Albanian-pro-Americanism paragraph in articles about the latest Albanian terrorist. I was barely finished writing it when I happened upon the March issue of Newsmax magazine at the house of a relative who has since promised to cancel his subscription.

As always playing catch-up in embracing stale left-wing propaganda — whether it’s adulating Bill Clinton, or buddying up to Islam, or forcing down the mainstream media’s Kosovo Kool-Aid that it once debunked, Newsmax was at it again. This time it was the Travel section trying to catch up to (regress to) the zombie presses of AP, San Francisco Chronicle, AAA’s “Via” magazine, Wall St. Journal, and assorted travel bloggers who sometimes are too young to even remember our pro-terrorist war that made Albanians love us. This time Newsmax was trying to catch up by selling us on Albania as a travel destination. Highlighting of course — you guessed it — its pro-Americanism. Behold a section titled “You don’t have to look hard to find countries that give U.S. visitors a warm welcome,” by a John Alderley (another byline without any trace of previous articles, probably belonging to a travel agent paying Newsmax to run the feature):

…This is another surprise, but Albania is now considered the most pro-American country in Europe.

(As if they don’t know the dark evolution of that “surprising” factoid.)

Where else but the largely-Albanian Kosovo capital of Pristina has a Bill Clinton Boulevard and a George W. Bush Boulevard, as well as a 10-foot-high golden statue of Clinton?

There was even a trend among Albanian parents to name their kids Bill and Hillary. They love Americans not just because the United States led the defense [aggression] of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. They remember how their country was saved by President Woodrow Wilson after World War I — hence plenty of boys were named Wilson 90 years ago. Besides a warm welcome, you’ll see fabulously preserved castles, beautiful scenery, and empty beaches.