http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/samantha-power-will-wow-t_b_3391808.html President Obama’s decision to nominate Samantha Power as the United States representative to the United Nations is right on. Power is perfectly suited to stand up to the United Nations’ notorious double standard and inversion of human rights. She is not a diplomat by nature, and that is precisely what the United Nations needs. […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/samantha_power_obamas_pick_as_americas_ambassador_to_the_un_will_fit_right_in.html Samantha Power has been a notorious critic of Israel for years and that, naturally, makes her well-qualified under President Obama’s criteria to serve in such a crucial post. She will be welcomed with open arms at the United Nations. We at American Thinker have been warning about her influence with Barack Obama since […]
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/06/04/bill-clintons-big-israeli-payday-shimon-peres-jewish-national-fund/ We are constantly reminded of the fact that there’s no better gig in the world than being an ex-president. With lucrative book contracts (for books that don’t always get read but for which publishers feel obligated to shell out big bucks in advances), highly paid speaking engagements and uncounted perks as well as lifetime […]
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/sodastream-continues-upticktake-that-bdsm-advocates/2013/06/06/ SodaStream is an Israeli carbonated water system whose economic success remains impressively strong despite anti-Israel BDSM efforts SodaStream is an Israeli company which has shaken up the soft drink business. Because its competitors are Coke and Pepsi, it has to take its business seriously. But because it is made in Israel, of course […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3752/kerry-israel-accident Imposition of a solution on unwilling partners is a terrible thing to do, as well as essentially undemocratic. They have elections over there for that. Yesterday it was revealed that that the current US (“I’ve Got Israel’s back”) administration leaked to the media the specifications for the heretofore-secret US-Israel installation for Israel’s Arrow 3 […]
Report: NSA Secretly Collecting Phone Records Of All U.S. Verizon Calls The National Security Administration is secretly collecting phone record information for all U.S. calls on the Verizon network. “Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, […]
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/If-you-see-something–say-nothing-7654 Changes to the AP stylebook show that we’re blinding ourselves to the connections between Islamic extremism and terrorism. It was a report of the now numbingly familiar sort. Witnesses at the synagogue in Paris recounted that an Iranian immigrant had been screaming “Allahu Akbar!” while he chased the rabbi and his son. When he […]
A RESPONSE FROM GERALD WALPIN:
I find the definition of “bigot” very interesting:
“One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.”
When it comes to politics (even the other categories) most people are, and are entitled to be, strongly partial to one’s own views — indeed, if one is not, one doesn’t really have one’s own views.
As to “intolerant of those who differ,” that can mean nothing more than believing that those who disagree are dead wrong — an allowed view. As you so well show with your examples, the accusation of being a bigot often is thrown against those with whom one disagrees, making the accuser the bigot!
Now that is real food for thought. rsk
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-angel-band-project-why-it-matters?f=puball Readers of Family Security Matters who have followed my work over the years have noticed in the nearly 100 articles I’ve written that most often I address terrorism, geoglobal as well as domestic threats to the security of our nation, and preparedness issues. Often these are discussions about WMDs. Big picture stuff. In the […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350183/when-sunni-and-shiite-extremists-make-war-daniel-pipes
“The fighting now underway benefits those of us outside the Middle East. May it weaken both combatants even as our governments take meaningful steps to help civilians caught in the crossfire.”
In his article “The Muslim Civil War,” Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal disagrees with my argument about Syria. He characterizes the position I hold this way:
If al Qaeda fighters want to murder Hezbollah fighters and Hezbollah fighters want to return the favor, who in their right mind would want to stand in the way? . . . If one branch of Islam wants to be at war with another branch for a few years — or decades — so much the better for the non-Islamic world. Mass civilian casualties in Aleppo or Homs is their tragedy, not ours. It does not implicate us morally. And it probably benefits us strategically, not least by redirecting jihadist energies away from the West.
Wrong on every count.
Why wrong and on how many counts? Actually, Stephens points to just one count: He looks back on the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, arguing that it harmed both the West’s interests and its moral standing. He assesses its impact on the West:
It’s true that the price of crude declined sharply almost every year of the war, but that only goes to show how weak the correlation is between Persian Gulf tensions and oil prices. Otherwise, the 1980s were the years of the tanker wars in the Gulf, including Iraq’s attack on the USS Stark; the hostage-taking in Lebanon; and the birth of Hezbollah, with its suicide bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut. Iraq invaded Kuwait less than two years after the war’s end. Iran emerged with its revolutionary fervors intact — along with a rekindled interest in developing nuclear weapons. In short, a long intra-Islamic war left nobody safer, wealthier or wiser.
He finds that the fighting left the West morally tainted.
The U.S. embraced Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to Iran, and later tried to ply Iran with secret arms in exchange for the release of hostages. Patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner over the Gulf, killing 290 civilians.
