Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Bleat Goes On

"Be afraid; be very afraid. Not of the rabid jihadis, whether towelhead or the latest, clean-cut version. Those can be dealt with easily--in a healthy Western society, though far less so in India. Be afraid of our ruling elite. The weasels in the legislature, the do-gooder one-worldists in the executive, and the eunuch sophisticates who interpret it all for the rest of us plebs. ... Luckily, less august media than the BBC still exist, with Cambridge PhD international security 'experts' still not on staff. And so the alert reader still had a chance to get a glimpse of the truth without high-level dhimmi varnish: 'Face of evil: Azam Amir Kasab, the only terrorist to be captured alive, has confessed to being a member of Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.' In the West, it's relaqtively easy to guard against jihadis. All it takes is common sense, starting from recognizing Muslim immigrants' fundamental incompatability with the West, and the evil wrought to them and to us by bringing them to the West. But who will guard us from our guardians? ... The see-no-evil syndrome is by no means a British specialty. Naveed Afzal Haq, the Pakistani-American who shot up the Jewish Federation of Seattle in July 2006, murdering two and wounding four while screaming, 'I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel, was not tried as a terrorist but as a murderer with 'bipolar disorder'," my emphasis, Takuan Seiyo, 1 December 2008 at http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/12/you-say-mumbai-i-say-bombay.html.

"The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep 'open' minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. ... To get an additional if oblique perspective on this riddle that is an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, take a look at Joshua Hammer's excellent essay in the current Atlantic. The question in its title--'Is Syria Getting Away With Murder?'--is at least asked only at the beginning of the article and not at the end of it. ... Hammer's article is good for a laugh in that is shows just how much trouble the international community will go to precisely in order not to implicate the Assad family in this string of unfortunate events. ... Given these grim and worsening states of affairs, perhaps it is only small wonder that we take consolation in the illusions and in comforting doubts--such as the childlike wonder about whether Jews are deliberately targeted or just unlucky with time and place. This would all be vaguely funny if it wasn't headed straight toward our own streets", Christopher Hitchens, 8 December 2008 at http://www.slate.com/id/2206233/.

"Let's stop being hypocrites; until Muslims started the terrorist attacks, we in the West did not give a darn if they killed their women for adultery or not, if they violated their rights or not, if they hang their thieves, criminals or gays in the main squares--or not. ... And tell me, why should I care about how many times a day some Abdullah from Saudi Arabia 'prostrates' raising his ass to the sky and hitting the ground with his head? As far as I am concerned, he can do this 10 or 20 times a day, or even stay in this position 24 hours, if he likes: the more the better, at least he will not have time to try to commit the terrorist attack. ... We started to notice the violence and intolerance of Islam only when this violence and intolerance started to touch our precious skins. ... 'Let Them Hate, So Long as They Fear'--Caligula. The Ancient Romans were famous for the exactness of their wordings. ... Rome fell when the Romans melted the Golden Statue of Military Virtue in order to pay the ransom to these barbarians. Rome fell when it gave the right of Roman citizenship to the barbarians in exchange for the defense of Rome against other barbarians. ... Guys, the world is never ruled by material wealth and cultural riches. The world is ruled by the Faith and Resoluteness, by the Cruelty to enemies and the Readiness to defend friends at any costs, by the Defiance to death and danger and by Ambition. ... For thousands of years this is what the white people, the Europeans, were famous for. And today--it's not so. ... Yes, some 200 or even 100 years ago our forefathers would reduce to ashes all these ridiculous Al Qayeda, Hezboallah, Hamas and other smaller groups of bandits who dare throw a challenge to the most powerful country of the world. ... together with all their supporters, followers, and simply those who happen to be close to its training camps and bases. ... And those who live in Europe today on their own will, without any pressure, substitute their religion and their entire civilization with the more primitive one and hide their own cowardice and lack of will to fight behind the nice phrases about 'violence can not be fought by violence' and 'if we act like them, we shall cease to be civilized European people, and this is exactly what they want.' ... On the contrary, what they want is that we do not become like them, that we go on thinking as we are thinking now and that we go on letting them kill us. ... If we go on thinking that 'human life is sacred', that 'violence can not be defeated by more violence', that 'human rights have priority' over anything, and similiar neo-liberal nonsense; we shall be attacked again and again, because, yes, Muslims today are dumb, illiterate, poor, stubborn, but they also are cruel, brave, amibitious and resolute. And they have a clear and simple goal: destroy the rival civilization and substitute it with theirs", Cherson, 28 December 2008 at http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2220.

"The Israelis just struck back hard at Hamas in Gaza. In response, the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab world (at least publicly) expressed their anger at the killing of over 300 Palestinians, most of whom were terrorists and Hamas officials. ... Watching both this week's war and the world's predictable reaction to it, we can recall the Gaza rules. Most are reflections of our postmodern age, and completely at odds with the past protocols of war. First is the now-familiar Middle East doctrine of proportionality. Legitimate military action is strangely defined by the relative strength of the combatants. World opinion more vehemently condemns Israel's countermeasures, apparently because its rockets are far more accurate and deadly than previous Hamas barrages that are poorly targeted and thus not so lethal. If America had accepted such rules in, say, World War II, then by late 1944, we, not the Axis, would have been the culpable party, since by then once-aggressive German, Italian and Japanese forces were increasingly on the defensive and far less lethal than the Allies. Second, intent in this war no longer matters. ... Third, culpability is irrelevant. The 'truce' between Israel and Hamas was broken once Hamas got its hands on new stockpiles of longer-range mobile rockets--weapons that are intended to go over Israel's border walls. Yet, according to the Gaza rules, both sides always deserve equal blame. Indeed, this weird war mimics the politically correct, zero-tolerance policies of our public schools, where both the bully and his victim are suspended once physical violence occurs. According to such morally equivalent reasoning, World War II was only a tragedy, not a result of German aggression. ... But when the payback comes, suddenly warriors are transmogrified into weeping victims, posing teary-eyed for the news camera as they deplore 'genocide' and the 'Palestinian Holocaust.' At least the Japanese militarists did not cry out to the League of Nations for help once mean Marines landed on Iwo Jima. By now, these Gaza asymmetrical rules are old hat. We know why they persist--worldwide fear of Islamic terrorism, easy anti-Westernism, the old anti-Semitism, and global strategic calculations about Middle East oil--but is still doesn't make them right", my emphasis, Victor David Hanson, 1 January 2009, at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/the_gazarules.html.

"Maybe this column would get a better reception if it were titled, 'No Endgame for Israel.' Because the quantity of commentary cannot possibly achieve any kind of successful outcome in Gaza is already approaching pre-surge levels of Iraq defeatism. ... Is Mahmoud Abbas's hand strengthened by the mockery Hamas makes of his claims to presidential authority? And, speaking of Palestinian moderates, shouldn't the test of their moderation be a willingness to stand up to Hamas, if only rhetorically? ... Critics of military action point to this damned-if-Israel-does, damned-if-it-doesn't scenario as evidence of the folly of the war. ... Israel will have to practice a more consistent policy of deterrence than it has so far done. One option: for every single rocket that falls randomly on Israeli soil, an Israeli missile will hit a carefully selected target in Gaza", Bret Stephens at the WSJ, 6 January 2009.

"The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties. My fear is that the rage we see in the protestors marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can't bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist that Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state--risks that threaten its very survival--because they don't believe Israel should exist in the first place", Marvin Heir at the WSJ, 8 January 2009.

Quoted without comment.

Quoted without comment.

What does our professoriate not understand? To end terrorism we must kill terrorists and their supporters. In economic terms, raise terrorism's "price" until it no longer pays. If we must sit and watch millions stave to death, so be it. Machiavelli and Caligula would laugh at our "War on Terrorism". Martin Feldstein, my 6 January 2009 post, please read this. Absent cruelty to enemies, the West will not survive. As Michael Savage has said many times, "Only a more savage nation will survive". So it has been and so it is. I read drivel about the Middle East and wonder if the writers read the Koran and Hadith and know anything of the history of Arabia? Either they don't or they're traitors.

I don't care what Europe or the UN thinks. Paraphrasing a statement attributed to Hitler and Stalin, "How many divisions has the UN and how many has Europe it would use"? What do Westerners not understand about "waqf", "hudna" and "takiwa"? Genocide? What happened in East Pakistan in 1971? Or Armenia in 1915? How many Christians were victims of pogroms in what was once Yugoslavia while UN "blue helmets" watched? For that matter, how many Christians were driven out of Iraq since we deposed Saddam? How many chairs of Islamic studies did the Saudis endow at: Columbia, Harvard, Georgetown and who knows where else? Does anyone remember 2002's Jenin massacre? The PLO said 10,000 died. The Israelis, 52. Then the PLO said: thousands, 500 and hundreds. Now the body count. Drumroll please, 55! I have no sympathy for the Palestinians. They're Arabs. By Western standards they are pathological liars. War story time. Before the 1967 war I listened to radio Damascus on an old Hallicrafters S-38B tube shortwave radio, made in about 1950. Every day for three months Damascus said Syria will drive the Israelis into the sea. All of them. The war came. Syria lost. Now Syria's ambassador to the UN appears on Barry Farber's (BF) WOR 710 AM radio show. The Syrian says nothing Syrians say should be taken seriously. Syrians are Arabs. Arabs are very emotional and exaggerate when they speak. We never intended to kill all the Jews. Oh, by the way, return the Golan Heights and control of Lebanon. BF listens politely for a while, then asks the Syrian about current Syrian radio broadcasts. The Syrian temporizes. The BF says something in Arabic, tells the Syrian stop lying, that BF is fluent in Arabic! The Syrian doesn't know what to say. He leaves. Then BF's show ended. If you hold Lenin's concept of "truth", all is accceptable to further the cause of the Ummah.

Israel left Gaza in 2005. What do the Gazans want now? What they always wanted: the death of all Jewish Isrealis. What's so difficult to understand? I would make one change in Stephens "tit-for-tat" program. I sugggest Israel launch one rocket or artillery strike for the first Hamas rocket launched in a day. Two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth and so on. Israel should also release footage to the absurdly pro-Palestinian BBC and the US's own NPR, National Palestinan Radio, of each rocket landing site's location. It should leave the rocket there until both organzations have had a chance to inspect it or 24 hours have passed when Israel posts the photos and a map of the site on the Internet with this comment, "At XXXXX on XXX January we notified BBC and NPR of this rocket landing site. At XXXXX on XXX+1 January, BBC and NPR having sent no 'inspectors' to the site we posted this video. This being the second rocket which landed in Israel on XXX January, we fired two artillery shells at Gaza at XXXXX + 30 minutes and XXXXX + 60 minutes". Will the world's bleaters then say, "The second shell was disproportionate. Bad Israel"? The conduct of BBC. NPR and the rest of the world's bleaters reminds me of Walter Duranty's in the 1930s, see my 29 April 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/04/bushs-walter-durantys.html.

Heir is a Rabbi in Los Angeles. I await the world's bleaters to attack Pakistan's legitimacy. Many people know Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947 to give the Moslems their own state. I have no problem with the existence of Pakistan. Why is it legitimate and not Israel? Study sharia to find out. Whenever I hear of the "two-state solution", I cringe. Why? Because creating a Palestinian state would make a "three-state solution". Whaaaat? Jordan, once known as Trans-Jordan, was created in 1946. Why did the British create Jordan in 1946 and not settle the Palestine Mandate partition? Because there is no partition that has ever been acceptable to Moslems. It's that simple. As Hamas has said it will not rest "as long as Israel controls one square meter of the land between the river and the sea".

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

IA... squishy nations...

What would Putin say about the Middle East and Israel?

Independent Accountant said...

Anonymous:
To attempt to answer your question, bearing in mind, unlike George Bush, I cannot look into Putin's soul. When Bush said that, I thought, "What a fool. Does this supposedly born-again Christian realize who he claims to be? Only The Master looks into souls".
Read my 11 January and 21 and 24 August 2008 posts which mention Putin.
I conclude Putin would say the Israeli-Palestininan contretempts was a sideshow of little world significance. The real action is in Asia. India-Pakistan, both with nukes for one. Stay out. The next place of interest is Iran, with 4,300 active centrifuges and likely capable of producing a nuclear warhead within three years. The Palestinians, are irrelevant Putin would say. We killed 250,000 Chechens out of a population of 1.3 million, did the Arab states say or do anything? No. And if they had?
Now to Iran. I think Putin would say, "I'll send 3,000 tanks south into Iran if Uncle Sam makes an amphibious landing against Iran and Unc and the Israelis provide air support from bases in Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis don't like it tough. Paraphrasing Marie Antoinette, 'Let the Saudis eat ham'. They do what they are told, or else". Tell the Saudis by crushing Iran we are pulling their ass out of the fire. For which we expect more than a polite, "Thank you". I suspect Putin suggested this to Bush a long time ago. When Bush fainted upon hearing this, Putin concluded Bush is a clown. Bush's failure to join Putin in crushing Iran is part of what is leading to a new Cold War with Russia. Putin thinks US foreign policy is run by a bunch of well meaning petulant children.

Anonymous said...

Good read on Putin

Actually the real problem is Pakistan. Iran is but a side show. If Pakistan goes unstable, dare I say more unstable, all the kings horses and all the kings men cannot keep this mess together.

While I agree the Iran nuclear program is worrisome, it is under a stable regime. You and I may not like it, but it is still stable. Pakistan is too populous and too diverse to bring under control. Yes, India would engage the Paki nuclear forces, but if some wild Pakistanis (redundant I know) took it upon themselves to seek justice against the US, Saudi, the gulf, Israel, watch out. Even a bout with India would be a big problem since as I recall there are about 100M moslems in India. Talk about a 5th column.

So while Iran professes harm against Israel, until 2015, Israel should be able to manage such a threat. An immediate threat from Pakistan would not be manageable. Whom would you attack in Pakistan to mitigate any threat? With Iran the answer is simple. Pakistan is so diffuse and loaded with potential threat that anything emerging from there is catastrophic.

Even Obama must recognize this, as both Bush and Obama are beefing forces in Afghanistan, the staging area for containing Pakistan.

I for one, do not believe that Pakistan can be contained. If you need proof, look to the Mumbai attacks. And if you do not believe Pakistan is an immediate threat to Israel, ask yourself: "who was the prime target in Mumbai?" A clue is that they wear yarmulkes.

And the Bush "soul" thing. All posturing and meaningless. Kind of Texan for "you stay on your ranch, and I will stay on mine, and we can stay friends".

Anonymous said...

Oh yes, if you did not think that the Russians recognized the threat posed by Pakistan, remember which country occupied Afghanistan before the US etc?

The Chechen revolt would be multiplied in spades if the wildmen of Pakistan expanded into the Russian "stans". Think of what would have happened to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan if the Taliban were not stopped. Nevermind Turkmenistan, or Kyrgyzstan, or Stanandollie.

Iran is contained on three sides, four if you include the gulf. They are not going anywhere, and in the middle east context, have all that they want. I can give you a different read on our relations with Iran, but will not do it in print.

Independent Accountant said...

Printfaster:
There are 165 million Moslems in India out of a population of 1.1 billion, or 15%. Yes, they are a potential fifth column.
We disagree about who was the "prime target in Mumbai". I think the Chabad center was a target, but with 179 killed, only six were Jews, so they were a "bonus" for the Jihadis.
I don't know if Pakistan is a bigger threat than Iran. But it is a more immediate potential threat, with 50-100 nuclear weapons and a military sympathetic to Jihadis, some of those nukes could go anywhere. I have the utmost respect for Russia's current leadership. Czar Putin is a "Man among munchkins". Little if anything escapes him. Send me an e-mail on Iran. Your thoughts intrigue me.

Anonymous said...

IA
Unlike you, I do not see the attack on Chabad as incidental. I see it as a message: "we will attack Israel, anywhere, anytime".

The intelligence needed for an attack on Chabad appeared to be much more involved than the attack on major targets. They could have easily attacked the train station, in spite of all the Indian security, and any disruption there, even minor would have meant chaos for a long time.

Foreigners were the target, and that means international trade, and that means internationalists, and that means...

Anonymous said...

Thanks men for the comments...

I'm following along thinking yes Paki... unstable... very... very...