Category Archives: Islam

Hillary Blabbers About Bhutto

“Hillary Clinton is demanding answers about the death of Benazir Bhutto.” She is also demanding that the fracas in Pakistan be internationalized—call in the UN, says she. And above all, put pressure on the already impotent President Pervez Musharraf to usher in democracy. Or hold “free and fair elections,” as she puts it. As though Musharraf alone is what stands between the people of Pakistan—who apparently yearn to breathe free—and democratic institutions and the rule of law.

The harridan Hillary differs very little from Bush: she announced her belief that America is obligated to shore-up civil society in Pakistan and address the “root causes” of the restive, ever-seething Muslim Street in that country. (To quote Clinton: “I’ve talked to President Musharraf about the necessity for us to raise the literacy rate, to reach out with healthcare and education that would help the Pakistani people to really concentrate on civil society.”) Can you say Nation Building?!

This is a meddler with paws stickier than Bush’s.

Above all, in her reaction to Bhutto’s assassination, Hillary has demonstrated that she is a deeply silly woman, having learned nothing from the adventure in Iraq. Forcing democracy down Iraqi gullets—now that worked out really well, didn’t? How about in the Palestinian Authority? At our insistence, democratic elections were held in the PA, and voila! The freedom loving Palestinians voted for Hamas, which the US then promptly boycotted. Egypt anybody? Think the Muslim Brotherhood, which would likely gain a majority if American idiots got the better of a recalcitrant Mubarak and forced him to democratize.

Be careful what you wish for in Pakistan, Hillary! They say about 50 percent of Pakistanis support the al Qaeda Islamist elements and the resurgent Taliban.

As for Bhutto whom the liberal media has hurried to canonize: No doubt, her death is tragic. But you have to admit that she was utterly reckless, bobbing up and down from sun roofs in unarmored, unprotected, rickety vehicles. Musharraf ought to have kept her under house arrest for her own good.

Nor was Bhutto such a saint; her niece certainly disputes her sainted status. Nor was she much of a “democrat”—for what it’s worth in that part of the world—during her time in office. Had she come to share power with Musharraf, she’d have supported an ongoing American presence in Pakistan. That might have also raised some of her countrymen’s hackles.

Updated: Ron Wrong on Islam, Right on Foreign Policy

Elections 2008, Islam, libertarianism, Ron Paul

Does it follow that because Ron Paul is wrong about the threat of Islam, and about the cause of Islamic terrorism, that he is also wrong about foreign policy? Not at all.
I cannot stress enough that I depart from Rep. Paul on quite a few issues, chief of which is the cause of Islamic terrorism. True, our foreign policy doesn’t help matters.
Still, irrespective of where one’s sympathies lie; regardless of how one views the cause of Muslim insurrections the world over, one must surely recognize that—for whatever reason—Muslims are at the center of practically every bloody conflict in the world today.
Is it possible that Muslims are right and that the “infidels” of Lebanon, Israel, India, Russia, Sudan, Indonesia, The Ivory Coast, Kenya and Nigeria all deserve to be visited by Islamic violence? Not if you live on terra firma.
Scholars such as Efraim and Inari Karsh, for example, have shown that “Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate.”
It’s a great shame Paul has adopted the received wisdom of the far-left, according to which the Arabs were (and remain) hapless and helpless victims of the West.
Strategically, moreover, it’s unwise for a presidential candidate to keep sounding as though he blames America first. That gets people’s backs up and is not conducive to his sensible message with respect to foreign policy.

Update: New participants on the blog are always welcome. However, I am getting tired of the odd individual who stumbles on my blog and website, and post facetious, rude csious comments withough familiarizing himself with hbut can we ask politely that before you post about Islam and Dr. Paul’s perspective, that you familiarize yourself with your host’s perspective first. I think you will find a far more comprehensive analysis of what is at stake vis-à-vis the West and Islam here than in Dr. Paul’s writings.

So if our foreign policy is just the minor player what is the major cause of Islamic “terrorism”. Our freedoms? I am interested…

Third World Immigration and Islam

IMMIGRATION, Islam

France’s Nicolas Sarkozy had better start flexing his muscles. “The darling buds of France—her raging Muslim youths” are at it again, and this time they want to taste blood.

Here’s a refresher of the last bloody outbreak. Nothing has changed since, in “Rah-Rah For Rioters,” I detailed the “reasons” for the fury:

“What have the French ever done for “les beurs,” now rioting in 300 French cities and towns, having destroyed more than 6,000 cars, burned busses, businesses, shops, schools, police stations, libraries; beaten bystanders, and snuffed out at least one life?

They’ve replaced the mud huts of their ancestors with subsidized housing and modern plumbing, given them schools, job-training institutes, cradle-to-crypt welfare, and, my personal favorite, the Musée du Louvre.

To listen to their enablers among the media, however, not much. Whether the mediacrats are applying their cerebral sinew to individual or group-orchestrated crime; to psychological or sociological “causal factors,” bad deeds are invariably caused—never committed. And they are caused by factors outside the perpetrators. …

…French Muslims endure untold oppression. France’s holidays are largely saints’ days. School cafeterias serve fish on Fridays. Restaurants still serve wine and pork, and souvenir shops peddle porcelain pigs. As the Times Literary Supplement recently complained, “Nuns do not have to remove their headscarves for passport or driver’s license photographs; Muslim women do.” Oh the indignities! My favorite newsman (and co-religionist) Jon Stewart, added his invaluable perspective as an “alienated” minority: “Do you know what it’s like to be sent to a Christian school every Passover with a hardboiled egg?” (Italians would have similar stories of “survival.”)

By the way, this will eventually unfold at a theatre near you. We Americans love to delude ourselves to the contrary, but it is a matter of time.

Update #II: Oops, Iran’s Innocent

Bush, Intelligence, Iran, Islam, Neoconservatism

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s dormant nuclear program confirms the following:

* If a Pinocchio proboscis that grew with each lie uttered was a feature on the faces of political leaders, the Cheney-Bush-Rice gang would put the Ahmadinejad-Hussein knaves to shame in the nose department.
* The Intelligence community has been somewhat deterred by its failures in Iraq; not so the brazen Bush Administration.
* Since the Iranians halted their weapons program well before this latest unjust round of sanctions, economic punitive measures penalizing all Iranians seem more unjust than ever, to say nothing of futile.
* Americans remain criminally clueless about the Arab mentality and culture: Since national pride and honor are at stake, Arab leaders would sooner lie and claim to have the know-how to manufacture WMD, than admit to lacking it. Therefore, when habitual blowhards such as Saddam and Mad Mahmoud tone down their truculence and confess to having no weapons, they’re probably being truthful because truly terrified of an American invasion.
* Hillary has been a hawk on Iran except when the political expediency of the campaign has dictated otherwise. The new intelligence discredits the Democratic frontrunner—and all the GOP candidates bar Ron Paul.

Update #I: I just KNEW someone would take issue with my tagging of the Iranian leadership as typifying the Arab mentality. Everyone knows Ancient Persia was not Arab and that the Iranians are descendants of a medley of non-Arab people. However, since the Islamic conquest, the place has gone the way all places under Islam have gone—to the dogs.
With respect to more recent developments, I’ve written this on BAB: “Reza Shah and son hated Arab culture and identified themselves completely with pre-Islamic Persia. Not so the clerics who came to power after the Islamic revolution in 1979; they endeavored to expunge the Achaemenids, the Sassanids, and Zoroastrianism from Iran’s historical memory. To Islamists, history begins with Mohammad and his exploits; all that went before doesn’t count.
Shortly after the revolution, Islamic mobs in Iran tried to Talibanize Cyrus’s tomb. Persian names were changed to Islamic names, and references to the Achaemenid kings were banned on the state broadcaster. In post-revolutionary Iran, children were no longer named Darius or Cyrus (but Mo and Hussein, like one presidential candidate).”
In any event, I’m sticking with the “Arab-mentality” appellation for Iran’s leadership. It fits.

Update # II (Dec. 5): The neocons are still in power among the punditocracy. Their adherents are hanging on for dear life too. Not that they’ve been truly challenged; reality doesn’t seem to interfere with hereditary rights in American media. Still, I thought that by now they’d have the decency and sense to steer clear of the “left-liberal” libel when it comes to my views—and certainly not expect to be hosted on my blog. Alas, hubris is another of their distinguishing trademarks.
Libel aside, I’m extremely cautious about Iran, but I’d like to see other powers do the heavy lifting—let Israel take care of itself. The IAEA is a good option too, so long as an American president doesn’t kick them out of the inspected region to start a war.

Here are my pieces on the “Persian Pussycat”:

“The Persian Pussycat”
“Satan’s Little Helpers“