Category Archives: Islam

'Iraq and the Christian Conscience'

Christianity, Iraq, Islam

A regular reader recently asked me if I know of other writers “like yourself,” as he put it, “who get the Islamic threat, but are also principled Old Rightists, who’ve been against the war on Iraq all along.” He explained that the Arabist American Conservative and like-minded libertarians were just too whacky for his liking.

I replied: only Paul Sperry.

And so it came as no surprise when on the day my column, “At Least Saddam Kept Order,” came out, I received a note from Paul, “Great minds think alike…” (Someone has to pat us on the collective shoulder occasionally.) Paul’s column, “Iraq and the Christian Conscience” echoes my sentiments exactly:

Bush turned Iraq into the most violent place on the planet—3,700 civilians killed last month alone—and he removed from power and put on death row the only person who can restore order there, the guy who after all the prewar demonizing turned out to be a toothless tinhorn, more a threat to his dentist than anyone else.

Did you know that more innocent Iraqi civilians—mostly children—have been killed and maimed under President Bush than under Saddam Hussein? It’s true. As a Christian, I am absolutely repulsed by this statistic. You don’t hear that one on talk radio, for good reason….

I also cringe every time I hear a minister preach or pray about us ‘fighting for freedom’ in Iraq, or fighting to ‘liberate the Iraqi people.’ Please, the Iraqi people never invited us to invade and occupy their country, and they don’t even want our form of freedom (they enshrined Islamic law in their ‘new and improved’ constitution). Here’s another statistic you won’t hear on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and it’s from the State Department’s own recent survey in Iraq: 91 percent of Sunnis in Iraq want us to leave, and 74 percent of Shi’ites also want us out.

Another poll found that more than 3/5 of Iraqis say they back attacks on U.S. troops!

The inconvenient truth is, there is nothing noble or heroic about the war Bush and Cheney started in Iraq. It was political, not strategic. It had nothing to do with 9/11. We were sold a bill of goods. As a Christian, I cannot support a lie, especially one that continues to grind up other people’s kids for no good reason (while still not protecting us from the true threat from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda Central, as opposed to the backbenchers and second-string wannabes in Iraq).

Did Bush, a supposed ‘born-again Christian,’ lie us into war? I’ve read the prewar intelligence estimates. I don’t believe as some do that Bush knew Saddam didn’t have WMD and attacked him anyway. No, Bush didn’t know Saddam didn’t have WMD, but he knew better than to say he had ‘proof’ that he did. The intelligence community had no such proof—the NIE dossier was full of caveats regarding WMD. Yet Bush and Cheney told us they had solid proof. They misled us…

But in the case of the alleged prewar al-Qaeda connections, they did know better—and they just plain lied to us. They said Saddam and Osama were collaborating and implied that Saddam was behind 9/11. The prewar Iraq dossier, the NIE, said exactly the opposite—no collaboration, no ties to 9/11 or any anti-American terror anywhere in the world, ever. Bush and Cheney knew that and deliberately lied to the public. (And Cheney’s still lying.)…”

Read the entire column. Being an impressive “shoe-leather investigative journalist,” as I called him in my review of his recent book, Sperry always packs his work with facts.

At Least Saddam Kept Order

Iraq, Islam

” … there is something really screwy about this administration’s admonitions to Iraqis to get with the program. As though Iraq ever had it together; Saddam’s reign was one of the more peaceful periods in the history of this fractious people. What a shame it’s too late to dust Saddam off, give him a sponge bath, and beg him to restore law and order to Iraq.
Secretly, that’s what anyone with a head and a heart would want. We could promise solemnly never to mess with him again — just so long as he keeps his mitts off nukes, continues to check Iran (which he did splendidly), and minimizes massacres. To be fair, Saddam’s last major massacre was in 1991, during which only 3,000 Shiites were murdered. That’s less than the monthly quota under “democracy.”
No one is praising Saddam, yada, yada, yada. But even the Saddam-equals-Hitler crowd cannot but agree that Iraq was not a lawless society prior to our faith-based intervention. Even the war’s enablers must finally admit that under our ministrations Iraq has gone from a secular to a religious country; from rogue to failed state…â€?
The excerpt is from my latest WorldNetDaily.com column, “At Least Saddam Kept Order.” Feel free to comment.

Cirque du Islam: The Airborne Imams

Islam

Courtesy of Power Line comes coverage of the Flying Imams’ tricks. The latest is a staged prayer protest at Reagan Washington National Airport, with the token Dhimmis in tow (a Rabbi and a minister). (A doff of the hat to Dr. Frank Zavisca for keeping me in the loop). These are the gentlemen who were led off a US-Airways flight after acting suspiciously.

How suspiciously?

1) They requested seat belt extenders, but were not overweight. Then, “Rather than attach the extensions, the men placed the straps and buckles on the cabin floor.”
2) They moved, without permission, from their assigned seats to first class. After the self-initiated shuffle, “the six imams were positioned on the plane from front to back,” covering all exits, in a configuration “associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

Before boarding, the six had prayed loudly, shouting “Allah,” like You Know Who. Quoting a man of impeccable pinko credentials (“former Minnesota Senator and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights Rudy Boschwitz,), Scott of Power Line asks:

There you are at the gate about to kiss your wife and kids goodbye and the imams begin praying. Would you walk away and let the family go forward? Or would you be much relieved if the airline said: hold on, we ought to check these guys out. Give me a break and not this liberal bullshit. The airline acted prudently just as it should have.

What all these pinkos collectively ‘and conveniently’ choose to forget is that federal anti-discrimination laws make it practically impossible for airlines to get away with the type of vigilance US Airways demonstrated. The federal government doesn’t really want airlines to be free to protect the flying customers, because this would invariably mean angering the noisy minorities they prize.

For their efforts on behalf of their customers after 9/11, four airlines were made to pay hefty sums to the federal goons because of so-called discrimination based on race or ethnic background. With airlines being only nominally private, they have fewer and fewer incentives to offer the kind of security service flyers desperately want–and need.

Meantime, the Muslim Public Affairs Council has not wasted any time. According the Washington Post, it has already complained to the Transportation Department. “The Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said last week that it was investigating the incident.” This is the intrusive apparatus that ought to be the focus of complaints from “conservative” screechers.

Spencer On ‘Obsession’

Islam

Robert Spencer explains, vis-Ã -vis my complaint about the documentary “Obsession,” why the directors needed to be so, well, politically correct:

“I agree with Mercer that it doesn’t go far enough in identifying the source of that challenge — which I think must be done if anything is ultimately going to be done to meet the challenge effectively. So along with, but not instead of, Obsession, I recommend the less flashy but more informative Islam: What the West Needs to Know.

Now, I am in Islam: What the West Needs to Know, but not in Obsession, as Mercer points out, but that is not why I am recommending the other film along with Obsession: while I appreciate Mercer’s kind words, certainly the Obsession producers could have told the full truth about the jihad ideology without featuring my mug in their movie. If they had told those truths, however, they almost certainly would not have gotten their film onto Fox News. So it’s a trade-off. A lot of people are waking up to what we’re up against because of Obsession, and so my hat is off to Wayne Kopping and Rafael Shore.”

I think the wise Mr. Spencer is suggesting — implicitly, at least — that I be less impolitic.