"Is anyone else getting bored with Iraq and Islam?" --from a reader

I am. Or rather, I've long been bored silly with the whole business of Iraq and Islam. Not terribly interesting, except as a case study offering a rich variety of different kinds of willful ignorance, sentimentalism, avoidance of the obvious, sheer stupidity in so many different, and differently unappealing, forms. It must have been the same for all kinds of people, though perhaps not Churchill, to have to again and again saythe obvious things (or obvious now), about Hitler, about the Storm Troopers, about Nationalsozialismus, about how "Mein Kampf" was meant seriously and should not be dismissed. Or all those who wrote about Japanese militarism and emperor-worship, that is Kodo, in Japan beginning in the 1920s, with the full menace already clear to some by 1930 (one Western student of the subject lays it all out, even predicts the exact places the Japanese will attack). And don't you think the members of Guistizia e Liberta would have preferred to do other things in southern France then have to worry about being picked off by the secret police of Il Granitico, with those endless harangues matched only by the crazed speeches of Hitler. Imagine having to watch those speeches, or read anything written by either one, or have to solemnly study, for example, the kind of thing Kremlinologists used to study, what went on at the First Party Congress in Minsk, and what Lenin wrote about Renegade Kautsky, and when Stalin first started airbrushing "Bukharin out of those photographs of the Soviet leadership. Who in his right mind can stand it?

 And why would  we want to follow, day by day, what general or admiral in the Japanese Imperial War Office is in, or out, or on his way up, and the ideological origins of Emperor-worship and bushido-cults and all the rest, when when one would much rather, if one were reporting on Japan in those days, write about the cherry-tree ceremony, or Murasaki Shikibu, or possibly that nice exhibit of wazikashi blades in the Japanese War Ministry's museum?

We're all bored, just as bored, even more bored, than you are with Islam, and Jihad, and having to listen to solemn parsing of speeches by Bin Laden, or Ahmadinejad, or Mahathir Mohammed, or analyze some promise made by Mubarak or Musharraf or Mahmoud Abbas. Why should primitive peoples with primitive belief-systems take up our time? Because they can. Because they must. Because the Western world made a big mistake, over the past four decades, and now it is paying for it, and will if something is not done pay much more, for that big mistake of letting into its midst, at the moment of maximum sentimentality and softness in the collective Western brain, people who do not and cannot wish that Western world, its legal and political institutions, well. 

And politics, just writing about anything involving large numbers of people -- so that one writes, actually writes and can't quite believe it, such phrases as "the Iraqis" or "the Arabs" or "the French" or "the Israelis" or "the Hindus" - writes, and then still has to look at oneself in the mirror to keep from cutting oneself when shaving.  One simply has to agree to the rules of the publicistic game, in an age of the degradation of the democratic dogma. What else can one do? No one in the world could be as bored with Islam as I am, not even you, given my natural bent and interests and hierarchy of values.  But it has to be discussed, until enough people understand what the whole thing is all about, and by helping them make sense, they can be helped to come to their senses.

"could very well be a key turning point"?

Prediction: The oil-sharing agreement will not have the slightest effect in diminishing sectarian or ethnic tensions in Iraq. Whatever its wording, it will be the cause of argument and worry. And whatever its wording, it will be ignored, when the Americans leave, by those who hold power in Baghdad.

It will have no permanent effect at all. on the project of keeping Iraq one country, under a most unpleasant and whimsical god.

A little more on Pakistan, our "ally" in the "war on terror," from today's report on Cheney's visit, and his attempt, the umpteenth by a visiting American, to make Musharraf pull up his ever-drooping socks.

The story in The Times, p. A9 -- "Cheney Warns Pakistan to Act Against Terrorists" -- includes this:

"The Pakistani government lashed out Monday with a series of statements insisting that 'Pakistan does not accept dictation from any side or any source."

And later in the story, which bears the subtitle "Reports That U.S. Aid May be In Jeopardy," there is this piquant detail:

"Mr. Musharraf alluded to those payments in his recently published memoir, in which he wrote, 'Those who habitually accuse us of 'not doing enough' in the war on terror should simply ask the C.I.A. how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan.' When asked about that assertion, C.I.A. officials have declined to answer."

So there is it. Pakistan, that has withdrawn its forces from the northwestern region and allowed Al Qaeda to come back in, and allowed the Taliban, too, to regroup and resurrect itself in Afghanistan, where other reports in The Times tell of village elders being rounded up and killed for daring to want the Taliban to merely leave their villages alone.

Pakistan is ruled by a meretricious government, with meretricious rulers, whether generals or zamindars who are only slightly less bad than the generals. Its masses, idiotized by Islam, long accustomed to the habit of mental submission that Islam requires, more than any other non-Arab Muslims, in a state created for Muslims, and run by, and for Muslims and for the greater glory of Islam, have largely jettisoned any pre-Islamic or non-Islamic history or indeed, any other conceivable identity that might conceivably modify, or nuance, or dilute, the identity provided by Islam -- that is, save among the Baluchis of Baluchistan, with their tribal identity kept intact, not least because of the ruthless measures taken against them, for their quite modest demands, by the implacable Pakistani generals who are spending far more time suppressing the Baluchis than they are suppressing Al Qaeda and the Taliban elements still in Pakistan.

The jig should be up. It should not be Cheney using the threats of Congress cutting aid -- it should be Cheney saying that the Administration itself will end all aid, military and economic, if there is not a complete reversal. And it might add, for good measure, that the children of the zamindars and the generals, including the accountant son of Musharraf himself, may all find themselves booted out of the West, and condemned to life imprisonment in the hell of Pakistan.

That might get some attention. Yes, I know that's not the kind of thing we do, in order to preserve ourselves, in the advanced West. It smacks of extortion, of collective blackmail. Of exerting pressure on rulers by telling them the futures of their children in the West will be imperilled.

No, it's not what we do. But it is what we should be thinking about doing. That, and a good deal more.

DID YOU REALLY WRITE THIS? It supports the Left and the conspiracies to perfectly --from a reader commenting on this post

My general endorsement of Selig Harrison does not mean that I necessarily endorse every word he writes, or charge he may make. I don't know enough about the early history of the Taliban. I do know that it is a creature of Pakistan, and the I.S.I., and that for decades many in Washington found Pakistan's generals, including Zia ul-Haq, to their liking, and were remarkably negligent in the matter of A. Q. Khan, and furthermore thought that it was right to back anyone at all as long as they were fighting the Red Army. That was a mistake.

It is not enough for a thinker to think the thought – he must talk the thought, and possibly even walk the thought. Up and down Charlotte Street is a good start:

I remember (can’t recall who or where) someone smiling at a ‘Deleuzian’ who nonetheless prepared a genealogical tree of Deleuze’s thought.

I know what he means. It’s enough to make a cat laugh.

One thinks, similarly, of the Derridean who, when the logic of his rhetoric is revealed to him, appeals instead to the integrity of his intentions. Or people who are happy to talk about ‘positions of enunciation’, ‘discursive context’, ‘phatic functions’ and so on, while displaying wanton disregard for these in their actual human interactions.

Call me primly lower-middle class if you like – Jilly Cooper’s Jen Teale  perhaps - but I don’t hold with “phatic functions” in a public place.

Time and again, thinking operates only within the penumbra of the desk lamp, wilfully blind to its own implications, unable to translate itself into practice or to move from one domain into another - esp. into the domain of the everyday. ‘Deleuze’, or whoever, becomes one more Playstation of the intellect into which a pale narcissus plugs before returning to a life unruffled and intact.

But the point here is not simply to underline the too-familiar contrast between thinking and practice, to repeat the adage that thinking is one thing but life quite another. Firstly, because there is already a thinking immanent in those everyday actions and relations, so that it’s not look, you think this but do that; its look, effectively you think this. Secondly, though, and perhaps obviously, there is a point at which the idea, to think itself further, must pass beyond itself into life; but this passing through itself is also a coming into itself.

Try Windeeze. And a cold shower.

Those at the Emory Wheel are reduced to this transparent nonsense of Taqiyya and Tu Quoque. How else can they proceed? They know what is in the texts. They know what states, societies, families suffused with Islam are taught. They know the tenets. They know the attitudes. They are well used to the atmospherics. They just don't know how to handle those Infidels who also know those texts, those teachings, those attitudes, those atmospherics.

And there is nothing they can do to stop more and more Infidels, as they pick up their newspapers or turn on the evening news and realize how much of it is about this or that local manifestation of the world-wide and permanent Jihad -- which can only get worse, and examples of which will only proliferate -- from finding out, slowly and then more rapidly, in greater and greater numbers, about Islam. There is nothing they can do, try as they will to lie, or to hide, or to distract with irrelevancies, or by appeals to Western "guilt" and false claims of victimisation (but Islam itself, as the vehicle for Arab imperialism, is the most successful imperialist project in history, the force which caused whole peoples to jettison and ignore, or despise, their own histories, pre-Islamic or non-Islamic), and the raising of idiotic claims of "racism," to make Infidels, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and all others, everywhere and not just here in this country, refrain from finding out about Islam.

It's too late. Cat's out of the bag. The Qur'an is just a click away (www.quranbrowser.com). And so are the Hadith. And so is the Sira -- or you can read the texts about Muhammad, the Muslim texts, the texts of Qur'an and Hadith and Muslim Sira, and Muslim commentators and historians, with connective tissue and organizing principle supplied by Robert Spencer.

Nothing these people can do, except what they have been doing all along: "three Abrahamic faiths," "one of world's great religions," "hijacked" or "perverted" by "extremists," or adducing in support of this preposterousness, a handful of Qur'anic phrases,-- "there is no compulsion in religion"  (which does not mean what an Infidel who reads only those words would naturally take it to mean), and 5.22 but not 5.23 (Bush does it, Blair does it, even semi-educated fleas do it)., or if not the Qur'an, then one of the inauthentic" Hadiths from one of the unauthoritative collections (Karen Armstrong loves the one about Muhammad returning from the "Lesser Jihad" of war to the "Greater Jihad" of domestic life, without recognizing that the hadith in question is not widely accepted as authentic). Why, I can write the Mosque-Outreach script for Infidels myself, and so can you, dear reader, and so can any man.

Islam was a "stabilizing force" for Somalia according to the BBC.

Yes, it was a stabilizing force.

And the Times of London can provide a whole stack of yellowed sheets on which are printed editorials about the wonders that Mr. Hitler is doing, whatever nastinesses he may have been accused of by his detractors (or sentiments to that effect), in raising Germany from its post-war prostration, and in bringing at long last order, and national pride, and national order, and pride. And those volkswagens for the Volk, and the autobahnen for them to ride on, and the paid holidays for workers, and the tramping through the German forests (ah, that German air! those German hunters! that German game to be shot!), and the healthy Hitlerjugend, healthily learning how to march in lockstep, as their parents were learning how to think in lockstep, and everyone, children and parents alike, were learning to raise their hands in lockstep salute while the goosesteppers walked by: Heil Hitler!

And then there is that other person who Brought Order of the kind the BBC is apparently so fond. That is, Il Granitico, Mussolini, who aside from that little nastiness about Matteotti (oh, and hundreds of others at the same time, often overlooked), aside from the Blackshirts and the Balilla, aside from those jaw-jutting harangues (hence the name "Il Granitico") from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia overlooking the Piazza Venezia -- aside from all that, he was making the trains run on time, the rapido, the rapidissimo. And draining the swamps.

Ordre, avant tout chose. It doesn't matter how it is achieved. It doesn't matter if it is this totalitarian and menacing belief-system or another, for the BBC as for the appeasers of the 1930s before it.

Order. Nostalgia for order, desire for order. For the Lesser Breeds Without the Law, who need it, even if it is to be supplied byIslam.

Order. Order and Ordnung. And with that Ordnung, a Drang Nach Westen to boot.

I mentioned Derbyshire’s Law this morning, or rather his assertion that he puts forth for discussion, “ANYTHING WHATSOEVER said by a Gentile about Jews will be perceived as antisemitic by someone, somewhere.”

Hugh's rebuttal was the following sentence: "Jews are the most persecuted tribe in history," confident that no one could possibly take offense at that.

However, I would worry about use of the word "tribe" because I heard it used in a derogatory fashion in reference to Jews once. I would use "people" instead.

Derbyshire writes:

I remember thinking how strange it was, in that special issue of The New Republic devoted to The Bell Curve, that Leon Wieseltier should declare himself “repulsed” at the suggestion, by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, that Jews have higher intelligence than Gentiles.

“What an odd thing to say!” I thought to myself. “Why, if someone were to say that my common-ancestry group was smarter than others, I’d be proud!” But that was a very Jewish reaction on Wieseltier’s part. It’s not hard to see why this should be so, historically.

I look forward to Thursday's continuation of this exchange.

The deal reached yesterday by the Iraqi cabinet on revenue-sharing of the country's vast oil reserves could very well be a key turning point in Iraq's road to stability.  It still has plenty of hurdles to overcome — to become law, it has to be enacted by the legislature; to become effective, corruption in the Oil Ministry will have to be addressed and foreign investors will have to be convinced that contracts will be honored and security can be ensured.  But this is an enormous step in the right direction. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad deserves high praise for his perseverance.

An elemental objection of many of us democracy-project skeptics has been whether the Iraqis really view themselves as a single country with a common destiny.  The jury is still very much out on that, but a path to success is clear:  the three major factions have to come together not to sing kumbaya but to solve difficult national challenges jointly. 

The Iraqis have two such challenges in their immediate future:  the security situation and laying the groundwork for a functioning economy in which Iraqis perceive it is more in their interest to be together than to go their separate ways.  Longer-term challenges will involve the role of Islam in Iraqi life and the nature of relations with Iran.  None of this is easy, but none of it is hopeless — far from it, and it is entirely possible that success in overcoming the immediate problems would foster a unity that would clear the path to reasonable, joint solutions on other challenges.  That kind of unity, tested by fire, is the kind of foundation real democracy might be built on.

Victory here is by no means assured, and there is still great cause for concern that we are not sufficiently focused on how to win the wider war against jihadists.  But a way for the U.S. to win in Iraq is taking shape.  It's visible.  It will require patience and resolve.  Which is a long-winded way of saying:  It is utterly irresponsible at this critical moment to be doing anything other than supporting the mission — no matter how you feel about whether we ought to be in Iraq in the first place, and no matter what you think about the way things have been handled up until now.

"al-Qaeda is a religious cult, but a perverted one.

Religion turned William Wilberforce into a Protestant saint, but Wahhabism has turned Osama bin Laden into a devil."-- Wlliam Rees-Mogg in his article, "Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure"

Is Al-Qaeda a "religious cult"? Does this mean that the members of Al-Qaeda believe something other than what is in the canonical texts of Islam? Do the members of this "cult" believe something that is not in the Qur'an and the Hadith (in the most authoritative collections), and the Sira? Would Rees-Mogg care to explain exactly how, ideologically, the members of Al-Qaeda are not true Muslims but the members of a "religious cult"? Why doesn't he say it otherwise -- that Islam is now strong enough so that the permanent doctrine of Jihad, that falls into desuetude at times of Muslim weakness, has been revived and put into practice, that the sources of Muslim strengh are three -- the OPEC oil trillions, the millions of Muslim migrants settled deep within the Lands of the Infidels, and the Western technology of every kind, but especially weaponry, and the means for disseminating propaganda (audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite television, the Internet)for Daw'a (the Call to Islam) and for Muslim causes (Iraq, "Palestine," Kashmir, etc.) all over the world -- even unto southern Thailand or the remotest parts of the Sudan.

Osama bin-Laden is not a "devil." He is an orthodox Muslim who takes his duties as a Muslim seriously. That is all. Not all Muslims, fortunately, take their duties quite as seriously. But many do. And he not only takes his duty to perform Jihad seriously, but also believes that the best instrument of Jihad is terror. There many Muslims differ. They think that "terror" for the moment is not necessarily the best way, especially in Western Europe. They are patient. They see the call to Islam, targetted at the economically and psychically marginal at first, and thence by degrees to others, will win converts to Islam in the Dar al-Harb. They think they can continue to exploit the freedoms of Infidel lands in order to promote their own position and the cause of Islam, that is in the end to ensure the goal of all Muslims, encapsulated in Muhammad's remark that "Islam must dominate and is not to be dominated." They differ, where they do differ, with Osama bin Laden, on the means to that end. Some are more patient, just as Mahmoud Abbas is more patient than Haniya of Hamas.

Rees-Mogg has gone far, in Infidel terms. But he has not gone far enough. It would be too painful.

And the idea that "religion isn't the disease, it's the cure" should perhaps be modified. After all, the most important apostates from Islam include many who are without belief: Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, Irfan Khawaja. Among the keenest Infidel writers on Islam have been those without any faith: Oriana Fallaci, Pim Fortuyn, Geert Wilders all come to mind. And what, after all, is a Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslim if not one without any faith, but who perhaps insists on such continued self-identification out of filial piety, the remembrance, say, of humble parents who did everything for you (including sending you to Christian schools in, say, Cairo) -- surely that is behind Magdi Allam's continued self-identification as a Muslim rather than as an apostate. And the same, one would think, is true for Kanan Makiya (not liking attacks on Islam because he thinks at once of his pious, humble grandmother, and becomes defensive).

There is no one "cure" and perhaps there is no "cure" at all. But one could say, as we metaphorically continue to make our Grand Rounds, that some patients respond to one form of treatment, and others to another.

All are to be tried.

How many native speakers of Russian will be left in 2020? In 2050? I wonder if Putin, that philistine, cares. What does the word "Russia" mean to him? To other members of the KGB, or the FSB, or whatever it now calls itself? One used to think that, at least, their authoritarianism was based on Russian nationalism, on a wounded national pride and a desire to recover for the nation power and even glory. But is it? Or are they simply grasping at the gold, like those privatizers and privateers they pretend to deplore, but really only wish to replace?

One sobering result of the Taliban's attempt to murder Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan is that the New York Times has tamped down — at least for a day — its standard caricature of the dark, secretive Veep. 

Compare the following.  This is from yesterday's pre-bombing coverage of Cheney's Pakistan trip:

The vice president’s office asked news organizations that knew of Mr. Cheney’s upcoming trip, and the small number of reporters traveling with him, to withhold any mention of his travels until after he had left the country. That request went far beyond the usual precautions as American officials travel into and out of Pakistan....  It was unclear if the request reflected Mr. Cheney’s well-known penchant for secrecy — he said nothing in public during his visit — or an increasing unease by the Secret Service about how freely Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives are moving in Pakistan. There have long been doubts about the loyalties of some members of Mr. Musharaff’s intelligence service, and assassination attempts against him have been linked to Al Qaeda.

Now, here's today's post-bombing coverage of Cheney in Afghanistan:

MOSCOW - Russia will push for the lifting of an economic embargo against the Palestinian government, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday during a visit by Hamas political director Khaled Meshaal. --from this news item

Meanwhile the population of Russia goes down, and the Muslim population booms -- not least in Moscow itself. And everyone pretends this is not a problem, because, just like the French who complacently believed that "we know the Arabs" the Russians think, because of their experience in Soviet Asia, that "we know the Muslims" or "we can handle the Muslims" or "our Muslims are not like Middle Eastern Muslims." Perhaps, after the Soviet repression, including the destruction of thousands of mosques, those Central Asian Muslims were for a time quiescent.

But are the Russified elites of Central Asia, thoroughly secular, Muslims-for-identification-purposes Muslims if that, representative, or rather a special case that, save in Kazakhstan, are unlikely to prevail? And what about those Muslims outbreeding the non-Muslims all over not only the Caucasus, but deep into historical Russia itself?

Why does the Russian government think it will not have a problem? What does it intend to do about that problem, other than appease and support the Arabs outside of Russia, in their Lesser Jihad against Israel -- in other words, in continuing the nonsensical policies of the Soviet past?

Perhaps it is merely a case of mental exhaustion and inertia. We used to support the PLO. Abbas got his degree at MGU. So we will continue to support, in effect, the PLO, whatever its current name is.

In the same way, the American government for the last five years has been suckered by the Pakistani government, partly because for decades the Pakistani generals were our friends, just like the Saudis -- both of them were "bulwarks against Communism." Seeing them as something else takes quite a while, a lot of evidence to the contrary, before thick skulls in Washington get the point, or are retired or removed, so that others, without such a parti pris, more mentally agile, more willing to consider the overwhelming force of Islam in molding the minds of Muslims, can replace the yesterday's men incapable of dealing with today's, or foreseeing tomorrow's, trouble.

"It is well known that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids; they regarded these structures as a national project for ancient Egypt," said Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Hawass filed an official complaint to the Egyptian attorney general of Egypt against a Cairo high school for teaching the students that it was the Israelites who built the pyramids.

Hawass, prominent figure in Egyptian culture and around the Arab world, criticized the school curriculum for "insisting that the Jews built the pyramids and highlighting the fact that those who refused to partake in the building were physically tortured." --from this news item

The Muslims were entirely indifferent, and remain largely indifferent (save insofar as a handful of Western-educated Arabs have begun to take an interest, and insofar as antiquities such as the pyramids provide Western currency from tourists) to their own pre-Islamic past.

The great Egyptologists have all been Westerners. The Frenchman Champollion deciphering the Rosetta Stone, the German Lepsius, the Englishman Howard Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen, these and many other Westerners were not only the founders, but also the creators of Egyptology. The scholars of Coptic, right up to the present and Bentley Layton, have all been Westerners.

And the same is true for all the other antiquities. It is not the local Arabs and Muslims who rediscovered Babylon, or founded the field of Assyriology. It is Henry Austen Layard, whose books have been reprinted by George Kiraz, who dug in the Land of the Two Rivers, and the fabulous treasures of Ur were discovered by Leonard Woolley and by others with support from, not any Muslim group, but the University of Pennsylvania.

And what about the only two museums of antiquities in the Muslim Arab world worth anything? The Cairo Museum was a product not of Egyptians, but of the Frenchman Mariette, who thought, in those days when there were still considerable numbers of Levantines in Egypt, and the further arabisation of the country not foreseen, that Cairo would be the proper repository for pre-Islamic, pharaonic antiquities. Thank god a lot of the stuff has nonetheless managed to get out, to the MFA in Boston, to the Louvre, to the British Museum, else we would all have to risk our lives visiting the Cairo Museum which, under the ubiquitous, presumptuous, and absurd locals such as Hawass, are much more akin to warehouses full of stacked stuff than to museums intelligently displaying material, in the Western sense.

And the other museum is that of Baghdad, which is essentially the product of Gertrude Bell, herself an archaeologist (see "From Amurath to Amurath" about excavations in Syria), who began the Department of Antiquities that metamorphosed, with further British help, into the Baghdad Museum and where, as one might expect, the staff was heavily non-Islamic, right up to its last Director, Donny George.

Now comes Zahi Hawass, a self-promoter who gets himself often on the news. His position does not reflect any great contribution to archeology, but rather his being politically connected, good at extracting money from foreign audiences or at least trying to (see the latest Egyptian Pay-Per-View Exhibit -- no, on second thought, refuse to go see it, refuse to pay).

Knowing what we all know about the Muslim Middle East, we should thank god that our intelligent forefathers removed some of the stuff, so that we in the Western civilization, a civilization receptive too, wide-open to, the so-called "Other" of which the Saidians and their epigones like so much to prate, can see the stuff without fear of being attacked or blown up in our tourist bus, between hotel and museum.

Over at Jewcy.com, Joey Kurtzman & I are having some exchanges about the ideas of Kevin MacDonald, whose book The Culture of Critique I reviewed a couple of years ago.  Is Derbyshire's Law true?  Am I afraid of offending the Jews?  Are these kinds of discussions Good For The Jews?  Read and ponder. 

The Home Office won a key legal victory yesterday in a five-year battle to eject a suspected al-Qa'eda terrorist leader from Britain. --from this news item

Why did it take so long? How much money was wasted extending every legal courtesy that the Western world has to offer to a primitive who utterly rejects every detail of the legal and political institutions of that same West, and is working to destroy them? How much government money was spent on him, on his upkeep, on the lawyers on both sides, on the judges, on the heating of the courtroom, on the recording of testimony.

The Law is not an ass. But sometimes, as in wartime, other rules, quicker rules, apply. Niceties are no longer so nice. This should now be defined, or at least understood by many, to be wartime. It will save a lot of time, a lot of money.

And do not be impressed, much less susceptible to their meretricious arguments, when groups wrapping themselves in the mantle of "rights -- the ACLU for example -- thoughtlessly take the side of those who, just like the Nazis, would undo or destroy everything of value in the Western world. What was once a noble enterprise now has a different set of people, less intelligent, less wise, much more hell-bent on promoting themselves and a certain ideology of mad tolerance of the real and very powerful enemies of tolerance in the Western sense. Many of the groups -- not all, but many -- that like to call themselves "human rights activists" or "civil rights activists" have been taken over by those who would not be recognized as such by those who founded those organizations, a hundred or even thirty years ago. They are now, these people, in many cases -- and the ACLU is one -- in the "rights racket." Don't help them, don't lend them support or credibility, but mock and expose them and their tendentiousness, so that the true, as opposed to the false, defenders of individual liberties, can proceed.

I think John Podhoretz makes excellent points in his column this morning. A candidate of course has this or that track record on this or that issue, and it all counts, and it should.  However, a candidate also carries with him a kind of generalized single image, a Gestalt; and that also counts. 

The reason that Rudy is getting so much support from conservatives, in spite of a poor record on social issues, is his Gestalt.  It screams ANTI-LIBERAL!  Rudy is the anti-Kerry—the very opposite of a mincing, apologetic, guilt-addled elite liberal.  A lot of people like that.  Whether you can win a nomination on Gestalt remains to be seen, but it's carried Rudy a good way with conservatives already.

MADRID — A dozen radical Islamists have infiltrated the Spanish army garrison in Madrid's North African enclave of Ceuta, a magazine claimed on Tuesday. --from this news item

This can only get worse. Throughout Europe, the threats to police garrisons, to army bases, to American installations, to arms depots, to every kind of weapons facility, the threat of Muslim infiltration, diversion of weapons, sabotage -- can only get worse.

How much longer do the Defense Secretaries of the NATO nations, or whatever should replace NATO (without Turkey) continue to ignore this problem? How much longer will this not be talked about because it is, for many, too horrific a problem to discuss, too upsetting, too dangerous?

Twenty years from now, when it will be too late?

Ten years from now, when it will be much worse?

Five years from now?

When?

A reader alerts me to a recent interview of Rudy Giuliani by Sean Hannity, in which the gun rights issue came up.  The whole interview is here.

Relevant section of the interview:

HANNITY: ...Do you support the right of people to carry handguns?

GIULIANI: I understand the Second Amendment. I support it. People have the right to bear arms. When I was mayor of New York, I took over at a very, very difficult time. We were averaging about 2,000 murders a year, 10,000...

HANNITY: You inherited those laws, the gun laws in New York?

GIULIANI: Yes, and I used them. I used them to help bring down homicide. We reduced homicide, I think, by 65-70 percent. And some of it was by taking guns out of the streets of New York City.

So if you're talking about a city like New York, a densely populated area like New York, I think it's appropriate. You might have different laws other places, and maybe a lot of this gets resolved based on different states, different communities making decisions. After all, we do have a federal system of government in which you have the ability to accomplish that.

HANNITY: So you would support the state's rights to choose on specific gun laws?

GIULIANI: Yes, I mean, a place like New York that is densely populated, or maybe a place that is experiencing a serious crime problem, like a few cities are now, kind of coming back, thank goodness not New York, but some other cities, maybe you have one solution there and in another place, more rural, more suburban, other issues, you have a different set of rules.

HANNITY: But generally speaking, do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?

GIULIANI: It's not only — I mean, it's part of the Constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then the restrictions of it have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You've got to regulate, consistent with the Second Amendment.

Britain has launched a "reconciliation" drive to undermine support for the Taliban after Whitehall strategists concluded that a decisive military victory in Afghanistan cannot be won, the Guardian has learned.

In a significant shift in tactics, senior British officials have stopped talking about winning a war. "We do not use the word 'win'," one said. "We can't kill our way out of this problem." --from this news item

Would that the Bush Administration stopped using the word "win" and spoke of "containment." Would that those who talk of how this "war on terror" will take "a generation or two to win" (Cheney) or "20-30 years" (Blair) would come to understand that the Jihad goes on forever, has no end, cannot end, but can be contained by depriving the Camp of Islam of major weaponry, of its unearned and quite undeserved oil trillions, by intelligent exploitation of the divisions, ethnic (Arab and non-Arab), sectarian (chiefly Sunni and Shi'a), and economic (oil-rich Muslims and the others), that divide or could divide, and demoralize, and thereby weaken the Camp of Islam.

In answer to Mary's question, Has Boris Gone Potty? I believe the answer is yes. Writing in the Telegraph, the conservative MP Mr. Johnson explains it all for us. (thanks to Alan)

Now: what would be better for the long-term health of the planet - a Turkey increasingly apathetic about Europe, and interested in forging links with Iran? Or one firmly entrenched in the European Union, reaching out to provide a stabilising influence in what will remain, in our lifetimes, the most dangerous region of the world? I know what I want. So why does everyone hesitate? As the Pope indicated, the problem is religious, or "cultural". It won't do.

We need reconciliation, not repulsion. We need reciprocity, not rejection. Instead of intensifying the differences, by burbling on about alien "values", we should see that we are coming to a critical moment in our discussions with Turkey. We either shore up the Ataturk achievement, and reinforce Turkey's huge success in becoming a secular democracy with a Muslim population. Or we wrinkle up our noses at the Turks because of their religion.

And if we do, what are we saying to moderate Muslims all over the world? What are we saying to those who believe it is possible to make an accommodation between Islam and democracy? What are we saying to the millions of Muslims who have made their homes and lives in western Europe, including Britain? Are they a kind of geographical error?

Should they be barred, by their alien "culture", from living here? We would be crazy to reject Turkey, which is not only the former heartland of the Roman empire but also, I see, one of the leading suppliers of British fridges. One Turkish company alone has 15 per cent of the UK fridge market.

Think of all those Turkish fridges, thundering through the passes of the Balkans to Germany and Britain. Think of the intimate interdependency it sets up between the workers of Turkey and the kitchens of Britain.

Think of the colossal numbers of Britons now buying property in Turkey.

I am not saying that a lively trade in fridges or timeshares means political union. Nor am I saying that this process should happen quickly, or that we should soon allow unlimited migration from Turkey to the UK. Absolutely not.

But what do we gain by continually asserting some "cultural" gulf between us and this "alien" people?

One day, if we get it right with Turkey, we could rebuild the whole ancient harmonious union around the Mediterranean, the rich and free dissemination of produce described by Henri Pirenne, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Bosphorus; from Tunis to Lyons.

We could heal the rupture created by the Muslim invasions. We could create, once again, the Roman Economic Community built around Mare Nostrum.

Over time, we need to develop a new and deeper relationship between the EU and the Maghreb countries of North Africa, based on the old Roman idea of tolerance.

It is time we all grew up and recognised that there is not a cat's chance in hell that Islam will build a new caliphate in western Europe; and it is time the Muslims got with the programme, and recognised the irreversibility of female emancipation, and also that there is no disgrace in being altogether apathetic on the question of whether or not Mohammed is the sole Prophet of God, and that if a religion is truly great it does not matter a damn whether people draw pictures of its prophet.

That will never happen as long as Muslims feel demonised, as long as their very sense of identity and belonging is created by a sense of rejection and inferiority.

I am not saying that a lively trade in fridges or timeshares means political union. Nor am I saying that this process should happen quickly, or that we should soon allow unlimited migration from Turkey to the UK. Absolutely not.

But what do we gain by continually asserting some "cultural" gulf between us and this "alien" people?

One day, if we get it right with Turkey, we could rebuild the whole ancient harmonious union around the Mediterranean, the rich and free dissemination of produce described by Henri Pirenne, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Bosphorus; from Tunis to Lyons.

We could heal the rupture created by the Muslim invasions. We could create, once again, the Roman Economic Community built around Mare Nostrum.

Over time, we need to develop a new and deeper relationship between the EU and the Maghreb countries of North Africa, based on the old Roman idea of tolerance.

It is time we all grew up and recognised that there is not a cat's chance in hell that Islam will build a new caliphate in western Europe; and it is time the Muslims got with the programme, and recognised the irreversibility of female emancipation, and also that there is no disgrace in being altogether apathetic on the question of whether or not Mohammed is the sole Prophet of God, and that if a religion is truly great it does not matter a damn whether people draw pictures of its prophet.

That will never happen as long as Muslims feel demonised, as long as their very sense of identity and belonging is created by a sense of rejection and inferiority...

The Tennessean: A Nashville cab driver accused of running over a passenger told police that he was afraid of the two men riding in his taxi after a heated discussion about religion, an officer testified Monday.

But Metro Officer John Pepper told the court he was skeptical of the claim by Ibrahim Ahmed because the United Cab Co. driver did not report the incident to police...

"At one point he indicated as he was driving the passengers around that he felt like he was in fear of the passengers that they might harm him," Pepper said. He added: "It didn't seem credible to me."

Ahmed did not take the stand.

Jeremie Imbus was pushed alongside the witness box, where he testified from a wheelchair. Imbus and his friend Andrew Nelson, both of Ohio, were in Nashville to visit a friend and had gone out drinking in downtown bars before hailing a cab on Broadway.

Imbus, who said he had about 12 drinks from about 5 p.m. until 2:30 a.m., told the court that the drive seemed uneventful until the taxi driver began talking about Adolf Hitler.

The driver told the pair that Hitler was a "good person because he was trying to cleanse the world of the (Jews)," Imbus said.

"I just remember … (being) … I guess the word is 'shocked,' " Imbus said.

Doctors had to put screws in Imbus' leg because of a fractured tibia, which left him susceptible to arthritis, he said.

Imbus said he also suffered a fractured pelvis, small fractures on the left side of his face and lacerations...

Imbus' friend remembered more about the incident.

Nelson, who said he'd had about 12 to 15 drinks between 5:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., which included beer and shots of alcohol, also recalled the cab driver making anti-Semitic statements.

"I just said if you're going to live in a country like ours, you're going to have to tolerate other people's beliefs," Nelson said of his response.

He was outside the vehicle and just paid the driver when he noticed things getting heated between Ahmed and his friend, who was kicking the back of the driver's seat, Nelson said.

So he grabbed his friend out of the cab, and both men took off running.

Nelson said he heard the taxi accelerate and watched his friend being hit.

The crime scene was marked by acceleration marks, not skid marks, Pepper said.

Imbus and Nelson told the court that they did not say anything to prompt Ahmed's comments about Hitler and Jews. Police have said that both men are Christians...

New Duranty: WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Just hours after Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a stiff private message to President Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, the Pakistani government lashed out Monday with a series of statements insisting that “Pakistan does not accept dictation from any side or any source.”

The unusual outburst, later toned down, revealed the depth of tensions between General Musharraf and Washington over what administration officials say have been inadequate efforts by Pakistan in combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

By the time of the Pakistani response, Mr. Cheney had left Pakistan to make a second secret trip, this time across the border to Afghanistan, where a meeting with President Hamid Karzai was suddenly delayed. American officials said a snowstorm prevented helicopter flights between Kabul and Bagram Air Base, where Mr. Cheney had landed, and neither leader seemed inclined to take a risky drive to meet the other.

Bagram was the scene of a suicide bombing attack by the Taliban targetting the Vice President. More here.

The WSJ's indispensable James Taranto has this item, courtesy of the Jerusalem Post, on Best of the Web today:

"Al-Qaida posted a 56-second video Friday of rockets being fired at what it claimed was a US military base in Afghanistan," the Associated Press reports:

The pictures were accompanied by a song whose lyrics included the line: "Burn the Christians, fight the devious Christians who worship crosses."

[Taranto observes:] Obviously they're just unhappy with American foreign policy in the Middle East.