In commemoration of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on America. The United American Committee will hold a rally featuring a mock hanging of Osama bin Laden on Sunday, September 10th in front of the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City California at 10980 Washington Blvd beginning at 4:00 PM.

hat tip: JW

Via Daniel Freedman:

"Five years after the attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic extremists -- including members of Hezbollah -- still view the city as a prime target for another terrorist strike, police say," the AP reports.

The threat "is a permanent condition, and in all likelihood will worsen," the New York Police Department's top counterterrorism official, Richard Falkenrath, told an audience of private security executives Thursday. "It's a very sobering conclusion and I don't reach it at all happily, but I do think it is true," he said ...

While al-Qaida operatives and their homegrown imitators remain the greatest concern, Hezbollah should not be ignored, police officials said. They emphasized the point by showing footage of a Hezbollah rally in Lebanon where a massive crowd chanted, "Death to America."

Historically, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and is called a terrorist group by the United States, has been most active in the Middle East, but "we're worried that may be changing," Falkenrath said.

The city has pockets of Hezbollah loyalists who could be incited to violence, the NYPD intelligence analysts said. They said they suspect that Iranian spies working on the group's behalf had already done reconnaissance on landmarks, large synagogues and other potential targets in Manhattan and elsewhere.

In 2004, the United States expelled two guards at Iran's U.N. mission for photographing "sensitive" sites around the city. Iranian officials denied any wrongdoing, saying that the pair took pictures of typical tourist attractions.

Finally this is a reminder of the Iranian threat. Hezbollah is Iran's proxy, and Iran itself, as the terrorism chief reminds us, has taken an unhealthy look at Manhattan sites. A reminder why those who see no threat in Iran getting nuclear weapons are so off base.

I know, I know:  We're on the offensive; we're taking the fight to them; the Islamic fascists are on the run. 

But why do I not feel assured?  Could it be pro-Hez rallies in Detroit and San Francisco?  Could it be creeping dhimmitude coast-to-coast?  

You have to admire our bloodthirsty, supremely determined enemy:  So far, they understand us better than we understand ourselves.  They're betting that when we do wake up, it will be too late.

Diana West points out the muddle-headedness at the helm of our major opinion magazines here:

...even conservatives such as the Wall Street Journal's John Fund and National Review editor Rich Lowry -- who dismiss the notion of naming the enemy. As Mr. Lowry recently wrote online, "I hate to say it, but I don't think it's too important what we call our enemy. Yes, 'the war on terror' is flawed, but everyone knows what we're talking about...My view is the whole naming debate is "much ado," and although it's very interesting, its contribution to actually winning this war will be nil."
    Maybe that depends on the definition of "winning." And who's "everyone," anyway? And is there agreement on what constitutes an "enemy"? Notice how, in a reporter's summation of a recent presidential speech on the terrorist enemy, the Washington Post saw fit to set off the word "evil" with a pair of quotation marks: "In his speech," the reporter wrote, "Bush said terrorist leaders' statements have made plain their goals, which he called the present-day equivalent of the 'evil' aims of Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler."
     Maybe this just goes to show that one man's Hitler is another man's Fuehrer. But being vague about the enemy and non-judgmental about evil is not what we should be five years after September 11.

I suppose Lowry would have proposed fighting communism without bothering to read Lenin or Marx. The underlying assumption here is that it isn't important to understand the enemy's goals, we just want to stop one of his means to those goals: terrorism. Implied here is the thought that Islamization is just peachy, so long as there's no violence associated with it, which is what Lowry must think and also what the Bush Administration must think. As I said before, Rich Lowry, and by extension National Review, by refusing to define the enemy, plays along with him. The same goes for the Wall Street Journal and My Weekly Standard.  Ralph Peter even had the temerity to call those of us who have studied and criticized Islam "an enemy within."  Both Lowry and Peters seem to think it will all work out if we just don't know too much, or just don't say too much about what we know.     

"I still fail to see how Muslims who comprise less than 10% of Europe will ever take it over."
-- from a reader

1. Check the records on the growth in the Muslim populations of England, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Holland. One example: in 1970 there were 15,000 Muslims in Holland. Now there are one million. In the other countries the rise has been equally dramatic. Not worrisome? One out of every three babies now born in France is a Muslim baby. In 20 years, one out of every three 20-year-olds in France will be a Muslim by birth. How many will, among its population of Infidels, some of them unhinged by modern life, or seeking The Answer, or wanting a vehicle to express their discontent, will have converted to Islam?

What makes you think that Muslims will magically remain 10% of the population especially since everywhere in Western Europe, the birthrate of non-Muslims has sunk below replacement level? What will prevent that 10% from becoming 20% in 15-20 years, and 30%-40% in 30-40 years?

And why do you think that a Muslim majority is necessary for Muslims to take control of a society? Determined, self-conscious, aggressive because of its aggressive texts and essence, Islam has managed to take over many lands through essentially non-military conquest. Look at the East Indies, now Indonesia. Look at how, over the past few decades, Malaysia has been transformed into what was once a pluralist society into a society where Islam dominates, and Muslims rule. Look at how, wherever Islam has dominated, the non-Muslims are persecuted, driven out -- as with the Hindus of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

There is not the slightest reason for anything but alarm. Anything less than alarm would be crazy.

Charles Moore, writing in The Spectator, has some interesting observations on the Jameah Islameah "faith school":

You could write the history of a culture through the changing uses to which its buildings are put. At the weekend the Jameah Islameah at Mark Cross, in East Sussex, was raided by police in connection with possible terrorist training camps. The enormous Gothic edifice began life in 1868 as an orphanage. Later it became a Roman Catholic seminary. After the war it was taken over by the Legat School of Russian Ballet. Madame Nadine Legat, daughter of a Tsarist admiral, taught her version of ballet with rigorous devotion. Her book Preparation for Ballet devoted an entire chapter to ‘The Correct Way of Putting on Ballet Shoes’ in the Russian style. A colleague who taught art there in the 1980s recalls a beautiful place which tried to live by its motto, ‘Through Art Comes Education’. ‘The school possessed the most perfect studio an art teacher could imagine: at the top of a central sweeping staircase, double gothic doors opened on to a room flooded with light on three sides. In front, a cedar of Lebanon framed the view to the lake. The windows on either side gave a bird’s-eye view into the dance studios from where the sound of tapping feet and piano keys came all day.’ Ballet tastes gradually changed, and the school closed in 1991. I suppose the Roman Catholic seminary, the Legat school and the Jameah Islameah school are all testimony to a host nation that opened up to outside influences and gradually became more tolerant. I hope that Jameah Islameah will prompt comparable happy memories from ex-pupils and teachers in years to come, but looking at the grim, neglected appearance of the place today, I doubt it. The great cedar appears to have been cut down.

This neglect does not surprise me. Muslims do not have a good record on heritage preservation, especially, as Hugh Fitzgerald argues so eloquently, where the heritage is from the infidels.

Jameah Islameah is described as a ‘faith school’. People have not really woken up to the difficulties that Church schools will increasingly face as it is argued that all the main faiths should be treated by the state in the same way, including in education. Historically, it would have been assumed that Christianity held a special position automatically. In the case of schools, this was reinforced by the fact that, until the Forster Education Act of 1870, most children were educated by the Churches. A deal had to be done with them if the state were to be admitted at all. Today, Church schools in the state sector are generally preferred by parents because of their higher standards, but the pressure from the public authorities is to remove from them almost everything that is distinctively religious on the grounds that this is discriminatory. In the face of this, bishops resist very feebly. Meanwhile, the question of what the state should do about Muslim schools becomes more insistent. Understandably, many argue that no Muslim schools should receive state subsidy, since they might teach doctrines hostile to peaceful life in Britain and will aggravate segregation. The apparent logic is to remove all state support for Church schools (and Jewish schools) as well. It may turn out that the best way to teach Christianity now is to remove it from all areas of the life of the state but if so, it must be thought through very carefully. It has never happened, after all, in the entire history of our country.

Nor should it. Like our monarchy, our established Church and our faith schools seem illogical and out of date, but they work, and it is wrong to fix what is not broken. Why should we abolish Church of England, Catholic and Jewish schools when these work so well? As always, it is Islam that throws a spanner in the works. A Muslim school is not just a faith school because Islam is inherently political. The sooner it is recognised that Islam is not only a religion - not even a religion, in my view - but a totalitarian political ideology, the sooner we will stop having to destroy our own religious heritage in the name of equality.

I have a lot of time for Charles Moore, who, I believe, is starting to understand Islam. But the logical conclusion of his argument - that Islam is uniquely dangerous - needs to be stated in so many words.

I was reading about an interview with that Austrian teenaged girl, Natascha Kampusch, who was held captive in a tiny basement cell for eight years (from age 10 to age 18) and was struck, no, I was floored, by how articulate and mature she is. The only reason I can think that she could possibly sound so well-educated is that she must have educated herself by actually reading books and was kept out of our multi-multi-bazillion dollar educational system and was equally sheltered from our multi-multi bazillion dollar entertainment edifice, not to mention isolated from other children who are all hypnotized and enthralled by the great Steropticon.

She's living proof.

Two of our great new contributors, Alykhan Velshi and Howard Anglin, have an article written together up at NRO:

In a landmark speech Wednesday, President Bush announced that all captured terrorists will receive the protections of Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. This concession was compelled by the recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfield, where a narrow majority of the Court substituted its preferred detainee treatment policy for that of the president. Though bowing to the Supreme Court’s ukase, Bush acidly observed that this decision has “impaired our ability to prosecute terrorists.” This was too kind. The Court’s ruling in Hamdan established a deeply flawed framework for dealing with terrorists motivated by an implacable religious desire to destroy.

Those who favor applying the Geneva Conventions to militant Islamists rely on several dubious assumptions. First, they believe this will redound to our own troops’ benefit if they are captured. Second, that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions represents a minimum standard of decency that must be applied to all detainees, without exception. Both arguments reveal a woeful and dangerous ignorance of the text, history, and purpose of the Geneva Conventions....

Read it all.

MEMRI has more evidence that the sweet, peaceful Indonesian mind on Islam reacts like all the rest:

The Indonesian Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was released from prison in July 2006 after having been charged with complicity in the Bali terror attacks of 2002, gave an interview to Al-Jazeera in which he outlined his plans for establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia. Bashir attacked democracy and the West, and called on Muslims to wage jihad against the ruling regimes in the Muslim world. The interview appeared on August 21, 2006, on Al-Jazeera's English-language website.

"We demand an Islamic state, and not some form of Islamisation of society. We want the state to be Islamic, with Islamic leaders who have the courage and will to implement the shari'a in total. There is no other way...

"We want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The shari'a is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it!

"Right now we are drafting our own constitutional amendments for Indonesia, the framework for an Indonesian Islamic state where Islamic laws are enforced. Indonesians must understand that there is no Islamic state without the enforcement of Islamic laws. Otherwise it is just talk and nothing else."

AP: CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Jazeera broadcast Thursday what it called a previously unshown video in which al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is seen meeting with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media branch.

The video showed bin Laden sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.

Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is in U.S. custody, and this week President Bush announced plans to put him on military trial.

In the video, bin Laden was wearing a dark robe and white headgear walking in a mountainous area. He smiled as he greeted several men, which the tape said were Sept. 11 hijackers.

"As for the withdrawal timetable, one little detail that must be attended before the troops can withdraw to the desert is that we must make sure that Saddam is properly hanged."
-- from a reader

Making that a condition precedent to departure would merely allow the Shi'a who rule Iraq to delay our departure. For they could simply put off the trial, or the final verdict, or the carrying out of the verdict -- it might be delivered in October, and then the date for its carrying out be set, say, for six months hence. And what about appeals?

Why would the Iraqi government do this? Well, for the same reason it has, over the past 3 years, tried in every way to squeeze still more money out of the rich and blindly generous Americans, for that government, whether it has been al-Jaafari slyly mentioning on his visit to Washington the need for a new "Marshall Plan -- let's call it the Bush Plan" (thank god that got nowhere), to the equally meretricious Maliki, supporter of Hezbollah, the man who wanted to free Iraqis jailed "only" because they had killed American soldiers, and had to be read the riot act in order to drop that idea.

The Shi'a of the Dawa and SCIRI parties are perfectly comfortable, pleased even, with the idea of American soldiers fighting and dying, to suppress the "insurgents" (that is, the Sunnis who refuse to accept the transfer of power to the Shi'a) and even being asked to handle Moqtada al-Sadr, who will never be that senior cleric his father was, will always remain in all-but-dissertation ("ABD") status.

And the longer American troops can remain to do what the Shi'a are not yet ready to do, in inflicting great damage on the Sunnis, the more opportunities all kinds of locals will be able to squeeze more money out of those innocent soldiers ("What? Your predecessor, Captain Brown, promised he would build a new road right here, and a school, and a factory, and he promised I would get $300,000 in cash to spread around the tribal elders -- why, he gave me his word, and now you are telling me you never heard about this? Are you calling me, the tribal chief of the X, the Y, the Z tribe, a liar?"), for all that "reconstruction" so idiotically and wastefully and corruptly engaged in, winning not a single heart, not a single mind, to the American cause, to the cause of Infidels, but allowing the local Muslims to be even more rapacious in their demands, displaying that total absence of real, as opposed to very temporary and feigned gratitude, that the American officers and men understand far better than does The Great Hallucinator in Washington.

And not only money. There is always the need for more, more, more military equipment and training. The endless litany of "if only" we were given this, the same kinds of equipment you Americans have, just think what wonderful soldiers we would be, and how we would so quickly destroy the "insurgents" (that is, our rivals and enemies) and "if only we had that," why then that so-called "Iraqi" army and "Iraqi" police would flourish. Never mind that in both cases 70% of the recruits are Shi'a Arabs, and many of the rest Kurds, and that the longer the Americans remain, the more training these Shi'a will receive. Were it otherwise, were the Americans to begin training the Sunnis and supplying them with weaponry, the Shi'a government would suddenly discover it wanted the Americans to leave, at once.

Saddam Hussein dead or alive? That depends on if you think he would, if executed, become a valuable symbol to the Sunnis, and will encourage them to fight against the Shi'a, in the name of this unlikely Sunni martyr killed by the "Rafidite dogs," or whether you think that by keeping him alive, he is likely to encourage Sunni irredentism and Shi'a fears that he might, like Napoleon, escape from St. Helena and arrive, triumphant, in Tikrit or Falluja or Ramadi.

What weakens the Camp of Islam more -- Saddam dead, or Saddam alive?

In any case, no need to wait around for the Shi'a to execute him. They may well delay the day, in order to put off the American departure. Right now it is too valuable to them. The minute it ceases to be, they will boot the Americans out themselves, without a single public sign of gratitude.

The San Jose Mercury News has the story:

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The song blares from seemingly every shop and car window in the Palestinian territories, hailing Hezbollah as "the hope of Lebanon" and warning Israelis that "blood will be repaid with more blood."

Its author knew it was going to be a hit as soon as he wrote it.

"It was more than a dream of a song," Ala-Eddin Abdul-Haija, 23, recalled. "It was fame. I could feel fame coming to us through this song. But I did not expect so much fame."

Before the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, Abdul-Haija's Band of the North was a little-known purveyor of love songs. Now it's the most popular Palestinian musical group in recent memory, thanks to "Greetings, Hope of Lebanon," the song Abdul-Haija wrote in an afternoon, 10 days into the fighting in southern Lebanon. He said he'd been watching seemingly endless footage of dead and wounded women and children on Arabic television when the inspiration hit.

The 10-year-old band - composed of Abdul-Haija, his three brothers and their neighbor - came to music through Abdul-Haija's father, Kayed Abdul-Haija, a well-known Palestinian poet. As youngsters, Abdul-Haija and his brothers were known as precocious. But this Sunni Muslim, Palestinian song of praise for Shiite Muslim, Lebanese Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made them famous.

"Look at Nasrallah, bold courageous Nasrallah," they sing. "He has responded to the call of Muslims and Arabs. He has responded to the call for revenge from Muslims and Arabs."

The song begins with a clipping from a Nasrallah speech, in which he pledges, "Jerusalem, we are coming." The music is all thumping drums and keyboards. It's loud.

Palestinians say that much of the attention the song brings is negative. Israeli police have seized tapes and CDs from those driving in Jerusalem and smashed them. Music store owners say they have to hide copies from Israeli soldiers or risk confiscation.

The song clearly is hostile to Israel, but it is everywhere.

When it started rattling windows at a performance Monday at a gathering of the militant Sunni group Hamas to honor local college graduates, little boys and their grandfathers started clapping along. Earlier, the crowd had cheered when the welcoming speaker called on the graduates to "never abandon jihad, rise and fight for God."

"Do people know their song?" said Yazeed Khader, the editor in chief of Hamas newspaper Manbar El-Islam. "Of course, every family has a copy. Most families have five copies. The daughters have a copy. The sons have a copy. The mother has a copy. The father has a copy. Everyone, throughout Palestine, is singing this song."...

In response to Rebecca and Andy's conversation yesterday:

Withdrawal from Iraq would be depicted very briefly as a "victory for Islam." But then, as the real situation in Iraq becomes clear, and as it becomes clearer -- not in years, but in months -- that a permanent fault-line between Sunni and Shi'a Islam has been established, and as the refusal of the Shi'a to yield to Sunni demands (why should they --they've got the oil, they've got the best territory, they are the ones who suffered for so long from Sunni persecution), and the Sunni refusal to acquiesce in the new order, and while both sets of Arabs are preoccupied, Kurds in Kurdistan push for independence). And soon enough the airwaves and the newspapers in the Muslim world will contain stories shrilly denouncing the Americans for "leaving Iraq" in a "deliberate attempt to sow discord" and so on, and the few weeks of exultation over a "victory" will now sound hollow, and both the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even more, the malevolent "staunch allies" of the United States among the Sunni Arabs will realize that their usual appeals to the United States ("You have to do something about the Shia" or a favorite variant, "You have to put pressure on Israel because if you don't the Iranians will further exploit the situation and harm us and you don't want that, do you" and other blague, by now transparent, designed yet again to have the Americans dance to a Sunni Arab tune. But what if we won't? What if we will force Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., Jordan, Egypt, even Alawite-controlled but Sunni-populated Syria, have to deal with, or not, as they see fit, the Shi'a takeover of Iraq or the most important parts of Iraq, the Land of the Two Rivers, of such historic importance to history-haunted Muslim minds, in which real or false past glories loom so large?

Think beyond the first week or month after the withdrawal, imagine just a bit further ahead. And if that withdrawal is accompanied by much sterner measures, including a freed-up military now dealing, from the air, with the Iranian science project (having learned the lesson about land invasion of any Muslim country) -- from now on, wreak destruction when necessary but without any of that "reconstruction" stuff, any of that "winning hearts and minds" on the ground stuff.

Think of the repercussions, as the Sunnis and Shi'a go at it, as they will, and think of the inevitable repercussions in the relations, already very bad, with persecution of and discrimination against Shi'a in Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states, at time rising to the level of deliberate murder by Sunni groups, as in Pakistan. Think of what will be done by, or done against, Shi'a populations in Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain. Imagine Hezbollah volunteers being summoned by the Iranian government to help co-religionists in Iraq, and some of them going, there to fight their Sunni counterparts, or some of them refusing to go, thereby demonstrating their lack of usefulness and loyalty to Iran that might limit their future weapons deliveries. Think of the government of Saudi Arabia attempting to move wholesale the Shi'a population in Al-Hasa, where all the major oilfields are. Think of the Sunni Arab ruler of Bahrain, attempting to deal with the 70-75% of the population that is Shi'a, and keenly aware of it -- and not only Shi'a, but also, in many cases, of Persian ancestry. Think of Kuwait, think of Yemen, where significant Shi'a populations exist. And so on.

Not everyone in the Camp of Islam will interpret an American withdrawal as an American failure. And soon enough, all will see that it bespeaks a much harder line, one where sentimental descriptions of the Shi'a as "those who seek freedom" will be put aside, and the aim will always and everywhere be to halt the presence within, and power over, the Infidel states, by Muslim peoples and polities.

"President Bush vowed on Tuesday to prevent al Qaeda from setting up a violent, radical Islamic empire based in Iraq, which he said was Osama bin Laden's ultimate goal."

"If we retreat from Iraq, if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty 50 years from now, history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act," Bush said.
-- from this article about a speech by Bush last Tuesday

How would Al Qaeda, a Sunni organization, many of whose members are in complete agreement with Al-Zarqawi that the Shi'a in Iraq are "Rafidite dogs" and who regard them as the worst kind of Infidels, manage to "take over Iraq”? How would it accomplish this -- especially with Iran next door, its agents already within Iraq, and its appeal not dependent on whether or not Al-Sistani or anyone else necessarily approves of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but on a more visceral feeling, a feeling that the Shi'a are being deprived of their rights by the Sunni?

Why is withdrawal from Iraq called "retreat from Iraq"? Why not call it a sensible move, or if it pleases you, a diabolically clever and ruthless move? Or if it pleases you, call it something else: not a "retreat," but a move designed expend no more lives of Americans, and not to further demoralize and weaken the necessary long-term resolve of the military and support for counter-Jihad measures among civilians. Rather, call it a means to ensure that the sectarian and ethnic fissures in Iraq will not be dampened but will, rather, work in the same way that the Iran-Iraq War worked: to use up men, money, and materiel, and for eight years to preoccupy the two most unpleasant regimes of Iran and Iraq. In any case, sooner or later it will be understood that these fissures cannot be dampened, because of the violence, aggression, and refusal to compromise that are the natural condition of societies suffused with Islam.

No matter what Bush says, if the Americans do not withdraw from Iraq soon, there will be continued damage done to the American military, as well as a widening split between the United States and what should be its natural allies in Western Europe. This split is encouraged by the army of Muslim Arabs so adept at exploiting the divisions within the Camp of the West, while the Americans are so un-adept or unwilling to exploit the divisions within the Camp of Islam (sectarian, ethnic, and economic, as detailed here on many occasions). If Bush continues on this path, then in 2008 it is very likely that a policy of real appeasement of Islam will be so attractive to some who are sick of the mess in Iraq, that they will vote the appeasers into power. Yet the mess in Iraq is entirely unnecessary, for the true "victory" in Iraq was won, the legitimate goals of Iraq War #1 attained, within one year of the invasion, by March 2004. This, however, remains unrecognized by the Administration, and of course will not be pointed out by any of its political enemies, who are all dead-set on not identifying or recognizing that victory.

The first war in Iraq, the war that went from March 2003 to March 2004, made a certain sense. Saddam Hussein had done everything he could to make the world -- that is, Iran -- believe he had major weaponry -- even as he offered stage-whispers of denial that only increased suspicions. Unfortunately, those suspicions were raised not only in Iran, but in the United States and other Western countries. The invasion was the result. It took quite a while, in a country as large as Iraq, and with as many hiding-places, a country which American soldiers have described as one vast weapons-horde after another, to assure the government that the major weaponry, or projects to make such weaponry, were either undone, or halted, or had not been obtained or undertaken. And the removal of the regime of Saddam Hussein, the killing of his sons, his own capture in late 2003, the Game of Fifty-Two Pick-Up, made inevitable the reemergence of those sectarian and ethnic divisions that are not to be suppressed but encouraged -- as is the help of co-religionists from outside Iraq.

Having discovered for the American government the victory they have been unable to locate, I think I have a right to claim a Finder's Fee. To what government office shall I send my claim?

Newt Gingrich in the WSJ this morning uses some common sense: He says, [Bush's strategies regarding the war] are failing for three reasons:

(1) They do not define the scale of the emerging World War III, between the West and the forces of militant Islam, and so they do not outline how difficult the challenge is and how big the effort will have to be. (2) They do not define victory in this larger war as our goal, and so the energy, resources and intensity needed to win cannot be mobilized. (3) They do not establish clear metrics of achievement and then replace leaders, bureaucrats and bureaucracies as needed to achieve those goals.

But in my view, he fundamentally stumbles here in the same way analysts across the board are stumbling over Islam and the western vs. Islamic concepts of freedom:

Beyond our shores, we must commit to defeating the enemies of freedom in Iraq, starting with doubling the size of the Iraqi military and police forces.

Though many may take issue with my assertion that the Qur'an is a fetish object for Muslims, there is no question the Bible has always been more than that.

"In the beginning was the Word." That single Johannine phrase is the crux of Judeo-Christian understanding of reality. Fidelity to the Word has nothing to do with the look of words on vellum, however lovely.

So writes Maureen Mullarkey in her very insightful review of The Museum of Biblical Art's "Gilded Legacies: The St. John's Bible in Context" in the NY Sun today:

[T]he interior confusions of its sponsor find subtle embodiment in a made-for-exhibition Bible that is less a companion to liturgical prayer than an ambitious tour de force with a parade schedule, a catalog, its own Web site, and wares including DVDs, facsimile editions, note cards, and framed prints.

The sacral imagination and the pictorial one are not fully in sync in the St. Johns project. Sacred art cedes to decoration when the language of religious symbols is faultily transmitted or distrusted. Illustrations here have all the coherence of a 1970s folk Mass against the consistent clarity and dignity of the letter arts.

The St.John's Bible was the brainchild of Donald Jackson, an eminent calligrapher and official scribe to Queen Elizabeth II. With the Abbey's backing, he assembled a team of artists, calligraphers, and computer-adept designers...

"The Genealogy of Christ," an exquisite menorah threaded with Hebrew calligraphy, affirms Christianity's organic dependence on Judaism. But additional Zen, Navajo, Buddhist, and Islamic elements hint at a multicultural variant of Pascal's wager and lack of confidence in the claims of Christian motifs. As Mr. Jackson has said, he wanted to suggest "the connectedness of all seekers of enlightenment. All paths lead to God." Jihadists and Wiccans know better...

...St. John's is a cross to be taken up with a spoon, a pudding of gold leaf for a post-Christian culture uneasy with any cross at all. (If all paths lead to God, get rid of that cross. It's just weighing things down.)

Bravo Maureen! You must read it all.

I may be wrong about this, so do correct me if that is the case, but I’ve noticed a few differences between American and British usage.

Poles

Americans say of something they want to avoid, “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.” While the British may say this too, we are more likely to say, “I wouldn’t touch that with a barge pole.” A barge pole is around ten feet long, so we are probably talking about the same kind of pole. If not for barge purposes, and for not touching unpleasant things with, what use would an American have for a ten-foot pole?

Backsides

While the British are glad to see the back of something – perhaps the very thing that they had not touched with their barge pole – Americans seem to be glad to see the backside of it. Am I right? Nevertheless, I imagine that there will be some backsides that Americans would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

Horns

An American “doesn’t like to blow his own horn”. An Englishman “doesn’t like to blow his own trumpet”. If an Englishman could blow his own horn – and I read in Cosmopolitan that one in a hundred can – he would certainly like it.

Ah, now I know where that ten-foot pole comes in.

The government of Pakistan today denied it would allow Osama bin Laden to avoid capture under terms of a peace agreement it signed with Taliban leaders in the country's North Waziristan area. - from this news item

How much debt relief? How much more aid of every kind? How many more F-16s? How much more averting the gaze, as when the Taliban were nurtured and promoted, and their regime given diplomatic recognition, by Pakistan? How much more averting the gaze, as when A. Q. Khan stole nuclear secrets from Holland, and returned to Pakistan to build that "Islamic bomb" with the full cooperation and approval of Pakistan's generals, who also no doubt knew of his Nuclear Outreach to Iran and North Korea, and possibly other countries (Libya? Saudi Arabia? Egypt?) as well.

How much more?

For what? So as to pick up Bin Laden? So what? Bin Laden is replaceable. And the ranks in his group, a group no different in its promptings and ultimate goals, from a thousand other Muslim terrorist groups and groupuscules, are endlessly replenishable from those who believe deeply in Islam, deeply enough to participate themselves, rather than merely support in every other way, the violent Jihad to ensure the spread of the True Islam, in both Dar al-Islam in places where it needs to be enforced, and in Dar al-Harb, where Islam needs to dominate, and Muslims rule, as they have never before managed to rule.

But these are different times. Trillions in oil money, the accidental wealth, the only kind of wealth, other than the Jizyah of foreign aid supplied by the Infidels, that the Muslim peoples are able to accumulate. Tens of millions of Muslims foolishly allowed in to the Lands of the Infidels, and given every conceivable kind of assistance that Infidel welfare-states can supply: free advanced medical care of a kind impossible to receive in the Muslim world, free education of a kind impossible to receive in the Muslim world, subsidized or free housing, and what's more, a government and indigenous Infidels willing to bend over backwards, in every way, to accommodate those ungrateful, permanently hostile, Muslim migrants who claim, in a most unpleasant and disturbing and threatening way, that "we are here to stay."

And Pakistan remains what? An "ally on terror"? Because it keeps up a charade, a Musharrafian charade (he doesn't want his accountant son forced to leave Massachusetts, condemned to a future in a Muslim country), possibly to be followed by a Sharifian or Bhutto-esque charade, the same parade of generals and zamindars, employing their English, Caliban-like, the better to curse us, or to inveigle us, the Infidels.

We've had it. We've had it with all of them, including the most plausible of them, the anglophone journalists who slyly deflect all criticism of Islam, and work to prevent Infidel understanding of Islam, such as Ahmad Rashid (who in the first page or so of "Jihad" tells us that the most important meaning of that word is "a spiritual struggle" of the individual Believer to be a good Muslim -- in other words, the usual nonsense.

Support India's right to Kashmir to the hilt. Support anything India does to punish Pakistan (and Bangladesh) for their support of Muslim terrorism in India. Don't even think about it. Just choose the non-Muslim side, period. Later you can read K. S. Lal and V. S. Naipaul and Francois Gautier and Koenraad Elst. For now. just choose India.