When will the madness end?

This is the first sentence of Andrew McCarthy's must-read piece on the "moderate" Fatah. The madness in question is our government's willingness, nay, eagerness, to fund the Palestinian terrorists.

Here is what all Americans should, and must, know about Fatah: they, along with their feuding cousins Hamas, want Israel gone. And the Jews dead. From Mr. McCarthy's piece:

The Fatah constitution still calls for the "eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence[,]" through an "armed revolution" which is to be the "decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence" — a revolution that "will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated."

These are not people you can, or should, negotiate with. How does one negotiate when the other party a) won't acknowledge that your very existence is legitimate, and, b) their goal is to kill you?

Only a fool negotiates thusly. And an even greater fool enables the terrorists by giving them money. It looks as though the Bush administration talks tough, but then goes along with the State Department's Arabists. You know, the ones who think that the world would be a better place without Israel.

Not just another "human tragedy"

The recent passage by the United Nations General Assembly of a resolution that condemns Holocaust denial was interesting, and useless. Interesting insofar as the UN's worthies felt it necessary to delve into the subject at all (Iran, of course); useless in the same way the the entire United Nations is useless. Or worse than useless, actually.

In contrast to the UN, Hillel Halkin has a useful piece on this today in the New York Sun, and he captures in prose what I was thinking:

that Holocaust denial laws and regulations are foolish. Not only are they an infringement on freedom of thought and speech, they are counterproductive in terms of their intentions. If a country were suddenly to pass a "solar orbit denial law," criminalizing the belief that the earth stands still in space, it would be natural to wonder what that country's astronomers know that we don't to have made it so hysterically afraid of anyone saying that Copernicus was wrong.

The same holds true of Holocaust denial. For anyone who is neither a lunatic nor a fool of one kind or another, the Holocaust is as much a fact as the earth's orbiting of the sun. To make denying it illegal can only suggest to the poorly informed but not necessarily bigoted that it may not be such a fact after all and that there are things about it that need to be hidden in order to keep the illusion of its factuality alive.

This is right as rain, and it makes little sense to deny the facts of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, there are quite a few people, mostly of the Muslim or bigoted persuasion, who opine that far too much attention is paid to the Holocaust.

The vast majority of such people seem to be motivated by, pick and choose, a) anti-Semitism, b) anti-Zionism (which has become, essentially, structural anti-Semitism), c) anti-Americanism. The latter simply to nip at Uncle Sam's ankles for the crime of supporting Israel. It all boils down to anti-Semitism, basically. Deny the Holocaust, and one denies that there should be any "Jewish National Home" to compensate, somehow, for six million killed. No Holocaust, and Israel becomes just another European colony planted in the middle of precious Muslim lands.

But Mr. Halkin reminds us that the Holocaust is not just another attempt at genocide. It was aimed precisely at the Children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. My people, the Jews. From his article:

The Holocaust is not the world's "only human tragedy," and if we wish to turn it into a universal symbol of human tragedy, or of human evil, we are ignoring the most important thing about it, which is that it would never have taken place, or proceeded as far as it did, had not much of the world, though disliking the Nazis, thought that the people they sought to exterminate deserved it because they were Jews. If the world can't remember that about itself, there's not much point in remembering the Holocaust at all.

I have to disagree a bit: there is always virtue in remembering not to kill large groups of people for the crime of being a certain religion, ethnicity, nationality, or race. The problem is that by homogenizing the Holocaust, making it a generic crime against humanity, the world is allowed to forget why there needs to be at least one Jewish state.

Just in case...

Palestinian flack

Jay Nordlinger is providing his annual reporting from the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Today's installment includes reporting on a joint session with Saeb Erekat, Palestinian flack, and his Israeli opposite number, Ephraim Sneh.

Now, all by itself, the presence of these two at the same forum is encouraging. But, read Jay's piece and see if it isn't just the SSDD (same s***, different day). Here's my response to him:

Jay, with respect to the Erekat-Sneh show, you wrote you didn’t "quite grasp Erekat’s point" in his joke. The punchline, "I just thought the man would have learned from his mistake," well describes the Palestinians’ recent history: never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and doing it again and again. Watching a movie, even knowing the outcome is predetermined, is an excellent metaphor for how the Palestinians have behaved.

The most recent was electing Hamas, a rejectionist, terrorist outfit, to a plurality position. The worst in recent memory was Arafat’s rejection of a generous peace, brokered by Clinton in 2000, and starting the current intifada on a pretext.

As for Erekat, I don’t think I'd accept anything that a Palestinian said in a Western setting. No, not a John Wayne western; Samuel Huntington Western. I’d check and see what MEMRI might provide in the way of translations from the Arabic of what the Palestinian leaders feed their people. I suspect it will not be quite so nice.

But, hope springs eternal, and one may hope, against experience, that the Palestinians will finally, and truly, accept a Jewish state of Israel. This is an important distinction. The Saudi plan, and, what most Palestinians mean when they say a "two state solution," includes the "right of return" for Palestinians unto the fourth and fifth generation from 1948. Which will simply swamp Israel demographically, and, next thing you know, there’s yet another Arab and Muslim state in the Middle East.

As a conservative, I’m an optimist. I’d love to see peace break out in the Middle East; and I think it is possible. At the very least, it would stop that incessant whining, e.g., "the road to [fill in your hotspot; now it’s Baghdad] runs through Jerusalem." Claiming that, somehow, "we," meaning the United States, need to fix the problem caused principally by rejectionist Arabs, is simply a dodge to avoid doing what ought to be done.

But I’m also realistic, and I think we should be skeptical when listening to flacks from Palestine (or most other places, for that matter…)

"too fine to be perceptible"

David Pryce-Jones now has a blog at NRO. It is well worth the time. Today's entry concerns the just-departed Abbé Pierre, an acclaimed holy man of the Christian persuasion.

Perhaps he was holy, that is. As is sometimes the case, what you see isn't all of what you get. in Pierre's case, this is apparently the case. From Pryce-Jones:

Abbé Pierre who has just died at the age of 94 was perhaps a good, and even a saintly, man. Certainly he looked the part, a white-bearded sage, habitually wearing a comforting French beret and a dramatic black cape. He started Emmaus in 1949, a movement to provide shelter for the homeless, and now an organisation in some 30 countries. That is to his credit. Hearing of the death, Jacques Chirac called him, "an immense figure, a conscience, a man who personified goodness." And that’s quite enough to make anyone have second thoughts.

Beware of holy man wearing sackcloth and ashes, he could have written. So, why think that this Pierre fellow was anything other than a good and holy man? Just this:

...in 1996 he came out to endorse a book called "The Founding Myths of Israeli Policy." Its author was Roger Garaudy, a veteran Stalinist, who after the Soviet collapse converted to Islam (what else?), moved to Cairo, and became a Holocaust denier. Nobody who had ever saved Jews from Nazism could conceivably have come to the support of the disgusting Garaudy. But the Abbé did. Proud to claim fifty years of friendship with Garaudy, he compared the Holocaust to what the ancient Israelites had done, and referred to Zionism as an American-based worldwide plot.

Well, guilt by association, and, by their friends ye shall know them. God will judge Abbé Pierre. In the here and now, I've my doubts about anyone who is called "good and holy." Yes, that very much includes Mother Teresa and Gandhi, both of whom I suspect of being not quite as good as their publicity would have us believe. But Pryce-Jones nails it about Pierre:

Perhaps he was in his dotage. And perhaps in his case, as in so many in a century that smoothly converted morality into a branch of public relations, the distinction between a good man and a charlatan is too fine to be perceptible.

I suggest that this is a subtle way of saying that Abbé Pierre may not be very comfortable when he comes before the throne.

Why they hate us, redux...

Dinesh D'Souza, scourge of political correctness since his days at Dartmouth, has written a new polemic of the "why they hate us" variety. The "they" are the so-called Islamic extremists, the "us" is America and its culture. Or lack thereof.

In his new book, The Enemy at Home, D'Souza targets "the lack thereof" as a principal cause of Islamic terrorism against us. The charge is, not that our liberals literally invited terrorists to attack. Rather, it is that our excessively bourgeois and allegedly atheistic culture so disgusts the pious Muslims as to incite violence.

Among other things, D'Souza goes so far as to state there is a "de facto alliance between the radical Muslims and the American left." And, "a traditional conservative in America would have more core values in common with a traditional Muslim in Egypt or Turkey than he would have with Michael Moore or Hillary Clinton."

There appears to be some truth to the former, at least if one is limit the American left to idiotarians like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. But they are a fringe element, and do not at all speak for any kind of majority. As for the latter, speaking as "a traditional conservative" in America, this is nonsense on stilts.

What appears to motivate pious Muslims is the need for Islam to subdue infidels. By persuasion if possible, but, as 1,400 years of history have shown, by the sword where persuasion fails. By its own holy book, the Koran, it is simply not acceptable for Islam to coexist in peace with other faiths (or lack of faith), unless and until those who confess another faith submit to the authority of Muslims.

Giving credit where it's due, D'Souza is right on the mark when he writes of the worst elements of our left wingers and of our culture. The left projects an image of American self-hatred combined with an inability to protect ourselves. Our culture, in its worst aspects, is, simply, disgusting in its materialism verging on idolatry.

What Islamists and others may miss, however, is that America still retains a bedrock of decency and culture. That a majority of Americans may not know Bach from Bartók isn't what is key. What is key is that most Americans share the basic Judeo-Christian values, tempered by a post-Enlightenment respect for the rights of all people to worship, or not, as their conscience dictates.

The concept is enshrined in the First Amendment, and I'd hazard that these few but mighty words might most accurately answer the question of "why they hate us." Even before its ratification (December 15, 1791), our first president gave life to its heart, in his letter to the
Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790. President Washington wrote specifically to Jews as a people who, in diaspora, had been persecuted and literally expelled from many nations:

May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.

"...and there shall be none to make him afraid." This is why they hate us; we're just too tolerant of those whose faith differs from our own.

Now that's my kind of epitaph. It is from Art Buchwald's farewell column, titled, appropriately enough, "Goodbye, My Friends."

Art Buchwald, who died Wednesday, January 17, had written this column last year, with the proviso that it not be published until after his death. It was published in today's Washington Post. In it, this kindly yet sharp-witted everyman-genius reminds us of what we shall all miss.

Art Buchwald, a mensch's mensch.

Pat Buchanan, you've got a friend...

...in William Pfaff, who is a columnist for the International Herald Tribune. What they share is an apparent fear and hatred of that sinister "Jewish lobby" (or, as Pitchfork Pat used to say, Israel's "amen corner") and, naturally, the Zionist Entity. Although neither Buchanan, nor Pfaff, so far as I know, go so far as to call Israel what its declared enemies call it.

No, Pfaff, and Buchanan, are more subtle anti-Semites. They don't actually come right out and state that they hate Jews and the Jewish state. But they make claims that can, even with charity, only be called what they are: filled with hatred for Israel and for American Jews.

Absent any direct accusations of anti-Semitism, Hillel Halkin, takes Pfaff to task for some really bad logic. From Mr. Halkin's piece in the New York Sun, a tasty quote from The Pfaffman:

Mr. Pfaff says in a recent column that the Jewish state has been conducting a "propaganda campaign against Iran, accusing it of developing nuclear weapons … to convince the American public that the United States should go to war against Iran to eliminate its power to threaten Israel." Israel, Mr. Pfaff believes, is about to sucker America again. Already, he writes, American "fleet units have been ordered to the Gulf, together with troops not part of the Iraq reinforcement. An admiral has been named theater commander. The Israelis are ready to go."

Mr. Halkin then destroys these silly assumptions, one by one. The most obvious problem with the assumption that Israel wants war with Iran is that it would be Israel that would pay, in Halkin's words, the "blood price" for an attack on Iran.

After reading all of Mr. Halkin's piece, he's done as good a job of fisking the idiotarian Pfaff as anyone can. But the underlying problem remains: there are far too many who lack the intellectual curiosity or who simply don't bother to read other sources who might think that, somehow, Israel and the Jews really are pulling the strings, and that it's only a matter of time before our Joint Chiefs call Jerusalem for their marching orders.

"be a light unto the nations"

The Jerusalem Post has a Q&A with Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. My first reaction to this is, "who gives a fuzzy white rat's tuchas" to what some haredi thinks? And who died and made him melech, anyway?

But then I read some of the responses, and, for all of my lack of belief in formal Judaism, I was impressed. Mind, I absolutely do not agree that all Jews must return to Israel in order to fulfill prophecy. A God who created what appears to be an unbounded universe is not going to be limited to the Holy of Holies in some Third Temple in Jerusalem.

This one question and answer, however, made me stop to reflect:

Q: Rivka Langworthy, Melbourne, Australia: B"H What, in your opinion, should the role of Jews in the diaspora be? Is it important for us all to aim to make aliyah, or should we maintain a vibrant presence in other lands? How can diaspora Jews work for the benefit of the State of Israel, other than making aliyah? How can Jews in the diaspora, who are often so disparate, work together in an effective way?

A: Rabbi Metzger: Our aspiration is that all Jews in the Diaspora will make aliyah to the Holy Land, but so long as there are many communities living abroad it is our duty to care and assist them until the coming of the Messiah. God willing, when the Messiah will have arrived, all Jews will come to Eretz Israel. The responsibility of members of communities in the Diaspora is to support their brethren and their homeland in all ways possible, to be a light unto the nations and to sanctify God's name.

That last sentence has a ring of truth to it. Not to be argumentative, but I believe it applies equally well to Christians as it does to Jews.

My point is that we, Jews, and Christians, share a common heritage. Those who would be holy, should live as holy men and women, and, in the Rav's phrase, "be a light unto the nations." And, although I don't know about that business with the Messiah requiring us all to pack up and go to Israel, I do stand with the RAMBAM: though the Messiah may tarry, I expect he'll be along some day...

All you need to know

Once again, an eager if naive American secretary of state goes into "shuttle diplomacy" mode. Condi Rice is an admirable woman, but is clearly still playing the good and loyal analyst by going to the Middle East to listen to the whines of the Arabs about those frightful Israelis.

There is only one thing wrong with this all-too-public and loud attempt to re-enter the fray in a futile attempt to get the "peace process" to seem to be alive. That thing is only hinted at in this WaPo article, but it's all you need to know about the chances for success:

The radical Islamic group Hamas won legislative elections a year ago, putting the peace process on hold because Hamas refuses to recognize Israel.

I write "only hinted at" since Hamas differs from the "moderate" Fatah only insofar as their honest declaration that their end game is not a peaceful solution, with a Jewish state sitting next to a Muslim state in Palestine.

No. Hamas does not recognize Israel, for the simple reason that it's raison d'etre is the destruction of Israel. Fatah, those moderates, by contrast, lie in public (at least in the English media) and claim to be ready to recognize Israel. But then they give away their game by doing things such as surfaced today, a complete unwillingness to even discuss transitional borders of a nascent Palestinian Arab state.

No again; Fatah wants nothing less than the elimination of a Jewish state from the Middle East. Just that they're willing to do it differently, since they know that force of arms won't work.

The interim goal is the insistence on demographically swamping Israel with some bogus "right of return" (what about all the Jews kicked out of Arab countries in 1948? Don't they get a "right of return?"), and making "Israel" a majority Arab nation.

At which point it would be only a matter of time before they can effectively drive all the Jews out of the Middle East, which is their true end game.

The Palestinian Arabs have had several chances to have their own state, and they have most emphatically turned it down as recently as 2000, when President Clinton forced concessions from Israel. Arafat and his terrorists in the Palestinian Authority wanted, and still want, nothing less than the whole enchilada.

Which, for the Arabs, is a judenrein Middle East.

Victory is possible if...

Victory in Iraq first needs definition. I suggest that victory will be achieved when the only armed force in the country (besides our troops) will be loyal to and under the full control of the central Iraqi government. These troops will destroy, as needed, any and all militias or other armed groups who are not loyal to and under the full control of the central Iraqi government.

This condition must be accompanied by the actions of the central Iraqi government to repair, re-open, reconstruct, and simply get back to doing business again. No ethnic cleansing. No reprisals against former Baathists. No sectarian raids by Shiites against Sunnis against Kurds against Turkmen.

Now, what would it take to bring about such a state of bliss? I don't know, because I believe that Iraqis, in their various sects and tribes, are not capable of this kind of peace and reconciliation. At least not yet.

What would it take to force Iraq to do this? The use of armed force by the United States similar to that used to obtain unconditional surrender from Nazi Germany. Death to any Iraqi who even waves a gun in the air near our troops. Without explicit permission. Death to all militias found, especially those loyal to al-Sadr, unless they surrender their arms. Death to any Iraqi policeman or soldier caught fighting against us.

Sound harsh? If it is a war, then it is necessary. If we are not engaged in a war, why in the hell would we have so many armed men over there? In other words, if we don't start fighting in Iraq as if it were a war, we will never win. And might as well leave now.

The Burquini

This might be fun to make fun of -- swimwear for the muslim babe who doesn't want her parts to show. The "burquini" is made Down Under for the athletic servant of the sheik. It might be fun to make fun of, but for what you might see at a nudist beach. When you've seen sixty-something grannies in their altogether, you might wish that more women had a wee bit more modesty.

Islam is infamous for its oppression of women, but when was the last time an unescorted woman could approach a haredi rabbi and shake hands with him? My point is that medieval is as medieval does, and Islam is simply a few centuries behind the power curve.

On the more general topic of modesty, I wish women (and men, for that matter) had more of it. The "burquini" is, actually, a logical and beneficial thing for women who simply want to swim without revealing anything. The problem arises, of course, when women must cover up. As much as I dislike immodesty, I really, really, hate coercion.

Islam will have come into the modern world when its adherents don't merely use the accouterments of modern technology to kill and maim, but become enlightened. In the sense of allowing freedom of conscience for all, men, and women. In matters great, and, even in a matter as seemingly small as whether to cover up when swimming.

"America's cruelty and meanness"

Perhaps our troops will start acting more like an armed force and less like a girl scout troop handing out cookies and sympathy to the locals. Perhaps; I won't hold my breath. But there is a ray of hope that the president may have found the spine he appears to have lost over three years ago.

It appears that we've finally started to clean out the Shiite shite from Iraq. From the Beeb online:

US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized six members of staff.

The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.

The US military would only confirm the detention of six people around Irbil.

Well, those peace-loving islamis in Iran aren't taking this lying down. In a fit of pique and showing chutzpah to the n^th degree,

Tehran said the attack violated all international conventions. It has summoned ambassadors from Switzerland, representing US interests, and Iraq.

A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry described the raid as an attempt to sabotage Tehran's relations with Iraq. One Iranian MP said it showed America's cruelty and meanness.

I don't know about our "cruelty and meanness," but the salient point is that we did this because our men on the ground believe that Iran is providing material assistance to Shiite terrorists in Iraq.

As for Tehran's being upset, boo hoo, babies. At least we did not take your guys hostage and start shouting about "death to the great satan Iran!"

Hey, mullahs -- war is hell. You don't want your boys nabbed? Stop interfering in Iraq.

So, what's their position on gravity?

So, some Hamas schmuck has told the world that, yes, Virginia, there is an Israel. But we still want to destroy it, and we won't even talk about recognizing the Zionist Entity until a Palestinian state is created.

And, oh, by the way, we'll tell you Jews what land is yours, and you've got to allow any Arab born since 1900 to move into his ancestral home in Palestine, which you Jews now call "Israel."

Oh, and lastly, "death to the Jews!!!" "Was the mike still on, Abdul?"

This pretty much sums up the latest non-news that has been glommed onto by al-reuters as some sort of a breakthrough. From it's "news" story, these gems:

Hamas acknowledges the existence of Israel as a reality but formal recognition will only be considered when a Palestinian state has been created, the movement's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal said on Wednesday.

Meshaal said Hamas backed Arab demands that a Palestinian state should include Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem and that Israel should accept the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes lost in a 1967 war and before.

"As a Palestinian today I speak of a Palestinian and Arab demand for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land," said Meshaal. (emphasis added)

So, they won't recognize Israel, yet somehow expect that Israel will fold like a cheap suit and give up land for peace. Wait a minute, hasn't that been tried? Worked out well, didn't it?

Oh, and that "right of return" bullshit. Hard cheese, morons, you started something and lost. Flooding Israel with 5 million or so "refugees" is a non-starter, since it would make Israel a majority-Muslim state. And, while there are (apparently) a significant number of Jews who don't care about living in a Jewish state, the Jews who count really, really, want the world to have one majority-Jewish state. As a counterweight, perhaps, to the dozens of majority-Muslim states. Most of which won't allow Israelis into their country, let alone allow Jews to settle with full citizenship.

So this Hamas worthy has told us that nothing's changed, but he does believe that Israel is a reality. Big freakin' deal. Wonder what his position is on gravity? It would be just as useful to know that Hamas doesn't believe that gravity exists, as what al-Reuters has reported.

"Immoral" options in Iraq

There is an all-too typical mainstream, liberal media piece by Sally Quinn in today’s WaPo.

Typical in that it portrays our losses in Iraq, and they are grievous, in a vacuum. Every day one may find the grim numbers of our soldiers killed, and human interest stories abound concerning the wrenching personal and family costs borne by those who go to fight.

Quinn's piece is a vacuum. A political vacuum in which there is only one point of view: our mission in Iraq is wrong to begin with, and there are no valid American national security interests served by this mission.

Quinn, as is typical, wishes us to focus only on the horrendous human suffering and loss; she waves the bloody shirt of soldiers that she happened to be close to. Soldiers who were themselves wounded and dying in another conflict.

From her piece, she informs us that any of our choices in Iraq are "immoral:"

We have already lost more than 3,000 soldiers, and many more have been wounded and disabled.

We have three choices here. All three are immoral. We can keep the status quo and gradually pull out; we can surge; or we can pull out now.

The three choices are, of course incomplete and meaningless absent the context of our national security interest. And not all of them are "immoral." Not if there is any valid American national security interest served by keeping our troops engaged and subduing the sectarian violence. Reasonable people may disagree about this, but it is beyond reason not even to engage in the discussion and to simply assume, without even saying so, that our mission to democratize Iraq was and remains "immoral."

As for incomplete, what matters is not just how many boots we have on the ground. It's what our troops are charged with doing; what the rules of engagement are. These, so far, have been seriously compromised by our failed attempt at winning, in the old Vietnam-era expression, "hearts and minds."

On this score, I'm with Lyndon Johnson, who famously said something like "if you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." Amen to that. If we keep on pussyfooting around, then, yes, Quinn is right on all counts: any American life taken is wasted, and thus it is immoral to continue in Iraq.

I don't have an answer as to whether it is truly in America's national security interest to remain in Iraq. I used to believe so; I still believe it was a very good thing for us to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But, now, no, I don’t think that Iraq can ever become anything like a safe and stable democracy. So, on that score, I’d like to see us do three things: First, start getting serious and killing any Iraqi who raises a weapon without our authorization.

Second, turn over security to trusted Iraqi forces as soon as possible. Third, recognize and support an independent Kurdistan in the north.

"the speaker wants us to succeed in Iraq"

The speaker in question is Nancy Pelosi, who just today threatened to cut off funding for any more troops for Iraq. On the Democratic house radio organ, NPR news, I heard that Pelosi claimed that the country had just voted to end the war in Iraq.

Those were not her precise words, but that was its exact meaning. In a just-published AP story, Pelosi's remarks were interpreted thusly:

Democrats now running Congress will not give President Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday, suggesting they could deny him the money should he call for additional troops.

Yet Pelosi's second-in-command and a Senate leader on foreign affairs questioned the wisdom and legality of using the power of the purse to thwart the White House as Bush prepared to announce his revised war strategy this week — perhaps on Wednesday.

Wanting to avoid showing her true appearance, Pelosi hastened to add that she really loves the military. From the AP story:

Pelosi made clear that her party supported boosting the overall size of the military "to protect the American people against any threats to our interests, wherever they may occur. That's different, though, from adding troops to Iraq." She also said Democrats would not cut off money for those troops already in Iraq.

So, if we've got this right, the new speaker from San Francisco would parse each dollar for our Iraq venture and cut off those portions of the dollars that would go to pay for any surge.

Of course, aside from the fact that the devil is the father of lies (or would Nancy Pelosi be the Mother of Lies?), inquiring minds want to know: If she would agree to keep the funds flowing to pay for our current levels of troops in Iraq, then those, would, logically, be necessary to "protect the American people against any threats to our interests."

On the other hand, she, in her long and illustrious military and foreign affairs experience, knows that any surge in our troop levels would not, somehow, also be engaged in protecting the American people. Makes the head spin, such fine-tuning of our national security strategy.

What might be even worse is that the White House can't call Pelosi the cut-and-run leftazoid that she is. Again, from the AP story:

Asked about Pelosi's remarks, White House spokesman Alex Conant said Bush welcomed any ideas on Iraq that "lead to success."

"We're glad the speaker wants us to succeed in Iraq," he said.

Unfortunately, this last was probably not said with even a hint of irony. The speaker most certainly does not want us to win in Iraq. She, and the rest of the cut-and-run crowd, are far more concerned with partisan politics here at home. Better that George Bush look bad, than we win in Iraq.

"most abhorrent"?

First, let me say that, although I think he is an idiot of the first water, I pray for Jimmy Carter. Pray that he will read the Scriptures he seems to have forgotten in his very public persona of piety.

Nice alliteration, there, Yochanan, now get to the point. The point is that I love Jimmy Carter as a fellow human being and as a lost sheep. For some reason, our worst ex-president (we just lost our best; Gerry Ford, R.I.P.) hates Israel. And, apparently, does not believe that a Jewish state has any place in the ancestral home of the Jewish people: Palestine.

Fresh evidence of Carter's blindness appears in an excerpt from "On Faith" in today's Washington Post. The excerpt in question touches only in the most marginal way "on faith." Unless one's faith is secular liberalism. Carter does mention that his Carter Center

has promoted programs that fall under the broad umbrella of peace and human rights. I see these as compatible with my Christian faith.

That's as close as it gets. His real cri du coeur is the "plight of the Palestinian people." Which, according to Carter,

represents one of the most abhorrent cases of human rights oppression on Earth. Forced from their homes and land and surrounded by walls, they live under a system of mandatory segregation, with passes required to reach their jobs, schools, pastures and fields. A unique system of military justice deprives them of any legal ability to alleviate their suffering.

One should feel pity for the Palestinian Arabs, but not for the pro-terrorist reasons Carter writes of. What is absent, asides from a sense of wretched excess (more on this below), is any notion that the Palestinian Arabs, and their Arab cousins in the Middle East, have the greatest responsibility for the current "plight."

By not recognizing the state of Israel, by making war on Israel, and by supporting terrorism, unceasing terrorism against Israel, they have, as the saying goes, made their own bed. And must now lie in it. Contra Carter, it isn't the even-handed seeming "inability of Israel and its neighbors to live in peace" that is the root cause. It is the total denial of the right of Jews to live in peace in the Middle East, except under conditions of dhimmitude, that is the self-inflicted wound of the Arabs.

As for the notion that, even though self-inflicted, the Palestinian Arabs live under "one of the most most abhorrent cases of human rights oppression on Earth", this is nonsense on stilts. The "oppression" is necessary to protect innocent civilians from state-sponsored terror. The "state" in question being the fiction that is the Palestinian Authority, led now by Hamas, who is opposed by Fatah and several other terrorist factions.

The salient difference between Hamas and Fatah? Hamas is more honest about its stated intent to destroy Israel. Fatah lies in public, at least in the English media.

As for "most abhorrent," there are quite a few situations that are much, much worse. Darfur, for starters. Women under any place where sharia is in effect, for another. How about Saudi Arabia itself, where one is not even allowed to bring in a Bible? Then there's the problem of those pesky Jews who used to live in fairly large numbers in majority Muslim nations. Virtually all of the Jews had to leave places like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and, of course, any place under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

When public moralists like Jimmy Carter libel the Jews and don't say very much at all about terrorists and the Arab mistreatment of Jews, there is truly only one plausible explanation for such a gaping double standard: anti-Semitism.

Malik Daoud

Ralph Peters writes with his usual clarity, and this time he is right on the mark. His piece in today's New York Post is about the return of the impressive and now-four star general David Petraeus, called "Malik Daoud", King David, by the Kurds.

Gen. Petraeus appears poised to take over from Gen. Casey in what may be a deck-chair rearrangement mission by the Bush administration. As on the deck of the soon-to-be sunk Good Ship Democracy in the Middle East. We lost Baghdad; we are in the process of losing all of Iraq, with the exception of those unafraid to mutter the name of a Jewish King: the Kurds of an independent in all-but-name Kurdistan. Would that Gen. Petraeus will be as bold and ruthless against God's enemies as was David.

As for what Gen. Petraeus should do, this from Mr. Peters:
Regaining control of Baghdad - after we threw it away - will require the defiant use of force. Negotiations won't do it. Cultural awareness isn't going to turn this situation around (we need to stop pandering to our enemies and defeat them, thanks). We insist it's all about politics and try to placate everybody, while terrorists, insurgents and militias slaughter the innocent in the name of their god and their tribe.

Meanwhile, we've been pretending we're not at war.
That is a beautiful, and taut phrase: "defiant use of force." If only the new general is allowed to use that force which is needed. As opposed to the force that our military's political handlers think would not offend the Iraqis.

"house of condolences"

Got to hand it to the Palestinians. They never seem to miss an opportunity to get on the wrong side of history. There is, now, in the (Christian) holy city of Bethlehem, a "house of condolences" for paleos to mourn the passing of a man who was, apparently, the best friend a terrorist could have.

This account in the Jerusalem Post is, to say the least, sickening. Not anything that the Post has done. Rather, the notion that any group of people are so evil as to cheer a monster such as Saddam, and take money from him as a reward for blowing up innocent cilivians.

From the story, the basics:

The execution of Saddam Hussein sent many Palestinians into deep mourning Saturday as they struggled to come to terms with the demise of perhaps their most steadfast ally.

Unlike much of the rest of the world, where Saddam was viewed as a brutal dictator who oppressed his people and started regional wars, in the West Bank and Gaza he was seen as a generous benefactor unafraid to fight for the Palestinian cause, even to the end.

Then there is this, from one local idiot:

"He wanted the Palestinian people to have a state and a government and to be united. But God supports us, and we pray to God to punish those who did this," said Ghanem Mezel, 72, from the town of Saeer in the southern West Bank.

Finally, in a heart-touching note, we are told that

Others were happy to hear Saddam's final words, knowing that his support for them remained unshakable until the end.

This is beyond sad; it is beyond pathetic. It shows that some Arabs are beyond salvation. Judging from the way they are even now plotting to kill each other (Hamas and Fatah, that is), the paleos are simply too ignorant and unable to distinguish the evil from the good to deserve their own state.

"They want victory"

Today you may find, in an abbreviated version, the heart of the reason why our investment in Iraq will not pay any dividends. Not if one expects a return in the form of a peaceful, truly democratic nation called "Iraq" that is not just a bunch of ethnic and confessional -stans cobbled together with spit and bailing wire.

The article, by the author Mark Bowden ("Black Hawk Down"), includes this quotation from Michael Sheehan, former ambassador for counter-terrorism that sums up the situation in tribal places such as Iraq:

The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in the fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she will say, 'Yes, of course, I pray for it daily.' All the things you would expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another to have that peace, and she'll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I'd die first.' People in these countries . . . don't want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old, and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it.

"They want victory." And will settle for nothing less. It is only the whip and the lash and the boot of the dictator that can tame those for whom clan, tribe, confession, and ethnicity trump all else. Or, put more simply, those for whom blood triumphs over reason.

This describes most of mankind. The United States is the leading, and, some might claim, the only successful version of the alternative: a nation whose founding reflects the post-Enlightenment notion that free men can create a nation built on an idea. In our case, the idea, at least in theory, is that each of us has certain, inalienable rights, vested in us not by any political entity, but by God.

Those rights may vary from telling to telling, but in our founding documents, they are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not just for Kurds. Not just for Sunni Arabs. Not just for any single group, but for all.

Iraq may never get there, but whether or not they do, I don't believe the journey is worth more American lives.

Koranic blues

Jonathan Tobin has a thought-provoking essay at Jerusalem Post online on the mini-flap caused by Keith Ellison's statement that he would use a Koran to be sworn into office (as a Democrat congressman from Minnesota).

Rep.-elect Ellison, other than being a Muslim, would appear to be just another left-leaning politico. Leaving aside Ellison’s professed faith, there is something problematic in the extreme for a Koran to be used as a platform for swearing an oath of office in the United States. Reason? The Koran is not just another version of the Scriptures. It is in direct contradiction to some quite fundamental points for Jews, and for Christians.

The first, and obvious divergence is that the Koran has Abraham’s covenantal seed passed through Ishmael, not Isaac. So long, tribes of Israel; hello, tribes of Arabia. The second, and fatal, flaw for any Christian American is the denial of two basic tenets of the American Founders’ shared Christian faith: that Jesus was the messiah, and that he arose from the dead to be with God, his Father.

It is one thing to not believe; it is quite another to specifically give one’s allegiance to a book that denies the basics of Americans’ beliefs.

As a final reason that the use of the Koran is troubling, there is the stated belief that all people must submit to Islam, either through conversion, or to live as second (at best!) class citizens under some form of caliphate. This, at least, is the desired end state for Islam.

What about all those wretched Christian crimes against freedom of conscience? Islamist apologists like CAIR will usually trot out the Crusades and the Inquisition by way of counter example.

It is sad but true that, throughout most of their history, Christians have behaved badly towards those who were not Christian. To say the least. And that behavior most definitely included the by-now-standard "convert or die, infidel!"

Well, that may have been true, but in the post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment world, Christianity has become what Islam merely claims for itself: a religion of peace. One may accept Christianity, or not. In nations where Christians are the majority, at least here in the West, there is no compulsion; no force.

In majority Islamic nations, this is far from the case, and in some, it is not wise or even allowed to be anything other than a Muslim. Which brings me to the conclusion: it is not the swearing on a Koran that is at issue; it is the notion that a man feels so drawn to a creed such as Islam that is intrinsically un-American.

Un-American, not because most of its adherents are not Americans. No; Un-American because the faith requires conversion or submission to Islamic authority. This violates the basic premises of the American experiment: all people, men, and women, are created equal, and all shall have freedom of conscience.

F***** for starters

This being a family blog, I won't spell it out, but it's a common enough expression from the Bronx. Consider a euphemism, "FUBARED for starters." Or, courtesy of Battlestar Galactica, "Frakked for starters." What is frakked for starters? The Islamic holy day Eid ul-Adha.

The subject comes up because it turns out that Saddam was executed coincidentally with this holy day. And, natch, some idiotarians are protesting his execution by the government of Iraq (New York Sun story).

The holy day apparently is intended to mark, with holy reverence, the willingness of the prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son. So, what problem could a nice Bible-fearing man such as me have with this? Just this: the son, according to Islam, is Ishmael. And this is a major, if not the major point of departure from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and the Koran.

The importance of this seemingly small point can not be exaggerated. Isaac, through his son Jacob, becomes the patriarch of Israel. Ishmael, Abraham's other son, becomes the father of the nomadic and pagan Arabs.

This is worth considering, anytime some mush-headed Anglican or Church of Christ or Reform rabbi worthy starts mumbling about how the three monotheistic faiths are all "peoples of the Book."

Jews are. Christians are, and we share the Hebrew Scriptures. Ver-frakking-batim. Muslims deny the truths and the history of the Bible, and are people of quite another book.

"I am Cyrus!"

Israel and the Jews have always had lots of enemies and likely always will. But there are also some rather excellent friends of both the modern state of Israel and the Jewish people. And they are to be found among Protestant Christians.

No, not the sniveling peace-at-any price, Israel-is-evil so-called mainline denominations such as the Episcopalians and Church of Christ. Rather, those Christians who truly accept that the Hebrew Scriptures remain true; who truly accept that the Jews still have a covenant with God and that God's people must stick together. Whether confessing Christian, or Jew.

Enter Jimmy Carter, who wore his Baptist faith on his sleeve, and confessed "lust in his heart." Well, Carter is not the last word among Baptists. There's one Baptist president of the United States who had a different, and a correct point of view. From Michael Oren's essay in the Wall Street Journal, one may learn something of the Protestant love of Zion, and, in particular, one president's claim of "I am Cyrus" (2 Chronicles 36. From that essay:

The question of whether or not to recognize that state fell to Harry S. Truman. Raised in a Baptist household where he learned much of the Bible by heart, Truman had been a member of the pro-Zionist American Christian Palestine Committee and an advocate of the right of Jews--particularly Holocaust survivors--to immigrate to Palestine. He was naturally inclined to acknowledge the nascent state but encountered fervid opposition from the entire foreign policy establishment. If America sided with the Zionists, officials in the State and Defense departments cautioned, the Arabs would cut off oil supplies to the West, undermine America's economy, and expose Europe to Soviet invasion. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops would have to be sent to Palestine to save its Jews from massacre.

Truman listened carefully to these warnings and then, at 6:11 on the evening of May 14, he announced that the U.S. would be the first nation to recognize the newly declared State of Israel. While the decision may have stemmed in part from domestic political considerations, it is difficult to conceive that any politician, much less one of Truman's character, would have risked global catastrophe by recognizing a frail and miniscule country. More likely, the dramatic démarche reflected Truman's religious background and his commitment to the restorationist creed. Introduced a few weeks later to an American Jewish delegation as the president who had helped create Israel, Truman took umbrage and snapped, "What you mean 'helped create'? I am Cyrus"--a reference to the Persian king who returned the Jews from exile--"I am Cyrus!"

Some things never change. The Arabists in our State Department have never accepted that Jews should live in their ancestral homeland. The difference today is that, for the most part, our military establishment is pro-Israel.

As Mr. Oren makes clear, our support for the modern state of Israel has been mixed:

Since 1948, some administrations (Eisenhower, Bush Sr.) have been less ardent in their attachment to Israel, and others (Kennedy, Nixon) more so. Throughout the last 60 years, though, the U.S. has never wavered in its concern for Israel's survival and its support for the Jewish people's right to statehood. While U.S.-Israel ties are no doubt strengthened by common bonds of democracy and Western culture, religion remains an integral component in that relationship. We know that Lyndon Johnson's Baptist grandfather told him to "take care of the Jews, God's chosen people," and that Bill Clinton's pastor, on his deathbed, made the future president promise never to abandon the Jewish state. We know how faith has impacted the policies of George W. Bush, who is perhaps the most pro-Israel president in history.

It is well worth the time to ponder who Israel's friends, and enemies have been. One thing that is crystal clear to me is that Christianity is not, today, the enemy of the Jewish people. Rather, properly expressed through the Hebrew Scriptures, Christians must, to be faithful to our shared Scriptures, "take care of the Jews, God's chosen people."

Just shut up, Rowan

The Anglican Communion is doddering on its last legs, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in America, the Episcopal Church is losing members and parishes due to its steady leftward drift. In England, the putative home of the Anglican Communion, they can rent out most churches for Sunday bazaars for the few people who actually show up for Eucharist.

Today we have fresh evidence of why this is so. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is sending out fresh messages from the left. Messages that have nothing to do with his alleged savior, Jesus Christ, and everything to do with white, post-colonial, liberal guilt. With perhaps a bit of anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure.

First, Mr. Williams lectures us on how Islamic intolerance of Christians is really our fault (story here):

The spiritual head of the Anglican Church launched an outspoken attack on the British and U.S. governments on Saturday, saying their "ignorant" policy in Iraq has put Christians in the region at risk.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, said Christians were being attacked and forced to flee the Middle East because their countrymen saw them as supporters of a "crusading West".

"This Christmas, pray for the little town of Bethlehem, and spare a thought for those who have been put at risk by our short-sightedness and ignorance," Williams wrote in an article for the Times.

Williams, who is not shy of controversy, has long been a critic of the Iraq war, saying there was no moral basis for military intervention.

He said the consequences of Anglo-American foreign policy have been the erosion of good relations between the Muslim and Christian communities and made Christians an increasing target for Muslim extremists.

Pat Buchanan, Jim Baker, Jimmah Carter, or David Duke couldn't have said it plainer: it's all our fault. Nevermind that Islam has been on the march at the point of a sword for going on 1,400 years. Nevermind that Christians don't and never did have full rights under Islamic nations.

Bethlehem? Well, perhaps Williams can explain how the Palestinians went from being about ten percent to around two percent Christian well before we saved Iraq from Saddam.

The second bit of wisdom is Williams typical leftist, totally one-sided criticism of Israel's attempt to protect itself from Palestinian terror (story here):

"The [Israeli security] wall which we walked through a little while ago is a sign not simply of a passing problem in the politics of one region; it is sign of some of the things that are most deeply wrong in the human heart itself," Williams told his fellow church leaders, according to Britain's Press Association.

"We are here to say that security for one is security for all. For one to live under threat, whether of occupation, or of terror, is a problem for all, and a pain for all," he was quoted as saying.

Perhaps this overly dressed preacher man should advise his Palestinian friends that they could stop their pain by simply recognizing Israel. But that would be too hard for the likes of Williams. Many Israelis look European and, worst of all, they're Jews, so to a high churchman, they simply are wrong and don't need to be consulted.

Here's the topper from Williams:

Williams toured the Church of the Nativity on Thursday and recited prayers in the grotto where Jesus is believed to have been born. He also met with local leaders and expressed solidarity with the Palestinians there, who have been hit hard by fighting.

"Hit hard by fighting." Now, reading this, one might never guess the source of all of that fighting: Palestinian terror, which, under the keptocracy of the late and unlamented Arafat, rejected a generous settlement sponsored by President Clinton.

Williams is an idiot, and churchmen should first tend their own flocks, without lecturing governments about their problems. Or taking sides with the terrorists in the Middle East. Chuchmen ought to deal with the promise of God's kingdom to come, and have the good sense to otherwise shut up.

"reminiscent of Nazi crackdowns on Jews"

The recent raids to catch illegal immigrants may or may not have been over the top, but some of the objections to them certainly are. Consider that a coalition of open-borders-zero-enforcement hispanics have opined that these raids are "reminiscent of Nazi crackdowns on Jews."

This according to this story in the Washington Post:

U.S. Hispanic groups and activists on Thursday called for a moratorium on workplace raids to round up illegal immigrants, saying they were reminiscent of Nazi crackdowns on Jews in the 1930s.

They accused the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of "racial profiling," or selective enforcement against Hispanics, for arresting 1,300 workers on immigration violations in December 12 raids at meatpacking plants in six states.

This easy slide into comparing any American action to the actions of the Nazis shows two things: an ignorant, if not downright stupid, misreading of history. And a blatant disrespect to the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of real, as opposed to imagined, Nazis.

The basic problem with those who are protesting is that those arrested are criminals, in violation of U.S. law. Are hispanics being "profiled?" Yes, of course. If by "profiling" one means targeting those who constitute the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants. Perhaps those who support illegal immigration would feel better if we arrested equal numbers of Anglos just for balance.

So, if hispanics don't wish to be arrested, there's a simple remedy: don't enter the country illegally.

As to whether our immigration laws are just laws, that is something we can debate. But unless and until those laws are changed, to not enforce them, equally across the board, simply sends the message that we are no longer a nation of laws. Rather, we would become a nation of favored groups; some of which can openly flout our laws.

But that's probably the way the la raza types want it. It is they who are the racists, insisting that brown people are above the law.

The road to Baghdad

No, not one of those Bob Hope movies. Rather, one of the givens, a nugget of received wisdom for the multinational crowd: settling the Israeli-Palestinian mess is central to peace elsewhere in the region. The by-now trite phrase is that "the road to peace in [fill in the blank] runs through Jerusalem."

This is, usually, code for something else. For genteel anti-Zionists like Bob Novak, it is a way to nip at Israel's ankles without coming right out and saying that he's embarrassed to have been born Jewish. For less genteel anti-Semites like Jimmy Carter and others who hide behind their exalted positions, it's just that Israel is held to an insane double standard that no nation can meet.

The recently released Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report has some of both of these genteel antis. These retired has-beens include the notion that, somehow, if Israel would just give a little more, then joyful Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds would just burst out into song and make nice with each other.

The Brits have a word for this: bollocks. For a cogent explanation of why the "road to Baghdad," meaning a peaceful solution to the Iraqi civil war, does not run through Jerusalem, Robert Satloff's article, "Forget the Domino Theories" is a must-read.

Mr. Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explains:

The basic proposition -- linkage [between Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] -- is not new. President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, tried 15 years ago to build an Arab-Israeli peace process on American success in the Persian Gulf War. In the current Bush administration, some advocates of toppling Saddam Hussein echoed that argument when they predicted that a change in Iraq would open new avenues for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Linkage also has its more ominous side. The most common is the fear that, left unresolved, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could explode into a Middle East-wide war. A second variation locates the epicenter of regional instability in the Persian Gulf. A generation ago the fear was that the export of Iran's Islamic revolution would undermine pro-West Arab states. Today, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during his confirmation hearings, the fear is that Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq will spread like a contagion through the region, leaving ethnic bloodletting in its wake.

The problem with all these theories is that after a generation of theorizing about Middle East dominoes, the evidence is piling up: The linkages simply don't exist.

This is the essence: the linkages simply don't exist. Given that the Palestinian-caused intifada is now in its seventh year, and now the paleos are fighting over who hates the Jews the most, one sees how many Arab divisions rushing to attack Israel?

Mind you, it isn't that Arab states, even those with nominal peace treaties, didn't wish that Israel would cease to exist. Just that it appears that Egypt, Jordan, and, one may hope, even Syria and the Saudis have realized that the entire region would benefit from normalized relations.

Israel, after all, may be the Little Satan, but it has a vibrant economy. Something that Israel would happily share with its neighbors. And I think that the saner neighbors know this all too well, and perhaps have given up their dream of a judenrein Middle East.

"the wall of the mind"

The quotation is from a book review by Newt Gingrich that appears in the forthcoming issue of the Weekly Standard. Pretty classy outfit, the Standard, to have a former speaker of the House of Representatives write a book review, was my first thought.

The book is by a former secretary of defense, Bill Cohen, who writes of the Berlin Wall, that, once it was physically destroyed, nonetheless left a "wall of the mind" that, to this day, divides West from East. And this raises a larger, more global issue. From the Speaker's review:

In passing, Cohen describes one of the greatest problems facing American planners in Iraq and beyond. He describes the challenge in unifying East and West Berlin and notes that, while the physical wall has fallen, "the wall, it is still there, the wall of the mind." In all too many places, we imagine that if we replace a corrupt, vicious, torturing, and murdering dictatorship there will spring forth a new, democratic, honest, and transparent system of self-government, pursuing happiness and living in peace. We underestimate the walls of the mind that remain long after the system changes. It is a useful insight into the challenges of the modern world.

If there is one fatal flaw in our Iraq endeavor, it is that the "wall of the mind" that exists in the primitive tribes and sects of Iraq were not taken down by our "shock and awe" in March 2003.

Yes, we got rid of the dictator Saddam and his merry band of thugs. But we could not take down the wall that separates most Iraqis from what we might call the modern world: a post-Enlightenment world of freedom of conscience, and freedom of, and most importantly, from, religion.

Islam may, or may not be, the central "wall" in the hearts and minds of Arabs. But Islam is clearly, and successfully, used by those who fear modernity the most: the tribal leaders and imams of al qaeda and the various Islamic sects.

We can't direct people how to think. And it should be evident that the mere holding of elections does not result a truly modern and liberal democracy (read: applied freedom of conscience). Hamas and Hizbullah may win elections, but the people who vote for these monsters are not capable of living in peace, in tolerance, with their neighbors.

a symptom, not the malady

Victor Davis Hanson has a piece at NRO that ought to be read by all of our policy-makers and pundits. Especially any of those who think that James Saudi Baker's Iraq Study Group has shed light on the path to peace in the Middle East. VDH's article is titled "Israel Did it! -- When in doubt, shout about Israel."

The essence of his thesis is that hatred of Israel is "a symptom, not the malady" of the perennial failure of Arab states. In this, VDH is right on the mark. Unfortunately, Baker and the other