Yesterday’s discussion covered the moral imperatives for supporting the “Free Muslims”; now I’d like to consider the practical reasons for doing so.

This discussion dovetails with the recent meme of “We’re on Our Own,” so I’ll cover that aspect first.

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The recent election has confirmed that our little corner of the blogosphere — the members of the Counterjihad — will not be affecting public policy any time soon. Elected politicians and the members of the permanent foreign policy establishment, as exemplified by James Baker, are giving clear signals that they have no interest in or stomach for a real fight against the legions of Mohammed. The politicians have to keep an eye on the masters of seditious propaganda media and the next election. The bureaucrats, out of habit, or Jew-hatred, or complacency, or ignorance, are not going to think outside the box.

For at least two years — and more likely for a decade, after two Hillary administrations — what we advocate and strategize for will remain with us, the citizens of America and the free world, and not extend to the people who actually execute public policy on our behalf.

So I don’t want to hear any more prescriptions for public policy. Saying “We need to crack down on Saudi Arabia” or “It’s time we did something about the Salafists in Somalia” is pointless. None of it is going to happen.

When we talk like that, we’re spinning palaces out of gossamer, building castles out of airy nothing. We’re wasting our time.

If our government were capable of doing such things, we wouldn’t be mired so deeply in our current slough. The legacy media have a lockjaw grip on the manly fortitude of our elected leaders, and we just have to deal with it.

But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless — far from it. It just means that the potential for action has devolved from our national political leaders to where it belongs: local government, civic organizations, and the people themselves.

Assuming our First Amendment rights aren’t eroded any further by the courts — which they may well be, under either a McCain or Hillary administration — we can act forcefully and lawfully on behalf of the majority of our people, the ordinary people, people who have not succumbed to the PC propaganda, people who want to take back the culture.

If the First Amendment falls to the anti-Liberty forces of the state, then we will have to fall back on the Second Amendment. In the meantime, it’s time to reinvigorate the Tenth.
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It’s an ongoing process, one that will move slowly. It won’t get much publicity, and will take at least a decade to bear real fruit.

The bywords are: Rebirth and Resistance.

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Which brings us back to the Free Muslims.

The Cold War wasn’t won solely by outspending the Soviets, or by superior firepower, or by better planes and submarines.

Those were crucial, but it was also won by many thousands of ordinary people in the West who acted collectively to reach out to dissidents and disaffected groups behind the Iron Curtain. There were Christian groups which equipped local churches in Poland and East Germany with computers, printers, and paper so that they could disseminate samizdat materials. Jewish groups contacted their oppressed co-religionists in the Soviet Union. Human rights groups co-ordinated with local dissident organizations in communist countries, and worked on a well-publicized campaign to force the Soviets to live up to their signature on the Helsinki Accords.

After Ronald Reagan was elected, this process gained the imprimatur of the United States government, which helped accelerate the collapse of the Soviet bloc. But it was going on before that, and it was inspired, organized, and executed by people without the help of government.

This is part of what we will be doing from now on in the Counterjihad. We didn’t write off the Lutherans in East Germany by saying, “They’re all Reds; to hell with them.” We didn’t say, “Let those Jewish refuseniks rot in the gulag. They’re part of the Soviet system.”

The same should be true of Muslims. It’s a serious strategic error to maintain the all-Muslims-are-evil meme, because you are thereby foreclosing cooperation with the Kurds or the ordinary Muslims in Bangladesh who are being overrun (and killed) by violent radicals. These people may not like us — and the Kurds have every reason not to trust Americans, thanks to the work of James Baker — but they are our natural allies.

To turn our natural allies into people that we have to kill does not make sense.

“Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” That packs a nice emotional punch. It adds oxygen to the pure flame of righteous anger, and makes a person feel strong and dedicated to say it. But it serves no strategic purpose.

Sound strategic doctrine would argue for allying with truly dissident non-violent Muslim groups, both here and abroad.

Some of them might indeed hate Jews. Some of them might smile if America were destroyed.

But that just makes them the Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvilis of the Counterjihad. We deal with Uncle Joe now, while we need him. Later, after all the mujahideen have earned the 72 black-eyed ones, our relationship with the remaining Muslims may have to change — after all, they do revere the Koran and the Hadith — but, for now, we’re in the same fight together.

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The most important thing, however, is to realize that the fight has moved to a new venue. It’s not happening in the political arena any longer, and it can’t happen there for the foreseeable future. Our political leaders have abandoned the Counterjihad, and we have to continue it without them.

The topography of the battlefield has changed greatly since the 1970s, when we struggled against the Soviet empire. Back then mimeograph machines and reams of paper were the necessary substrate for the effort; now the internet, cell phones, instant messaging, and electronic networks define the battlefield.

This is an information war, and every single person who is connected to global communications is a combatant, whether he realizes it or not. That’s why we can enter the struggle as we are, in our pajamas. We don’t have to dump tea in the harbor or mount the barricades to fight it. We can stay within the law (at least here in the United States) and still be soldiers in the Counterjihad.

The enemy is way ahead of us in the field of 21st-century information warfare, but we are learning fast. Speed, agility, and flexibility; network security, investigation, research, and close communication: these are the weapons of choice.

It’s already happening, but you have to lift your eyes from the TV screen and the newspaper headlines to see it. You have to give up on Congress and the State Department. They’re a lost cause.

Get down to the county office building and see what’s going on. Watch the zoning hearings for the CAIR-affiliated Islamic centers. Pay attention to what’s in the curriculum at your kids’ school. Watch out for those “field trips” to the mosque!

Above all, connect with the others who are thinking the same way. There is strength in numbers, and that strength is already gathering into a non-sectarian and internationally networked movement.

For more information, see the CVF forum.

Or you can nuke the ragheads. Your choice.

World News Daily says that a meeting between unknown American Democrat politicians and Hamas took place before the elections: [emphasis mine]

According to the report, the alleged meeting with the Democrats took place in a European country following a series of preliminary meetings with representatives from the British and French governments.

The source told Maannews the Democrats expressed an understanding with the Hamas principle of not recognizing Israel and applauded Hamas’ willingness to accept a long-term cease-fire with the Jewish state in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to what is known as the pre-1967 borders – meaning an evacuation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

Last month, overall Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said his group would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.

Israel withdrew from Gaza last summer. Since then, Palestinian terror groups have been regularly firing rockets from the territory into nearby Jewish cities. The West Bank is within rocket firing range of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israel’s international airport.

The Maannews report quoted the Hamas source as claiming prior meetings with European representatives “broke the ice” and facilitated the alleged talks with Democrat officials. The source claimed Britain and France recently discussed with the terror group the possibility of breaking an international financial embargo imposed on the PA since Hamas won parliamentary elections earlier this year.

The source claimed Britain and France are “coming to terms” with the Hamas position of mediating the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a long-term cease-fire instead of final status negotiations in which the PA would agree to peace with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. The source said the two countries asked Hamas for a position paper outlining ideas for a long-term truce with Israel.

This news follows closely on the heels of the assassination, by Hamas, of several children whose father is an intelligence officer in Fatah, the opposition party. Supposedly Hamas is angry that Abbas has called for early elections – a threat to Hamas since it currently holds the reins in Palestine’s parliament.

Hamas is also known to have a long-standing grudge against the father, Baha Balousheh, for his crackdown on violence some years ago.

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The initial news reports claimed that Mr. Balousheh was the supposed target of the killing. However, Carl in Jerusalem puts it in even starker terms: “I believe that they were trying to get the kids as a warning to the father and to other Fatah members.”

In other words, they knew the father wasn’t in the car; instead, the targeting of the children was a message to him. And the fact that the message was delivered in a font called Overkill, in a street full of other children, didn’t matter at all. What was important was to deliver the message.

And these people have the gall to complain about Israelis’ targeting of known killers. They are moral imbeciles and that fact is immaterial to them.

Meanwhile, on another subject, One Cosmos has this to say about the Palestinians:

[They] are probably the most comprehensively depraved people on the planet, truly one of the worst cultures that mankind has ever produced. But there is little the individual can do about it, because the essence of their cultural pathology revolves around the delusional idea that the existence of Israel has something to do with their problems. In short, they do not just hate Israel because they are so backward and barbaric; rather, they are backward and barbaric because they are obsessed with hatred of Israel.

Thus, the Palestinians have created a sick culture in which it is strictly impossible to realize — literally “unthinkable” — that the source of their suffering is within. A Palestinian who comes to the realization that the Jews are not the source of their problems — and is foolish enough to speak up about it — will soon find himself dangling upside down in the town sqaure with his testicles missing and a couple of lumps obstructing his breathing. Mental health is not allowed in much of the Islamic world.

There’s not much diversity allowed in the Islamic world , either. But some of the more useful idiots on the left are willing – nay, eager – to meet with and support these monsters.

In the same report noted above, World Net Daily said:

Last month, just prior to U.S. midterm elections, WND conducted a series of exclusive interviews [see WND article for this link] in which prominent Middle East terrorist leaders said they hoped Americans would sweep the Democrats into power because of the party’s position on withdrawing from Iraq – a move, the terrorists explained, that would ensure victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

The terrorists told WND an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are “tired.” They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.

[…]

Many Democrat politicians and some from the Republican Party have stated a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency there.

In a recent interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, stated, “The jihadists (are) in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean we stay there. They’ll stay there as long as we’re there.”

Pelosi will become House speaker when the new Congress is seated in January.

WND read Pelosi’s remarks to the terror leaders, who unanimously rejected her contention an American withdrawal would end the insurgency.

Islamic Jihad’s Saadi, laughing, stated, “There is no chance that the resistance will stop.”

This conclusion is so clear that only the blind leftists in our country can’t see it.Or is it that they don’t care?

By what moral calculation did they arrive at the idea of meeting with Hamas? Are they that overweeningly ambitious? Do they inhabit some UN-equivalent moral universe, a world much like the one inhabited by the members of the Iraq Study Group, who think sitting down to discussions with our mortal enemies is going to lead to a good outcome?

Hamas is evil. So are the leaders of Syria and Iran. They all fervently desire and work toward the ruin of the United States. And the best defense that either these unknown Democrats or the Surrender Group can come up with is a get-together to talk things over.

The essay below is aimed specifically at Jews and Christians. If you are from another faith, or are uncomfortable with religious discussions, you may want to skip this post.

One of the most important and widely-argued issues within the Counterjihad concerns moderate Muslims (or as the 910 Group prefers to call them, “Free Muslims”). Do they really exist? Are they all practicing taqiyyah? Should we take them into consideration, or are they not worth bothering about?

The “Free Muslims” really do exist; Stop the Project has a list of their organizations. They don’t get much publicity, because the MSM, in its tacit alliance with Islamofascism, prefers to focus on CAIR and similar organizations.

But these brave people put their lives on the line every day to speak out on behalf of non-violence and religious tolerance, while still remaining Muslims.

This morning I received an email from a friend of ours who has noticed the nuke-the-ragheads mentality which so often rears its head in Gates of Vienna comments:

A couple of your commenters have got Islam so deeply on the brain, they think the only good ay-rab is a dead ay-rab. People who can’t distinguish individuals from groups are by definition prejudiced.

And indeed they are.

In fact, what they are doing is arguing for the assignment of collective guilt. They believe that innocent people within a group defined as “the enemy” should not be spared the fate of the group, deserve no sympathy, and should be disregarded.

I hesitate to cite the most notorious earlier examples of such an ideological stance, for fear of invoking Godwin’s Law upon myself. Suffice it to say that these folks have some unsavory ideological companions among the blood-soaked regimes of the previous century.

Scripture provides some illumination on this topic. Genesis 18:20-33 describes Abraham’s intercession with the Lord on behalf of the “moderates” (the Bible calls them “righteous”) in Sodom and Gomorrah:

And the LORD said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.

“I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.”

Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham was still standing before the LORD.

Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

“Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it?

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“Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”

So the LORD said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.”

And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes.

“Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?” And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”

He spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.”

Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.”

Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.”

As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham the LORD departed, and Abraham returned to his place.

Note that Abraham is arguing a moral issue with God. Abraham is using the Lord’s own moral laws to intercede with Him and deter Him from indiscriminate retribution.

Can you imagine an Islamist supporting such a dialog with Allah? It would be, by definition, heresy.

This is what separates us from them. This is why we are different. This is why what we have is worth fighting for.

We can chew gum and walk. We can fight the vampires of Islamic fascism while supporting those Muslims who have the courage to speak out on behalf of values we share. Both jobs can be done.

If there be but ten righteous, let the city be spared.

Or so Hamas seems to say…

Palestine politics is a cesspit beyond our imagining. The latest evil is the murder of three children whose father, Baha Balousheh, a loyalist of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.

In a bungled attempt to kill Balousheh, it is thought that Hamas assassins murdered his children instead:

Palestinian gunmen killed the three young children of a leading enemy of the ruling Islamic Hamas movement today, firing dozens of rounds into their car as it passed through a street crowded with youngsters.

It is believed the assassination target was the children’s father, Baha Balousheh, a senior Palestinian intelligence officer. He was not in the car.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility and Hamas has denounced the drive-by attack.

The car was riddled with some 60 bullets by gunmen driving in two vehicles, Palestinian security officials said. Its seats, school bags and a small plastic bag with a sandwich in it were splattered with blood.

Three of Mr. Balousheh’s children, ranging in age from six to ten, were killed in addition to an adult, hospital officials said. Four more people were wounded in the attack in Palestine Street, lined with nine schools.

[…]

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An Abbas aide, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, said he was concerned the attack will lead to a large-scale confrontation. “If this continues, it will lead to our worst nightmare, internal fighting.”

Gaza has been plagued by factional violence in the past, with dozens killed and hundreds wounded.

Today’s attack targeting children was unprecedented, and was likely to trigger widespread confrontations at a time when the lines between Hamas and Fatah have hardened.

Earlier this month, Abbas announced that talks on forming a unity government between Hamas and Fatah have broken down. Earlier this week, he raised the possibility of calling early elections, drawing angry protests by Hamas which said he does not have the authority to dissolve the Hamas-dominated parliament.

The mills of Hamas grind slowly…Balousheh was – is – an intelligence officer known for his crackdown on Hamas’ violent tactics some years ago.

Hamas deserves to be blackballed by every legitimate government in the world, and every NGO currently funneling money to them. Saudi Arabia deserves to be hung out to dry for supporting them. Iran, too. The UN should be deep-sixed for their byzantine efforts on Hamas’ behalf.

Meanwhile, this old globe keeps spinning, and Hamas continues to metastasize further: an evil, spreading tumor on Palestine’s already weakened system.

“Factional” fighting? More like suicide nightmares lived out in the streets of Palestine.

You wait, though. Somehow this will be Israel’s fault. The Zionist entity, powerful as it is, will be the root cause of the grotesque mayhem that Hamas inflicts on its brothers.

Massive projection is just another term for Jihad.

We had a nasty email crisis today. Some lowlife spammer sent out about 1,000,000,000 spam emails with our email address as the “reply to”. All the bounces — “Delivery failed”, “Invalid address”, “Sender must confirm address”, etc., etc., came to our box.

More than 9,000 of them were there at one point — 225MB of mail in one day, according to our ISP. The box had to be cleared out, and then we started over.

So… If you emailed us in the last twenty-four hours or so, and don’t get a reply within a couple of days, send it again (if it’s important). Some of the emails came in, but we’re probably missing a lot of others.

To add insult to injury, our satellite connection has been down most of the day.

Another lost weekend.

Want a gift for the person who has everything? Or the fastidious gourmand on your gift list?

Try Peace Oil:

Peace Oil is produced in Israel by Jews, Arabs, Druze and Bedouin working together. Grown in the foothills of the Carmel Mountains, the olives are pressed within hours of picking, to produce this prize winning extra virgin olive oil.

An initiative of registered UK charity The Charities Advisory Trust, Peace Oil encourages co-operation between communities. By helping to market their produce it hopes to bring economic prosperity to such enterprises, encouraging others to follow their example.

Profits from Peace Oil are used to support peace and reconciliation work in the Middle East.

According to the website, the land on which the olives trees were planted was formerly laid waste during the reign of the Ottoman Empire:

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Our oil is from the Suria variety olives, grown in the foothills of the Carmel Mountains. They are grown organically, but because of the non-organic farming neighbours, do not have organic certification.

Next year, Peace Oil will also be offering oil with organic certification. These are produced on land laid waste by the Ottomans (before the 1st World War the whole of the middle east was part of the Ottoman Empire). The trees were cut down for timber, which led to degradation and erosion of the hillsides. They are now re-planted with olive trees, which as they mature will produce wonderful quality oil.

The website does not say whether they ship to the US, but the prices they have listed seem reasonable.

I think I’ll send this to the powers that be at Amazon…see if they’ll list it.

Which reminds me: don’t forget to buy your Danish Christmas cookies. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the Danish paté on their listings anymore. On the other hand, I do notice that Lurpak butter is available. I found it on sale recently at Whole Foods. The reason it’s better is that it has fewer milk solids and a higher percentage of cream, which improves the flavor. It’s similar to Plus Gras, except the latter is French and more expensive…and good girls don’t buy French foods, even if they could afford them.

So…I have proposed Peace Oil and Bellicose Cookies. Probably don’t want to eat them as part of the same meal, though.

Hat tip: Corporate Presenter, via James Higham’s Blog Focus

The departure of Rick Santorum from the United States Senate is one of the more signicant instances in which the walls of Western Civilization have been sapped. So many breaches in in the defenses, so many mujahideen over the walls rampaging through the city, and so little time to stop them!

This past Thursday Sen. Santorum gave a rousing farewell speech on the Senate floor on behalf of the Counterjihad. Some excerpts are included below; the full text is posted at The 910 Group Blog.

The added emphases are mine:

If there has been a failing — obviously, for the last several weeks and months we have been talking about the failings of the administration with respect to the policies within Iraq — I would make the argument that the larger failing, not just of the administration but of the Members of Congress and leaders in this country, is that we have not had the courage to stand up and define the enemy as to who they are and study and understand them and explain to the American people who they are.

I defined the enemy back at the National Press Club speeches as Islamic fascism. I said that is the biggest issue of our time, this relentless and determined radical enemy that is not just a group of rag-tag people living in caves but, in fact, people with an ideology, a plan, and increasingly the resources to carry out that plan, as well as, increasingly, a bigger and larger presence throughout the Islamic world, these radical Islamic fascists.

[…]

Many people talk about this war as if it is an attempt simply to create fledgling democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. While this may be an appealing possible outcome, we all must recognize that Iraq and Afghanistan are battlefields in a much more complex and broader war. That includes every continent with the exception of Antarctica. The war is at our doorstep, and it is fueled, as I mentioned, literally and figuratively by the evil of Islamic fascism.

Whether we know it or not, they have been at war with us, and the State of Iran specifically has been at war with us, since 1979 when they declared war against the United States. They have not rescinded that declaration. So when we talk about engaging Iran as the Secretary, the new, future Secretary of Defense has talked about, we are talking about engaging someone who is at war with us, who has declared war with us, and who has been at war and, and as I will talk about here, and I think it has been widely reported in the press, has been doing a lot to substantiate the claim that they have been at war with us.

[…]

The President gets advice from the CIA that the opposition in Iran is weak and divided and therefore we should do nothing in Iran because we have no alternative. We have no one we can use in Iraq to confront the Iranian Government to cause any kind of changes. So the President gets advice from his intelligence team that we are without options in Iran.

The Pentagon advises the President and says we don’t know if we have the resources to open up a new battlefield or confront, militarily, Iran, and therefore we have limited options in Iran.

The State Department — yes, State Department — they think that Iran is the solution to the problem; that negotiating with them and getting them to be our pals can in effect solve the problems; so confronting Iran would be the absolutely wrong thing to do in solving the problem in Iraq.

So the President is being advised by all of his minions that Iran and confrontation with Iran is not an option, as we heard from the testimony of the new Secretary of Defense.

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[…]

Republicans and Democrats, leaders in the Congress, why don’t they focus and talk more about Iran? Democrats, if you look through — as unfortunately many Republicans and Democrats do — look at it through the eyes of politics, why would we change focus and focus on Iran as the problem? We saw from the last election there is grand political advantage of keeping the focus on Iraq and the problems in Iraq. Why aren’t the Republicans, then, stepping forward and pointing to the difficulty and problems that Iran is causing in Iraq and call for confrontation? If we saw anything from the last election, the American public has no appetite for a broadening of this war, increasing the complexity of this war. You might be seen as warmongering, digging us deeper and more dangerously into a region of the world that we would rather not be in the first place.

So what do we have? We have the Baker-Hamilton report which is a prescription for surrender. It is just a matter of time. It is certainly not a prescription for victory. Nowhere does it mention, other than of course that we would like victory, nor is there a prescription for victory in that report.

So now we have the slow process of how we exit ourselves because we have no option to confront the real problem. We have no willingness on the part of any level of Government to confront it. So we are destined at this point to focus on something that is insolvable without confronting Iran, and that is the war in Iraq.

[…]

Islamic terrorists organized an assault on civilian aircraft leaving London, planning to blow up 10 or more planes this summer as they flew over the North Atlantic. You may not know that two of those participants were a husband and a wife, a husband and a wife who were going to board that plane and explode that plane over the North Atlantic while holding in their arms their 6-month-old child.

This is evil.

Islamic terrorists slaughter innocent Iraqis every single day on both sides of the divide within Islam. As we know, in recent days they beheaded an orthodox priest and crucified a 14-year-old boy guilty of nothing but being Christian.

This is evil.

[…]

Our troops in Iraq are being killed by Iranian weapons today paid for with Iranian money smuggled into Iraq by Iranian logistics and utilized by Iranian-trained terrorists.

A couple of years ago you needed a security clearance to know this. Now, if you care to know, if you want to know this uncomfortable truth about Iran, you can know it. Iran is the centerpiece in the assault against us and other countries in the civilized world, which is why I fought so hard for passage of the Iran Freedom and Support Act.

I stood on the Senate floor at this very desk and argued in May or June of this year for passage of the Iran Freedom and Support Act. I said we should not be negotiating with Iran, that we should be confronting Iran.

Bernard Lewis tells a familiar opinion that he has. He tells a lot of them. He said that the oddity in particular of the Arab and Middle Eastern Islamic world is that the more we have strong relations with the government in an Arab Muslim country the more the people of that country hate us; and the more that we stand up and confront leadership of those countries the more the people like us. Is it no wonder he recounts on the day of 9/11 when there was but one Middle Eastern Muslim capital there was a candlelight vigil in support of those who died on 9/11, and that was in Tehran, Iran.

It is not hard to understand when you have regimes throughout the Middle East who oppress their people that when you stand up and confront those regimes and call them the evil they are the people understand and respect your honesty, agree with you, and support you.

This summer when we attempted to negotiate with Iran, we told the people of Iran that we are not on their side, that we want to make deals with people who oppress them, who torture them, who enslave them, who abuse them, and who kill them. That is why we should not have entered into any negotiations in spite of the entreaties of Europe with this evil regime in Iran. We should confront them, and only confront them. If we want the support of the people of Iran, we have to earn it with the integrity of our mission, and we are not doing that.

[…]

To make matters worse, we see, with the help of Venezuela, Cuba and China are now exploring for oil within 50 miles of the coast of the United States, while the Senate blocks a measure to allow us to explore for oil within 100 miles of our own shore. So while China, Cuba, and Venezuela draw oil from our shores, we stand idly by and let them do it to arm against us.

[…]

Winston Churchill wrote in “The Gathering Storm” a short description of the gathering storm:

How the English-speaking peoples, through their unwisdom, carelessness and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm.

We are at such a moment. Are we going to allow the wicked to rearm? We paid a terrible price for waiting. We look at each war, each major conflict, we paid a terrible price for waiting. In many cases, it was a price paid in America. In many other cases it was a price paid in countries around the world. Are we going to pay that price at some day in the future or are we going to confront this enemy?

If we learned anything from the 20th century, it should be this lesson: When leaders say they are prepared to kill millions of people to achieve their goal, we must take them at their word. The enemy before us that I have described has said it clearly, repeatedly, and pointedly, and even more threateningly, because this is an enemy who doesn’t see death as a tragic consequence of the war; they see it as their objective of war.

The ayatollah and the mullahs of Iran have repeatedly said that the object of jihad is not success, it is death. It is reaching the next level. It is ending this miserable life which we have on Earth and in pursuit of jihad, guaranteeing yourself eternal life with Allah.

Here in America, we refuse to recognize, many, that we are at war with this great evil.

We shrink from the recognition of identifying the enemy and confronting them, whether they be the Islamic fascists led by Iran or the socialist rulers of North Korea and Venezuela. We are sleep-walking through the storm, as we have done in the past. We pretend it is not happening or that it is simply because of the incompetency of the current administration or of a member of that administration.

But how do those who deny this evil propose to save us from these people? By negotiating through the U.N. or directly with Iran? By firing Don Rumsfeld, now getting rid of John Bolton? That is going to solve the problem? These people are now going to be nice to us because we removed these people who were agitating them or causing problems? Maybe relocating our troops to Okinawa or Kuwait or some other place will get these people to simply leave us alone? Maybe if we just abandon Iraq and Afghanistan to the chaos and slaughter of Islamic fascists, their thirst for blood will be met? Or maybe it is just engaging in one-on-one discussions with Iran and North Korea and other reasonable dictators?

No, I do not think any of those things will work. And history has proved they have not worked. We need to begin to confront our enemies. And that does not mean we have to launch a military mission into the countries I spoke of. But we have to do more than just adjust tactics in Iraq. If the focus of the next year and a half is simply adjusting tactics within Iraq, it will fail. It will fail. We must go after the regimes that recruit, pay, train, and arm their surrogate militias in Iraq. Again, I am not talking about military confrontation; I am talking about political and economic warfare to bring down the terror regimes in Tehran and their satellite puppet state in Syria. The best way to do that is to work with their own people who want freedom.

[…]

Osama bin Laden said:

“In the final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union… Now we have defeated and destroyed the more difficult and the more dangerous of the two.”

Understand what bin Laden is saying. “We,” these Islamic fascists — they claim they defeated the Soviet Union, not Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, not Pope John Paul II, but Islamic fascism, the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. History will make a plausible case for this assertion that, in fact, they had a lot to do with defeating the Soviet Union. But he continues with one final sentence:

“Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy.”

You see, they think they understand us. They think they know how to get to America. Open a paper every day and see what their tactic is. Open a paper every day, turn on a television every day, turn on your radio every day, sign on to the Internet every day and see what their tactic is and see how they believe they will defeat us.

I believe we need strong leadership to confront this greatest enemy that we have. The stakes are high, too high not to join together — Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, American, European — to confront this dangerous enemy. We must stop them.

Winston Churchill, in June of 1940 — I will close with this, for my colleagues who have been patiently waiting — Winston Churchill, in 1940, addressed the British people as Britain stood alone:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.

Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to do our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

This is the call of this generation. This is America’s hour. This is the hour that we need leadership, Churchillian leadership, who had a keen eye for the enemy and a resolve in spite of the political climate to confront it. I ask my colleagues to stand and make this America’s finest hour. I regret that the new Secretary of Defense is not up to the task, in my opinion. I hope others are.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

He may have yielded the floor, but he hasn’t yielded the high ground.

Bravo, soon-to-be-former Senator Santorum! As you assess the possibilities for a future career outside of politics, you might want to consider doing a little volunteer work on the side.

Remember, the 910 Group is looking for a few good men…

Thanks to 910 Group member Dan for sending us this text.

There is a comment by The Marwanist on a recent post at the 910 Group Blog that should be required reading for everyone in the Counterjihad:

In order for us to win this war, we can not make it a partisan affair. We have to build bridges between left and right, socialists and capitalists, democrats and republicans. If we fail to build a common front that crosses the right-left divide, the war is going to be much harder, much bloodier, and the outcome much less certain.

I’m a libertarian communist. An anarchist in the Bakunin mold.

As a right leaning thinker, you might feel frustrated at the absolute moral blindness of the left. Can you imagine what it feels like for those of us from the left who recognize the threats posed by the Jihadists and the misguided cultural policies which enable them? I was nearly lynched at a party for speaking out against Hezbollah.

Imagine being a liberal and seeing everything you believe in betrayed and attacked by those who claim to be on your side. Democracy, open inquiry, freedom of thought, equality — leading neo-fascist “liberals” are waging a war against these values in the name of cultural sensitivity, and many of us are sick and tired of it.

– – – – – – – – – –

I’ve already started to organize others in this fight. We refuse to let those Marxist-loving bastards get away with what they’re doing. We might be a minority right now, but we’re confident other disaffected leftists will join our ranks. This war is just getting started. Don’t count us out just yet.

You’ve seen how difficult it’s been to organize the right. Imagine how difficult it is for those on our side to organize! It’s a difficult, thankless job. We have more enemies and fewer allies. Right now, we walk our path very gently, ever mindful that a thousand “friendly” predators want to devour us whole.

Despite the hostility we face, despite the thankless nature of the work ahead of us, we have chosen to get involved.

Our first project is a school that teaches Western history and values. Other projects in the pipe include a post-leftist magazine and establishing an educational network that combines and connects online organizations with real world venues like ours.

Will we succeed? Maybe, maybe not. But these are tangible acts of resistance. If other people start doing similar things, we are going to have a real show of defiance on our hands, one that can change the cultural and political climate we now live under. One tiny school out in the wilderness is nothing — but if our business model proves viable, a year from now, we’ll be in a position to help others start their own schools. What happens once hundreds of grass root schools start popping up? Our pie in the sky goal is to see these schools become the next generation of Liberty Trees. Grounds where modern sons and daughters of liberty openly and publicly gather to organize the defence of their constitutional rights.

I like what the 910 group is doing. Baron and friends want to defeat Jihadism by encouraging open debate and free inquiry.

I might disagree with conservatives on a host of issues, but I agree with them on some of the most fundamental ones, and I will do everything in my power — however limited that might be — to help protect their rights and freedoms.

We have common opponents to deal with. We can set aside our differences for the length of this battle. And perhaps, when everything is said and done, we might realize we aren’t that different after all.

That was a long post, but I hope it served its purpose. You are not alone in this war.

I’ve been saying for a while now that it’s wrong — and counterproductive — to write off the entire Left. Christopher Hitchens and Nat Hentoff are not the only ones who understand what’s important.

Anti-jihad leftists are in the same bind as “moderate” Muslims — they are vilified, ostracized, and threatened because of their heresy. A heretical leftist may get to keep his head, but he will likely find his property destroyed and his career ruined because of his apostasy.

So it’s important to extend a hand to anyone who — without any socialist taqiyyah — genuinely wants to defeat the Great Islamic Jihad.

Join us on the barricades! There won’t be any red flags raised this time, but it’s a crucial struggle.

Gates of Vienna does indeed encourage “open debate and free enquiry” within a civil and temperate framework. The enemy lacks these capabilities.

It gives us the advantage.

A one-man jihad attack has been averted in Rockford, Illinois:

CHICAGO — A man was arrested Friday by federal agents on charges of planning to set off hand grenades in garbage cans at a shopping mall.

Derrick Shareef, 22, of Rockford, was arrested when he met with an undercover agent in a parking lot to trade a set of stereo speakers for four hand grenades and a handgun.

Federal officials said he planned to set off four hand grenades in garbage cans at the CherryVale shopping mall in Rockford, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago.

He was charged with one count of attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Officials say he was acting alone.

If convicted, each charge in the complaint carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Federal officials said that in September, Shareef became acquainted with a witness who was cooperating with the FBI and confided to him that he wanted to commit acts of “violent jihad,” as well as other crimes, to obtain funds to further his goals.

The story never uses the I-word, but it does use the J-word. So there’s no doubt that this man isn’t a Buddhist or a Mormon.

This incident, like the OU bomber and other similar cases, makes one wonder: how many more guys like this are there?
– – – – – – – – – –
This fellow got caught because he confided his plans to an FBI snitch. But how about the ones who are lucky or savvy enough not to make that mistake?

Young men of a certain religious proclivity, angry loners listening to jihad cassettes late at night in the privacy of the their apartments… Scouring the internet for bomb-making formulas and instructions for cellphone-contolled detonation devices… Cheering the deaths of American and Israeli soldiers on the nightly news…

How many of them are there who aren’t being caught?

Coming soon to a shopping mall near you…

One of our most distinguished public servants died yesterday at the age of eighty.

Kirkpatrick’s death was announced Friday at the senior staff meeting of the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said spokesman Richard Grenell, who said that Ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence. An announcement of her death also was posted on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank here where she was a senior fellow.

The work she did will live after her, and it is impressive work indeed.

But even more impressive is how far she traveled in her walk across the political spectrum: from her days as a Marxist political science major at Columbia in the 1960’s to her speech at the 1984 Republican Convention:
– – – – – – – – – –

Thank you very much for that warm welcome.

Thank you for inviting me.

This is the first Republican Convention I have ever attended.

I am grateful that you should invite me, a lifelong Democrat. On the other hand, I realize that you are inviting many lifelong Democrats to join this common cause.

I want to begin tonight by quoting the speech of the president whom I very greatly admire, Harry Truman, who once said to the Congress:

“The United States has become great because we, as a people, have been able to work together for great objectives even while differing about details.”

He continued:

“The elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But, the basic source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the dignity of man.”

That’s the way Democratic presidents and presidential candidates used to talk about America.

These were the men who developed NATO, who developed the Marshall Plan, who devised the Alliance for Progress.

They were not afraid to be resolute nor ashamed to speak of America as a great nation. They didn’t doubt that we must be strong enough to protect ourselves and to help others.

They didn’t imagine that America should depend for its very survival on the promises of its adversaries.

They happily assumed the responsibilities of freedom.

I am not alone in noticing that the San Francisco Democrats took a very different approach.

Foreign Affairs

A recent article in The New York Times noted that “the foreign policy line that emerged from the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco is a distinct shift from the policies of such [Democratic] presidents as Harry S Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.”

I agree.

I shall speak tonight of foreign affairs even though the other party’s convention barely touched the subject.

When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich — convinced it would shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand.

Today, foreign policy is central to the security, to the freedom, to the prosperity, even to the survival of the United States.

And our strength, for which we make many sacrifices, is essential to the independence and freedom of our allies and our friends.

Ask yourself:

What would become of Europe if the United States withdrew?

What would become of Africa if Europe fell under Soviet domination?

What would become of Europe if the Middle East came under Soviet control?

What would become of Israel, if surrounded by Soviet client states?

What would become of Asia if the Philippines or Japan fell under Soviet domination?

What would become of Mexico if Central America became a Soviet satellite?

What then could the United States do?

These are questions the San Francisco Democrats have not answered. These are questions they haven’t even asked.

Carter Administration

The United States cannot remain an open, democratic society if we are left alone — a garrison state in a hostile world.

We need independent nations with whom to trade, to consult and cooperate.

We need friends and allies with whom to share the pleasures and the protection of our civilization.

We cannot, therefore, be indifferent to the subversion of others’ independence or to the development of new weapons by our adversaries or of new vulnerabilities by our friends.

The last Democratic administration did not seem to notice much, or care much or do much about these matters.

And at home and abroad, our country slid into real deep trouble.

North and South, East and West, our relations deteriorated.

The Carter administration’s motives were good, but their policies were inadequate, uninformed and mistaken.

They made things worse, not better.

Those who had least, suffered most.

Poor countries grew poorer.

Rich countries grew poorer, too.

The United States grew weaker.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union grew stronger.

The Carter administration’s unilateral “restraint” in developing and deploying weapon systems was accompanied by an unprecedented Soviet buildup, military and political.

The Soviets, working on the margins and through the loopholes of SALT I, developed missiles of stunning speed and accuracy and targeted the cities of our friends in Europe.

They produced weapons capable of wiping out our land-based missiles.

And then, feeling strong, the Soviet leaders moved with boldness and skill to exploit their new advantages.

Facilities were completed in Cuba during those years that permit Soviet nuclear submarines to roam our coasts, that permit planes to fly reconnaissance missions over the eastern United States, and that permit Soviet electronic surveillance to monitor our telephone calls and our telegrams.

Those were the years the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, while in Nicaragua and Sandanista developed a one-party dictatorship based on the Cuban model.

From the fall of Saigon in 1975 ‘til January 1981, Soviet influence expanded dramatically into Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Yemen, Libya, Syria, Aden, Congo, Madagascar, Seychelles, Nicaragua, and Grenada.

Soviet block forces and advisers sought to guarantee what they called the “irreversibility” of their newfound influence and to stimulate insurgencies in a dozen other places.

During this period, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, murdered its president and began a ghastly war against the Afghan people.

The American people were shocked by these events.

We were greatly surprised to learn of our diminished economic and military strength.

We were demoralized by the treatment of our hostages in Iran.

And we were outraged by harsh attacks on the United States in the United Nations.

As a result, we lost confidence in ourselves and in our government.

Jimmy Carter looked for an explanation for all these problems and thought he found it in the American people.

But the people knew better.

It wasn’t malaise we suffered from; it was Jimmy Carter — and Walter Mondale.

Election of Ronald Reagan

And so, in 1980, the American people elected a very different president.

The election of Ronald Reagan marked an end to the dismal period of retreat and decline.

His inauguration, blessed by the simultaneous release of our hostages, signaled an end to the most humiliating episode in our national history.

The inauguration of President Reagan signaled a reaffirmation of historic American ideals.

Ronald Reagan brought to the presidency confidence in the American experience.

Confidence in the legitimacy and success of American institutions.

Confidence in the decency of the American people.

And confidence in the relevance of our experience to the rest of the world.

That confidence has proved contagious.

Our nation’s subsequent recovery in domestic and foreign affairs, the restoration of military and economic strength has silenced the talk of inevitable American decline and reminded the world of the advantages of freedom.

President Reagan faced a stunning challenge and he met it.

In the 3 1/2 years since his inauguration, the United States has grown stronger, safer, more confident, and we are at peace.

The Reagan administration has restored the American economy.

It is restoring our military strength.

It has liberated the people of Grenada from terror and tyranny.

With NATO, it has installed missiles to defend the cities of Europe.

The Reagan administration has prevented the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations.

It has developed flexible new forms of international cooperation with which to deal with new threats to world order.

The Reagan administration has given more economic assistance to developing countries than any other administration or any other government, and has encouraged the economic freedom needed to promote self-sustaining economic growth.

The Reagan administration has helped to sustain democracy and encourage its development elsewhere.

And at each step of the way, the same people who were responsible for America’s decline have insisted that the president’s policies would fail.

They said we could never deploy missiles to protect Europe’s cities.

But today Europe’s cities enjoy that protection.

They said it would never be possible to hold an election in El Salvador because the people were too frightened and the country too disorganized.

But the people of El Salvador proved them wrong, and today President Napoleon Duarte has impressed the democratic world with his skillful, principled leadership.

They said we could not use America’s strength to help others — Sudan, Chad, Central America, the Gulf states, the Caribbean nations — without being drawn into war.

But we have helped others resist Soviet, Libyan, Cuban subversion, and we are at peace.

Blame America First

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do — they didn’t blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians — they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first crowd” didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

But then, they always blame America first.

The American people know better.

They know that Ronald Reagan and the United States didn’t cause Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua, or the repression in Poland, or the brutal new offensives in Afghanistan, or the destruction of the Korean airliner, or the new attacks on religious and ethnic groups in the Soviet Union, or the jamming of western broadcasts, or the denial of Jewish emigration, or the brutal imprisonment of Anatoly Shcharansky and Ida Nudel, or the obscene treatment of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner, or the re-Stalinization of the Soviet Union.

The American people know that it’s dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause.

They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self- criticism and self-denigration.

He wrote: “Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”

With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and conviction to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace.

And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.

Thank you very much.

Notice a number of important things about her speech:

• Jimmy Carter is still awful – “It wasn’t malaise we suffered from; it was Jimmy Carter…”
• Jeane Kirkpatrick gave us “Blame America First”
• Jeane Kirkpatrick was the first to name the “San Francisco Democrats,” and to pinpoint their squishy incompetence and total inattention to foreign policy.

That’s because foreign policy is for thinkers, not for referees who want everything to be fair. And for this reason, Ms. Kirkpatrick joined the Republican Party. When she served in the UN – the first woman to do so – there was no one her equal until John Bolton came along.

After serving her time there, she said:

As I watched the behavior of the nations of the U.N. (including our own), I found no reasonable ground to expect any one of those governments to transcend permanently their own national interests for those of another country.”

“I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.”

“Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal. Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God.”

Requiescat In Pace, Jeane Duane Jordan Kirkpatrick. May angels fly you home.

Fjordman has translated this article from today’s Vårt Land. Following the translation is his commentary.

Editor Vebjørn Selbekk of the small Norwegian Christian newspaper Magazinet was scheduled to sign books at a bookshop in Oslo this Saturday. Now the book signing has been cancelled because the bookshop fears terror attacks.

Selbekk is topical with his book Truet av islamister (Threatened by Islamists) about the conflict that followed after the newspaper Magazinet reprinted Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons of Muhammad. But now there won’t be any book signing event, for security reasons. “I’m disappointed. This is prostration in front of forces we should not give in to,” Selbekk says.

Svein Andersen, the head of his publishing company Genesis, has during his 23 years in the trade never experienced anything like this. “The head of the bookshop said she was worried about the security of the employees and the customers, and that she unfortunately had to cancel the event. This is outrageous and frightening,” Andersen says, who thinks this is a blow to freedom of speech. “If Islamists are allowed to decide which books should be published in Norway, cookbooks with recipes for fillet of pork will be banned,” he says.

Comments by Fjordman

And why not? A person who visits kindergartens to read fairy tales experienced that, in stories by Asbjørnsen and Moe — the Norwegian equivalent of the Brothers Grimm — the word pig had been replaced with fox. When she discovered the same thing happening in another kindergarten, she wondered whether this was a new policy. In Sweden previously, the wording of several older books for children such as Pippi Longstocking has been changed to make them more “culturally sensitive.”

Bruce Bawer, the author of the recent book While Europe Slept, describes on his blog how Velbjørn Selbekk, the editor of Magazinet, had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists who made death threats and by the Norwegian establishment. But then Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Bjarne Håkon Hanssen hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo. There Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council, accompanied by a number of imams. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom, with the Muslim leader declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection.
– – – – – – – – – –
In a Friday sermon on February 3, 2006, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, exhorted worshippers to show rage to the world in response the cartoons depicting Muhammad. The sermon was aired on TV. The day after, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were set ablaze by an angry mob. A few days later, a delegation led by Mr. Mohammed Hamdan of Norway’s Islamic Council and a senior pastor representing Oslo’s bishop then visited Qatar to meet Mr. Qaradhawi. The trip recieved support from the Norwegian government. Yousef Al-Qaradhawi then accepted the apology that Velbjørn Selbekk had issued on February 10.

Walid al-Kubaisi, a Muslim dissident living in Norway, warned that Yousef Al-Qaradhawi was more dangerous and influential than Osama bin Laden, and that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder, Hassan al-Banna, Qaradhawi followed when he was young, want the West to submit to sharia. Al-Qaradhawi has boasted that “Islam will Return to Europe as a conqueror.” It should be mentioned that both Norway and Denmark are members of NATO, and that destroying an embassy is pretty close to an act of war.

In contrast to the Selbekk case, Mullah Krekar, the former leader of the Islamic terror group Ansar al-Islam, still lives in Norway, even though he has pretty much openly threatened the country with terror attacks, has called Osama bin Laden “the jewel of Islam” and bragged that Islam will conquer Europe. He has written a book about himself, which was published by a man called William Nygaard, who was shot at and almost killed in the early 90s for having published the Norwegian translation of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. A Norwegian NGO called the Freedom of Expression Fund supported the translation and publication of Osama bin Laden’s speeches.

Later in 2006, Minister Bjarne Håkon Hanssen from the Labor Party called for increased immigration to Norway from Pakistan because this wuld be good for the Norwegian society. The majority of Muslims in Norway voted for the Labor Party in the 2005 general elections, which the left-wing coalition won by a very slim margin. 83 percent of Muslims voted for Leftist parties.

There have been calls for translating Norway’s national anthem to Urdu because this would be good for integration. Kristin Halvorsen, the leader of the Socialist Left party, began her election campaign in the Pakistani countryside, and praised all the “blood, sweat and tears Pakistanis in Norway have spent on building the country.” She is now Norway’s Minister of Finance. The deputy leader of the Socialist Left party has stated that he wants to abolish private property rights.

Samira Munir, Norwegian politician of Pakistani origins and champion of the rights of Muslim women, later found dead at a suburban railway station outside Oslo in November 2005, claimed that there was widespread cooperation between the Socialist parties and the Muslim communities. “The heads of families and the mosques would decide how entire groups of immigrants would vote. They made deals such as ‘How much money will we get if we get our people to vote for you?’“

Trond Giske, Minister of Culture and Church Affairs from the Labor Party, met with Mohammed Hamdan, the head of Norway’s Islamic Council, a few months after the cartoons incident and announced that government subsidies for the Islamic Council would be raised from 60,000 kroner a year to half a million. That’s more than a 700% increase in a single year. The government would also meet more frequently with the Islamic Council to “improve dialogue.” Its leader Hamdan smiled after having talked with Mr. Giske for about one hour. “We’re pretty pleased with the meeting. For us it’s important to improve contacts with the government so that we can get to know each other better.”

Mohammed Hamdan participated during a meeting with members of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas at Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, in the summer of 2006. According to him, he was only an interpreter, but his brother Osama Hamdan is a member of parliament for Hamas in the Palestinian Territories.

Meanwhile in Oslo, the number of rape charges during the summer of 2006 was more than twice as high as the year before. Both the authorities and the media have failed to give any explanation for this unprecedented rape wave, although they reported in 2001 that two out of three rape charges involved immigrant perps. Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, in 2001 said that “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor’s conclusion was that “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”

I think Norwegians are adapting quite well so far.

In a comment on last night’s post, the intrepid blogger Fellow Peacekeeper had this to say:

Incidentally, will fleeing from Iraq make Americans “hamburger eating surrender monkeys”?

Well put, Fellow Peacekeeper! Speak truth to powerlessness!

In honor of our position as the world’s newest craven appeaser, I’ve photoshopped a nice self-portrait of America.

Do you want fries with that?

These are lean times for the Counterjihad.

The Iraq Study Group report has revealed the depth of surrender among the political élite in the USA. The best and the brightest gathered and deliberated, and ended by codifying the Current Wisdom, which can be summarized thusly:

• Abandon Iraq to its fate, but paper the situation over by calling it “stabilizing the situation through consultation with our regional partners.”
• Abandon Israel to its fate, with the all-too-eager acquiescence of the Olmert government.
• Ignore the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, hoping that we can somehow contain the mullahs by talking and offering more gifts.
• Ditto with Kim Jong-Il.
• Abandon the policy of regime change when dealing with dangerous Islamofascist dictatorships.
• In the name of multiculturalism, ignore the ever-growing Saudi Wahhabist influence in mosques throughout the West.
• Leave the Mexican border wide open, so that terrorists, Aztlan enthusiasts, criminals, and anyone else may come to America to realize their dreams.
• Take no action without the permission and “help” of the UN.

Considering the above, and given the fact that the academy, the permanent political class in Washington, most of the major charitable foundations, and all the major media (with the possible exception of Fox News) are in the hands of the dhimmi left, we’re in deep trouble.

The election last month clarified the existing trend: our leaders have abandoned us. They have left ordinary people to reap the results of socialism and multiculturalism, while they themselves hope to carve out a comfortable niche and continue to enjoy their accustomed perks for the rest of their lives.

It’s a fine distinction as to whether this is political calculation or moral cowardice; the end result is the same. The jihad will advance. Millions will eventually die at its hands. Whole countries will be swallowed up by it. Christians, Hindus, and Jews will face the swords of the mujahideen across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
– – – – – – – – – –
And eventually the jihad will arrive right here, on the shores of America. By then the craven and corrupt political leaders of our country may well be resting comfortably in their multicultural tombs, but it will get here.

There will come a time when the young men of this country will once again have to bear arms and shed blood to defend our ancient liberties, and when they do they will curse the leaders of our time and spit upon their graves.

But we’re not without the means to do something; we will just have to do it ourselves. Since this is primarily an information war — the same one the enemy has been fighting all along, and is in the process of winning — it is as information warriors that we can do the most to resist.

Organizations like the 910 Group and CPC have arisen because their time has come. Even if craven appeasers won the last election, there are still millions of Americans who will not willingly cede the country to the jihad and the UN. They are communicating among themselves, organizing and gathering resources in order to fight a protracted information war.

We will get no help from the government. “Homeland Security” is a sick joke. We will be unable to affect government policy for the foreseeable future, given the corruption and inertia that controls the federal behemoth.

So don’t talk to me about policy. Don’t say, “We should deport all the Muslims” or “The government should do such-and-such”. Because we can’t, and it won’t. National policy is out of our reach.

But we have the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy instead. We have a network of like-minded individuals, people who are ready to be proactive, who are not giving up, who are willing to stop kibitzing and bitching and second-guessing, and actually do something.

We’ll have to manage this one by ourselves.

We’re on our own.

This post is dedicated to Redneck Texan, and all the other Texans, and to their cousins in Denmark and Australia — the good, decent folks who have decided that they’re not going to just lie down and take it. More power to you.

Thank you, Frank Gaffney.

Here’s what he had to say about the Iraq “Study Group” on Larry Kudlow last night [No, we didn’t suddenly acquire a TV…I lifted this off Kudlow’s site].

I think unfortunately it has the makings of a prescription for defeat. I call it the Iraq Surrender Group because I think what you see at the core, wrapped around language of defeatism, is a plan for trying to extricate the United States from Iraq with the help of Iran and Syria—as you say, our archenemies.

The likelihood that Iran, which has made it clear in the words of its president, that it seeks a world without America, that it seeks to wipe Israel off the map—that these guys, who have done as much as anybody to destabilize Iraq and to make it impossible, if they could, for us to have a secure, stable, functioning country there, let alone a democracy—are going to help us in any way is, I think, not only silly, but reckless. And that’s why I think it is going to lead to a strategic defeat for this country if these proposals were to be adopted.

It comes down to this: Punish your friends and reward your enemies. That’s exactly backwards. We should be making it clear that if you stand with the United States, if you stand for the things we do, you get our loyal and long-standing support. You’re not going to have us abandoning you.

And if you are our enemy, if you’re killing Americans in Iraq as the Iranians are, if you’re trying to take over Lebanon as the Iranians are, if you’re building nuclear weapons with a threat to destroy Israel as the Iranians are, and you say, as a stated policy of your president, that you want to bring about a world without America, that’s not something you’re going to be rewarded for.

Stability in Iraq is all well and good to talk about, but the Iranians want it on Iranian terms. And that means a loss for us, a loss for Israel, a loss for Iraqi people, for freedom in the world, and I think it is a terrible mistake.

As we know, all committees tend to lose IQ; and the more crowded with “experts” the group is, the larger the loss of intelligence. Unlike The Wisdom of Crowds, which is aggregated decision-making by people unconnected with one another, the “wisdom” of committees is, a priori, a contradiction in terms.
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This “group” has proved no different. The members are “realists” and since their tired solutions didn’t work the first time, they bound and determined to apply them with redoubled vigor this time around.

Anything that comes out of Washington is suspect – mined with hidden agendas and corrupt conclusions. This one was not only suspicious, it wasn’t even breathing. Under the aegis of The United States Institute for Peace, how could it be otherwise?

As long as no one tries to implement this dead-end thesis and as long as we can rein in the truly malignant MSM — which right now is in overdrive on the highway to defeat with the Iraq Study Group corpse in the back seat – we and the Iraqis may survive and surmount this assault.

That’s a big caveat, though, because our Iraq expedition has acquired two important similarities to Vietnam:

1. the politicians are making the military decisions,

2. and the MSM is skewing the reality on the ground in order to turn the American public.

Quagmire time, brought to you by the same players, one generation removed. Only this time the loss will be radioactive.