European self delusion.

The Colonel has swung around to the position that where Muslims are involved in any kind of uproar or disturbance, it is presumed to be based on plain-vanilla Islamic doctrine. Muslim moderates have the onus of rebutting this presumption. Infidels do not have the onus of first showing that riot, rapine, and terror is based only on some twisted, fanciful, grotesque interpretation of Islamic doctrine.

The Colonel has to admit, however, that the various analyses of the recent Muslim youth riots in France are persuasive when they ascribe the source of the unrest to economic marginalization.

Ilana Mercer correctly makes the point ("Oh the indignities" heaped upon the Muslims in France!) that the French have hardly stiffed their immigrant communities and that people commit crimes, not conditions,^[1] but when reading the extract from ever precient Victor Hanson it's hard not to conclude that the French worked hard at keeping second generation Muslims from advancing economically.

The Colonel has grave doubts about the willingness of Muslim immigrants ever fully to integrate into any non-Muslim culture or polity and remains to be persuaded otherwise. It could be a long wait, however. Islam sees to be the only extant world doctrine that is doctrinally fundamentally inconsistent with modernity or liberal society, one.

That said, if there is a scintilla of hope that Muslims can indeed integrate honestly -- without the secret desire to transform their host country into a Muslim backwater -- the French seem to have hit upon the precise formula forever to foreclose integration -- as well as to guarantee economic irrelevancy for themselves, truth be told.

Mr. Hanson on European self delusion:

While traveling the last three weeks from Turkey to Portugal, I was reminded again how different Europe has become from what some Americans idealize as a nirvana of benevolent socialism, universal and free medical care, and sophisticated high culture.

Gasoline ranges from $4 to more than $5 a gallon. . . .

* * * *

The utopian dream of a 35-hour work week, lifelong job tenure and cradle-to-grave benefits falls victim to a bothersome reality: More competitive Americans, Indians and Chinese have no such pretensions. While Europe gets its beauty rest, others work far harder and longer to produce cheaper things for an ever more price-conscious global consumer.

Behind these frequent strikes, urban riots and anger at the U.S. is the harsh reality of dismal economic growth and fewer jobs. So for all the undeniable achievement of the European Union, its central premise of government-mandated equality and security simply doesn't work.^[2]

Notes
^[1] "Rah-Rah For Rioters." By Ilana Mercer, 11/11/05.
^[2] "Heaven on Earth." By Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Media Services, 11/14/05 (emphasis added).

Iraq under Saddam.

The Koranic reference for a campaign of murder, torture, and poison gas was a nice touch:

The Halabja attack was the single deadliest incident in Saddam's 1988 Anfal campaign, named after a verse in the Koran that urges believers to attack the infidels. The Anfal had three phases, each lasting from several weeks to a month, each focusing on a different Kurdish region.

Kurds say it was simply genocide; people were rounded up into concentration camps or simply marched into the desert and shot. The Anfal saw the disappearance of 182,000 Kurds, most presumed to be dead.

"Saddam's Shop of Horrors." Posted by Kevin Sites, Yahoo News, 11/29/05 (emphasis added).

Egypt after the fall of Baghdad.

Freedom for Egyptians provides more of her interesting perspective on the Middle East. Here is more evidence of the salutary effect of US involvement in Iraq, and even of some US diplomatic finesse:

• The Palestinian Cause is no longer Egypt-sponsored: The death of the late Palestinian dictator Yasser Arafat put an end to the monopoly of the Palestinian cause at the expense of the Palestinians. The Arab League is not longer foiling all attempts by the US and EU to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict[.] The Palestinian Cause is back to the Palestinians. Today US secretary of State succeeded in striking a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians on Gaza crossing in the absence of Egypt’s leadership or the so-called Arab League. The US is smartly trying hard to keep the Palestinian cause away from the Arab dictator regimes who claim that freedom and democracy for their peoples are pending on solving the Palestinian cause.

• The longstanding alliance between Egypt and Syria was unveiled: Egypt claimed for a long time to be an ally for the US when it was not. Syria is open about its enmity to the US. The Egyptian regime is in a critical position now because it was not open about it hatred to the US. Egypt’s alliance with the Syrian regime was uncovered after disclosing the role of Syria in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and its deals with Iran.

There's much more in her post and it's worth reading in full.

"Egypt after the fall of Baghdad." By Freedom for Egyptians, 11/15/05 (yellow italics added).

Saddam, WMD, and the anchor-dragging Left.

In the execrable "Bush lied!" campaign so beloved by the Dog in the Manger Left in this country much effort has been expended gleefully to shout the news that no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq after the most recent invasion.

Given that in the run up to the recent invasion (1) there was plenty of time to hide evidence of his NBC activities, (2) Saddam was able to bury large fighter aircraft in the sand to avoid detection and destruction,^[1] (3) trains and trucks ran freely from Iraq to Syria, and (4) Russian forces may have helped Saddam to transport WMD to Syria, no one in these troubled times should be all that wedded to the theory that NBC weapons were never there in the first place.

The Gooneybird Left is so desperate for an "issue" that they've become like a cat that crosses a street. Once it commits to crossing, it stares at the far side and scoots without ever a sideways glance. The Dem equivalent is to ignore all manner of pre-Bush evidence and try to score off of Mr. Bush for personally failing to check the "Discard After" dates on the troop MREs.^[2]

Michelle Malkin has a clever illustration of this, which graphic we reproduce here at her behest:


Amy Kellogg also reports today that Saddam used against the Iraqi Kurds a

combination of chemical agents including mustard gas, sarin and possibly VX [that] killed 5,000 people and left 65,000 others with severe skin and respiratory diseases, abnormal cancer rates and various birth defects.^[3]

Even now she reports that there still are "50,000 Iranians suffering from the affects of exposure to Saddam Hussein's mustard gas" and that the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s caused almost a million casualties.^[4]

Right there we have 120,000 people killed or horribly affected by Saddam's actual use of a weapon of mass destruction.

He had it. He used it.

End of story.

All this evidence is ignored by the despicable Left. In point of fact, the Left's massive bank of superhigh-energy radars tuned to detect any forest sparrow fall between Nome and Nogales is curiously down for maintenance on this issue.

The reason is obvious. The Left is angling solely for partisan advantage and is heedless of the need for unanimity and dogged persistence in the war on Islamic fruitcakes everywhere.

The Colonel himself gagged at the announcement of the juvenile "Axis of Evil" and would much prefer the invasion and occupation to have been of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and/or Syria. Colonialism ended far too soon, we think, and another 50 years of western "tutelage" in some of the more benighted areas of the world would be a change for the better, in the Middle East and elsewhere. If nothing else, think how much better off the ENTIRE WORLD would be without a lot of oil money flowing to people with a devotion to terrorism and a very backward "religion" who have no ability to manufacture a pop tart let alone a decent peekaboo bra.

Without going There, it's nonetheless true that you can throw a dart at a map of the Middle East and its environs, hurt the government of the country thus selected (with some exceptions), and make a dent in Islamofascist plans for terror and obscurantism. The invasion of Iraq and our continued presence there thus serve some useful purposes, even if there might have been far better objectives for our military in the region.

But the Left chooses not to debate our foreign policy constructively by addressing where and how we should make war upon Islamic obscurantists ("Isloobs"?). They don't even seem to care to acknowledge that they've made war on us. Rather, the Left has chosen to stake its hopes on an intellectually bankrupt campaign that "Bush (eek) lied!" and the metaphysical vagaries of the Valerie Plame nonscandal.

The Left's anchor is quickly dragging away from safe moorings. Its stupidity is, of course, matched only by Republican fiscal irresponsibility, unwillingness to address the incompatibility of Islamic doctrine with western notions of civil society, and cowardly unwillingness to seal the southern land border despite the creation of the feckless Department of Homeland Security (whose director has still at this late hour failed to resign in protest of the federal government's failure to meet its most basic of responsibilities).

The Colonel needs to go fan himself for a while.

Notes
^[1] 50,000 silicon-particle removers also recovered nearby. Criminal proceedings pending against American manufacturer for Trading with the Enemy Act violation.
^[2] Military field rations. Meals Ready to Eat or, more properly, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.
^[3] Inside Iran Part VIII: Saddam's Iranian Victims." By Amy Kellogg, FOX News, 11/29/05 (links omitted).
^[4] Id.

Simple corrective action re illegals.

Sensible thoughts about dealing with illegal immigrants:

• Encourage local law enforcement to find illegals but to be followed by fast-track federal removal.
• Use the military to control borders, if that is what it takes.
• Illegals: go home, get in line for a visa. Leave now with your possessions; leave later with nothing.
• Impose steep penalties for those who hire illegals.
• Stop handouts to illegals.
• Expand guest worker program as needed.
• End “birthright citizenship” for children of illegals.

"From Joe Sixpack - President Bush and the Border." By LTC (Ret) John G. Wheelock, quoted in From Joe Sixpack - President Bush and the Border, The Uncooperative Blogger, 11/28/05.

France 101.

American Daughter posted an interesting paragraph by Paul B. Clemenceau who, without even mentioning Islam, 'splains why France is headed down a dead end at warp speed.

"France and the French." American Daughter, c. 11/26/05.

Legerdelèvre

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein stood outside her office one recent afternoon explaining her plan for granting legal status to some farmworkers who had entered the country illegally.

She turned to leave, then beckoned back a departing reporter. "Please don't use the word `amnesty,"' [sic] Feinstein said. "It's not an `amnesty.' It's an `earned transition."' [sic]

"A war of words on immigration." By Lisa Friedman, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, 11/28/05 <-- "If you can't win the war of words, just change their meaning." The Great Satan, 11/25/05.

The slow, leisurely surrender.

Thus, the soft, pliant extinguishment. The ever-ripening fruit of spineless living. The betrayal of the past and the future.

And the American analogue:

From academia to the media, to the highest levels of the State Department and CIA, America is being bombarded by social, cultural, and religious philosophies that are every bit as intellectually vacant as anything being uttered by the panic-stricken French.

"France Mirrors Liberalism's 'End Game' For America." By Christopher G. Adamo, 'MichNews.com, 11/10/05.

Reform of Islam - I.

The US-based Free Muslims Coalition, which was set up after 9/11 to promote a modern and secular version of Islam, has proposed the following:

1. A re-interpretation of Islam for the 21st century where terrorism is not justified under any circumstances
2. Separation of religion and state
3. Democracy as the best form of government
4. Secularism in all forms of political activity
5. Equality for women
6. Religion to be a personal relationship between the individual and his or her God, not to be forced on anyone

"What does the Qu'ran say about terrorism?" By Patrick Sookhdeo, The Melbourne Anglican, 9/05 <-- Dhimmi Watch, 11/10/05.

The Price of Temporizing.

With regard to the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s refusal to allow inspections of his nuclear program supplied the reasons for our invasion, which could be called a preventive war. Now, it is a curious fact that a preventive war against Hitler during the 1930s could have prevented the slaughter of the White Rose students, about 6 million Jews, and millions of others. That window of opportunity opened in March 1936, when Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded the Rhineland. Under the terms of the World War I armistice, that area was to remain a demilitarized zone, like the DMZ that separates North and South Korea today. Against the advice of his generals, who knew they didn’t yet have the forces to fight neighboring France, Hitler marched his troops into the Rhineland anyway. Had the French intervened – which they were legally entitled to do - they would have beaten the Germans, and that would probably have been the end of Hitler. But the French government, dominated by leftist pacifists, had decreed that the French armed forces must only be used defensively. So they talked themselves into doing nothing. Hitler’s successful bluff emboldened him to swallow Austria next, then Czecho-Slovakia, and finally Poland. And this is how World War II started: a lot of the blame can be placed on the anti-war movements of the time.

Letter to Oregon's "The World": "'The White Rose' -- Misconstruing Nazi History," republished in John Ray's Of Interest, 10/21/05 (emphasis added).

More high-level Saudi anti-US policy.

The testimony [in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 11/8/05] also discusses an audiotape, obtained by NBC earlier this year, of the chief justice of Saudi Arabia's Supreme Judicial Council heard exhorting young Muslims to go to Iraq to kill Americans. When NBC asked Saudi officials for their reaction, Saudi officials falsely claimed that the tape was a fabrication. NBC then contacted the Sheik directly in Saudi Arabia, who admitted that he made the recording.

Steven Emerson & Anthony Cordesman Debate Saudi Arabia's Cooperation at Senate Hearing, The Counterterrorism Blog, 11/8/05 (emphasis added).

Ze leetle problem.

Fred nails it, yet again:

Time and again these days, national governments let in all sorts of people who belong somewhere else. Pretty soon the country has so many that the government comes to fear them. At that point the problem passes beyond easy solution. So politicians paper over everything, and make concessions to buy a year’s peace.

* * * *

Has no one noticed that diversity doesn’t work? Putting together peoples with little in common begs for trouble, usually with success. It is the chief source of the world’s bloodshed and enmity.

* * * *

But what have facts to do with foreign relations? It is much more entertaining to base policy on adolescent theories and see what happens.

* * * *

Moslems in particular are poison. A failed civilization, Islam sends its unsuccessful, thus double failures, to Europe. . . .

* * * *

What the French need to do, but won’t, is to send the army into the Islamic slums, round up the whole lot, and put them ashore on the beaches of North Africa with a box lunch and a coupon for three free Dunkin Donuts. It isn’t a pretty answer. It’s a lot prettier than what seems to be coming down the pike.

Ah, but there is the little matter that the enlisted ranks of the French army are heavily Moslem. . . .

. . . Soon it will be too late for civilized answers.

Then what? That is the question.

"Paris Burns Again. Let's Roast Frankfurters." Fred on Everything, 11/7/05 (emphasis added) <--American Daughter, 11/9/05.

The ancient war.

The existence of an unassimilable Muslim population must be faced squarely. Flordman's descriptions of the hellish situation in Sweden caused by unassimilable Muslims and France's recent troubles demand at least that there be an immediate freeze on further immigration from Muslim lands and that what immigration is eventually permitted be conditioned on a solemn oath to

• forswear forever the advocacy of sharia,
• forswear jihad and Wahhabism as false and evil doctrines,
• affirm infidels as moral equals of Muslims,
• deny the concept of najis^[1] as applicable to infidels,
• accept the equality of women, and
• accept apostasy from Islam as a valid personal choice.

For starters.

Those who make false statements on immigration papers can be pursued as vigorously as those who concealed their Nazi pasts were.

Yet another warning:

There is no "war of civilizations" today . . . . No, it is simply the ancient war of Islam against all non-Muslims. If that war has here and there died down, even for centuries, it is only because the forces of Islam lacked an enemy they could defeat. It was not for want of trying -- for a thousand years Muslim raiders went up and down the coasts of Europe, and in Africa, for a thousand years, seized black African pagans for enslavement. Its conquest of India was a Muslim Jihad.

. . . The war against Israel is a classic Jihad, only since 1967 more or less tarted up as a "nationalist" crusade so as to win Western affection . . . . The war to kill Christians in Indonesia, to persecute the Copts in Egypt, to murder or mass-murder the non-Muslims in the southern Sudan, to murder a million Christians in the Biafran War (1967-1969) are all examples of Jihad.

It was not that Jihad somehow went away. It is just that we, the non-Muslims, failed to recognize what was going on. We failed, and many fail still, to see the ideological roots of Muslim behavior -- a behavior that is remarkably similar in time and space in its treatment of non-Muslims. It would be surprising were it otherwise, for the texts, Qur'an and hadith and sira, have remained the same, in time and space. What would surprise would be if Infidels were treated differently, say, in conquered India from the way they were treated in conquered Persia, or Mesopotamia. Everywhere, the choices: immediate death, immediate conversion, or dhimmitude were the only possibilities. And if today the Muslim populations in Western Europe and North America pay lip service to pluralism, it is only in order to take advantage of that pluralism until such time as they feel strong enough to pull off the mask, and deal with Infidels as their belief-system tells them to believe with Infidels. Those who, like Gilles Kepel, appear to believe that some other evelopment, some "new Euro-Islam," will emerge, should be asked to explain just how.^[2] 

"Notes
^[1] "The entire body of a Kafir, including his hair and nails, and all liquid substances of his body, are najis [filth]."
^[2] Fitzgerald: Learning from history is not a bad idea." By Hugh Fitzgerald, Dhimmiwatch, 11/8/05 (emphasis added).