Dr. Jack Wheeler
GEORGE BUSH’S BETRAYAL AND DESTRUCTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
The worst fears of conservative Republicans in Congress came true this Monday (11/13), six days after their November 7 wipeout. The tapping of Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) as RNC Chairman is confirming evidence that George Bush is intent on destroying the Republican Party. The most stunning defeat the GOP suffered on election day was that of Michael Steele for the open Senate seat in Maryland. Here is a black Lt. Governor who is really smart, really articulate, and really conservative Republican. The Dems were desperate to see him lose and they succeeded. Outgoing Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Ken Mehlman immediately recognized the value of Steele to the GOP and asked him to be his successor. Rove and Bush squashed the offer like a bug. Steele has been humiliated and is infuriated - he may drop out of politics now to the GOP's great loss. Bush and Rove instead forced their choice of Martinez upon the party. Why? Because Martinez, a Hispanic, is a fierce advocate of amnesty for illegal aliens.
A LUTA CONTINUA
That's Portuguese for "The Struggle Continues." It was the mantra and motto of the RENAMO (Resisténcia Nacional de Moçambicana) guerrillas fighting to liberate Mozambique from Communist tyranny in the 1980s. Of all the anti-Soviet freedom fighters I spent time with, they were the ones I liked the most. Now, their mantra should be that of conservatives who wish to preserve their country from the Hate America Left. It certainly is of TTP member Erik Larson, who commented in the User Forum:
Republicans should tactically exploit the certain fracturing on the Left: we have the Blue Dogs, the Hillary crowd, and radical leftists -- one of whom is about to be speaker. Even the Left's backers like Eleanor Clift (current article on MSN) see trouble ahead. I laughed all day hearing the talk about consensus building and getting along -- there ain't gonna be none! Not with this crew. The Dems have essentially a three way split. The Republicans need to widen it.This is excellent advice. I discussed it with a Republican Congressman (happily re-elected) who agreed, especially about the Blue Dogs.
IT’S PARTY TIME: THE TO THE POINT VEGAS RENDEZVOUS
When the going gets tough, as it got excruciatingly so on November 7th, the tough have a party. You may recall that's a line from a famous movie. But it won't be a Toga Party as John Belushi had in Animal House (the smooth seduction character of "Otter" in the movie, by the way, was based on my Sigma Nu fraternity brother at UCLA, Steve Deming). It will be what the Mountain Men of the Old West called their gatherings: a Rendezvous. And what better place to have it in than Las Vegas? Here's how it's going to work.
A DAY TO CELEBRATE
Today is November 9th. It is a very special day in the history of the world. No, not because it's my birthday. Because on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Today is World Freedom Day. It seems so long ago, doesn't it? Yet for anyone who isn't still a kid, the fear of the Soviet Union, the tyranny and genocidal oppression inflicted by the Soviets upon so much of the world, epitomized by the Berlin Wall, is what we grew up with. Hardly anyone could even imagine it going away. I'm recalling this history because it comes to mind now that there is a new inevitable doom engulfing Europe. Like the Soviet Union, it can't be resisted, Europe's fate is sealed, blah, blah, blah. This is, of course, the inevitable transformation of Europe into Eurabia, the inescapable submission of Europe to Islam. The problem is serious. The Soviet threat was very, very real, and so is that of Islam. But problems are not important. Only solutions to them are. By focusing on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the Soviet Communists, we were able to defeat them. We can do the same with the Islamic Fascists..
IT’S SINATRA TIME
Yes, it's Sinatra Time - meaning, recall FS's lyrics in That's Life, take a while to feel like garbage over Americans electing people who hate their country to run Capitol Hill, then pick yourself up and get back in the race. Yes, this is not going to be easy. I lived through the old joke this morning - waking up at dawn to survey the wreckage of yesterday, telling myself to cheer up as things could be worse. So I cheered up and sure enough, things got disastrously worse when Bush threw Rummy to the wolves of the left - and announced the worst possible replacement. Bobby Gates' nickname at the CIA was The Little Prick. He is a pompous, incompetent, squishy witless fool. He is the total tool of the Jimmy Baker-Brent Scowcroft crowd that so horribly ran foreign affairs for GW's daddy. To put such a man in charge of the Pentagon - the one bastion of pro-Americanism remaining in our foreign policy establishment - is an unmitigated catastrophe. Conservatives can get back in the race by blocking this awful nomination. They did it with Harriet Miers, it can be done with Little Bobby.
THE ARAB FAILURE IN IRAQ
We went to Iraq to overthrow a police state. Through a combination of stubbornness, naïveté and noble intentions, we've replaced it with another police state - more violent, more corrupt and less accountable. Our greatest setback in Iraq may be that country's undoing: It has proven impossible to develop an honest, nonpartisan police establishment anywhere in the country's Arab provinces. The police aren't feared by criminals, but by law-abiding citizens. The secret police are back, in the form of death squads. And the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki looks perfectly happy with the situation. An ugly truth is emerging. As dearly as we believe in democracy, Iraq's Arabs are proving that they're incapable of the political, social and moral maturity necessary to run an elected government.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: THE FATE OF MONTEZUMA
The Jade Steps Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Fate of Montezuma Cortez moved swiftly to commandeer the ships and supplies of Narvaez's fleet. Under the command of Francisco de Lugo, the ships were brought to Villa Rica, everything of use brought ashore, and the great quantities of wine, bacon, flour, cassava bread and other perishables carefully stored. He also moved quickly to merge the men and commands of Narvaez's men with his own. He detached Juan Velasquez de Leon and 120 men, 100 of whom were Narvaez men, to explore the coast to the north of Villa Rica and establish a colony near the river Panuco. He directed Diego de Ordaz to lead the same sort of contingent south for a colony near the river Coatzacoalco. He placed Rodrigo Rangel in charge of Villa Rica, made sure Narvaez and Salvatierra were securely imprisoned there, and ordered Gonzalo de Sandoval to make all preparations for the remainder of the command to return to Tenochtitlan. Then everything changed when Malinali brought one of Narvaez's officers, Botello Puerto de Plata, to Cortez. "Señor de Plata has disturbing news, my Captain," she told him. Cortez had been hearing about him. A hidalgo from Santander on the north coast of Castille, he had become a Latin scholar while studying in Rome, and had a reputation for being a prestidigitador, a magician who could predict the future. "Señor Cortez, I must warn you to leave here immediately," de Plata announced. "The officer you left in command at Tenochtitlan, Pedro de Alvarado, and all your men there are in grave danger. The Aztecs are making war upon them, they are attempting to climb into their quarters with ladders, and wish to kill them all. You must return there quickly."
KAFKA IN MANAGUA: Ollie North Is Helping A Communist Win In Nicaragua
Franz Kafka couldn't make this up. Ollie North is doing his best to see that his Sandinista foe, Daniel Ortega, responsible for the Communist tyranny in the 1980s that took so many lives of his (and my) Contra friends, will be elected president of Nicaragua this Sunday, November 5th. He's not doing it on purpose. Just like Democrats who are so filled with Bush-hatred they will support anything that hurts Bush even if it hurts America, Ollie is so filled with State Department-hatred that it is blinding him to what he is doing. I know it's hard to believe - and that Foggy Bottom has gotten something right for once adds to the Kafkaesque weirdness. The story begins in 1997....
WILL NOVEMBER 7 BE A CAPITULATION TO MASOCHISM?
If they were honest, liberal scientists who fanatically believe in the religion of anti-missile defense should band together and call themselves SFADA: Scientists For A Defenseless America. No matter what breakthroughs are achieved by the Pentagon in missile defense, you can depend on these guys to lie about them and claim they won't work. Last week, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency reached an extraordinary milestone: putting a "death-ray" high-energy laser aboard an airplane that can destroy at the speed of light an enemy nuclear missile aimed at the Unites States shortly after its launch. It was immediately denounced by liberal scientists being paid to lie for the left -- yet another example of liberal masochism that doesn't want America to be defended. The question of the moment is whether Americans will capitulate to such masochism next week.
CHINESE SIBERIA
If you're familiar with the Reconquista plan of the Mexican Aztlan movement (to reconquer the Southwest US "stolen" by America in the 19th century), this may sound like déjà vu all over again. Yet however bad you think our illegal immigrant problem is, it's pipsqueak compared to Russia's in Siberia. As a news story in mid-October (10/16) by Russia's only independent television station, Ren TV, reported from Vladivostok:
The emerging demographic situation developing here between Russia and China is simply catastrophic. The crisis is due to the creeping expansion of thousands of Chinese migrants. Chinese workers entering Siberia are replacing Russians who are not prepared to toil 12 hours a day for a pittance. Chinese students are taught that Siberia is their land, stolen from China in the 19th century. It is suspected by many Russians here that China is subsidizing the migration of its citizens. Demographers predict that by 2025 Chinese will be the Russian Far East's predominant ethnic group. Then, it is feared, they will gain the right to vote and demand union with China.
REVOLT IN THE AMAZON
Think you could be friends with these fellows? 
Sure you could. My son Jackson and I had no problem when we visited their village in the Amazon in 2002. They live in the deepest heart of the Amazon, along a tributary of the Xingu (ching-goo) River. They call themselves the Xicrin (chick-reen), a branch of the Kayapo tribe. They made newspaper headlines around the world this week. During our visit four years ago, the Xicrin asked for our help. In the middle of a pristine rain forest next to a beautiful river, they said they needed a well for drinking water. We were incredulous. They explained that their water was polluted with poison from a huge Brazilian mine on a river that drained into theirs. That's when I learned about CVRD.
FORWARD AWAY!
We are happy to announce a new feature for To The Point. A lot of you have expressed frustration that they could not easily forward a Members Only article to their friends. There is an email function, but to access an emailed article, you had to be a TTP member yourself. The only other way was to copy and paste an article into the text body of an email message. Our problem was that an emailed link to one article in To The Point would open up access to the entire site. We solved this with software providing a "one-time use" for just that article. Here's how it works. All TTP articles have two small icons in the top right corner, one for Print, one for Email. For any article you'd like to email to a friend or friends, just click on the icon and enter your friend(s) email address(es). Add your name, address, and whatever message subject you want. Push send. That's it. Your friend will get a link which will bring up the article on the To The Point webpage when he clicks it. Your friend has full access to that article - but only that article. He or she is in the site for just this "one-time use." Hopefully, they will benefit so much from the article they will be persuaded to subscribe themselves! But there's no sales pitch attached, just the article itself. So many of you have asked for this - wanting to share the wealth of To The Point - and now we can oblige. So feel free to forward away!
ARAB TRANSPARENCY
Indonesia, as per Will Indonesia Save Islam?, is not the only place in the Moslem world struggling against Jihadi Islamism. It turns out that there are hosts of folks in the Arab world who oppose the Jihadis, the Saudi Wahhabis, the Salafists who want a Dark Ages Islam. Now they have a voice. It's an independent Arabic website called Middle East Transparent. There are English and French versions (click on "English" in the top banner), but many of these articles are by Westerners. It is articles by Arabs written in Arabic that make this site so influential. "Metransparent" gets around 50,000 unique visitors a day, almost all from Moslems living in the Arab world. There's nothing else like it - for it gives voice to Arab writers still residing in countries with no intellectual freedom. These are not exiles safely pontificating from Paris coffee shops and London salons. These are men - and women - who have the courage to speak out under their own names from within Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, and every other Arab nation.
WILL INDONESIA SAVE ISLAM?
There are 245 million folks in Indonesia. 88% of them, or 215 million, are Moslem, comprising the largest Moslem population on earth. Just 8% of Indonesians are Christian, 2% are Hindu, and only 1% are Buddhist. Yet the most famous landmark of Indonesia - the archaeological wonder of Borobudur - is Buddhist. In fact, it is the world's largest Buddhist monument. Indonesia's most famous tourist destination and most famous culture is the island of Bali. The people of Bali are not Moslem. They are Hindu. Indonesia used to be Buddhist and Hindu, and is a long ways from Arabia. How did this place become Moslem? Answering that question may lead us to a surprising conclusion: Our focus in the War on Islamic Terrorism has been the Middle East, then secondarily with fears that Europe is becoming Eurabia. But it may well turn out that this war will be won or lost in Indonesia.
BORIS. BILL, AND MONICA: TROUBLE FOR HILLARY?
Will the saga of the world's most famous fellatrice return to haunt Hillary in 2008? There's this fascinating whisper making the Washington rounds that says yes. While convoluted and circumstantial, a number of plugged-in Washingtonians believe it. The story starts with Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was President of Russia from its emergence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to 1999. In October of 2000, part three of his autobiography was published, Midnight Diaries. In it, there was an astounding revelation: That in "late 1996," after Bill Clinton's re-election in November, he (Yeltsin) received a highly classified report from his Foreign Intelligence Service (Russian acronym SVR, formerly a branch of the KGB). Russian intel had learned that the President of the United States was having an affair with an intern named Monica Lewinsky. This was over a full year before the world learned of the scandal via the Drudge Report internet website on January 19, 1998. The President of the United States was about to be blackmailed.
NORTH KOREA: THE NEXT CHRISTIAN NATION IN ASIA
2008. That's the number that dooms North Korea's lunatic tyrant Kim Jong-il. If there's one thing the Chicoms in Beijing are not going to let anyone screw up, it's their coming-out party to the world, the 2008 Olympics. They are not about to tolerate some nuclear fruitcake causing a million-death war on their doorstep. That's why they are studying Romanian history, circa 1989. That was the year that communist generals in the Securitatae (secret police) staged a putsch and seized power after executing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena. Their death by machine-gun was videotaped. Baby Kim has a copy, and is requiring all his subordinates to view it. It's to teach them a lesson, but you'd think that it would give them ideas instead. It's a good bet that the Chicoms will soon be instigating a Romanian-type overthrow of Baby Kim and installing a new regime in Pyongyang. It won't be a pro-West democracy promising disarmament and union with South Korea - but it will be far less belligerent and far more peaceful. Such a regime will be a colony of China and will resist demands for genuine democratic elections. What it won't be able to resist is its being rapidly Christianized.
THE DEATH OF THE ARGUMENT FOR MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING
One year ago, in September 2005, you learned what is actually causing whatever global warming the earth is experiencing. Solar Warming explained the specific mechanism involved: the sun's increased magnetic activity deflecting the rain of cosmic rays upon the atmosphere, resulting in fewer clouds reflecting sunlight back into space and thus a warmer earth. This month, scientists at the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen released the results of very well-designed and controlled experiments demonstrating the chemical mechanism of cosmic ray action upon cloud formation. Folks, this a big deal. These are the results of a controlled experiment by serious scientists, not some GIGO (garbage-in/garbage-out) computer climate modeling. They experimentally demonstrate how the cause of global warming or "climate change" is the sun, not us. The argument for man-made global warming is dead.
WHY SHOULD WE RESPECT OUR ENEMIES?
Freeman Dyson, who is a famous physicist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, argues in the current issue of The New York Review of Books that the 9/11 Moslem terrorists are deserving of “respect” : "Yes, I wrote that we should respect our enemies as human beings in order to understand them. I do not retract or apologize for this statement. I would like only to add a more general statement, that our lack of respect for our enemies made it harder for us to deal with them effectively." Yet it needs to asked: Why should one respect someone as a human being? Does the mere fact of membership in the human species amount to some worthwhile achievement? No. Why then respect one merely for being human? Hitler was human, child molesters are human and it is pretty preposterous to consider them worthy of any sort of respect. So, that part of Professor Dyson's claim is arguably false. Let's take the other part. Why would lack of respect imply lack of understanding? Much of the world around us deserves no respect at all, yet we can understand it pretty well. As a physicist, while he understands them, does Professor Dyson respect the electron or the quark?
THE IMMORALITY OF LOSING A WAR
Have Americans lost the will to win wars? Not just in Iraq, but anywhere? Do we really believe that being nice is more important than victory? It's hard enough to bear the timidity of our civilian leaders - anxious to start wars but without the guts to finish them - but now our military leaders have fallen prey to political correctness. Unwilling to accept that war is, by its nature, a savage act and that defeat is immoral, influential officers are arguing for a kinder, gentler approach to our enemies. They're going to lead us into failure, sacrificing our soldiers and Marines for nothing: Political correctness kills. It's all in the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine laid out in Field Manual 3-24. The doctrine is so dishonest and cowardly that it's message is: Let our troops die, just don't hurt anyone's feelings.
THE COLORADO CANARY
The meta-story regarding the mid-term elections is how the Democrats can't wait to get to the voting booth to inflict electoral doom upon their enemies, while Republicans are so depressed they will either stay home or have to be dragged to the polls.
Maybe, but there's this Colorado canary in the Democrat coal mine that's warbling a contrarian song. In Colorado you can vote up to 30 days ahead of election day by absentee ballot. To do so you must of course request a ballot. The absentee ballots won't be counted until November 7th, but what is known is the number of requests for them. It turns out that the number of requests by registered Republicans is way up from past years while those from registered Democrats is way down. Here's more of the buzz heard in the halls of the Capitol Building three weeks out:
IMPLODING IRAN
[This is the text of a speech I am giving on Friday, October 13 to an organization composed of prominent conservative leaders throughout the country called the Council for National Policy. --JW] How many of you here have been members of CNP since the 1980s and remember the critical role the CNP played in generating support for anti-Soviet freedom fighters? Please raise your hand. Keep them up, thanks - now, the rest of you notice who these folks are. Remember them, and after this panel, go up to them and ask them what it was like 20 years ago when the thought of collapsing the Soviet Union seemed completely off the wall. Yet it was the incessant, unrelenting, demand of thousands, millions, of conservatives who belonged to organizations led by members of the Council for National Policy, that enabled the Reagan Administration to support and supply with money, training, and equipment, anti-Soviet freedom fighters. And that turned out to be the key to winning the Cold War. I want to talk to you today about how you, as current members of CNP, can play the same role in winning the war on Islamofascist terrorism by ridding the world of its principal sponsor, the Mullahcracy ruling Iran.
CELEBRATING COLUMBUS AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Today, October 12, is the 514th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' landing on Guanahani (now known as San Salvador or Watlings) island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Unfortunately, Columbus Day is for most Americans just an excuse for a three-day weekend, which is why it fell on Monday, October 9. What it should be is a commemoration and celebration of Western Civilization - which is why the Left hates Columbus and his holiday. Fortunately, North Korea's botched nuclear bomb explosion shooed the Columbus Day protestors off the newspaper pages and television screens. Thankfully ignored was the usual spectacle of American Indians using the holiday to denounce the White Man and his genocidal war-mongering culture-destroying earth-murdering imperialism, blah blah blah - with White Liberals joining in, masochistically condemning their own civilization. But they will be at it again next year, so let us suggest to them now that they abandon every vestige of the civilization they hate as so evil - for else they are bottomless hypocrites. Not just every material benefit - electricity, the wheel, and all post-Stone Age inventions. Every psychological vestige as well - starting with the very concept of American Indian or Native American or any other collective term. For the reality is that there were no Indians in America when Columbus discovered it.
BRAYING JACKASSES CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO LEAD AMERICA
The BBC reported on October 10 that in the Indian state of Jharkhand, villagers fled their homes to escape a rampaging herd of grief-stricken elephants. "They say the animals are agitated because one of their herd disappeared. Officials say the missing animal became disoriented, and fell into a ditch and drowned over the weekend." There was no mention in the BBC report whether or not the village jackasses were braying with delight at the sight of the distressed elephants. Of course the Indian people are always disturbed when their elephants run amuck, because, since time immemorial they have relied on the strong, intelligent and friendly elephants to do their heavy lifting for them. The donkeys simply do not have the mental or physical capacity to substitute for the prized elephants. Meanwhile in Washington...
NORTH KOREA’S NUKE TEST FLOP
[Note: Written the day after North Korea exploded its "device," an Update with new information is now appended at the end.] The public face of Bush Administration officials regarding North Korea's nuclear test is a mask of utter seriousness, or "grave concern." Behind the mask, folks are laughing their heads off. Meanwhile, the world's dumbest nuclear scientists - namely, those in North Korea - are terrified of what Baby Kim will do to them when he finds out the truth. Essentially, we have a replay of the total fiasco of Baby Kim's headline-garnering missile test launch last July. North Korea's claim to have successfully conducted a test explosion of a nuclear bomb on Monday (October 8) has resulted in even more public hysteria that its missile tests, and even more private laughter. The test shows the entire plutonium stockpile of North Korea is worthless: It's not "weapons grade" so bombs cannot be made ot it. Here's why.
SMUGGLERS’ PARADISE
This is a story about 21st century Persian smugglers and 19th century British soldiers driven crazy by literally going "around the bend." It takes place in one of the world's most inhospitable and strategically critical places in the world - the Strait of Hormuz. This is where the sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil, pumped out of the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Iranian, and Emirati oil fields, and into giant supertankers which snake through the Strait in continuous succession. That's where I am right now, writing this overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. The sun is setting, and I can see it lighting up the cliffs of Iran. There's a direct flight from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. From there I drove through the other Emirates like Sharjah and Umm al Qawain, then up into the wasteland of Musandam to here. I had come to see a Persian smuggling operation running contraband across the Strait by speedboat into Iran. But first, let's talk about those crazy Brits...
TURTLE SOUP
Grand Cayman, The Cayman Islands Turtle Farm. If people were not allowed to own chickens and if chicken eggs and meat could not be legally sold, how many chickens would there be? The reason chickens, cattle, catfish, and goldfish are not endangered is because they are owned by private parties, bred and raised in captivity, and sold for commercial profit - hence there are billions of these animals. The poor sea turtle is endangered precisely because the global environmental lobby refuses to let sea turtles be commercially farmed and marketed like chickens and cattle and catfish.
WITH THE PESHMERGA
The moon was a little over a quarter full. It would be setting in an hour or so, leaving us without its meager light. I longed for night vision goggles, but the men I was with seemed to have no need of them and moved confidently in the dark. They were Kurdish guerrilla fighters known as Peshmerga, "Those who face death." We were armed, but not heavily. Holstered on my belt was a Webley Mark IV .38 revolver, and slung over my back was an AK-47 Kalashnikov, Type 2 with a wooden stock. The famous banana clip only holds 30 rounds, but I had no vest for extra magazines. One of the men showed me he was carrying eight and motioned for me not to worry. The Peshmerga were all carrying AKs of course, with vests for extra magazines and pouches for hand grenades. But that was it - no RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade launchers), no heavy machine guns. We were traveling light, as this was an insertion team. The mission was to insert me into Iran.
JOKE INTELLIGENCE
There is an "intelligence website" emanating from Israel called Debka. This Monday (September 24), it breathlessly blared Iran and Turkey Prepare for War in Iraqi Kurdistan. Debka's "exclusive military sources in Iraq" have revealed just to the website alone that "Turkish and Iranian air units as well as armored, paratroop, special operations and artillery forces are poised for an imminent coordinated invasion of the northern Iraqi autonomous province of Kurdistan." Since I am in Iraqi Kurdistan meeting with Kurdish resistance movements operating in Iran, I showed them the story. They laughed their heads off.
THE KURDISH KEY TO THE MIDDLE EAST
Among the most fascinating folks in the world are people known as the Kurds. They are older than history. The Land of Kurda is mentioned in Sumerian clay tablets - the world's oldest writing - over 5,000 years ago. The Land of Kurda - Kurdistan - was ancient five millennia ago. The Kurds had been living there for thousands of years before 3,000 BC - and they are still living there today, in the mountains of what is now northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey. They number in the tens of millions - five million in Iraq, ten million in Iran, three million in Syria, between twenty and thirty million in Turkey. They are by far the largest ethnic group on earth without their own country. This has always made them a threat to the countries that divide up their homeland of Kurdistan. Always. The Kurds have been fighting the Persians for 2,500 years, the Arabs for 1,300 years, the Turks for 500 years. Western governments look upon the Kurds as a problem which threatens to break apart the fragile map of the Middle East into chaotic pieces. Now at last, the time has arrived to look upon the Kurds as an opportunity rather than a threat, not as a problem but a solution. The emerging reality is that the Kurds are the key to peace, freedom, and democracy throughout the entire Middle East. That's why I am in northern Iraq right now, as I am writing this.
TOXIC HONOR
The more I travel, study history and read the papers, the more convinced I become of the superiority of rationalism. With that attitude, I should spend all my time traveling to northern Europe and Japan. However, fate has also seen fit to send me to many places where people think with their viscera and gonads instead of their brains. The more I see it in action, the more convinced I become that societies that place personal "honor" before everything else are truly cursed. Nothing better illustrates this "honor" mentality better than the fury directed by Islamic militants against Danish and Norwegian cartoons of Mohammed, or most recently the Regensburg speech of Pope Benedict XVI. Sacrilegious art in other cultures can offend and get people angry but the lunatic response of radical Islamists is in a class by itself. It's the shrieking, out of control petulance of a three-year old throwing a tantrum. People infected with this attitude will be utterly incapable of recognizing wrongdoing by their own society, utterly incapable of taking criticism or recognizing the need for correction. This is remarkably close to the image of Hell painted by C. S. Lewis in his books Perelandra and The Screwtape Letters: a paralyzing self-absorption that imprisons the individual in hate and impotent rage while simultaneously blinding him to any possibility of escape.
RESCUING ISLAM FROM ITSELF
The recent brouhaha surrounding Pope Benedict XVI comments on Islam delivered in Germany should give Moslems a pause. What the Pope said allows me, as a Moslem, to ponder self-examination and not rush into a reaction of condemnation. Islam, throughout its history, delivered its share of great minds to humanity during times of peace and prosperity. Scientists like Mohammad al-Khawarizmi who invented algebra and Avicenna who contributed greatly to medicine lived in an era of "political prestige, financial power, and intellectual pursuit with Baghdad as the epicenter" as Saadia Iqbal described it in a recent National Geographic article. We Moslems, in another era, built our own great and peaceful civilization that ushered the prosperity wished upon any people of any race in any religion. But Islam of today differs from the Islam of yesterday. Instead of a thriving era of the Abbasids, we are experiencing a terrorist era of Wahhabism. The radicalism of Wahhabi Islam demands a concerted effort by moderate Moslems and Moslem nations alike if ever Islam is to survive to usher another era of peace and prosperity.
THE DAWN OF MORAL CLARITY
There is a historically fairly predictable pattern to the unfolding strategies and views of great wars. They often start with a morally ambiguous view of the enemy, a more limited conception of the war's magnitude and a restrained application of violent tactics. Eventually, moral clarity is obtained, war objectives expand - often to grandiosity, and tactics become ferocious. Today, the West's struggle to resist radical Islamic aggression (both cultural and terroristic) is still in that early phase of moral confusion and limited tactics. Thus we continue to debate the ethical merits of minor intrusions into American civil liberties (such as NSA surveillance of some phone calls from foreign suspects), and even men such as Sen. John McCain and Gen. Colin Powell challenge the need to permit psychologically rough - but nonviolent - interrogation of captured terrorists. But there are some signs that the early stage of moral confusion is beginning to give way to greater clarity.
THE DAMASCUS SCAM
Syrians Foil US Embassy Bombing blared the BBC headline regarding the terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Damascus, Syria on September 12. US Lauds Syrian Forces in US Embassy Attack was the CNN headline the next day. Then came the clincher when the Associated Press ran a story headlined Isolated Syria Hopes Attack on US Embassy Will Warm Relations with US. Syria playing Uncle Sam for a sucker yet again. For the "attack," you see, was staged. It was planned by Assef Shawkat, head of Syrian Military Intelligence, whose agents provocateurs provoked a few hothead fools, provided them with weapons, and organized the attack for them - so Shawkat's "Syrian Forces" could be there as heroes to kill the bad guys and save the American diplomats. It's an old Damascus game...
TORTURED LOGIC AND TORTURING TERRORISTS
When House Majority Leader John Boehner accused Democrats last week of wanting to protect the "rights" of terrorists more than the lives of Americans, a number of Republican Senators winced - because they knew Boehner's accusation also applied to three of their colleagues: John Warner, Lindsay Graham, and most especially, John McCain. A lot of folks who have had personal contact with McCain think a part of him is mentally unhinged. It scares them to death that he might be president. The upside of the debacle he has caused opposing President Bush's proposed legislation on terrorist interrogation is that there are enough voters now who see his mental instability to block his White House aspirations. Yet if McCain is around the mental bend, even more so is the Supreme Court - or at least the five Justices (Breyer, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg) whose pro-terrorist ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (June 29, 2006) is the cause of this mess. For those interested in the tortured logic of the Supreme Court, I am appending a discussion of it at the end of this article. What we're going to talk now about is torture, and how it isn't necessary. For there is a way, using a knowledge of brain chemistry, to make a terrorist quickly and easily sing like a canary - without any torture at all.
ALLAH IS DEAD
A careful reading of Pope Benedict XVI's speech on Faith and Reason, delivered at the University of Regensburg, Germany, on September 12 leaves one with the overwhelming impression of being in the presence of an absolutely world-class intelligence. I could not encourage you more to read and study it entire. At root and on purpose, the speech is a devastating assault on the metaphysical foundation of Islam. It's become a commonplace to refer to our war with Islamofascism as a "War of Ideas." The war is now joined for real. The fight Benedict picked with Islam is exactly the fight we need. It is a fight in which Islam is defenseless. This goes far beyond the Kafkaesque hypocrisy of Moslem barbarians threatening to kill the Pope for accusing Islam of being a religion of violence rather than peace. What Benedict really accused Islam of is being inhuman - because it's god, Allah, is inhuman. In this speech, the Pope wiped away all the weepy touchy-feely "we all believe in the same God" claptrap. The Pope's fundamental point was the connection between mankind and the Christian God, and the lack of it with the god of Islam.
Join the forum discussion on this postYOU KNOW YOU’RE A SYRIAN WHEN…
Having spent the last two months in Damascus, Syria, I have determined through personal experience that you know you're a Syrian when... ...You have a Malcolm X sign on your rear view mirror and think Adolf Hitler was a great man for killing Jews. ...You Love Hezbollah but hate the Lebanese. ...You think all women should be virgins but you want to screw everything that walks.
REGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVES
At my university I was sitting at one interminably long meeting where sadly much time is wasted and little gets done. But during one of the discussions the person who was the leader made the point that there are faculty members of two different political persuasions, conservative and progressive. He was trying to be simply descriptive. Ah, yes, "progressive," that into which liberals have been transformed. Yet the designation fails to fit folks on the Left altogether. Because instead of moving forward, getting away from past practices, of making progress, those on the Left are actually regressive, even reactionary, in their politics. I give you one major example.
OUR SECRET VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN
The last thing America's Traitor Media would report is that we are winning in Afghanistan. Yet that's what's happening. NATO forces - combining US, Canadian, Australian, Polish soldiers plus 1,000 French (!) - have been rolling up the Taliban in a ball over the last several months. The "resurgent" Taliban that Democrats like John Kerry claimed today (9/14) are "running amok across entire regions" of Afghanistan are in reality being wiped out. Victory over them is quite near. Taliban guerrillas are being killed by the gross - dozens, scores, at a time, hundreds a week. Over 500 have been killed in one single district (Panjwayi) west of Kandahar (the main city in southern Afghanistan) in the past two weeks alone. It's being called The Great Taliban Turkey Shoot.
THE BEST AND WORST IN IRAQ
"Roger Ramadi" is the pseudonym of a high-ranking Marine intelligence officer currently serving in Iraq. To The Point just received his "sitrep" of the best and the worst in Anbar Province, Iraq's "Wild West." Worst City in al-Anbar Province -- Ramadi, hands down. The provincial capital of 400,000 people. Killed over 1,000 insurgents in there since we arrived in February. Every day is a nasty gun battle. They blast us with giant bombs in the road, snipers, mortars and small arms. We blast them with tanks, attack helicopters, artillery, our snipers (much better than theirs), and every weapon that an infantryman can carry. Every day. Incredibly, I rarely see Ramadi in the news. We have as many attacks out here in the west as Baghdad. Yet, Baghdad has 7 million people, we have just 1.2 million. Per capita, al-Anbar province is the most violent place in Iraq by several orders of magnitude. I suppose it was no accident that the Marines were assigned this area in 2003. Best Chuck Norris Moment -- 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in the small town of Kubaysah to kidnap the town mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor's hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machinegun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can't fight City Hall. Most Surreal Moment -- Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. I had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.
THE COST OF HUBRIS AND GAS
Over a bottle of Di Majo Norante Sangiovese Tuscan red wine last night, the chiefs of staff for two Republican Senators, the chief of staff of a Democrat Congressman, and I bantered over the fate of Capitol Hill. The Democrat was crowing over soon-to-be Speaker Pelosi and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who could hardly wait to launch impeachment proceedings against President Bush. The Republicans enjoyed their wine and let him crow. Then one of them lowered the boom. "Dream all you want," he said, "but on November 7, gas will be way below $2 a gallon and you'll be kissing your majority goodbye."