What’s Wrong with the World

Recent arrests of (qualifiedly) indigenous jihadists, four of whom are Muslims from the former Yugoslavia, and three of whom are illegal immigrants, have failed to stimulate even a simulation of the sort of discussion America must have if it is to secure itself from the depredations of such men. Such a discussion would, of necessity, be liberal in scope, encompassing interrogations of everything from immigration policy to the squalor of a foreign policy which issues in the creation of sharia states along the underbelly of Europe, and brings to power sharia regimes further to the east.

I am conflicted on the subject of Tony Blair. There are good reasons to dislike him intensely. He has, for instance, presided over the abolition of Britain’s liberty. There has been no more reliable advocate of Liberalism, or more feckless and even perverse skeptic of multiculturalism, than Tony Blair.

On the other hand, his loyalty and eloquence as an ally has been unfailing; and shone most brightly when America was in her hour of need. This is no small thing. Nor should it be forgotten that he disarmed Socialism in Great Britain, and allowed the British people to prosper — at least materially.

Whether Britain can be said to have prospered, in the more general sense, under his Governments, is an open question. Business enterprise has been unfettered to some degree — but rushing in behind the levelers of Liberalism, Blair’s men, has been a wave of social ruin and debasement, of nihilism and passivity, almost unparalleled in the Western world. It is like American cities in the 1970s. And perhaps the Liberals can take credit for this at least: they have demonstrated that their philosophy, when implemented with sufficient vigor, can deprive men of any race, creed or color of their culture and manners, and reduce them to barbarism.

Into these ruins filtered the agents and provocateurs of the Jihad; and they will not be easily dislodged. This may well be Blair’s most lasting legacy: as from ruins of the decaying Byzantine Empire the Turkish Jihad acquired its resources and even manpower, so too may today’s incarnation of the Jihad soon gain control of substantial resources in Europe, including in Great Britain. Tony Blair presided over the first steps of this ominous process.

Snopes, call your office; it's time for an update.

Annie Jacobsen has been speaking out for years about what she saw on Northwest Airlines Flight 327 on June 29, 2004.

But the hoax-detector site Snopes.com labels her story as an urban legend, or at least an urban myth, blown up wildly out of proportion by Annie's all-too-vivid imagination. The group of Syrian men seated in a zig-zag pattern in the plane, making hand signals to each other throughout the flight, using the bathroom continuously in rotation, and standing up in unison when the fasten seatbelt sign went on (and there's more suspicious behavior where that came from) were a musical group, don't you see? Which means, of course, that they couldn't possibly have been carrying out a terrorist dry run. All the flight attendants and the air marshals felt all along that Ms. Jacobsen was exaggerating. She was endangering the flight by making such a fuss. Everyone thought so. They tried to calm her down, but she wouldn't listen. Poor, hysterical woman. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Thanks, Snopes. We're so glad you're there to tell us when to brush these things off. We wouldn't want to be credulous, now, and get all bent out of shape for nothing.

So it looks as though, having first fitfully embraced the Jihad by means of democracy, Palestine will consummate this union by simple brute force. Hamas, a forthright agent of the Jihad, is swiftly conquering Gaza, dispossessing the nationalist organization Fatah; and in a kind of microcosm of Western impotence, we see Nationalism, a thing basically understood by the West, overthrown by Religion, a thing made mysterious to by our folly of forgetfulness — overthrown first by Westerns mechanisms such as elections and other democratic forms, and then by means of Western technology. We have before us, in short, Democracy and Progress.

Western impotence, my friends, is something that in my judgment amounts to simply a fact we have to confront. By that I mean merely this: the Jihad is older and deeper than most of us realized at first, and even today many influential people are still in a position of the most brassbound and reactionary denial about it. The Jihad will not soon be changed or defeated, much less broken and discredited, by any craft we here possess. We cannot introduce Permanent Revolution into the strange ferment of piety and radicalism in the Dar al-Islam: and expect to profit from the consequences of that toxic brew. We can hardly predict those consequences, much less exploit them toward a just peace.

My call last week for a Jihad-sedition law stirred up a hornet’s nest. While it was not a new idea, I often forget that what is old hat to me may be new and shocking to others. I also must take some blame for some misinterpretations — because the simple fact is that my writing, in one paragraph in particular, was a convoluted mess.

So here, in legal and more precise language, is what I propose:

America lies torpidly beneath a consoling, yet leaden blanket of illusions, made all the more inviting by the mythology which has grown up around - or, rather, has been imposed by representatives of the dominant liberal elite - the history of her post-WWII period. According to this mythology, America was a nation which was conceived, not as the expression of a distinct and settled culture, albeit a restless one, but as a promise of the future; and that future, moreover, was cruelly deferred for a significant segment of the population, deferred, that is, until liberals awakened the conscience of the nation and roused her to realize that future. And we might well acknowledge that, despite the grotesque "unfurling of history" quality of the liberal narrative, that there was a terrible contradiction and injustice that begged for rectification.

Yet, America did not seem to rest content, having at least acknowledged a troubled history and moved to redress it. To the contrary, the liberal narrative laid hold of her authoritative institutions, if not the hearts of the people, and that glorious promise of the future cast ever-darkening shadows over the present, and even as Americans adjusted their habits to correct those perhaps now outmoded, showed it as little more than a collage of injustices. American history was now a litany of abuses and perfidies. Perhaps her essence was no more than this. At the heart of this emergent image of the republic, or at least near to its heart, was the notion that much injustice resulted from the drawing of distinctions, and the actions that followed upon such employments of reason.

In the debate over a proposed Jihad-sedition law — a law at once designating the threat of sedition on principles of Jihad a threat of highest gravity, and giving legal teeth to that designation — one response commonly heard, though more whispered than shouted, is that, “it will never pass.” I have written about this proposal several times over a period of over a year, but the impermanence of the Web medium makes it as though each proposal is quite novel and shocking — so I have some sense for how this thing strikes readers. A sizeable group, even at a place like Redstate, are inclined react with predictable antagonism to the proposal; some are even thrown into unreason by their shock; but others merely react with what we might call a conjecture of impotence, a preemptive prediction of failure.

Via Rod Dreher:

Islamic extremists embedded in the United States — posing as Hispanic nationals — are partnering with violent Mexican drug gangs to finance terror networks in the Middle East, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

"Since drug traffickers and terrorists operate in a clandestine environment, both groups utilize similar methodologies to function ... all lend themselves to facilitation and are among the essential elements that may contribute to the successful conclusion of a catastrophic event by terrorists," said the confidential report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The 2005 report outlines an ongoing scheme in which multiple Middle Eastern drug-trafficking and terrorist cells operating in the U.S. fund terror networks overseas, aided by established Mexican cartels with highly sophisticated trafficking routes.

These terrorist groups, or sleeper cells, include people who speak Arabic, Spanish and Hebrew and, for the most part, arouse no suspicion in their communities. (Sara Carter, Washington Times for August 8, 2007)

Now, some of us who have taken the measure of the jihad, perceiving in it the nature of an existential threat to the very substance of our civilization, albeit one which will require time to ripen, have contemplated this very possibility for some time. In fact, we might even asseverate that this possibility suggests itself upon consideration of the entities involved: it is in the nature of clandestine organizations, even those that, like some Islamic groups, observe a decentralized, "leaderless resistance" style of organization, that they not concern themselves overmuch with the objectives of partners. Provided that there is sufficient overlap at the point of meeting, and provided, further, that there exist no immediate and overt conflicts of aim, collaboration can occur. That some nationals of Islamic nations may easily pass themselves off as Latin Americans only adds to the synergy.

James Poulos, who blogs at Postmodern Conservative and The American Scene, has, in his own words, taken part-time employment as a critic of "our general cultural retreat into the therapeutic meta-ethics of feeling, emotion, and sense - and away from the ethics of fact, act, and responsibility". Critiquing a NYT article on US-Saudi relations which stated that the American officials had consented to interviews in advance of a diplomatic junket in order to "send a pointed signal of deep frustration", Poulos wrote:

No, ladies and gentlemen. The officials were clearly intent on actually expressing deep frustration that more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course. (snip) We must cease this constant retreat into meta-narrative. We must insist upon discussing the world where actual actions take place. We must resist the half-conscious urge to make feelings and feints, interpretations and intimations, more important than the behaviors that call them into 'being.' We must stop reading entrails and issuing oracles.

In other words, the US did not send a signal of frustration; they simply expressed it, period. The metanarrative of signals and signs adds nothing but a layer of opaque, baroque ritual, obfuscating what actually transpired.

I want you to consider what it would mean to you, if you learned that a Jim Crow Party were potent and fashionable, and perhaps even ready to shake the political science of our country. Consider that before us stood the menace of a political movement organized upon a principle of subjugation and humiliation of an inferior or benighted class. How would you greet this? How would it strike your sensibility? Or consider what might be your reaction to the appearance of renewed apparatus of subversion, in certain ways analogous to the Communist infiltration of the early 20th century.

I want you to consider them amalgamated: an organized apparatus of subversion ordered toward the subjugation of a class of men.

This, friends, is the Jihad; and it is we who shall be subjugated. For the great honor of Islam is to extend equality to all men; and the great disgrace of the Jihad is to remove it utterly from those who reject the faith.

It is vital to understand the gravity of the situation. Now of course I know that all my friends here understand it perfectly well — else they would not have signed onto a statement of purpose so emphatic as ours. I feel confident, moreover, that even some of our dear right-Liberals, as Zippy long ago described them, are pretty well on-broad with our purpose. I have even discovered, in personal conversation, that indeed a number of flat-out Liberals are in the end sympathetic; in short that though they might bristle at the strictures I would apply to Liberalism, they could still be made to perceive the true threat of the Jihad. In these facts I find great reassurance and even pride. My countrymen, in considerable number and even despite other differences of real depth, are with me in opposition to the Jihad.

There is, in a manner of speaking, a board constituency for a formidable Anti-Jihad Coalition.

And so my question to readers is this: what sort of rhetorical, political, philosophical, even theological principles ought to comprise our strategy against this enemy?

I have long believed that the goal of bringing democracy to Iraq — a goal that is often confused with bringing freedom to Iraq — may in fact be inimical to the immeasurably more important goal of vanquishing the Jihad. This for the pulverizingly simple reason that the Jihad is popular in the Islamic world, including Iraq. I doubt that it commands majority support — but it certainly commands majority acquiescence, and enormous factional sympathy. That is to say, waging war to subjugate the infidel (however defined), being an ancient and enduring feature of the Islamic religion, perforce is an enduring feature of Islamic society. Emancipate that society from autocracy and suppression — free popular passions from the yoke of Leviathan — and you may well find that the Jihad is not weakened but considerably strengthened.

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The popular trope on the Right is that Leftists are suicidal dhimmi when it comes to the Jihad. While there may be some truth to that, I don't think it is the whole story. In a recent thread, Lydia and I were both making dire predictions which we fervently hope will not come to pass. In the course of that thread a metaphor came up which may be helpful in understanding how modern left-liberals think about the Jihad.

The metaphor is this: the modern Left views the Jihad in much the same way that the modern Right views global warming.

In 1565 the Grand Master of the Knights was a Frenchmen of Gascony, Jean Parisot de la Valette by name, who was by then (like Sultan Suleiman himself) in his seventies, but still vigorous. Piety and military acumen were his leading virtues: he was the very model of the warrior-priest, a kind of throwback to a dying medieval age. The religious fervor of the Knights had of late diminished, much as the chivalric piety of the medieval age itself was dying, and many of them had become worldly, sensuous, and arrogant. But La Valette, when he became Grand Master, aimed to check this corruption. Ernle Bradford calls him, “that rarest of human beings, a completely single-minded man.” His lieutenant was an Englishman, in exile from his homeland where Catholicism was proscribed; and it was this latter who decoded the reports from spies in Constantinople that the Turks were again massing against the Knights. The Order was the last vestige of that great Christian counterattack known as the Crusades, and the Sultan was now determined to stamp it out forever. Communiqués were sent all over Europe, calling the Knights to the defense of their last island home.

For the strategists of the Turks, including an old Algerian corsair called Dragut, Malta was more than just the remnant of an antique military order: it was the key to a proposed offensive in the western Mediterranean, an offensive that was to cow the Spanish and if possible carry the jihad to the very doors of St. Peter’s. And in any case, since Sicily, Sardinia, Majorca, and southern Spain itself had once been Islamic lands, it was a duty imposed upon the Sultan, by the iron principles of jihad, as duly constituted ruler, the successor to the caliph, to recover them from the infidel. Lands where the banners of the Crescent had once flown proudly must be returned to the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam). The presence of the Maltese Knights barred such a project; and therefore the reduction of the island would be a prelude to a wider war. Said Dragut: “Unless you have smoked out this nest of vipers, you can do no good anywhere.” In March of 1565, a fleet of nearly 200 vessels, bearing some 40,000 soldiers (including 6,500 elite shock troops known as the Janissaries), assembled in the Golden Horn for the Sultan's inspection. Dragut made two astute recommendations: move against the isle early in the season, and detach a significant flotilla to menace the Spanish mainland, thereby preventing aid from the Emperor. Once the invasion began, the more confident among the Sultan's advisers anticipated the victory to come — in a matter of days.

The victory never came. Across Europe news of the bravery of Knights — outnumbered five to one or more — rang like a great tocsin. All throughout that brutal summer on the sun-baked isle, the Turks had been repulsed, time after time, in their attempts to take the Christian fortresses of Malta. One such fortress had been reduced to rubble by Turkish artillery, and its garrison (almost every one of them already dead) desecrated by enraged Turks; but the other had held. Casualties among the Sultan’s army had been terrible, and disease ran rampant. The stiffness of the resistance, added to the depredations of pestilence and heatstroke, had won for Western Christians their first great victory over the Turk. La Valette’s final address to his men has come down to us:

A formidable army composed of audacious barbarians is descending on this island. These persons, my brothers, are the enemies of Jesus Christ. Today it is a question of the defense of our faith — as to whether the Gospels are to be superseded by the Koran. God on this occasion demands of us our lives, already vowed to his service. Happy will be those who first consummate this sacrifice.

The date of this victory has for us a certain resonance: it was September 11, 1565.

From that day we may date the decline of Turkish power on the Mediterranean. Six years later at Lepanto, a vast Ottoman fleet was decisively beaten by a comparable fleet of the Christian Holy League in one of the largest and bloodiest naval battles ever fought. The Knights were there on that day too. On another September 11, 1683, the Polish King John Sobieski led an army to relieve Vienna from a Turkish siege, in a battle that marks the end of the Turkish advance into Europe. These dates may strike us today as very ancient indeed; the reader may wonder what significance they have to us. The answer is that they form the conclusion to a very long story, a great tale of human drama, mostly forgotten now by a forgetful people k a drama that, on yet another September 11th, was renewed here in America. It is the story of the Jihad. [read more]

More than a year ago my monday-morning quarterback guess was that 9-11 was a tar baby strategy on the part of al Qaeda: that the idea was that we would either be too weak willed to respond at all, or if we responded we would overcommit and end up in a Soviets-in-Afghanistan style war of attrition that we cannot win.

A year or so later, I haven't seen any reason to change that view. It seems to me that al Qaeda's strategy - if that was the strategy - worked. The reason we haven't been attacked again is because things are going exactly according to plan. Instead of narrowly focusing on wiping out al Qaeda and getting serious about preventing the form of sedition called "Jihad" at home, we decided to change the world one predominantly Muslim country at a time, starting with one that had nothing to do with 9-11.

And if we don't want to have various parts of our anatomy handed to us over the long run, one of the first things to do is admit and understand why we've had a certain one handed to us in the short run.

Via Lawrence Auster, a luminous send-up of the feckless war policy of the Bush adminstration. Have a look.

Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, discloses an interesting fact indeed. It seems that the propaganda of the Jihad takes two distinct forms, one for Western eyes and one for Islamic eyes. For Westerners, the language is one of grievance and accusation: the West has committed X, Y and Z crimes against the House of Islam; the Jihad is the just response to these outrages. Meanwhile, for Muslims an entirely different tone: the West is composed of infidels; between believer and infidel there is undying enmity; the Jihad is the just response of the House of Islam to the unbearable outrage of unbelief. In short, our enemies justify their raids and aggression to us by appeals to our weakness for victim narratives; but to Muslims they justify themselves by appeals to Islamic doctrine.

One of the less edifying features of our current public discourse is the tendency to say "shut up!" by accusing someone of postulating moral equivalence between, say, ourselves and the terrorists who have attacked us.

Now it is doubtless true that many critics of the Administration's follow-up to 9-11 really are attempting to draw a moral equivalence, or even worse, to displace moral blame for the attacks from those who carried them out to someone else. Certainly that is a dominant theme on the political Left, and the "Truther" phenomenon is its natural manifestation. If we are morally to blame then we must be the ones who actually did it, a priori: no matter how much people try to cling to the idea that we are responsible for outcomes rather than for our own acts, nature reasserts herself. The "Truthers" are just being more consistent with the reality of how moral responsibility works than other factions of the "blame America first" mob.

[Note to the paleo Right: if you don't want to be like the Truther Left, then don't be like them. You can choose.]

Summarizing the existential significance of Sudden Jihad Syndrome, in connection with an outbreak of the mysterious, aporia-inducing contagion in Vienna, Srdja Trifkovic observes:

The list will continue for many years to come, and the victims’ blood is on the hands of the Western elite class, in Vienna, Denver, London, and any other place that is blessed and enriched with the presence of a Muslim “community.” The ongoing refusal of the elite class to protect the people they rule from Islamic terrorism is the biggest betrayal in history. It is rooted in the mindset that breeds the claim that “force is not an answer” to terrorism, that profiling is bad and open borders are good, that Islam is peaceful and the West is wicked. The upholders of such claims belong to the culture that has lost its bond with nature, history, and the supporting community. In the meantime, thanks to them, the quiet onslaught continues unabated, across the Mediterranean and through every major airport in Western Europe and North America.

This malevolent presence is only found among us for reason of our self-loathing, of a perverse and decadent psychology by which we direct ressentiment inwardly, upon ourselves, reproaching ourselves for our very historical achievements; for these achievements belied our 'faith' that a primal equality was the natural condition of mankind. In order, therefore, to atone for this transgression of the Prime Directive, we must become the Other, and the Other must become us. But just as God is not mocked, neither is Islam mocked by such craven obsequies - albeit for different reasons - and intends to laugh last, and laugh longest.

And so these lurid little dramas will be reenacted until we have become surfeited with them, inured to them, world without end - until our world splutters and whimpers to an ignoble end. Unless.

While touring the blogosphere rather aimlessly this morning, it seemed as though everything I read was destined to occasion aggravation. The first three articles I happened upon left me 0-for-3 in the reader-satisfaction department. At a suitable level of abstraction, there may even exist a common thread, perhaps something like, 'obliviousness to the obvious.'

The first item, Bradford Plumer's endorsement of a Sentencing Project critique of sentencing guidelines, contained this nugget of incomprehension:

The second striking bit comes when Mauer compares U.S. sentences with those abroad. Burglars now serve an average of 16.2 months in prison in the United States, compared with 5.3 months in Canada and 6.8 months in England.

A friend and colleague at Redstate, our Managing Editor Erick Erickson, has a rousing post calling for unity within the Republican Coalition. Well worth reading in full. He concludes by asking for ideas for how this unity — one thought to hold pretty well from the early days of National Review through Reagan and even up to George W. Bush — might be reconstructed. Below is an expanded version of my comment:

(1) Shift the focus of what is called the war on terror, beginning with public rhetoric, toward the domestic front; take heed of the subversives and saboteurs in our midst; strike at them. This combined with: (2) reconciling the Party to that deep skepticism verging on hostility, which comprises the majority opinion on Iraq in this country.

I really doubt that the Democrats (were they to gain Executive power) shall conduct foreign policy as the reflexive anti-patriots of their base would like. A gradual but steady reduction of American troops in Iraq seems far more likely than immediate withdrawal.

For the fiscal boys, it’s much cheaper. We don’t need huge new expenditures of money. We need to carefully craft some laws whereby we can expose the doctrines of the enemy to vigorous prosecution. Our work will largely be a matter of legal savvy and above all public and democratic will. We may need a new prosecutor, investigator, or orator now and then. We will not need to spend even a fraction of what we are spending in Iraq right now.

For social Conservatives, it's the whole enchilada: the maintenance of the character of the Republic. Who are we? Are we a people that is going to shelter and protect the Jihad like its principles are mere Free Exercise? or are we a people confident enough to say we will stand against this wicked thing?

What was the glue that held the old Coalition together, from the early glory days of NR to Reagan?

It was a clear single thing: the Communist Enterprise; and a unified antipathy for a wicked system. Well the Jihad is no less wicked, and it has already stuck us blows no Communist ever dared.

So let us unite against it. Let opposition to the Jihad be one of our principles.

I don't lie awake at night wondering about the plans of the Iranian Mullarchy to become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds, plunging the world into a sea of nuclear flame. In fact, the thought seldom occurs to me at all, and when it does, I find it somewhat amusing, actually.

There. I've said it.

Now permit me to explain myself. I'd rather that a regime such as that of the Mullarchy not possess nuclear weapons, and on principle. Such regimes, combining several undesirable qualities - Islam, evil, general contumacy - are not the sort with which one would trust such weapons, were there an option. Nevertheless, the development is animated by a certain logic, which would obtain even in the absence of the Mullarchy, and which, moreover, militates against the use of such weapons by the Mullarchy.

The linchpin of this logic? Iran is desirous of becoming the regional hegemon, the dominant power of the Near East, a long-term geostrategic ambition antedating the Mullarchy, which would outlast that regime. Iran could be liberated from the shackles of the Islamic Republic, and Persian nationalist sentiment would keep alive the both the ambition and the nuclear program itself, which would be both symbol and surety of that status, should it be achieved. This regional ambition has two main consequences, as far as the nuclear program and the West are concerned. First, a first-use of nuclear weapons on the part of Iran, whether directly, or by means of proxies - such as Hizbollah - is highly improbable, since the logical conclusion to be drawn in such a case will be precisely that Iran has used/supplied the weapons, and Iran will cease to exist as a functioning, post-medieval state. Israel and the United States will see to that, morally licit or not.

Second, and in consequence of the first consideration, any use of nuclear weapons merely suspected to originate in the Iranian program will entail the permanent demise of Persian ambitions for regional preeminence. And I would suggest that, the apocalyptic rhetoric of a former Tehran traffic engineer aside, the Iranian powers-behind-the-presidency are more than worldly enough to value that ambition over the annihilation of the Zionist Entity. Incidentally, this is the reason for the low probability of Hizbollah being provided the eventual products of a mature Iranian nuclear program. One does not hand the keys to the kingdom to third parties one cannot completely control.

Finally, as a concluding observation, a the development of a nuclear program in Iran is more or less inevitable for another reason: Iranian oil and natural gas production is declining, and I consider it highly doubtful that Iranians will be willing to contemplate a return to premodernity, merely because the only long-term means of avoiding that fate is one of which the West disapproves. This is not to argue that Iran needn't be countered in Syria or Lebanon, nor that such countering need never involve military action of some sort. It is only to argue that a nuclear Iran can be deterred. And, as regards regime change - well, have we learned nothing?

Would the American foreign policy establishment be willing to jettison its geopolitically counterproductive and morally illicit hegemonism with respect to Russia, a hegemonism that not only ties our hands with respect to legitimate threats from disparate Islamic sources, but devalues the legitimate and instinctive patriotic sentiments of other peoples, Russians particularly, but not exclusively, in order to mitigate the Iranian threat? Hear Stratfor:

Via the U.N. Security Council, Russian cooperation can ensure Iran's diplomatic isolation. Russia's past cooperation on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power facility holds the possibility of a Kremlin condemnation of Iran's nuclear ambitions. A denial of Russian weapons transfers to Iran would hugely empower ongoing U.S. efforts to militarily curtail Iranian ambitions. Put simply, Russia has the ability to throw Iran under the American bus -- but it will not do it for free. In exchange, it wants those treaties amended in its favor, and it wants American deference on security questions in the former Soviet Union.

Russia could be encouraged to throw Iran under the American bus. But there is a price, and that price would entail the abandonment of hegemonism.

In response to this, I should like to note three things.

First, it is entirely possible that Persian nationalism, in the event of a collapse of the Mullarchy, will require constraints, both by the nature of the case, and in virtue of the fact that, well, we're talking about Central Asia, the womb of horrors. The probability of this would decline, I think, in large part because a large plurality of Iranians have little sympathy for the Islamic regime and its more sanguinary aspirations. In any event, I believe that a nuclear Persia can be deterred. I don't foresee a new era of national martyrdom.

Second, whether one deems it sympathy or 'seeing things from the other guy's perspective', this habit of thought is integral to effective foreign policy-making. Absent this capacity, one cannot effectively anticipate the reactions of the Other, and absent such anticipations, one cannot assess prudentially the probable consequences of various courses of action. We have already witnessed the consequences of this purblind willfulness in Iraq: we will be greeted as liberators, and Iraqis care nothing for tribe, religion and whatever by comparison to Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! In Persia, were we to somehow engineer or encourage a relatively peaceful transition from the Islamic Republic to.. something else (the Shah? - I cannot predict), we would be swiftly disappointed if we expected the Persians to accept American overlordship, quite apart from the factor of Islam. Their own patriotic sentiments would never permit it.

And that leads to the third point, which is that, for Persians, accession to the nuclear club is perceived as a badge of national honour, as well as a sign of regional status. Beyond that, Peak Oil is real, and if Americans really believe that Persians are going to accept "lights out!" as a legitimate option, merely because America says that Persian ambitions are unacceptable, whether Islamic or not, well, then Americans are nuts. This would represent a massive failure to understand and predict the reactions of the Other, a massive failure of prudential reason. And, off at the margins, is it even licit to compel another society to revert to premodernity, with all of what that would entail? I'd not like to see, let alone make, that argument.

...May be grasped in the following manner: They treat the question, "How could one be harmed by jihadists, if they and their sympathizers were not present in one's country?" as a sort of Zen koan. Instead of simply accepting the obvious point concerning immigration and subversion on the homefront, they assume that there must exist some hidden depths, and so they set out to derange their sense of reason - and to derange their hearers - by uncovering those hidden depths.

It could unfold, in Zen-fashion, like this.

The master learned in the way of Mahomet posed the question to his rebellious disciple, "How could a people be harmed by an adversary if their adversaries and sympathizers are absent from that people's land?"

The rebellious student returned to his quarters to meditate upon the question, using as aids the collected works of Harry Jaffa and Norman Podhoretz.

The following morning, he returned to the master and answered, "They could be harmed were their adversaries to suborn the treason of someone who would then allow a WMD to be smuggled through an American port."

And the master replied, "O stiff-necked and rebellious pseudo-disciple, were the adversaries to suborn treason, the traitors would be sympathizers. And how could the adversaries suborn treason if they were not even able to contact anyone from among the people? You are overthinking and deranging your reason. The depths lie in the surface. Meditate some more."

On and on this went, until finally, the miserable disciple said, "Master, I have solved the riddle, and the answer is this: the adversaries could harm the people by the fact of their absence, for in the case of such absence, the people would prove themselves as exclusionary and intolerant as their enemies. Discrimination is the greatest evil, the greatest harm, and the people would become like unto their adversaries. This would be their destruction."

Whereupon the master sent the disciple away, on the grounds that he was as yet too foolish to tread the path of wisdom, requiring the purgation of his rebellion before he could learn.

There are no obscure depths to the problem of the jihad and our response thereto; there are questions concerning certain details, but there are really no mysteries, because they do not have to be like us in order for us to be as safe as it is possible to be in this world from them. Moreover, they do not have to be among us, because nondiscrimination is merely the negation of the principle whereby any culture preserves itself as itself, and not a moral imperative in this regard. But instead of common sense, we get all sorts of folderol about "becoming like the terrorists", simply because we dislike the religious and cultural milieu from which they arise.

Neoconservatism: lowering our collective IQ.

One of the more remarkable ironies of what is infelicitously called the War on Terror is the rigid mental partition we have set up between its foreign policy aspect and its domestic security aspect. The basic way this works is that the domestic aspect is ignored in its specifics, while the foreign policy aspect is exaggerated in generalities. A politician who talks tough on foreign policy, but almost exclusively in the comfortable language of political abstraction, is labeled a Hawk; while a politician (at this point only imaginary) who talks tough about the specific details of the domestic threat, will probably be labeled a bigot.

Now this is all very strange to me. Consider: The only reason the Jihad is a real threat to us is because its agents and propagandists are in our midst. In other words, the Jihad has not the wherewithal (yet) to deliver us blows from without. It must rely on infiltration into, or recruitment in America. That is a fact.

The quotable Lawrence Auster, on the media's conspicuous and universal avoidance of the accurate term "Islamic" to describe the rioters in France:

[E]ven if the French themselves no longer care, I am still very grateful to Charles Martel for turning back that youth invasion of France in 732. If they had won, they would have forced all the French to become teenagers.

I cannot hope to approach the aptness of Srdja Trifkovic's own title, Kosovo as a Symbol of Anti-Postmodernism, and so I have not tried. Nevertheless, the essay is a masterful summation of the significance this little piece of Balkan territory holds in the not-so-playful scheme of signifiers regnant in the West. Selected excerpts follow.

Blissfully unaware of the cultural tectonic shift that has taken place in “the West,” many Serbian political leaders, analysts and institutions in their contacts with the Western elite class keep invoking four sets of arguments in support of their position that Kosovo ought to remain part of Serbia:
1. Historical: Kosovo was the heartland of the Serbian medieval state;
2. Cultural: in Kosovo there are many priceless monuments of Serbian art and architecture that define Serbia’s contribution to the common European heritage;
3. Spiritual: Kosovo is “Serbia’s Jerusalem”;
4. Civilizational: Kosovo should not fall to the insurgent jihad.

A Pentagon analyst specializing in Islamic law has been removed from his position after coming into conflict with associates involved in outreach to the Usual Suspects, according to Bill Gertz. Andrew Bostom elaborates, and discusses an historical parallel, observing that the analyst, Stephen Coughlin, has demonstrated

...that “Jihad fi Sabil Allah”—“Jihad in the cause of Allah,” is the animating principle which underlies the threat of global jihad terrorism, and how this understanding should form the basis for rational, effective threat development assessment, and war planning.

Further interpretative efforts will be eschewed, inasmuch as this contributor already believes that he has entered the Twilight Zone, or some parallel universe or strange dimension hidden within a 'fold' of space-time, within which the law of non-contradiction no longer obtains, such that it is possible for jihad to be both jihad and not-jihad simultaneously.

It is my firm view that the most vital problem of American national security, the question upon which hinges our fortune in the war that came to our shores on September 11, in short, nothing less than the most pressing issue before the Republic, is whether or not we will comprehend the ineradicably Islamic character of the enemy.

Are we or are we not a people capable of embracing hard truth about the war that is made against us — the hard truth that the enemy finds his motivation, his inspiration, his justification, his rhetoric, even his strategy and tactics, in the authentic and primitive traditions of the religion of Muhammad? Are we or are we not a people possessed of the fortitude equal to this challenge? As the cliché goes, can we handle the truth?

It is an open question, I’m afraid; and I am convinced that it is one whose answer will tell for or against this Republic for generations for come.

It is in this context that we ought to read with alarm and indignation of the dismissal of Major Stephen Coughlin from the Pentagon. Coughlin worked as a counterterrorism analyst, and took an unsparing view of the Jihad. The document he authored concludes that a “working threat model” of the enemy must begin with “an unconstrained, undelegated, systematic, factual analysis of the threat doctrine that the enemy self-identifies as being driven by Islamic law.” The pulverizing fact is that our current model begins with an unthinking rejection of such analysis: it begins with a deliberate closing of the mind, enforced by the standard methods of intimidation and vilification. Coughlin, for instance, has been publicly castigated as a “Christian zealot with a pen.”

I commend to your attention a Jan. 20th story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution headlined, “Muslim cop played key role in terror probe.” The tale told is fairly simple: a DeKalb County detective of Islamic faith and heritage, Mr. Khaled Sediqi, along with his partner, investigated and ultimately apprehended an agent of the Jihad. DeKalb splits the city of Atlanta with the more well-known Fulton County; both the detective and the Jihadist attended the same mosque in Midtown near Georgia Tech. Syed Haris Ahmed, a former student there, is to stand trial for material support of a terrorist organization. He and an accomplice were arrested in 2006 and, later in that year, officially linked to a much larger Jihadist cell out of Toronto.

There is drama in abundance here. The detectives nearly succeeded, it appears, in turning Ahmed into an intelligence asset; he later changed his mind, having fortified himself “through prayer,” according to the article, and warned his accomplice. The interrogation technique of Mr. Sediqi, who we are told played the consummate “good cop” to his partner’s more aggressive and demonstrative method, seems to have relied at least partly on direct theological confrontation: “When you say you’re a good Muslim … I believe you, man” but “you’re easily swayed,” by men “with some really evil ways and evil ideas.” “If you’re trying to hurt innocent civilians and unarmed people, then you’re no longer a Muslim.”

Let us hope that the detective has, on Islamic grounds, the better argument here. We know that, on grounds of truth, he has the better argument. The principles and traditions of the Jihad are “evil ways and evil ideas.” If a man is truly “no longer a Muslim” when he embraces them, well and good. If he is rather a true Muslim . . . well, so be it.

But that conundrum we still have the luxury of leaving aside. We the people of the Republic are not now obligated, in my judgment, to deliver our republican judgment on the character of the Islamic religion. Many of us knew little about Islam before a certain autumn raid. And it would be a terrible thing for a republic to be forced to give a yea or nay vote on a whole religion and civilization. History is littered with the husks of great kingdoms and peoples, first savaged by the Jihad, then corrupted and enervated by the demands of a defense against it. The Empires of Byzantium and Spain, each in their characteristic way, teach this bitter lesson.

I call it a blessing that it is still within out power, as I perceive, to check the enemy and baffle his plans, here on our shores; to reduce our intercourse and limit our exposure to his madness; to crush his doctrine, his method, his conspiracies; to extirpate from our land the tendrils of the Jihad, and do so without war and repression — this is not yet beyond our power.

So we may still stay our judgment of Islam. But by God it is long past time that we delivered a resounding negative on the doctrine and institution of Jihad: wicked, treasonable, and menacing.

Detective Sediqi, I salute you — as an Atlantan, a Georgian and an American.

Imad Mughniyeh, a senior official within the Hizbollah organization implicated in the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner, the 1992 and 1994 bombings of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina, respectively, along with scores of other terrorist incidents and kidnappings within Lebanon, is now taking the dirt nap, courtesy, despite the pro forma denials, of a sophisticated Mossad operation. According to Stratfor,

The killing required a high level of tactical intelligence regarding Mughniyah’s location and movements; it also called for an operational unit on the ground with “eyes on” to detonate the bomb remotely. The remote detonation also provided the operational team with distance to assist in their escape.

At the time of the strike, Mughniyah was returning to a vehicle after meeting with Hamas and Syrian intelligence operatives. The timing of the attack, including the placement of the explosive, required intelligence about the meeting time and location. While it is possible that the information was captured via signal intercepts, Hezbollah and Syrian intelligence employ signal security that should have been good enough to prevent such a leak. Further, Mughniyah himself was known for very tight operational security, and slipping up by allowing Israel or others to intercept radio or telephone chatter does not seem to fit his profile. He successfully evaded numerous other Israeli attempts to track him down.

Thus it is likely that there was information flowing from someone intimately aware of the details of the meeting — and that means Mossad has likely penetrated Hezbollah, Hamas or Syrian intelligence.

Furthermore, "the hit will spread distrust throughout the Syrian intelligence apparatus, and within and between Hezbollah and Hamas, adding a layer of confusion to that already created by the death of a key liaison between Iran and Hezbollah."

While I've already gone on record, both at the old EM and here, in opposition to some of the wilder ambitions of American and Israeli strategy in the Near East, particularly regime change in Syria and Iran, sowing discord between Islamist organizations is a marvelous outcome. This would seem a suitable occasion for a bit of araq, which I will now enjoy.

In Iraq, the basic principle has been demonstrated (again) that the Jihad is no match for the force of American arms. Man for man we will crush it. Two difficult puzzles follow from this observation:

Puzzle 1: How do we overcome the fact that our military might, combined with our theoretical feebleness, has produced a strange condition of paralysis? The quintessential incongruity of Capitalism shackles us: material mastery alongside philosophic confusion.

From time to time, I entertain a sort of running dialogue - with myself. No, I'm not crazy, at least not yet. What I am attempting to do in that dialogue is persuade myself that Western leaders and opinion makers could not betray the West, by incremental steps sometimes imperceptible, into the clutches of our adversaries - not by means of some nefarious conspiracy, but in consequence of their own imbecilic fantasies and delusions. Some part of me, cynical and melancholy though I am, is desirous that there occur no apocalypse of liberalism.

Alas, I believe that I'm am losing that argument with my pessimistic instincts, which suggest to me that, when the moment arrives, our leaders will sooner turn intolerant towards us, and our cultures, than acknowledge that, say, Islam is not a religion of peace.

Joseph Loconte, writing in the Weekly Standard of the film being prepared by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, you see, engages in the stereotypical hand-wringing and cleverer-than-the-messenger, who-should-be-shot posturing, which performance summons up all of those dark thoughts. His article is illustrative of everything that is wrong with the elite commentariat in the West, and why we cannot now rely upon them in this regard, and why they will likely continue to fail us.

Canada persecutes Mark Steyn for writing that Islam is a threat to the West. The New York Times, having ignored that drama for months, takes the opportunity to dilate tendentiously on the uniqueness of American tolerance for Free Speech, implicitly comparing Steyn to Nazis, and naturally burying his response in the last two paragraphs of a long article. The few European politicians and thinkers with the guts to stand up to creeping Islamization, find themselves betrayed and denounced in America, and likewise compared to Nazis and fascists, by prominent bloggers. Readers will recall the pitifully tepid response from the West to the beleaguered Danes during the Cartoon Jihad.

And now we have this, as reported by Josh Trevino: In Kuala Lumpar, at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World, three prominent Muslim leaders called on the West to renounce Free Speech in order to accommodate Islamic sensibilities; and the three Westerns who spoke uttered not a word of protest.

Over at Vox Nova, everyone’s favorite ultramontane Liberal singles out this website for its “scaremongering” and “stupid jihadism rhetoric.” The very strong implication of the post is that we have little to fear from Islam, and that “humanitarian relief,” “more visas to study and work in the US, and better trade links,” along with a cessation of “anti-Islamic bombast,” and “domestic xenophobia,” will mitigate whatever minor troubles we do face.

The peculiar thing here is that Morning’s Minion shares with his Neoconservative opponents an assumption which we fundamentally reject: namely, that the character of Islamic doctrine and practice depends upon the actions of the West. It is our view that this is only true on the margins. America led by an Obama administration could pursue each of the goals Morning’s Minion has laid out — an end to reckless wars and rhetoric, more humanitarian relief, more of those precious student visas — and still the doctrines of Jihad, Sharia and Dhimma would remain. In short, Minion joins with those he professes to oppose in regarding Muslims as mere ciphers for Western policy disputes, mere automata responding solely to external stimuli.

The force of this assumption prevents a true appreciation of the antiquity and endurance of these doctrines, and thus the persistence of their influence on the world. The Jihad has taken many forms; it has assumed the guises of every age, reflected the character of the peoples it inspired and impelled to war; it has adapted and adjusted to times and place: But in its essentials it has remained unchanged. As Chesterton so wisely put it:

A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets.

It will not do to understand Islam and its doctrines of Holy War and Holy Subjugation exclusively through the lens of Western politics. Nor will it do to conflate warnings about the peril of these doctrines with support for the democratic imperialism that has characterized much of our post-9/11 foreign policy.

Captive Miranda, Lord knows I have not given a thought to the paperwork you sent me.

Let me tell you, Captive, that our release is not in the hands of the lawyers or the hands of America. Our release is in the hands of He who created us.

The poem, "To My Captive Lawyer, Miranda," was written by Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi while he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No doubt, it would have given the former detainee, who was released in 2005, immense satisfaction to know that his last earthly deed was referenced in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion in Boumediene v. Bush. That's the recent Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo detainees the constitutional right to challenge, in habeas corpus proceedings, whether they were properly classified by the military as enemy combatants. Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi, on the left [above], in a martyrdom video posted on an al Qaeda Web site. Al-Ajmi, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti, blew himself up in one of several coordinated suicide attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul this year.

That's how Debra Burlingame's op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal begins. Read the whole thing here.

(cross-posted)

It occurred to me while reading this thread that if this person had been treated as a POW, rather than as a carefully non-categorized non-person, he would still be - perfectly legitimately - in custody, rather than wherever he is after having successfully perpetrated a suicide attack in Iraq. The nice thing about POW status (at least in my layman's understanding) is that you don't have to prove that the detainee committed a crime in order to continue to detain him until the hostilities in which he was involved cease. We can't torture him, of course, which is a bummer to some; but we can keep him in custody until hostilities are definitively over.

If it turns out that he is a criminal, at least as I understand it he can be turned over to the proper authorities when that comes to light. And his treatment as a POW, unlike extra-legal treatment as an 'illegal combatant', will not interfere with prosecution or lead to premature release.

It further occurred to me that that - his status as an indefinitely yet legally and morally imprisoned POW, had it been the case - would probably represent an intolerable outrage to both the anti-war Left and the pro-war Right.

(Cross-Posted)

...That the presence of Muslims in any non-Islamic society is the condition of the inevitability of their attempt to establish sharia as normative:

Manifestly, this fellow is deluded as to the intentions of Europeans; the publication of the cartoons that served as the pretext for riots and protests was not a calculated strategy on the part of Europeans, an attempt to provoke the Muslims to such wrath that there would obtain a pretext for the mass expulsion of 30 million followers of Mahomet. Nevertheless, his advice to Muslims in Europe - keep on the down low, pursue respectable careers and lives, so as to better propagate Islam - is shrewd counsel indeed.

(HT: Evan McLaren)

From Haaretz.com (HT: Hugh Hewitt):

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden was quoted Monday as telling senior Israeli officials behind closed doors that the Jewish state will have to reconcile itself to a nuclear Iran.

In the unsourced report, Army Radio also quoted Biden as saying that he opposed "opening a additional military and diplomatic front."

Biden, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has long been considered strongly pro-Israel. His nomination as Barack Obama's running mate had been expected to shore up the Democrats' strength with U.S. Jewish voters.

Army Radio said Israeli officials expressed "amazement" over the remarks attributed to him.

"Israel will have to reconcile itself with the nuclearization of Iran," Army Radio quoted Biden as telling the unnamed officials.

"It's doubtful if the economic sanctions will be effective, and I am against opening an additional military and diplomatic front."

Read the rest here.

This just in:

Maybe Islamic cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid is just more of a Bugs Bunny sort of guy? In an interview with Al-Majd Television the sheikh, a former diplomat who once served in the Saudi embassy in Washington, condemned cartoons that endear rodents to their viewers.

Islamic law, he said, sees the mouse as "a repulsive, corrupting creature" while children today see mice as loveable and "awesome" because of animated shows like Tom and Jerry, and Disney staple Mickey Mouse.

"Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases," Al-Munajid tells the interviewer.

The Turks, in Chesterton’s rousing verse, had by the late 16th century, “dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,” and “dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea”: the Ottoman Empire was master of the eastern Mediterranean, and nowhere upon that “inmost sea of all the earth” was the might of the Turk, his great navy, and his dread shock troops the Janissaries, not felt. The great Christian city upon the Golden Horn, which for a thousand years had resisted the protean armies of the Crescent — the Greek city that called itself the Second Rome — had fallen a century before in a great shock to the Christian world. Venetian power (the Lion of the Sea) on the Albanian coast had suffered grievous blows. Malta, under the Knights of St. John, had by great valor and some good fortune narrowly escaped defeat and ruin; Cyprus, a Venetian possession, had not been so lucky. Massacre and enslavement was her fate. (But resistance endured to the end: on a ship full of young slaves, destined for the harems of leading Turks, a young woman of fierce pride would endure no such dishonor: she set fire to the vessel’s powder magazine.) In July of 1571, the fortress town of Famagusta on Cyprus had fallen after a year-long siege, and its Venetian ruler, his terms of surrender wantonly betrayed, was subjected to an unspeakable torture and humiliation. The Agony of Famagusta rang like a tocsin throughout Christendom; and on a cool October day in the Gulf of Corinth, the menace of the Turk on the Mediterranean was delivered a blow from which it would never fully recover.

The Battle of Lepanto can justly lay claim to being one of the single bloodiest battles ever fought, on land or at sea. Indeed, it was both: for the collisions between, on the one side, Italians and Spaniards, along with some German mercenaries, and on the other, Janissaries and Turkish conscripts; collisions which rapidly degraded into the great congestion of an infantry battle on the interlocked the decks of hundreds of galleys. 40,000 men lost their lives that day, more than 150 every minute. But it was also an enormous and complex naval encounter, where superior leadership and tactical maneuvering on the Christian side played a crucial role.

Far be it from me to inveigh against The American Conservative for any light and transient cause, especially after defending the redoubtable Daniel Larison in these pages (though he is more than capable of defending himself), but a couple of TAC's contributors have managed to lash themselves into a tizzy over Nick Griffin, and his recent appearance on the BBC, as well as Geert Wilders, who was finally permitted to enter the UK.

First, David Lindsay expressed his support for the initial ban, and then proceeded to opine that the ban should be extended to other ideological undesirables likely to disturb the public tranquility:

I fully supported the ban on Geert Wilders from visiting Britain, as he was finally permitted to do this week. He is in the Pim Fortuyn tradition of opposing Islam so that the Netherlands can remain a drug-addled, whore-mongering country where the age of consent is 12, contrary to the wishes of its general public either in the staunchly Protestant north or in the devoutly Catholic south. That is not any West which I for one wish to defend. But then, it is not in fact the West at all. It is only the most extreme, and in that sense logically consistent, manifestation of the pseudo-West proclaimed by the neoconservative movement, or what’s left of it these days.

Dear reader, there is yet more.

I really do not think this most recent act of jihad can be allowed to pass without some comment here at W4. We should also not let pass the sheer cravenness of our Dear Leaders--at the highest level and in the media--in discussing it. I note that when I bring up Yahoo mail, the story doesn't even appear as a top story. Atlas says that Shepard Smith at first would not say the murderer's name--Malik Nadal Hasan--and more recently has been giving a platform to Hasan's cousin who informs us that...

you guessed it!

It's our fault. Yup. Hasan was "harassed." Oh. Well. That explains it.

According to The Messiah, this was an "outburst of violence." An outburst. You know, violence does that sometimes. It bursts out. Impersonally.

Words of wisdom from Lawrence Auster on the subject:

Would King Jan Sobieski have allowed Muslim doctors to enter his headquarters and move about at liberty among his men on the eve of deployment for battle against Muslims? Of course not.

See here:

Washington - A top US Army official confirmed Friday that the suspect in the killing of at least 13 people at a Texas army base likely shouted 'Allah Akbar' (God is great) before opening fire.

Army Lieutenant General Robert Cone, commander of the Fort Hood, Texas, base where the shootings took place on Thursday, made the comment in answer to a question from NBC news.

Cone said 'there are first hand accounts' to the effect that the suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had yelled the Muslim religious chant.

See also here. Six months. Officials had seen a blog post apparently by this guy defending suicide bombings and have been investigating him for at least six months.

See also here for a link and quote from said blog post.

See also here for an interview with one of his co-workers who says that he defended the shooter at the recruitment station at Little Rock and repeatedly spoke in favor of Muslims' rising up against the "aggressors"--meaning Americans.

This is a horror and an outrage: That officials had reason to know already that this man was dangerous and defended jihadi murderers and that he was still allowed to wander about an army base and even to bear arms there himself. And anyone who continues to pretend that this isn't about jihad and Islam is dangerously self-deceptive.

Will we ever get serious? I don't know, but if this doesn't wake us up, nothing will.

Okay. I haven't blogged anything about the terror attack attempt on Christmas Day, because my fellow conservatives all over the blogosphere are doing such a great job, and I couldn't think of anything to add. (Favorite line from MyPetJawa: "Baby Jesus was watching over us.")

But this tidbit, courtesy of Jihad Watch, goes into the "Let's not learn anything from this" file, because I really, really doubt the present administration will let it affect its plans regarding Gitmo detainees:

The planners behind the attack, now fighting the jihad from Yemen, were released from Guantanamo Bay in 2007 and sent to Saudi Arabia, where they were released altogether and entered a "rehabilitation program." Specifically, an art rehabilitation program. Nothing like a little bit of art to make people understand that Islam is really a religion of peace.

The ABC News article ends:

Saudi officials concede its program has had its "failures" but insist that, overall, the effort has helped return potential terrorists to a meaningful life.

Evidently they think planning terrorist attacks is a meaningful life.

It also mentions that "One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen."

Maybe these two got Rose Art when they wanted Crayola.

Reprinted here, with light revisions, is a blog post of mine from June of 2002 on the legal treatment of Islamic terror suspects.

* * *

There has to be a better way of dealing with suspected and accused terrorists than the graceless and inconsistent method hitherto chosen by the Bush administration. Thus far, the pattern established by the Justice Department does not inspire much confidence, and suggests an ad hoc approach propelled more by a desire for successful prosecution than by a deeper desire for justice. The political atmosphere being what it is, one can perhaps sympathize with this, but consider: Josè Padilla*, the suspected “dirty-bomber,” is an American citizen, yet he is being detained by the military, incommunicado, without being formally accused of a crime; meanwhile, Zacarias Moussaoui**, the accused “twentieth hijacker,” and Richard Reid***, the accused shoe bomber, are both non-citizens, yet they are being tried in public court, with full access to a professional defense. One need not be a committed civil-liberties ideologist to perceive grave peril in the precedents set therein.

I fully understand and endorse the reasoning behind treating “unlawful combatants” in war as something else entirely than regular domestic criminals or prisoners of war — something far more dangerous and less entitled to constitutional rights. But several serious problems present themselves immediately, and cry out for assiduous consideration: (1) There has been no formal declaration of war by Congress, which declaration would have automatically initiated the machinery, available in both the Constitution itself and in legal precedents, to accommodate our judicial institutions, at least in part, to the reality of war. The failure of the administration to ask Congress for such a declaration, which it surely would have received in overwhelming if not unanimous votes, was in my view one of its first mistakes. The declaration need not have included anything specific about the enemy; it need only have observed the obvious: that a state of war exists between America and those who attacked her. That simple if unorthodox legislative statement would have struck a mighty blow for political, moral and legal clarity — a clarity which certainly existed already in substance, but was never authenticated in republican form.