Something Important

Fred Barnes tells us that there may be a Christmas present in store for us. Not this Christmas. Next. After what appears to have been dithering with a feckless policy, something has caught Mr. Bush's attention. The loss of Congress has been a great bracer, it seems. Nothing like searing pain to focus one's mind.

So. A plan for Victory in Iraq. About bloody time.

No retreat, not exit strategies, not peace with honor. Victory. Which means throwing the ISG report into the slop bucket for the unwashingtoned pigs to squabble over, and stepping out of the looking glass back into the real world. The plan, then -- the one that could work -- is to destroy the Sunni "insurgents," secure Baghdad and then work out into the troubled province of Anbar.

How? No, stupid, not by taking troops away. Sending more in. Fifty thousand, who will act as warriors, not gatekeepers. Clear out the bad neighborhoods and then actually stay, rather than running back to homebase and letting the badguys regroup. War is not an endless game of tag. As Barnes states, "Earlier efforts had cleared many of those sections of the city without holding them. After which, the mass killings resumed." Bloody hell. No. Stay and stomp on the cockroachs every time they crawl out of their holes. They will bring their disease, but that mustn't justify allowing vermin to propagate.

"The Keane-Kagan plan ... is an application of a counterinsurgency approach that has proved to be effective elsewhere, notably in Vietnam. There, Gen. Creighton Abrams cleared out the Viet Cong so successfully that the South Vietnamese government took control of the country. Only when Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1974 were the North Vietnamese able to win." Bloody hell.

Security first, then negotiations. Duh. The US military budget is bigger than those of the forty next largest combined. Hmm. What ever shall we do with this gigantic military? Hmm. Shall we impress ourselves by marching it up and down Main Street like a gay pride parade? Shall we secret it away in Alaska and Okinawa and Guam, just in case someday somebody might attack us and we'll have an army then and be safe cuz they'll be ascared of us oh wait we've already been attacked hmm I wonder what went wrong with that plan? Shall we bussle our boys into enemy territory and have them shake their fists from behind the battlements? You might very well think so. But I should think we might actually use our hard gigantic military for the function that nature designed it. What function? It is a sort of fucking the enemy, but it's the opposite of procreation.

There is a new cliche abirthing. Let's go Roman on them. War is about blood. Hopefully that of the evil doers. Sometimes ours. But it's about blood.

We do not, however, enter into the fray without counting the cost. My son is in a job in Baghdad that is as serious as a job could be. When I speak with him, it isn't my place to pry -- pray, rather. If he wants to talk about it, I will make it implicitly clear that I'm safe to talk to. But it is a solemn thing. My point? Doing what is right has all kinds of costs, not all of them in blood.

Winning wars is about dead enemies, though. I will not justify the statement. Search through these pages for "Beslan" and figure it out yourself.


J

Schizo

David Warren in an elegant article tells us of Turks protesting the Pope's visit: "'We spit on the tomb of Jesus' S Kikeerguard,' read perhaps the most intriguing sign at the last legal Istanbul rally before the Pope’s visit to Turkey began. ...the bearers of the sign were unable to explain it. ... I would myself guess that the slogan commemorates some heroic effort to combine Jesus, and by extension the Pope, with Soren Kierkegaard, and by extension Danish cartoonists, into a single object for hatred."

That's really funny. Then hop on my back! They just can't get it right. But imagine! Blaspheming the Lord Kierkegaard! I'm gonna use it as an excuse to blast a cap into some muslimah nuns. They have nuns, right? I'd guess they're all nuns, bundled up that way. Yep, we're dealing with some real scholars here. Indeed, some of the protest signs referenced the, to us, obscure “Barnabas Bible.” What, you breathlessly inquire, is the Barnabas Bible? It's nothing.

But the Gospel of Barnabus is, to us, an obvious 16th century forgery in which: "Jesus smote his face with both his hands, and then smote the ground with his head. And having raised his head, he said: 'Cursed be every one who shall insert into my sayings that I am the son of God.'" Hm. It prophesies the advent of the Prophet Mohammad, PBUH: "Then said the priest: 'How shall the Messiah be called?'" Jesus answered: "Muhammed is his blessed name." Hm.

To the Moslems, however, "It is widely believed in the Islamic world to be the true gospel of the apostle Barnabas -- 'the one the Christians tried to suppress'. ... It is as long, rambling, ignorant, and senseless as the Da Vinci Code." Well, not as long. Generous of them to tell us what we believe, and should believe. But that's what they do best.

Warren is right on track when he brings up the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "Turkish television recently showed a massively popular dramatic series in which basic elements from the Protocols were recast, as an 'exposé' of baby-eating U.S. soldiers in Iraq." My! I haven't eaten a baby since the '70s. And don't they know? Nowadays Americans eat only fetuses -- and it's only American abortionists. Not soldiers. Such a bridge of misunderstanding we need to double cross.

The Pope's visit had little to do with Islam per se. It was primarily an attempt to bring relief to the oppressed Orthodox Church that has for so long suffered under Turkish Islamic domination. Loaded words, eh? I'll talk about that some other time. As for the schismatic Church, it is, indeed, a scandal.

Two Bishops, of Rome and of Constantinople, excommunicated each other in the mid-11th century. The grand issue, political maneuvering aside, was the filioque controversy. The Nicene Creed had traditionally read that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father". Yes, that sounds about right. The Roman Catholics had settled upon the more specific "proceeds from the Father and the Son" -- filioque. Well, that sounds pretty good too, although it'd be inference and deduction. In any case there's a lot of historical noise leading up to the schism. Let's just skip it. I know, I'm living in darkness. So ignorant I am, to not be dogmatic about such issues. Hope nobody excommunicates me from their sect over it.

It calls to mind the Raskolnikovs. No, not the Crime and Punishment antihero. It goes like this: the Patriarch of Moscow had been making innovations, and in the conflagrational year of 1666 traditionalists broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church. Tradition had them making the sign of the cross with two fingers -- the reform required three fingers. Tradition had the hand moving from right to left -- the reform had it moving from left to right. Well! This, along with other radical revolutionary outrages of equal portent -- it was all just too much! To the barricades, comrades!

The two fingers represent the dual nature of Christ. The three fingers represent the Trinity. For this, they divided? All faiths have their irrationalities -- if not in the initial revelation, then in the practice. Even stupid religions can be made innocuous, given sane adherents. So what's up with Islam?

Do you suppose Moslems are resentful that their faith is the self-grafted limb on the monotheistic tree? The Bible faiths, one so clearly the outworking of the other -- and then the autochthonic mudpie of the Koran, pretending it's an appendix to the final book of Revelation? ... Mudpie?!? ... I know, I'm an insensitive bigot. What a pig I am -- an unclean beast. Hope nobody issues a fatwa against me over it.

If only we could get them to stop spitting on the tomb of our brooding antihero Jesus S. Kikeregard -- then we would no longer be driven to eat their babies or draw incendiary cartoons. Ah, what a perfect world that would be. Let's visualize world peace, what? Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. Imagine all the people living for today. And when we die -- but let's imagine there is no death. Let's imagine that's our new religion. Haven't we just seen it? We can imagine anything, and believe it's a truth worth killing for.


J

Desensitization

Six imams -- Moslem scholars ... scholars of Islam, rather -- were removed from a US Airlines flight last week. Suspicious behavior. Chanting Allahu Akhbar in the terminal. Cursing America on the plane. Requesting seatbelt extensions when none of them was unusually large. Moving from their assigned seats to positions by the exits at the front, middle and back of the plane. Behavior for which airline employees are trained to watch.

Well I just don’t get it. So some imams move about the plane. Big deal. Was the seatbelt light on? No? -- then just shut up then, bigot. What’s the problem? So what if they were swinging wet towels in the air like flashing scimitars, and so what if they said their carry-ons were full of human heads? Cultural diversity, dude. Don't be so narrow-minded. And so what if they were chanting "death to the Great Satan by which we mean America which we hate and want to destroy"? That's just a typical Moslem prayer, right up there in the Islamical catechism with "may all the Jews be burned to powder and their ashes mixed with pig urine and drunk by dogs."

Hey, dude, listen -- in this country we have this thing called "Freedom from Religion." It's in one of those amendments. (Hey, did you ever notice that amendment starts with AMEN? That unconstitutional. Separation of Church and State, dood.) So like freedom from Christian Religion is in one of the early, good amendments, that matter. Not that one about guns, though -- guns are bad. People don't kill guns, guns kill people. Guns and America. Why can't we be more like Canada? Anyways, what I was saying is that, um ... well, I seem to have lost my train of thought. Something about how America and Israel steal oil and are so full of hate.

I hope that clears it up for all you rightwing haters. OH, and did you hear in the news about how women are throwing shoes at little mosqlem children? It was on Air America, so you know its true. (Man that al-Franken rocks! And Juneen garAwfullo is sooooo hot.) I wish I was Arab. I'm white. That's bad. And I wish I was a woman.

ahem

ahem

Six imams booted off the plane, for, you know, suspicious behavior. Good. Or is that racist of me? The imams did it on purpose, of course. It's called desensitization. Keep 'em searching the support-hose of blue-haired grannies, but get 'em used to seeing the dusky Bedouins in flowing robes, chanting and skulking and acting all agro and outraged. Because nobody can claim you're profiling the old ladies. So you’re PC-safe. Until the Allah-shouters get up one final time and head to the cockpit rather than the back.

They did it on purpose. It was a test run, to see what they could get away with while being obvious. Has America been sufficiently cowed? Can we by the grace of Allah resume our holy jihad without the inconvenience of pretending to be sane Moslems instead of scum? That sort of thing. The conference they had just attended was, in part, a seminar in not just grievance mongering, but grievance manufacturing. Where's YouTube when you need it most. Taking care of Michael Richards, I guess. He's a Jew, you know ... or maybe not ... but we think he's a Jew. He played one on television.

The imams of peace really are past the "test run" stage, of course. Test runs are for testing to see if something is possible. Some of us might recall the bright surprise of a blue-skied Tuesday morning, a handful of years back, when the time for test runs came crashing closed. Now it's stage two: cruise control. Get 'em used to it. Get 'em so they can't believe their eyes. That's why the criminal always has the advantage. He knows ahead of time what he's going to do. He has a plan. As for the rest of us poor schlubs, why, how could this be happening? It's so ... so, so surreal. Like a dream. Like strip-searched grannies and tumbling towers.

US Airlines. Hmm, I wonder why the imams chose that airline? Was American Airlines all booked up for the holiday? USA did exactly the right thing. True, the Peace Religion did get propaganda points, what with all Americans being so racist and anti-Moslem and suchlike, but the message was also sent that they are being watched. Hurrah. I'll take that deal.

I kind of wish I'd been on the plane. I'd have sat next to one of them and engaged him in a conversation. I would have been faultlessly polite. He would have ended up trying to assaulting me.

Well, as you can imagine, the imams and their CAIR enablers were incensed at the outrage of the perfidy of the horror of the indignity. How dare they be suspected! They'll get even, mind you. They threatened a boycott of US Air. A Mozy boycott ... US Airlines could advertise as terrorist free: "More US Air passengers don't get their throats cut than on any other airline!" What else might we wish Moslems would boycott? Obvious things like boxcutters and Amazon vendors of Mien Kampf. They might boycott war. What if they gave a war and no Moslems came? There wouldn’t be any wars. (Thank you very much.)

The boycott threat -- like the wandering about on planes -- was, alas, a ruse. What the imams actually did was go to Reagan International and reenact their loud-praying antics, and then insist that they be boarded on yet another US Air flight. Aided (and abetted) by some lefty rabbis and other nitwits. I suppose there were Jews who volunteered to hookup the gas to the ovens. These people are shamelss. I know, it's a kind of obvious thing to say. But they are just shameless.

If we really wanted to be sure whether or not the imams and other lovers of peace were up to no good, we'd have to check if they’d shaved off their pubes. (Maybe that was what Tennie Pierce (the 2.7 million dollar dogfood fireman) was up to.) I for one would rather be blown up. But it is a fact that razor burns on nether parts are highly correlated with exploding Mohammads.

Sadly, we know the end of the script. Guess which company's plane will be the next to plow into a major US landmark slash tourist attraction? Hopefully, by then -- with the help of imams and other public-spirited citizens and guests -- we'll have become desensitized to such things.


J

Just a reminder:

Moved here.


J

The Next Crusade

Ralph Peters: "The notion that continental Europeans, who are world-champion haters, will let the impoverished Muslim immigrants they confine to ghettos take over their societies and extend the caliphate from the Amalfi Coast to Amsterdam has it exactly wrong. ...

"When Europeans feel sufficiently provoked and threatened -- a few serious terrorist attacks could do it -- Europe's Muslims will be lucky just to be deported. Sound impossible? Have the Europeans become too soft for that sort of thing?" He answers: No, genocide is a European specialty.

Exactly right. Of course I would think so. I said as much in my own Oil and Semen:

"When a young man, say, ethnically French ... looks around him and sees his country not just swarming with, but coming to be controlled by, ethnic Arabs, what might you imagine his response could be? ...racism is a force sufficient to overcome any manner of malaise or torpor. ...the predictable, perhaps inevitable response -- given the template of universal experience -- is war. In this case, civil war. Racial civil war. Young men, it seems -- violent, impulsive, bigoted or idealistic young men -- do have a purpose. It isn't only 'North African youths' who can riot - and les jeunesses françaises need not tantrum only over crib-to-crypt welfare perks.... If 'ethnic cleansing' can happen in the former Yugoslavia, why not in France? Is France more civilized? I smile, sadly, and suggest that civility is not a trait for which the French are renowned. Chauvanism is a word of French origin. ...

"The Danes, the Dutch, the Germans, the Spanish, the French -- the generation being born, or that is children and teens now, will be the soldiers, the Crusaders, the heroes and monsters, the bigots and patriots of the years and decades to come. It is inimical to human nature to allow the extinction of your own way of life -- especially to an inferior one -- that is, one of repression. The solution to a problem of such magnitude is never, or rarely, found in reason and compromise. ...History is written in blood."

The "Eurabia" idea is held by Mark Steyn, who is right about everything. Yet Peters is right too. A paradox? No, just the complexity of human nature. We don't know which way it will break. But we can look at trends, and make pretty good guesses. For example, France has a population of 61 million, 5.5 million of whom voted for the hard right anti-immigration National Front party of Le Pen -- 9% of the total population, then. There are perhaps 5 million Moslems in France -- call it 8%. Hmm. Nine percent, eight percent. Hmm. Which way will it break?

The soft central third of the French population will sway with the breeze, and it just takes a few outrages to clarify one's priorities. Then the ridiculous bugaboo of expelling the illegals from America will become the European reality of expelling Moslems born in Europe. The Moors have been moving back into Spain. They can be driven out again. Whither will they go?

Peters offers a bright and beautiful reminder: "Even the newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can truly become an American." I love this fact. It fills me with pride. But I also remember the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance, which includes: "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any ... sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject... that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..." One who takes this oath, and breaks it, is not just an oath-breaker, but a traitor. Almost a meaningless term, nowadays, but treason is the only crime actually defined in the Constitution. Article III, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." An Islamist, then, who is a citizen.

I have striven to remain fairminded. But I think I may have crossed a line. I think I may, now, be bigoted against Moslems. Not any that I might know. The group -- the faith. I'll have to observe myself, to see if this is so. It's just that the enemy is so utterly of a single group. And whereas, say, the KKK were exclusively white "Protestants," their active adversaries were also white Protestants. Our enemy is Islamism, but "moderate" Moslems are not the effective enemies of Islamism -- one might almost think they were aiders and comforters. I overstate the case, but we have been deafened by their silence in the face of continuing outrages. It's always a yes but thing with them. No. It's only a yes thing.

All faiths are welcome here. All colors, all languages, all people. But not all cultures. Cultures of death are not welcome. Whither will Europe's uneducated, racist and violent Moslems go? Please, please, please not here. Sorry if that sounds bigoted. I might be a bigot. In this instance, I will not apologize for it.



J

Penis-Melting Zionist Robot Combs

Khartoum, September 2003 -- A plague of robot combs held the city in terror, causing untold havoc by melting countless Sudanese penises. Attacking victims of any age, from infant to the very old, the vicious robot combs shrank penises to a smooth Nubian nubbin, or in some cases caused them to fall free from the body. The freed penises were observed to burrow into the dirt, whence they emerged during the wet season to devour birds and small game; they also attempted to breed with farm animals.

According to the United Nations' World Health Organization, the electronic robot combs exist in a complex symbiotic relationship with hand shaking and verbal curses. Epidemiologists throughout the Islamic world have identified the combs' cyborganic genome as consistent with strains developed by the Zionist entity. 

Nobel canditate Dr. Mustaffa al-Muzri, Director of Infibulation at the Abuja Institute for Qu'oranic Animal Husbandry, states, "It's like nothing a human has seen before. Completely inhuman science. The ... Jews are trying to destroy all Muslims by attacking our penises with the American science fiction technology of the robotic combs and making them shrink."

Ja'far Abbas, a prominent Sudanese columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Watan, writes: "shaking hands with a dark-skinned man" greatly increased susceptibility to the penis melting properties of the robot combs. Abbas documents his case by citing a man who was approached in a market by a stranger who handed the man a comb and asked him to comb his hair. 

"When he did so, within seconds ... he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis. ... I wanted to tell that man who fell victim to the electronic comb: 'You jackass, how can you put a comb from a man you don't know to your head, while even relatives avoid using the same comb?!' ... That [strange] man, who, as it is claimed, is from West Africa, is an imperialist Zionist agent that was sent to prevent our people from procreating and multiplying." 

As Abbas explains, "No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull, to the lower body and emasculates a man!!"

Reliable sources placed within the Zionist governing body have provided evidence that the Jews are also developing ray-generating bionic tweezers that will shrink the breasts and nipples of Muslim women, causing dwarfism in Muslim boys. The penises of Muslim birds and the udders of Muslim cows are also at risk.

Sudan's Minister of Health, Abul-Gasim Mohamed Ibrahim, stated that the phenomenon was investigated by Sudanese police, who found no evidence of a supernatural agent, thus affirming the likelihood of Zionist involvement.

*****

Toulouse, September 2006 -- Robert Redeker, a French profesor of philosophy, went underground. Living underground -- not yet dead and buried. Sleeping on couches, a night here, two nights there, starting in September. He was, frankly, stupid enough to take his life in his hands -- like a cape in front of a bull. It’s the death threats, you see, and the several sentences of death. From a very very very credible source. Sources. That have a stellar track record of success in such matters -- lots of practice. They have no real opposition at all, you see, just talk, nicetalk, about “getting along.” That’s from the, uh, “opposition”.

Robert Redeker’s home address, and thoughtfully-included maps to his home, have been published on websites of a certain ideological bent. French police have released from custody one of the life-threateners.

Who? Who so threatens M Redeker?

Please.

Redeker, you see, wrote an op-ed for Le Figaro, condemning Islamist suppression through terror of the free expression of ideas in the West. He wrote, "today Islam tries to put its leaden mantel all over the world. ...the enemies of the 'Free World,' the zealous bureaucrats of the Koran's vision, who swarm in the very center of the 'Free World,' should be called by their true name." The ironic result of his views, we have just outlined.

In reaction to the implication that Islam does not cherish freedom, Tunesia, Egypt and other Moslem nations have banned Le Figaro. The editor of that periodical, Pierre Rousselin, responded by apologizing to Islam via Al-Jazeera for publishing Redeker’s article, calling it "shameful" and "Islamophobic" -- that is, the article was shameful, not the apology … and certainly not Islam.

And so on, ad infinitum atque nauseum.

*****

Question: which of these two pieces is the hoax?

Answer: neither. I added certain elements of surrealism to the first, but the title contains the substance of the hysteria. As for the second, well, haven’t you been paying attention? We're dealing with a vast and boundlessly primative tribe that can use, but cannot manufacture, technology.

It’s a civil war, with only one side fighting.

Intolerable.


J

Field Trip

Ralph Peters reports that on Tuesday, "80 terrorists in police uniforms raided an Iraqi research institute in Baghdad, rounded up 100-plus male students, loaded them into vehicles in broad daylight and drove away. ...The students probably will be executed and dumped somewhere. Partly for the crime of wanting to study and build a future, but primarily just to step up the level of terror yet again." This terrorism will have been facilitated by complicity within the Iraqi government.

Do they have pre-schools in Baghdad? Get it?

Who puts his shoulder to the plow, and then turns away from the work, is unworthy of any blessing. A paraphrase. Plowing tears up the earth. It is an assault on nature. Violent. The same can be done to a society.

We have plowed the plains of Sumer, and uncovered demons. Did we think this would not happen? Do we think the task is competed because of it? Locusts devour what they touch. They will consume shoe leather and ax handles. Flyswatters do not work on them. To destroy locusts, flames must reach into the sky.

Peters asks, "Are we willing to kill mass murderers and cold-blooded executioners on the spot? If not, we can't win, no matter what else we do." Gentle Reader, what, pray, might you think the answer to be? My answer has long been recorded, as here or here. I am certain, utterly certain that we will not have a meaningful crackdown on the terror death squads. Am I mistaken in thinking that our soldiers are given sensitivity training? That I can even have the misconception is answer enough.

I will not consider the war lost, however. This enterprise is not a mere Iraq war, but a far greater thing. The battle will be lost, the Iraq battle. There -- I said it. It is lost when 80 murderers brazenly load 100 students into vans and cart them away to their deaths -- and the rest of the city proceeds as usual. Martial law should have been declared.

When did our troops start wearing blue helmets? But it's not our troops, of course. It's the big-crested capons who hold back the sword. It is not yet the age when swords should be beaten into plowshares. The lion lays down with the lamb inside its belly. The small child plays at the vipers' den and dies in agony. Savage ravaging beasts are for killing.

"Our 'humanity,'" says Peters, "is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a 'universal code of behavior' that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress." I quote because I could not say it better.

It seems that the demons in Mesopotamia are no longer confined within the earth. They walk openly above ground. They ride in convoys. Let's call it a parade. A Diversity Day parade. You bring the beer. I'll bring the fireworks.


J

In Memoriam

Moved to 9/07.


J

Loose Lips

I've never done this before, but the anonymity of this format allows me to loosen up some of my habitual reserve. My son sent me an email today and I'm going to share some of it.

*****

Sorry about the delay, the internet place had a line and I couldn't retype my message. But, I am alive, and well. Our schedule has been really crazy lately. I don't get much sleep, and pretty consistently ... am up for 24 hours or more. The missions we go on are pretty mundane, but they tend to be dangerous nonetheless. IEDs, EFMPs (shape charges that completely destroy up-armored humvees) are constant problems.

Hopefully as we get more settled in it gets a little calmer, but no one can be sure. Our ... missions are going pretty well....

I try to check my email at least every 3rd day just in case. ... I try to limit communication because if I keep up a constant stream, when it breaks for one reason or another, everyone will freak out. If something did happen to me, you would know within a day or 2 anyway.

... Ok, I'll try to call soon, but it's hard to buy phone time here (you have to buy a specific, monopolized, phone card).

Keep me in your prayers, talk to you soon.

*****

Isn't that interesting? But what's with this "line"? What's with this "monopoly"? Well, at least the lines of communication are open and fast for official bad news. Or was that petty? Well, I've had bad news before. Maybe I'll get used to it. But that's just morbid.

He says the food is unbelievably fantastic. A morale thing, no doubt. Compensation for the MRIs. But the mess hall is mortared every now and then. So no lingering over the split peas. In and out. Was that a secret? Hope I didn't give aid and comfort to the enemy, domestic and abroad.

He doesn't have to call me.

If any of you know how to pray, who fly in and alight for a brief moment in this unrestful oasis, please do for my son. What else is there?


J

Looking Forward over My Shoulder

Now get this and get it straight. Treachery is a sucker's road, and everyone who walks it ends up in the gutter, the prison or the grave. It's always the same. But they never learn.

Sure, they'll stab you in the back while they smile into your face. How can they be so slippery? Practice, brother, practice. Ain't no gilt-toenailed frizzy-haired dime-a-dance floozy who ever did you harm like these weasels will. No dame can cut your heart out the way they can. And they want to. They enjoy it. Der Fuehrer calls the tune and they dance the jig. And it's a high-stepping one, believe you me.

And the boys who got into the long gray boats to go give the little corporal a special message compliments of Uncle Sam, they don't ask no fancy thanks from us. They're happy to sit in a hole in the mud and blow a thousand metal kisses Jerry's way. It's their job, and Americans know how to get the job done, over here, over there, and anywhere. Not a place on this grim globe that our boys won't walk to or swim to or crawl on their bellies to, so that we here at home will be safe and secure in our dry warm homes with our wives and families. So we're not about to complain about too few red points in the ration book, about too little coffee, about a 35 mile speed limit or three gallons of gas per week or not being able to get tires. We'll drink water, see, and like it. We'll walk, so that our boys can ride. It's little enough to do for them. We sent our boys there, and our boys signed up and went, and this whole blessed nation is pulling for them, every one. Not a block in any town in every county of every state, but has a boy in uniform, doing the job that needs getting done. And they won't come home until it's done.

But not everyone in this nation is a real American, see. They planned ahead, these nasty bastards. So they sent their spies to live with us and learn our ways, and we, big lugs, took them in. Or they paid those cowards who were born here but don't belong -- like cuckoo's eggs -- we thought they were our own, but they're rotten. And some don't even need to be paid. They sucked up the Nazi lies like stolen honey and sweetness drips from their smiles as they poison the water tanks. They write for the newspapers. They talk on the radio. They produce the newsreels. They infiltrate the movies. They run for office to make our laws. And they hate the American Way and what it means and everything it stands for.

Well we can take it on the chin. Tojo got us at Pearl, and we were down but not out, and we got up off our knees from that sucker punch and came back swinging. But those boys of ours over there, what do you suppose they think, hearing the bullets hissing in their ears? They do it, because it matters. Somebody has to do it, and that's us. But when they open up a paper and read that they're losing? When they read that they're dying for nothing? And their cause is wrong? And their lives are wasted? When they hear the fatcats saying they terrorize women and children in the dead of night? When they're called torturers and monsters and murderers? There they were, thinking the enemy was only over there. We've let our boys be flanked.

It will not stand. We'll get to the ballot box come Tuesday, and send a message not to some SStuffed SShirt in Washington, but to the lads who read every letter from home like it was a telegram from God. We'll tell our boys that we're behind them all the way, until the job is done, and beyond. And we'll do it with the vote, but how. Herr Goebbels of das Propagandaministerium is already making too big a noise. We won't hand the purse strings over to das Finanzenministerium.

*****

Pull it 65 years forward. Change some of the nouns.



J

Moslem Pron and Halloween

I have to agree that I’ve been writing a lot recently about pron (here, and more anciently, here). It couldn't be my character, which is excellent. My hormones must be sort of out of balance or something. I’m really fighting it, all this writing. But sometimes it just gets the better of me and I have to start typing. Typing and typing and typing, so hard and fast. Ooooo. Yesssss. It feels so gooooood. Yeah, that’s the word, right there. Mmmmm.

ahem

And reading, man, reading is so hot. It’s what the internet is good, so good for. Yeah. So I was, heh heh, “reading” just now, and I saw this hot hot picture of this moslem babe?


Hot hot hot. You can almost see her ankle. Meeeeowww. Now that’s the raw meat I like, baby. And that kneecap! I’d gnaw on that bone. This little piggy went wee wee wee! Last time I saw a shadow like that, all the blood rushed away from my brain if you get what I mean. You do get what I mean, right? I'm talking about the boner she gives me. She can be my houri any time. That is, I think it's a she. But with posture like that, I'd make allowances.

And glim this, bo:


Hubba hubba! Have you ever seen a bridge of the nose like that? Daddy likes! And those eyes, so perfectly spaced apart! I’d bellyflop into those limpid pools anytime! And dig that stitching across the niqab! Black on black! Oh yeah, you know what I like! Look at the way it drapes! -- talk about yer delta of Venus! That's the arrow of love! She knows what she's doing alright. Man what she does to me. If it is a she ... but whatever.

No point. Just thought I’d share.

On an entirely unrelated topic, Halloween is just around the corner. What are you going as? What mask are you going to wear, that will veil your identity and allow you to pull off any number of innocent pranks? Tipping over outhouses. Putting buggies on roofs. Ah, good times. Burning dog doo on porches. Sarin gas in subway stations. T.P.-ing frontyards. Setting off dirty nukes. There’s something just crazy about wearing masks, that lets us run around like hell on wheels doing whatever we please. Imagine how wild the world would be if we wore masks every day of the year? Wild, dude. Imagine how free and easy we’d be, if we grew up with the example of, say, our mothers wearing a mask every day of their lives? That’d be so boss. Like, everyday would be Halloween! We could make scary movies all the time, like about cutting off heads! And we could run wild, demanding that strangers give us some sort of tribute, say a tax! -- an “unbelievers’ tax”! Far out!

I wish I could move to such a place, where the women wear hot sexy tents and the young men can do whatever they want to strangers. I wish people like that would take over the world. It’d be like heaven! It’d be hell on earth!


J

Reading List

It is a fact that Islam has not always been characterized by the totalitarian dictatorships that currently rule it. As Bernard Lewis points out, the Ottoman sultan historically had to consult with a large number of advisors -- former high officials, sundry faction leaders, religious figures and so on. Really, it sounds a fair bit like Italian fascism. Lewis is making the point that "The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or the Assad family in Syria or the more friendly dictatorship of Mubarak in Egypt--all of these have no roots whatsoever in the Arab or in the Islamic past." Lewis does know what he's talking about. Understatement.

Here's my theory. The Sultan had to consult with these various vested interests not because of any inherent love of consultation embodied within Moslem culture. Rather, the power wielded by these other leaders was too great to risk offending. Loyalties were not to the idea of some centralized guarantor of justice, but rather to one's own power base, and more specifically to one's own power. The threat of rebellion was ever-present. Consultation was the bone to the dogs, the mordida, the nod and lip-service paid to prevent uprisings and chaos.

How is this situation different than that of, say, feudal England? -- where powerful lords were vassals and owed fealty to a king, but to a king who was just another, albeit a more powerful, lord? Half of Shakespeare's plays wouldn't have been written, if it weren't for the native British spirit of rebellion. How is it that British tribalism contributed to the Enlightenment, brought about democracy, and lead to the greatest potential for prosperity, health and happiness that humanity has known in lo these thousands of years? Whereas Moslem tribalism led to stagnation, poverty and a culture of hatred, blame and futility?

There is no variability in human nature. East, Middle East and West are all populated by people -- the same coarse clay gives form to us all. There is no identified factor in any given language that requires one sort of society or another. Geography plays its roll in shaping customs, but great trading empires have arisen from both fertile and from stony ground. So what makes the difference?

We call it the West, but we call it Christendom. We call it the Middle East, and we call it Islam. The Bible, then, and the Koran. Forget about theology. What impact have these books had on shaping the present world? Models for violence in each, and for peaceful conduct. Great poetry, that has greatly moved those open to such things. Etc. I won't get into theology or doctrine. It's not a we're better than they are argument. It's the fact that whatever the present reality, each of these two civilizations has a founding document. We Americans should understand this better then any other nation -- aside from the Jews. We were invented by the Constitution. Of course it's a chicken or egg thing, but you see the point. And given a relative equality of initial status -- barbarism, feudalism, a thirst for blood and for gold -- which civilization has provided for the greater good?

A loaded question. We favor the familiar. Conservatives, here, will give the predictable answer. Liberals can only be liberals, can only continue to exist at all, in this civilization. So their verbal answer is irrelevant. Their very existence speaks to the matter. It has to do with the rather odd concept of freedom. Lewis speaks of the puzzlement that old-time Moslems experienced over this strange Western concept. The confusion was finally resolved by equating it with justice. A fair analogy. Rather insightful, actually. But not a mathematical, or logical, identity.

Many societies have justice. We might baldly state that no society can long survive without it. Hitlerism lasted twelve years. The Soviet Empire lasted some seventy years. Red China is coming up on sixty years. Pick a trouble spot in the world. It will become calm again, when justice is restored. Thus, the rage, the turmoil of the so-called Arab street. They look at their crappy lives, and their hearts are filled with envy. This leads to blame, and the scapegoats are, of course, the Greater and Lesser Satans. But their lives are crappy because they have crappy leaders. Leaders are crappy because they do not rightly minister to the needs of justice.

Freedom, on the other hand, is a rare and fragile flower, that cannot flourish without the nourishing soil of justice. It isn't just about statutes of law -- the means by which justice makes itself known. Laws are a consensus, and are the body that house the spirit of justice. There is no ordinance, though, that can give life to freedom. Either you have it or you don't. Either you get it or you don't. Islam doesn't get it. Islam, as you know, means submission. Freedom doesn't submit. As you have discerned through your own ruminations, new-time Moslems -- at least the Islamist faction, the masked-face of the enemy -- are no longer confused about freedom. It's bad.

We might make a catalogue of the characteristics of God, and of Allah. I won't. Such a list would seem self-serving. For our purposes, there is only one characteristic that is relevant. I challenge you to find any equivalent, any counterpart to a famous American, uh, slogan -- "Let freedom ring!" It's in our songs. It fell from the sonorous lips of Martin Luther King. It refers to the inscription on the Liberty Bell. Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. And that, of course, comes from the Bible. Leviticus 25:10.

Religions are many things. In this discussion, they are the shapers of civilizations. The theme of Islam is called five times daily from high minarets. The message boils down to a single word. Submit. Proclaim liberty. Submit. West, Middle East. Bible, Koran. Freedom, justice. Of course there really isn't any such thing as freedom, any more than justice. So the difference is as much a suggestion as a requirement. But in the real world -- not the world of fevered imagination, or fanciful historical romanticism, or distorted political polemics -- reality presses itself forward into our faces in a way that cannot be ignored. Toppling towers and toppling heads. Or what we have here: unfocused, self-indulgent, foolish ... and free.

I can speak only for myself, now. My family is gone. But a question has been echoing in our ears for three and a half thousand years, and it deserves an answer. If it seems evil, to you, to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom you will serve. There are gods across the waters that you might serve. There are gods grown up around you, with something, and much, to offer. But the God -- or rather the book that has brought us here, even in this day and age, has blessed us beyond the blessing of any other people. This is no small thing. It is great. If we must submit, wouldn't this God seem the wisest choice? -- given our blessings over those of others? Other gods might offer a freedom, of sorts. And there may indeed be found a vaccine for AIDS. But I'm trying to avoid romance.

No. I am not preaching. Far be it from me to do so. Do as thou wilt. My theme here is specific. We're better than they are? The Bible is better than the Koran? Well ... yes. But my theme has been that we are vessels shaped from the same clay. There are potters, and blueprints, and we know the purpose of the pots not so much by their shapes -- for they are almost identical -- as by what comes out of them. I won't argue the point. I'll just ask a final question. Have you been noticing all the chamber pots in the news, recently?



J

Ejsy;d i[z

Huh. What happened? I seem to have slept through the whole weekend. Just woke up. It’s 3:43, Monday afternoon. I don't seem to remember the weekend. How odd. Do I have epilepsy? Was I being probed by aliens? Mentally probed. Space aliens. Hmm. That would be just like me. Last thing I remember, I was watching some TV. Wonder why I thought I needed to do that? I never watch TV. Hmm. Didn’t know I was so tired. What was I doing, to get so tired? Can’t seem to recall. Ah well. No matter. Couldn’t have been very important.

Charles Krauthammer makes a typically incisive point. “In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to ‘hunt down’ the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun working in a children's hospital.

“‘How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it’ is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation. ...

"The pope gives offense and the Mujaheddin Shura Council in Iraq declares that it 'will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose the "jizya" (head) tax, then the only thing acceptable is conversion or the sword.' This to protest the accusation that Islam might be spread by the sword."

I think the meta-lesson here is that we must all be reasonable, and calm, and respect everyone else’s opinion. After all, isn’t that what we’re all about? In the great scheme of things, it all evens … evens … hmm. What I mean to say is that the other guy has a point of view, and it’s just as good as yours or mine. After all, until we walk a mile in the other guy's shoes, we don’t have the right … the right, uh, to, um, to judge. Huh. I, I feel so unfocused. Surely that’s not my opinion? It’s so bland. And so wrong. I mean, they blasted a cap into a nun’s cerebellum. Isn’t it time to send in the Black Hawks? Or does that evoke unfortunate associations. I appear to be thinking that it’s necessary to be sensitive to people’s sensitivities. I must be evolving.

Well, perhaps Krauthammer is too butch for me, right now. I was reading Bernard Lewis and among many excellent points he drew out the connection between freedom and justice. You should read what he said. It’s really neat and stuff. He's like so smart and cool too, you know? Totally the bomb. The rad bomb, lol. Uh. Hmm. No. Um, huh. Uh, I mean it’s most, uh, most edifying. Extremely elusidating of the contextual anomolies between the two paradimes…

No. Something is definitely wrong here. And there’s something nagging at me. Something important, that’s slipped my mind. Like a conversation I dreamed or something. Wish I could remember. Maybe I’m hungry. Think I’ll get some ice cream. That’s weird. I never eat ice cream.

J

Dunce Cap

So, did you hear there's a new Pope? Yeah, Benedict. "Good word." A German or something. He was in the Hitler Youth. You've heard of Hitler, right? He was like this racist dictator or something about a hundred years ago. Anyway, a totally bad dude. So this new Pope Benedict -- I guess he's like the President of the Catholics. Catholics are like Christians. But the Pope isn't a dictator, like Hitler was. Well maybe he is a dictator, but not a bad one. More like a King. King of the Catholics. Or Emperor. Something like that. Anyways, so Pope Benedict was giving a lecture at the University of Regensburg? I guess that's in some town called Regensburg. And in this long boring lecture he quoted some old dead emperor -- dude named Manuel II Paleologus ... Mexican I guess ... thought he was German -- who said to this Persian dude -- that's Iranian -- anyway, this Manuel dude said, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and in-human, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Then the Pope went on to talk about how Allah -- that's the Moslem god -- was transcendent.

Yes. This is all idiocy for the following reason. In Somalia over the weekend, a nun was killed. Retaliation. And so on. It seems the adherents of the Religion off Peace have once more yet again been offended yet again once more. And what better way to express their outrage than by murdering nuns? Very linear thinkers, these Moslems. Because a scholarly pope quotes a single sentence from a Byzantine emperor six hundred years ago, blood must be spilled in the streets.

But all this is old hat. We do remember the Cartoon Jihad, after all, when all of Islamdumb rose up in righteous ire against the insidious Danes. No, honestly, we have learned to expect nothing less from Dar al-Islam -- and nothing more. CAIR, that sensible group of moderate Moslemites, has condemned the Pope's words as "derogatory". I mean, who but a monster would quote a Byzantine emperor's opinion about Islam? It's, it's so, so provokkkative. Flecks of spittle are spraying from my lips even as I contemplate the matter. If you could see me, I'd be quite embarrassed. I've totally lost control of myself. I just now had to pick myself up off the floor. If I knew any Catholics, I'd go out and kill them. In sympathy for the poor inflamed and derogatorated CAIR muslimists. You know what it's like to be inflamed. It's like sunburn, or an erection. Not to be tolerated. And of course, if you are Moslem, you don't have to tolerate anything. Especially the opinion of long-dead emperors.

As I say, old hat. Old tiara, papal and imperial. Old kalipha turban. There is no insight to be found here. Moslems, like any third world tribe, are subject to mass hysteria, delusions, religious frenzies, mob violence, etc. It's obvious. Beyond all possibility of rational debate. What? -- you think I've made an unfair and sweeping generalization? -- based on prejudice and ignorance? I...I hardly know what to say. I thought we were friends. That you should turn on me like this is inexplicable. Don't you like me anymore? I'm going to have to riot about this. I'm a Dane -- I guess I'm going to have to burn down my embassy.

The real point, the new hat -- the really pointed new hat, then -- is this: Somebody sat in the audience listening to the pope, and deliberately took that one line, out of context, and broadcast it to the Moslem world. Just as somebody scoured the back pages of Danish newspapers for cartoons. And so on. Do you notice a pattern?

The dust of the Arab street is being stirred up, on purpose. Dust is so useful, and there's so much of it. It obscures the harsh outlines of reality. It hides faces. It's almost as useful as the dark of night. Add a little blood and it makes a mud that will slow down pursuers. Yes, in a very crude and obvious way, third world Moslems are being manipulated. By whom? You can fill out your own list. Yeah, it's just flame to the tinder -- stupid people need only pathetic excuses to demonstrate their stupidity -- but I suppose it's a good thing to identify the firebugs, rather than blame the forest for burning. Hmm. Looks like I've stumbled upon a solution. And coming from me, by now you must know what that would be.

If you could travel back in time, would you kill baby Hitler?


J

Torture

Moved here.


J

Pandemic

Christopher Hitchens gets it right: "It would have been far better if President Bush had characterized the atrocity as an attack on civilization itself, and it would be preferable if we observed the anniversary in the same spirit.” An attack on America? Well, yes, it occurred here. But the attacks on London, and on Madrid, and on New Delhi, on the Danes and the Dutch and the French, on Israel and Tunisia and Bali and Argentina -- what continent, what hemisphere has been spared? Nine Eleven is our wound, but the whole world is bleeding.

I have always been careful to distinguish between Islam and Islamism. I would not be associated with the barbaric aspects of the Crusaders -- for all that their mission was right. Just so, any hypothetical moderate Moslem must not be shown the disrespect due to murderous fanatics and their blackguards. But as for the islamists themselves -- someone comes at me with a box cutter, I want them dead. Period. Well, no, semicolon. I want their family dead too.

First, because war should have a cost, and to one who is willing to lay down his own life as well as the lives of the innocent, his death is no cost at all. Since the rules of their game call for the deaths of the innocent, let’s accommodate that demand -- although calling their family "innocent" doesn't really fit. We are not diminished, for waging war as it has always been waged. The idea of professional armies who allow no civilian deaths -- this is a new thing under the sun. New, the way unicorns are new: not real, and not possible. The Thirty Years War (now that was a war!) killed a third of all Germans. Tough. Don’t have Thirty Years Wars. But if you do, dig your son’s grave ahead of time.

Second, because the families of terrorists are crap. I suppose any family might spawn a monster. But there is a culture that plops out monsters the way blowflies squirt out maggots. Whether you are an Evolutionist or a Creationist, you understand that the universe is founded on death. Whether “survival of the fittest,” or “the wages of sin” -- the idea of death as an essential tool is embodied in both theologies. What is inevitable, is not evil. Turning your children into homicidal monsters, however, is not inevitable. It is a choice. And that choice should carry a penalty. A capital penalty.

When a child used bad language in front of Confucius, he slapped the father. Yeah. Mohammad needs a good thrashing. But Hell is taking care of it. The cave Mohammad had his vision in was a tunnel. Guess where it leads? No, I’m not Moslem. Not Hindu, not Jewish, not Mormon, not Buddhist, not Shinto, not animist, not voodooist, not Satanist. You? Be what you want to be, and enjoy your life. And extend that courtesy to others. Go ahead and think I'm wrong. Think I'm going to Hell. Think what you like. But use box cutters on boxes.

All this bloodthirstiness of mine is very uncivilized. But that supposes that there is an unassailable case for the virtue of civilization. An unwise absolute. There is virtue in pragmatism. We must not idly suffer the killing of the innocent. But Um Nidal, Mama Jihad, is not innocent. Let the innocent, then, go free. But let the guilty perish. Guilty. Islamist. And the fallacy lies in assuming there is no mechanism by which "civilization" may protect itself. There is. It's called "war". Again we have encountered our old nemesis, ambiguity. Equivocation. Words meaning more than one thing. How inconvenient. When I say "civilization," I exclude all monsters and barbarians. Islamists.

How can I be so sure? There are reasons other than my innate self-righteousness: London and Madrid and New Delhi, and the Danes and the Dutch and the French, Israel, Tunisia, Bali, Argentina -- and New York, and Washington, and Pennsylvania. So many wounds, and a single feral beast the cause. Hunt it down and kill it, and find its nest and kill what lies there.

Or is my metaphor faulty?

J

Living Memory

Here’s why it’s a World War: Moslems are all over the world. Those other, old fashioned wars? They were World Wars because nations are all over the world. But Islamists do not want nations. They want a pre nation-state world. For us, that’s going back a thousand years. For them, it’s a few years more than 80. That’s right. The Ottoman Empire is just the ticket. Everything after that has been a Western interlude, an interregnum.

The three Ottoman provinces that Churchill cobbled together and called Iraq comprise a “nation” only as a geopolitical fiction. Like Yugoslavia. Like Czechoslovakia. These of course are thriving countries ... oh, wait ... hmm. Well, it could be that cobbled-together countries aren’t really such a great idea. Like the United States -- a real failure. Oh, wait. Hmm. Well, it seems that when there’s a shared culture and the unity comes from an internal impetus, such agglomerated nations might work. After all, the US never had a civil war. Oh, wait. Well, our civil war was about an alien institution, one of anti-freedom -- one inherently antithetical to the very unifying principle from which the nation arose. Maybe that’s what all civil wars are about. Yet somehow the US seems in an entirely different category than Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, or Lebanon or Iraq.

In Iraq, democracy and constitutionality -- like its very borders -- are alien artifacts of an imposed system. That men of goodwill conspired to imagine that the concept of Iraq had any substance demonstrates the human capacity of optimism, but reality has a sort of rudeness about it, and interrupts our social ruminations in a most abrupt manner. My point is that Iraq can only work if there is some unknown minimum of perhaps illusory patriotism, some loyalty to the imposed fiction of nationality or nationhood, that will allow the country to continue to exist in its present form.

The danger is that Iraq is like some desert succulent, that might give the appearance of thriving, but uproots easily simply because it never put out roots. Is Iraq just a stick with leaves, presenting the similitude of vitality only in the absence of a breeze?

The broader point is that there are a number of ways for peoples to organize themselves. There are a number of concepts about which they might gather and present themselves to the world. Nationality is only one of them. Religion is another. The Jews survived the stateless millennia just so -- as a religious culture, so interbred with the surrounding peoples that as much of the blood of Abraham might flow in my veins, as in some Cohen or Levi. The Iraqis are for the most part Arabs -- not that Mesopotamians are racially Arabs, but by the millennia-long adopted culture and religion of the south. But the unifying principle has been, broadly, Islam. Islam is not a national religion. It is tribal, and as such it does not bode well for the continued nationality of any Islamic country.

Now we have Lebanon. An invented country, as almost all Middle Eastern countries are invented. People there of goodwill -- we might call them citizens -- identify themselves as Lebanese. But then there’s Hezbollah. They have a nation. But they do not recognize any state. Their nation is the Caliphate -- an empire after the old style. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia arose from the ruins of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Middle East today is just the visible part of the grave of the Ottoman Empire, famously styled the Sick Old Man of Europe. To what then would loyalty best be paid? Arabs most certainly do not have a long historical memory. They have a long memory for imagined grievances. Emotional, then. What inspires loyalty to an emotional people? Certainly not the cold elegance of blindfolded Justice and Her impartial scales.

Well. My metaphors are all over the place. I am rambling. It’s a rich topic, that I’m feeling too scattered to mine thoroughly. Another metaphor. So here it is. We’re due for another Hundred Years War -- a religious war -- this time intercontinental. The old empires are quickening, and what they will grow into we cannot know. But history is a most edifying discipline, not predictive like astrology, but indicative, like astronomy. The guiding star, then (my final metaphor) must be an understanding of human nature. My nature is increasingly pessimistic. But maybe that’s just a mood. Might be a metaphor, except I’ve used up my last one.

A World War, then. Of a different order -- a more ancient order. It's a World War the way Islam has been fighting World Wars since the seventh century. Islam invented World Wars, what with its invasion of three continents, from the peninsula of its origin. What we've been seeing is not, most certainly not, the final tactic of the emerging Caliphate. Moslem Islamist terrorism is just the first phase of a sinister master plan. Has anybody seen a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Mecca? I bet it's an interesting read. And that's not one of those pointy-headed metaphors you're always using.

J

Divided Loyalties

Mark Steyn: “Grant for the sake of argument that these [anti-West, anti-Israel (of course), anti-sanity (well, that’s my editorial comment) BBC etc.] reports are true -- that when the bloodthirsty Zionist warmongers attack all those marvelous Hezbollah social outreach programs it drives British subjects born and bred to plot mass murder against their fellow Britons. What does that mean?

“Here's a clue, from a recent Pew poll that asked: What do you consider yourself first? A citizen of your country or a Muslim?

“In the United Kingdom, 7 percent of Muslims consider themselves British first, 81 percent consider themselves Muslim first.”

Let us pause, and consider. At first reading, that seems quite dangerous and disloyal. But I asked myself the same question, modified. Am I first an American, or first a Christian. The answer has to be, for me, first, Christian. Made me a little uncomfortable. But then I rationalized it, quite sincerely, by realizing that they are the same thing. By which I mean that American values and Christian values are in close harmony. Not so, between British and Moslem values.

Pluralism: a Western concept. It derives both from the roots of earliest Christianity -- insofar as it is possible, live in harmony with all men -- and from the long struggle away from the Medieval perversion of intolerance that brought about the many religious wars of Europe. Islam has intolerance at its core. It must dominate, and there has been no Moslem Enlightenment or Reformation to mollify its adamantine heart.

The danger of being Moslem first and British second is that it means being Moslem only and anti-British. I could be either Christian or American first, and there would be no measurable difference in my conduct -- in my soul perhaps, but.... And the danger of being anti-British, while Moslem, has been made plain in the current news cycle -- something about air safety. Unfair? Yes. Moslem need not mean anti-British. But given that the core values of each are not in harmony, the dissonance must be more than unsettling. We have no problem, in this country, using bigoted religious caricatures in our teledramas and cinematic entertainments. But they must be Christian caricatures: purse-lipped bigots disapproving of dancing and beverages of any description. Our values allow such disrespect and unfairness directed against ourselves. Islam? ... Come to think of it, maybe I wasn’t unfair.

Christian missionaries brought Bibles and hospitals. Moslem missionaries bring shoe bombs and burqas. Unfair? Yes. But that is the mood of the day, and the news of the day. It takes no courage on my part to sit behind my initials and before my anonymous keyboard, loudly trumpeting my criticisms of an alien faith. But the ugly truth is that it would take courage to criticize Islam publicly. And not just social courage, but physical. This fact points out the anti-British, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-civilization, anti-human aspect of Islam as it chooses to present itself, non-anonymously -- except of course for the terrorist masks.

Questions of loyalty are always touchy. Parents avoid it by saying they love their children equally. Hmm. Like Solomon would have divided children equally, I guess. It excludes the idea of merit. There was a simpler time, when the king was the representative of God, so loving one was loving the other. But that was theory, too. The problem is resolved for us, living in freedom, by understanding that our country has no claim on our conscience, only on our behavior.

Islamism would have both. It will have nothing of divided babies -- it wants the whole thing, dead or alive. Not of course schoolbook Islam, which, we are told, is about behavior only. But Islamism isn’t really a religion, anymore than Nazism was a political movement. They are -- I use the present tense advisedly -- excuses. Excuses for what?

Do I really have to say?

J

Both Ways

Here are two women. Pick the terrorist:

Is it A:

Or is it B:

Honestly, they both have lovely eyes. But the jokes on you! Cuz one of them’s a DUDE!!! Hahahaha!!! See?!?

Gotcha!!! Yessssss!!! In your FACE!!!

There must be some dynamic at work here contrary to normative Moslem custom. Because these two are pretty androgynous, and that hardly seems appropriate. They're both in burqas, for mercy's sake! Tee hee. But here’s a little known fact: it seems that the serving virgins awaiting Islamist terrorists in Moslem terrorist paradise? They're boys. (Al Tur -- The Mount, 24)

J

*Hot Topic

YT

So there I was, not naked in the sauna. I hardly ever use it. I work for my sweat. But it was a Sunday mid-afternoon, and I’d had a nice run, and I’d been working on my one-armed chin-up (oooh!), and I’d soaked in the Jacuzzi, and I figured why not. Doing the sport that I do, I can lose up to 10 pounds in a few hours. Just water of course, but it comes from blood volume so I most certainly do replace the fluid, and I most certainly do not need to sit in a cedar-lined box just to sweat. I sweat enough. But it was a lazy Sunday mid-afternoon, and that’s what I was doing.

Some fellow I have a nodding acquaintance was there, and we chatted a bit, and it came around to the War, and how Bush was blowing it. That was his take. My take was that wars are messy, and don’t go according to plan, and that Roosevelt had a plan that didn’t work, and Churchill did, and the matter was resolved by firebombing Dresden and killing 200,000 civilians, and nuking Japan (happy 61st anniversary!). My take was that we don’t open up the Bible and find all the answers in, say, Psalm 23 -- to pick a random example. Wisdom is found where it’s found, and doesn’t appear in the index. Plans are necessary, but sometimes the opposition demurs.

My take was that fighting terrorism is like fighting crime. Sometimes “society” is all for cable TV and sensual massages, and sometimes it’s for solitary confinement for life. It goes in cycles, and neither one is wisdom. Is prison about rehabilitation? -- about punishment? -- about warehousing undesirables? Whatever. Same with terrorism. Define it, and work out a competent-seeming plan, but understand that one size does not fit all, and that for all the care we might put into definitions, it’s really more than one thing.

There’s that 10% on the bell curve of human aggression, that will just be vile, given an excuse. Oh, Allah wants violence? Got plenty right here. Come and get it -- or let me bring it to you. These are the Holy Martyrs of the Lesser Jihad, and a heroic lot they are. Takes a real man to knife open pregnant women. Then there are the camp followers, the blackguards, the mixed multitude, the cheering by-standers. In Islam, that’s about 89%. As for that core Islamist minyan, I’ve said it before: some people simply need to be killed. By the beneficial example of their violent demise, others are chastened. If we can kill them under color of authority, with a clear path from cause to effect, a primal instinct is addressed in the human psyche, enough to call out that cowardice necessary under some circumstances to survive. Add to this the enlightened Roman policy of family-guilt, where the parents are punished for the treachery of the son, and the incentive is magnified greatly.

The tag-along Islamist will reconsider his sect, and convert on the spot to something more moderate. This is how liberals become conservatives: they get mugged. By reality. Because there is no race that is genetically fanatical. Given a choice between clearly different outcomes, negative or positive -- well, it’s a great mind-clearer. I can blow myself up while murdering Jews, and as a result my father also will be hunted down and killed … or, I can live and let live.

Maybe I’m not very American in this opinion. But it does seem to be my opinion. I do not want an American Empire. But the British Raj wiped out the horror of Suttee (Sati, where a widow was expected to immolate herself upon the funeral pyre of her dead husband), and the Thuggee cult of Kali (the Hinduist murder cult which at its height yearly strangled 40,000 innocents, totalling perhaps two million murders. Yeah, Islamism. Allah, it seems, is Kali with external genitalia.) Suttee and Thuggee were extreme religious practices, certainly as deeply-ingrained and evil as anti-Semitic Islamism. The price of wiping out monstrosity is that a certain brutality must be employed. You do not talk a demon to death. Informants, pardons and many public executions wiped out the Thugs, and persuasion and criminal charges eventually dampened the urge to Suttee. Maybe such measures couldn’t work today, what with CNN and the NY Times running interference for Iran. But it usually works.

A third gentleman in the sauna, who thought it not at all inappropriate to display his entirely external genitals in a most free-wheeling manner, dropped his two cents worth by saying that all sorts of things have been tried, and the one that never works is appeasement. This we all agreed was true. Then he mentioned how electric cars can recharge 90% of their batteries in 10 minutes, nowadays -- and one's in the works that can do it in seconds. I guess that would be the cable TV and massage part, the passive part of how to deal with terrorists. Gently starve them of their petrodollars. Indeed, I opined, whatever Tom, Dick or Harry got the balls rolling on the electric revolution would be the new Bill Gates, the new Henry Ford.

At this point I had lost my ten pounds, and wobbled out to a fountain, that I might drink two and half gallons. Yes, I slosh. But everyday finds me more beautiful than the day before. At least on the outside. If such a thing is possible.

Did I mention my one-armed chin-up?

J