Itchy trigger fingers can cause wars.  A pre-emptive conventional weapons bombing strike against Iran’s known nuclear facilities could do more harm than good….or at least so say some.[i]

And indeed there is the real and frightening possibility that an Israeli or American attack might unite Iran’s disaffected anti-Mullah 30-somethings into a furious show of patriotism and thus lock in the current mullah-cracy (aka the Islamic Republic of Iran) for another generation.  Such an attack might also have a similar effect on the current Syrian regime; radicalize the Muslim world against the West; ignite Hezbollah on the Lebanese border; re-invigorate a flagging Hamas; endanger US troops in Iraq; spark revenge terror attacks; propel oil prices skyward; trigger a regional war; prompt Iran’s closure of the Straits of Hormuz; and cause stock markets world-wide to plummet.  And then again, it might not.

But what happens if one does not bomb?

Some current analysis suggests that an Iranian Islamist regime armed with nuclear weapons will trigger a regional nuclear arms race; destroy the non-proliferation treaty; increase the danger of miscalculation that could bring on a nuclear exchange; allow Iran to escalate its destabilizing influence throughout the region and the world; threaten Israel and moderate Arab regimes; manipulate energy markets to its benefit; pose as a guardian of Muslim communities even beyond the Middle East; and, perhaps worst of all, share its nuclear technology with its non-state proxies and terrorist groups.  Thus empowered, Iran just might be able to throw its nuclear weight behind the current Syrian regime; radicalize the Muslim world against the West; ignite Hezbollah on the Lebanese border; re-invigorate a flagging Hamas; endanger US troops in Iraq; provide a measure of impunity for Muslim terror attacks; propel oil prices skyward; trigger regional wars anywhere it wants; close the Straits of Hormuz with impunity; and cause stock markets world-wide to plummet.

And to make matters worse, the Iranian nuclear threat may by now be global. Israeli sources disclosed that recently Iran began working on missiles with a 10,000 kilometer (c. 6,200 miles) range, capable of striking targets in the western hemisphere.  But even worse is the slowly emerging reality that Iran and Hezbollah are working with drug cartels in Mexico and with the Venezuelan government to smuggle materials into South America, creating a conduit that could one day be used to smuggle nuclear weapons into South America for deployment against North America.  An Iranian nuclear attack on North America, via long-range missiles or from bases in South America, could involve the detonation of a nuclear device high in the atmosphere to send a massive electromagnetic pulse that would paralyze virtually all U.S.-based electronic defense systems, destroying America’s electrical grid, and shutting down everything from cars to computers to airplanes and refrigerators.  And if detonated closer to the ground, such a device would vaporize millions of Americans.

But Iran does not need to actually drop the bomb.  The moment Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the region will feel compelled to do the same, sparking a nuclear arms race among the world’s most unstable and fanatical regimes and their proxy terrorist forces.  And such threats, without a single missile being launched, would have a devastating effect on the Israeli economy and society:  withdrawal of overseas and Israeli investors, a record number of Israeli emigrants, a sharp decline of Jewish immigration, dwindling tourism, intensification of military-political-economic dependence on the U.S., and the transformation of Israel from a strategic asset to a strategic liability.

Should Iran achieve nuclear military capacity, it will be free to advance its Islamist revolution throughout the world with impunity from attack.  So it may well be that by not bombing, the world, and especially the USA and Israel, will pay a much higher and more horrific price.

But what about the IAEA, inspections, and sanctions?

The problem with the IAEA and its inspections is that it has failed numerous times to detect clandestine WMD activity in countries that are signatories to the non-proliferation treaty.  Such embarrassing gaffs include North Korea, Libya, Russia, China and most recently Syria and Iran.  Moreover, there is no method of enforcement of IAEA inspections.  With complete impunity, Iran recently barred inspectors from the most sensitive and suspicious of its WMD sites.

Moreover, Iran possesses the most clandestine-capable nuclear-weapon technology in history: the gas centrifuge. Gas centrifuge installations can be housed in a room the size of a high school gymnasium, and require very little external power, thus making it almost impossible to detect.  Iran can now make centrifuges on an entirely indigenous basis.

Sanctions have failed to bring Iran to its knees, even though the most recent ones have thrown the Iranian economy into turmoil.  And this is one of the most problematic aspects of sanctions:  in a country where leaders have no concern for the well-being of their own people, sanctions can harm the innocent without influencing the government. Enhanced incentives have not only failed to entice Iran to give up its nuclear program, but they have had the reverse effect of validating its uncompromising policy against making any concessions in the nuclear arena.  Moreover, Iran has successfully evaded US sanctions against its state shipping company simply by painting new names on its ships. Equally problematic is the willingness of Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela to supply Iran with whatever it needs, including WMD expertise and uranium, to vitiate the effects of the West’s sanctions.[ii]

The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control reported in November, 2011 that by December 2008 Iran had one atomic bomb. By 2009 it had two, and by 2011, five.  The IAEA garnered evidence that Iran was testing nuclear explosives and working on weaponization (fitting nuclear warheads to nose-cones of missiles). In January 2012 Iran announced publicly that its uranium enrichment site was about to become operational, prompting the IAEA to warn the world that Tehran now has the ability to make whatever nuclear weapons it chooses, within months.

On January 29, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was interviewed on CBS news.  When asked about the situation with Iran, Secretary Panetta responded: “[I]f they [Iran] decided to [build a nuclear device], it would probably take them about a year …  [and] …if they proceed and [if] we get intelligence…then….there are no options that are off the table” for the US commitment to stop Iran from building a nuclear arsenal.

Sounds good, except for all the “ifs:”  “if they produce” and “if we get intelligence” and “if they decide to do it”

Panetta’s “ifs” create the impression that there may in fact be no threat from Iran, that Iran may not be pursuing nuclear capacity, that there is as yet no actionable intelligence about Iranian WMDs, and that maybe Iran has not decided to pursue a nuclear option.

But facts of which Mr. Panetta must be aware tell us the opposite.

Back in the ‘60s the Shah tried to start a WMD program for Iran but it floundered and was abandoned.  In the mid-1990s the Ayatollahs restarted the program. Iran said it wanted nuclear power for clean energy needs, but in 2002 an Iranian exile group shared with Western intelligence secret Iranian documents revealing a clandestine program to enrich weapons-grade uranium.  The facility at Natanz was built with the assistance of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program.  Under threat of sanctions, the government agreed in 2003 to halt work on uranium enrichment; but in 2006, less than a year after Akhmedi-Nejad took power, the Iranian government announced that it was going to restart its uranium enrichment. No “ifs” about that.

From 2005 onward US intelligence organizations and the Israeli Mossad worked together to locate and sabotage the financial underpinnings of the Iranian nuclear project.  On September 9, 2009, American intelligence concluded that Iran had the nuclear fuel necessary to build an atomic bomb, thanks in part to a hitherto undocumented underground plant near the city of Qom. Most recently in January of this year, Iran announced defiantly that it was going to start an additional uranium enrichment site, fortified to withstand even the most powerful of America’s bunker-busting bombs. No “ifs” about that either.

In May 2011, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akhbar Salehi addressed a regional economic summit in Tehran.  He told his audience that he was optimistic that nuclear inspectors would not find anything amiss when they visited Iran.  Of course he was optimistic. For the past 20 years Iran has done a great job of hiding those of their WMD sites that were devoted to the development of military uses for nuclear weapons.

American efforts to counteract the Iranian threat have been limited to sanctions and efforts to persuade EU allies to cease cooperation with Iranian financial institutions, the most significant of which were H.R. 1905, the Iranian Threat Reduction Act of (May) 2011, and the Senate’s decision in December 2011 to approve sanctions against Iran’s central bank. Although, as has recently become clear, President Obama does not support such actions, even though a nuclear Iran now threatens the American continents, he nonetheless signed these newest and most comprehensive sanctions on December 31, 2011.  No “ifs” in the opinion of Congress nor in Obama’s acquiescence.

Throughout the past decade Iran has argued that it merely wants to generate clean, green electricity with its nuclear program; but a host of reports from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), thoroughly documented in a series of articles in the NY Times, create the more than merely credible case that Iran has been well on its way for over a decade to developing a nuclear device for military use. The New York Times offers no support for any “ifs.”

On January 21, Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, spoke at an event titled ”The Persecuted Church: Christian Believers in Peril in the Middle East,” hosted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (read this report for more details on the conference).  Raymond’s talk, which provided “context and continuity,” can now be seen on video, which follows:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Congressman Ron Paul showed in the January 17th Fox News debate why he would be so dangerous as president and commander-in-chief. He believes, in a twist on the Judeo-Christian Golden Rule, that our Islamist enemies are only assaulting us because we assaulted them first. Sorry, appeaser-in-chief Paul, but the Koran commands devout jihadists to use whatever means are necessary to destroy all infidels, no matter what we have done or plan to do to them.

As part of an exchange involving the appropriate response to al Qaeda and their Taliban supporters, Paul exclaimed:

My point is, if another country does to us what we do others, we’re not going to like it very much. So I would say that maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in — in foreign policy. Don’t do to other nation… what we don’t want to have them do to us.

Paul even offered the absurd analogy comparing our killing of the mass murderer Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, where he was provided a sanctuary, to the Communist Chinese government deciding to go after a Chinese dissident seeking freedom in the United States. Newt Gingrich properly labeled this comparison “utterly irrational.”

Ron Paul may have some good ideas on reining in the power of the Federal Reserve and on the need to control federal spending. But he is clueless in dealing with our Islamist enemies. He either does not understand or refuses to believe the ideology that drives them. They want to kill us because our nation is governed on the basis of principles derived from Judeo-Christian beliefs including the true Golden Rule. They hate us because of who we are, not for any alleged harm that we’ve ever caused them.

Only three years after the United States won its independence, when there was no Jewish state for Muslims to resent, and no American troops on Muslim soil, Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. ambassador to France, and John Adams, then U.S. Ambassador to Britain, learned from a Muslim ambassador to Britain why the Muslims were so hostile towards Americans. Jefferson and Adams were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty with the Muslim “Barbary pirates,” an exercise that ultimately proved to be futile.

As Jefferson and Adams later reported to Congress, the Muslim ambassador explained to them that Islam

Was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

All that Ron Paul needs to do is take a look at the Koran itself, cited by that Muslim ambassador more than 200 years ago, to understand the source of the  jihadist ideology that we are still fighting today.

Here is a sample:

• “Kill the disbelievers wherever we find them.” (Koran, 2:191)

• “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends: They are but friends to each other.” (Koran 5:51)

• “Shall I tell you who, in the sight of God, deserves a yet worse retribution than these? Those [the Jews] whom God has rejected and whom He has condemned, and whom He has turned into monkeys and pigs because they worshiped the powers of evil.” (Koran 5:60)

• “I will inspire terror into the hearts of unbelievers: you smite them above their necks and smite all their fingertips off of them.” (Koran, 8:12)

• “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”

•  “[F]ight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews], until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (Koran, 9:29)

• “When we decide to destroy a population, we send a definite order to them who have the good things in life and yet sin. So that Allah’s word is proven true against them, then we destroy them utterly.” (Koran, 17:16-17)

Islamist apologists argue that the Koran also contains verses calling for tolerance and understanding.  If the verses written while Muhammad was living in Mecca, where he and his followers were then surrounded by much stronger non-Muslim populations, constituted the entirety of the Koran, they may have had a point. However, the milder verses were superseded by the far more war-like and intolerant verses written during Muhammad’s time in Medina where he successfully launched his jihad of conquests against non-believers, especially against Jews who refused to convert to Islam. Moreover, when one examines the real meaning of jihad according to Muhammad from other primary sources such as Bukhari (the Hadith, which are oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of Muhammad), the fact is that 97% of the jihad references are about war and 3% are about so-called inner struggle.

On January 19^th 1991, during the first Gulf War, the United States sent Patriot Missiles and a contingent of U.S. service members into Israel on temporary assignment. This was the least we could have done for Israel as they vowed not to respond to Saddam’s SCUD attacks which reached deep inside Tel Aviv. Never have U.S. forces found a permanent home inside the Holy Land—until today.

Twenty years later, the United States committed to a permanent presence in Israel. According to Defense News, as of September 21^st 2011, the United States deployed a high-powered, high-frequency, transportable X-band radar system to Israel along with a small contingent of support personnel. Designed to detect and track ballistic missiles soon after launch, the AN/TPY-2 Transportable Radar Surveillance/Forward Based X-band Transportable (FBX-T), its ancillary components, and some 120 EUCOM personnel are prepared to defeat any Iranian missile attack. Today, these service members make home at Israel’s Nevatim Air Base.

In an attempt to comfort those who may feel alarmed by this news, rest assured that a U.S. military presence in Israel has been planned for some time now. In fact, since 2007, the U.S. Army solicited contractual opportunities for Israel’s Nevatim Air Base. Solicitation number W912GB-07-R-0013 was released in April 2007 specifically designed for the new construction of two aircraft hangars, hazardous material storage buildings, hangar annex buildings, a dining facility, a utility building, a boom treatment station, part washing and storage facilities, a laboratory and workshop building, as well as site development to include roads, parking, taxiways and landscaping.

Well, it seems the Obama team lately was running short of things over which to bash Israel and so it decided that the treatment of women in Israel is something that needs condemnation. Led by Hillary Clinton, the Obama administration thinks that Israel does not treat its women nicely or respectfully enough.  This is the same Hillary Clinton who never had much to say about the treatment of women in the Clinton White House. Other administration bashers of Israel joined the feeding frenzy.

This is the same Obama team that rarely has had anything to say about the treatment of women in the Muslim world, without a doubt the very worst such treatment that can be found on the planet.  Hillary insisted that Israel’s treatment of women is as bad as that in Iran, although Obama people do not exactly speak out against the treatment of women in Iran before breakfast each day.  Hillary also used the same opportunity to condemn Israel for considering the adoption of transparency laws that would require disclosure of foreign funding to political NGOs operating inside Israel, laws that are similar to what the United States and many other democratic countries already have.  After all, how will those who desire Israel’s annihilation be able to finance picayune treasonous radical anti-Israel propaganda NGOs inside Israel if such transparency ever takes effect?

So when Hillary Clinton recently decided to speak out against the mistreatment of Middle Eastern women, she singled out Israel for condemnation, and then turned around to welcome a delegation of Saudi feudalists with cordiality.  If Hillary considers Israel a force of anti-feminine darkness and repression, just imagine how awful she must regard Scandinavia.  She compared Israel’s treatment of women with the racial segregation that once was so common in the American South. Israeli public figures, led by the secularist non-Orthodox Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz, denounced Hillary’s comments as absurd and incorrect.  He was joined by numerous other secularist Israelis.

The Obama administration is largely silent when it comes to the plight of women in the Muslim world, but keeps condemning the only country in the Middle East that has a woman chief justice, plenty of women in its parliament, more women MDs and than men, countless women army officers and court judges, and which has had a woman as head of state, something the US has never had.  Israel is also the only country in the world where a panel of judges, two of them women, put a former president in prison for alleged rape and sexual abuse of women.  But perhaps that is what really has Bill Clinton’s wife so hostile to and suspicious of Israel.

Women university students in Israel have been the majority out of all undergraduate Israeli students since 1980, reaching 58% of students in 1999.  That is without including teachers colleges in the computation, where women are a far larger share.  Women students are the majority of students, not just in the fields of education and humanities, but also in such “non-traditional” fields for women as biological sciences and agriculture.  Women are a majority of medical students, 48.3% of law students, and 39% of physics students, according to the latest survey.  There are also oodles of women students in math, engineering, and computer sciences.   Women students are also a small majority of those pursuing MA and PhD studies.

So just what got Hillary and the Obama team so upset?  Well, it seems that Israel has been debating the behavior of some small ultra-religious Jewish sects, groups that believe in strict gender separation, especially in public spaces.  Known as the chareidim, these are religious radicals, best known for their black clothing, long sidecurls, anti-modern life styles, and especially for their ideas about “modesty” for women.  No Jew anywhere has to belong to such communities and women in those communities unhappy with the life style may leave at any time.

In some communities of these chareidim, there have been initiatives to introduce a small number of special bus lines in which women and men do not sit together.  When a secularist Israeli woman rider challenged the initiative and sat in the “men’s section” of one such bus Israel’s ultra-secularist leftist media proclaimed her the Israeli Rosa Parks, and Hillary picked up the cue.  In another incident, some religious soldiers requested not to be required to attend a concert in which women were singing, on grounds that according to their religious outlook such singing is erotic and immodest.  And in yet other incidents, some signs were put up in the neighborhoods of chareidim asking women not to congregate on a street next to a synagogue, or calling on men and women in the name of modesty to walk on opposing sides of some streets in those neighborhoods.

A distinguished panel joins Jamie Glazov’s new television program to discuss the Islamists’ victory in Egypt. Below is Part II of a three part episode (To see Part I about Putin’s Power, Click Here; to see Part III, about The Road Less Traveled, Click Here.):

Three distinguished guests recently joined Jamie Glazov’s tv program, The Glazov Gang, to shed light on Gingrich’s chances of rising to the top. The All-Star cast included Conservative political pundit Al Sonja Schmidt, America’s #1 Conservative Comedian Evan Sayet and Political Analyst Austin Dragon. Below are the three segments to the program (parts 2 and 3 dealt with Obama and the Middle East):

Part I, Gingrich Rising:

Part II, Obama’s Destructive Designs on America:

Part 3, Bye-Bye Middle East:

To get the whole story on why the Left sympathizes with enemy death cults, read Jamie Glazov’s book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.

At the recently held Cannes G-20 Summit, the host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, unaware of the fact that his lapel microphone was live, said to U.S. President Barack Obama, “I cannot stand Netanyahu. He’s a liar.”  And, according to the report by French media website Arret Sur Images, Obama responded with, “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day.”  The shameful and hypocritical behavior of Sarkozy and Obama, not to be outdone by Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron, speaks volumes about their perfidy and treachery.

Earlier this year, Sarkozy and Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron threatened Israel with severe consequences if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not accept the Hamas-Fatah unification, and agree to their demands as a price for the resumption of “peace” talks.  Sarkozy (and Cameron) hinted he will certainly vote for a Palestinian State. Although France ultimately abstained on Palestinian statehood, France voted for the Palestinians to have full membership in UNESCO.

French treachery vis-a-vis Israel has a history.  And, on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War it was on full display, when French President Charles de Gaulle decided to reverse the country’s foreign policy to one in favor of the Arabs, and placed an embargo on weapons deliveries to Israel, despite France’s contractual agreements with Israel. De Gaulle, who had served as founder and president of France’s Fifth Republic from 1959-1969, had forged an alliance with the Jewish state during a time when both France and Israel fought Arab nationalism in Algeria and Nasser’s Egypt respectively.

In 1960, France promised to supply Israel with 200 AMX-13 tanks and 72 Mystere fighter jets over the next 10-years.  On June 2, 1967, three days before the war broke out, de Gaulle cut Israel off cold.  He told his cabinet that “France will not give its approval to, and still less, support the first nation to use weapons.” De Gaulle’s statement was hypocritical and treacherous since he had already decided to abandon Israel and embrace the Arabs. On November 27, 1967, in a televised news conference, de Gaulle described the Jewish people as “this elite people, sure of themselves and domineering.”

Much of the instability and violence in today’s Middle East has its antecedents in the actions taken by the British and French governments.  While World War I was still going on they met and began to draw the map of the Middle East and drew up what would became known as the Sykes-Picot secret agreement of May 1916.  Following the end of war and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire they created new and mostly artificial nations such as Iraq, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, while abandoning minorities such as the Kurds.
On August 10, 1920, a pact between the allies (Britain and France) and the representatives of the Ottoman Turkish government, known as the Treaty of Sevres, abolished the Ottoman Empire and obligated Turkey to renounce all rights over the Arab Middle East and North Africa.  The treaty also provided for the establishment of an autonomous Kurdistan.

The Turks rejected the Treaty of Sevres, and in 1923, Turkey was recognized as an independent nation, with the Treaty of Lausanne subsequently replacing Sevres.  Under its terms, Turkey was no longer obligated to grant the Kurds autonomy.  The treaty divided the Kurdish region among Turkey, Iran, and Syria – with British and French collusion.

Syria became a hodge-podge of ethnic and religious groups.  The French, who were wary of Sunni-Arab nationalism, granted autonomous status to the Alawites. They created an officer cadre from amongst the Alawites, which eventually gave rise to the Assad dictatorships, and Alawite domination of the Syrian military. Today’s upheaval in Syria has a great deal to do with those early French policies. The majority Sunni-Arabs resent the Alawite monopoly on power, and they remember (as the Kurds do) the betrayal of the French.

All-American Muslim is on its last legs. Not only was the last episode of the show the lowest rated show in its time slot, losing again to Homeland, but it was also the lowest rated show of the night among the top 100 cable shows aimed at adults. While Homeland has improved its ratings, All-American Muslim has dropped so low that it’s hovering above the abyss.

Just to bring out the vultures, Discovery Communications is being sued by Visionaire Media which accuses it of stealing its idea for an “American Muslim Show” without compensation. At this point Discovery Communications, which oversees the disaster areas that are TLC, The Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and several other learning channels that have turned into minor variations of each other serving up the same Reality content, might consider letting Visionaire have the credit for All-American Muslim which a month later looks more like blame.

The media which enthusiastically embraced All-American Muslim has nothing more to say about it. There are hardly any more stories on it and those few that show up make it clear that the writer did not watch the show beyond the premiere episode. The deadly secret of All-American Muslim is that not even the liberals in the media want to watch it.

That is the problem with propaganda, it isn’t very interesting. Negative propaganda can be entertaining, positive propaganda is stifling. All-American Muslim promotes Islam with weak reality show theatrics that are inferior in drama and entertainment value to the competition. It is so determined to promote its agenda that it utterly fails to be interesting.

With All-American Muslim’s fourth episode, Friday Night Bites, the show continues its obsession with making its women dress in the Imam approved fashion and with promoting the Islamic makeovers to general audiences. The birth of a child to one of the couples leads to a spotlighting of the Muslim call to prayer and the adventures of Fordson High School’s religiously cleansed team continues with more Ramadan than ever.

It would be a stretch to call any of this interesting. Watching All-American Muslim is like watching an extended commercial in which smiling people use a product and talk up its virtues, discussing it at length, in order to convince you to start using it. It’s no wonder that audiences are fleeing the show faster than infidels from the Middle East.

The target audience for All-American Muslim is someone who is extremely interested in Islam, but completely disinterested in any dimension or depth, who wants to see women modeling Hijabs and discussing how they deal with fasting, but isn’t at all interested in how the religion reconciles its claim of being peaceful with the violent tendencies in its midst, or who doesn’t care about the larger context of such things as guilting women into wearing Hijabs or forcing non-Muslims to work around the Ramadan schedules of Muslims.

These things are quite explosive subjects in Europe, and they are developing into serious issues in the United States, but All-American Muslim presents them enthusiastically and without any context. To anyone who is at all familiar with terrorism, watching the show is a little like tuning in to a classic cigarette commercial and feeling a little discomfort with the enthusiasm with which the narrator pitches the virtues of smoking a Camel. No matter how you feel about smoking, there is the sense that a serious issue is being ignored. That nagging feeling haunts All-American Muslim which takes audiences on a promotional tour of Muslim life without explaining some of the more problematic side-effects which include the systematic repression of women, the religious persecution of minorities and the criminalization of dissent.

In following the Western press one gets the impression that the Arab (Palestinian)-Israeli conflict is the most important story that needs to be covered in the Middle East.  In reality, however, it ranks third in order of importance when viewed within the stricture of three concentric circles that complete the picture of the current Middle East.  What makes these circles all the more significant is that they all touch upon religion.

The first and most important of the circles addresses the Sunni-Shiite divide and pits the aggressive and revolutionary Shiite Iran against Sunni (Wahhabi) Saudi Arabia over hegemony in the Persian Gulf.  Directly associated with this circle is the attempt by Sunni-Muslim Turkey, led by Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to assume they are the champions of Sunni Islam.

Erdogan’s involvement in Syria, his support of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), his unwavering support for Hamas (Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) and his close ties with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (poised to govern Egypt if and when civilian government resumes), are part of Turkey’s attempt to play the leadership role in the Muslim and Arab world.

The most obvious clash between Sunnis and Shiites has been over control in Iraq. Although Arab Iraq is predominantly Shiite (60%+) it has been traditionally governed by Sunnis (the last one being the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein).  While the 2003 U.S. invasion toppled Saddam and restored majority rule, it created a Shiite-led government that is close to the Islamic Republic of Iran.  For Saudi Arabia and the Sunni world this portends a “mortal threat.” And, when coupled with Shiite (Hezbollah) dominance in Lebanon, it appears even more ominous.

The second circle involves the recent uprisings in the Arab world, better known as the “Arab Spring,” which have granted power to Islamists everywhere, and made the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (or affiliated parties) the dominant political force in Tunisia, Egypt, and now in Syria.  Political Islam has become a potent force throughout the Middle East, replacing nationalism and socialism – which some Arab regimes engaged in for decades.

The intolerance of the MB towards non-Muslims (Jewish Israel for instance), Christians and Shiite Muslims (whom they consider as “errant” Muslims) is connected to the first circle.

The third circle is that of the conflict between Arab countries as well as non-Arab Muslim countries (Iran and Turkey) and their ethnic and religious minorities.  These include the Jewish state of Israel, the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt, the Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Syria, and the Sunni Baluch minority in Iran as well as the Ahwazi-Sunni Arabs in Iran.

What the three circles have in common is religious and ethnic hatred and intolerance between Sunnis and Shiites, between Arabs and Persians, between Shiite Persians and Sunni Kurds, Baluch and Arabs, between Turks and Kurds, between Arab-Muslims and Israeli Jews, and between Egyptian Muslims and Christians.

Israel, an advanced Western democratic state, gets a disproportionate amount of press and criticism, to the near exclusion of coverage and analysis of intolerant Arab-Muslim states by the mainstream press.  The ease of access Western journalists have in Israel compared to the absence of secure access in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim Middle Eastern states, makes for unfair and inaccurate reporting in the Western media, which results in holding Israel responsible for the lack of regional peace.  Moreover, secular western reporters and editors, who are disconnected from religion, fail to grasp the overarching role religion plays in Middle Eastern conflicts.

Contrary to the reportage written and distributed by Western media sources, conflict in the Middle East is less about territory and almost entirely about religion. True also for the Arab (Palestinian)-Israeli conflict is that its foundation is in Islamic religious intolerance rather than territory or Palestinian victimhood (Palestinian Arabs could have established a sovereign state under the Peel Commission in 1937 over 72% of Mandatory Palestine, and again under the UN Partition Plan of 1947.  They rejected both plans with the demand for all of Palestine or nothing — no compromise with infidels). Palestinian Arab-Muslims seek to replace Israel rather than live side-by-side with it.  And, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is fueled by arms, funds, and propaganda provided by Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia to the Palestinians against the Jewish state, still pales in importance, to Shiite Iran’s encroachment and hegemonic ambitions in the Gulf.

The left’s worst crime in the Middle East has been its support for the region’s Arab-Muslim majority at the expense of its minorities. It has supported the majority’s terrorism, atrocities, ethnic cleansing and repression of the region’s minorities. Very rarely has it raised a voice in their support, and even then only in muted tones completely different from their vigorous defense of the nationalism of the Arab Muslim majority.

The left is obsessed with the Arab Spring, which rewards the ambitions of Arabist and Islamist activists at the expense of Coptic, African and other minorities. It is dementedly fixated on statehood for the Arab Muslims of Israel, (better known by their local Palestinian brand), but has little to say about the Kurds in Turkey or the Azeri in Iran. The million Jewish refugees and the vanishing Christians of the region never come up in conversation. They certainly don’t get their own flotillas.

The Africans of Sudan could have used a flotilla, or an entire UN organization dedicated to their welfare, which the Arab Muslims who had failed to wipe out the region’s Jewish minority are the beneficiaries of. But instead they had to make do with third tier aid.

Unlike the Arab nationalists and Islamists of Libya, the French, English and American air forces did not come to their rescue. They came to the rescue of the Libyans who showed their gratitude in the time honored way of the Arab majority by massacring the African minority. All under the beaming smiles of the selective humanitarians of the left. But what’s a little genocide between friends?

The left embraced Pan-Arabism, a race based nationalism, in line with the Soviet Union’s expansionist foreign policy. Pan-Arabism’s socialism made it easy for the left to ignore its overt racism along with the admiration of many of its leading lights for Nazi Germany. The same left which refused to see the Gulags and the ethnic cleansing under the red flag, turned an equally blind eye to the contradiction of condemning Zionism for its ethnic basis, while supporting Pan-Arabism, which was ethnically based.

Under Zionism, Israel retained a sizable Arab minority. The Pan-Arabists however drove their Jews out with mob violence, political repression, prisons and public executions. The left’s criticisms of Zionism are rendered moot by their own support for Pan-Arabism. In the Middle East and North Africa, Arabization has led to repression of non-Arab minorities and the destruction of other cultures through the insistence on unity through race.

As the sun of Pan-Arabism sets, the left has turned its attention to Pan-Islamism with equal enthusiasm. While Pan-Arabism allowed Christian Arabs some representation, Pan-Islamism excludes them based on religion. Having endorsed a racial tyranny, the left has fallen so low that it now champions majority theocracies.

The left’s fledgling support for Kurdish nationalism has faded as Turkey has gone from a secular ally of the Western powers to an Islamist tyranny dreaming of empire. This perverse twist of affairs has the left abandoning the national struggles of an oppressed people when their rulers align themselves more closely with the bigoted regional majority.

The War on Iraq, which the left hated, removed a tyrant aligned with the region’s Sunni majority and the Libyan campaign, which the left supported, removed a tyrant who had deviated too far from the positions of that majority. So too in Egypt, where Mubarak’s excessive tolerance for minorities, led the left to endorse the Pan-Arabist and Pan-Islamist calls for his overthrow. And in Tunisia, where a government tolerant of minorities has been replaced by Islamists.

The pattern repeats itself over and over again as the left rises in support of racial and theocratic rule. And for all the left’s critiques of American and European foreign policy, its own foreign policy which endorses racial and theocratic rule and works to bring it about is the true crime.

It is no coincidence that the one country in the region that the left hates above all else, is neither Arab nor Muslim. Just as it is no coincidence that the Arab Spring replaces regimes tolerant of minorities with Islamists and Arabists. The left’s true regional agenda is the racist and theocratic agenda of its Arab and Muslim members. The Arab Socialists and the Islamists who have defined its regional positions have turned the left into a vehicle for their racial and theocratic agendas.

Ezra Levant interviews Middle East expert Dr. Daniel Pipes on Sun TV:

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle. Click here.

Recently, French president Nicolas Sarkozy came out with some surprisingly harsh statements against Israel while concomitantly expressing strong support for the justness of a Palestinian state.  Moreover, the French leader even claimed “the Palestinians have been waiting for a state they deserve for 60 years now.” Since many people in the world unquestionably believe that this claim is based upon historical facts and truths, I have written the following open letter to Sarkozy in order to debunk this historical falsehood.

Dear Mr. Sarkozy,

As part of your recent outburst against Israel in which you termed Abbas a “statesman” for his supposed willingness to come to the negotiating table as opposed to Netanyahu whom you described as being someone that “never fails to disappoint us,” you added a most interesting line.  While discussing your support for the creation of a Palestinian state you justified your stand by stating that “the Palestinians have been waiting for a state they deserve for 60 years now”.

I hate to burst your bubble but not everyone agrees with that sentence or the implicit accusation that Israel is to blame for not helping the Palestinians attain statehood.  History, in fact, seems to say otherwise.

As I’m sure you know, following World War 1 and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire the Middle East was divided up by the great powers of the day.   While most of the territory in the region was given to the Arabs for the creation of several new countries, one area, via the Mandate for Palestine, was set aside to be the national home for the Jewish people.  Based upon the recognition of Jewish historical rights in Palestine, the mandate charged the British with facilitating the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River.  However, despite the fact that the mandate was a legally binding document that was conferred at the San Remo Conference and approved by the League of Nations, the British disregarded their responsibility and in an act of duplicity transferred roughly 80% of Palestine to the Arabs for the creation of Transjordan, the forerunner of Jordan.

Moreover, even on the roughly 20% of Palestine that was left for the creation of a Jewish state, the British continued to betray the role that was assigned to them.  Rather than permitting Jews to easily settle in Palestine they actually limited the amount of Jewish immigration, even during the dark years of the Nazis, while simultaneously allowing the influx of large amounts of Arabs from the surrounding countries.  Not surprisingly years of such injustice by the British only increased the tension between Jews and Arabs, so much so that in 1947 an offer was made to partition the country.  The Jews accepted, even though this was only a tiny portion of the original area that had been promised them while the Arabs refused.  In other words Mr. Sarkozy, roughly sixty years ago the Arabs, not yet called the Palestinians as that name only came into vogue two decades later, rejected a state on land that legally had been granted to the Jews!  So do you still believe that the Arabs deserve a state on more or less the same land they rejected sixty years ago?

The Iranian-backed terror plot targeting the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, along with multiple targets throughout South and Central America, should come as no surprise. Iran has always sought measures to jeopardize U.S., Israeli, and Saudi interests. U.S. authorities should be praised for their interdiction of this activity. This was not the first, nor will it be the last, attempt that the Iranians undertake to kill Americans and our allies through terrorism.

Below are just a handful of the more significant atrocities perpetrated by Iran against the U.S. and our allies:

1979—U.S. diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran held for more than one year.

1983–Iranian supported Hezbollah detonated a VBIED killing over 241 U.S. service members in Lebanon.

1984—William Buckley was taken hostage by Iranian terrorists and was later killed by the Revolutionary Guard Corp.

1985—U.S. Navy Underwater Diver Robert Stethem was brutally murdered on TWA flight 727.

1992—Israeli embassy in Argentina was attacked by Iranian operatives leaving more than 250 injured and 20 killed.

1995—The Amia Jewish Center was targeted with an explosive killing 85 leaving over 230 injured—Al Quds force commander Vahidi was behind the execution of the attack.

1996—Iranian supported Hezbollah in Hijaz detonated a VBIED at Khobar Towers killing 19 service members.

2003—Reports that Al Qaeda was operating in Iran through protection of Al Quds forces to engage in operations throughout Iraq and Afghanistan against U.S. service members.

20010—Substantial signs of Iranian infiltration into the United States were identified on the U.S. southern border—Congresswoman Sue Myrick cried for investigations with no resolve.

2011—Iran threatens U.S. coastal waters through articulating its desires to send its naval vessels on patrol around North America.

Evidence proves Iran’s hatred towards the United States, Israel, and its Sunni rival Saudi Arabia. U.S. politicians have known for several years that Iran has engaged in a very unique proxy war in Iraq. Such activities fuels Iraqi Shiite insurgents threatening U.S. forces with advanced shape charged IED’s yet very little has been done against the Shiite nation state.

Sanctions have been enforced on Iran due to its nuclear program yet they continue to laugh in our face. Today, the threat has become a reality on our own U.S. soil. Arrests have been made but that does not mean the threat has vanished.  Iran’s behavior has a pattern—a pattern that can only change with austere corrective measures.

Kerry Patton is the Co-Founder of the National Security Leadership Foundation, a non-profit organization pending 501c (3) status. He has worked in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, focusing on intelligence and security interviewing current and former terrorists, including members of the Taliban. He is the author of “Sociocultural Intelligence: The New Discipline of Intelligence Studies” and the children’s book “American Patriotism.” You can follow him on Facebook.

During these past few months, we have seen a real change in the Arab world. We have all watched the dramatic protests, first in Tunisia and then in Tahrir Square, protests that have effected a real change in the Arab world and that have brought hope to tens of millions of people who had lived under decades of crushing, autocratic rule.

We join in the celebrations of freedom for the Arab people. We wholeheartedly support freedom and democracy all around the world, and we are cautiously encouraged by what has happened. The United States stands by everyone who wants freedom and liberty. President Roosevelt listed the Four Freedoms and they are just as necessary today as they did in the dark early days of World War II. As he stated them, they are:

• Freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
• Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
• Freedom from want — securing to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants —everywhere in the world.
• And freedom from fear — everywhere in the world.

These are not just slogans, and these goals are not unrealistic. These are the primary foreign policy goals of the United States.

The Arab Spring shows that all people want, and deserve, real freedom.

My commitment is to do everything possible to bring that freedom not only to the Arab world but to every country on the planet.

Unfortunately, freedom is not free. One cannot just wave a magic wand and expect nations to embrace real freedoms on their own. Elections alone do not make a democracy. It takes time to build up the institutions of democracy, to give people a real choice in who they want to govern them. People must be exposed to the entire marketplace of ideas before making their own decisions. The process can be bumpy, and rushing it can be as counterproductive as not doing it at all.

Three times in the last century has the world been threatened by vicious, evil, totalitarian movements.  The first two were communism and Nazism. Even though both of them used the terminology of freedom and civil rights, both of these movements were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

They were fundamentally against freedom and they brought with them a swath of destruction and genocide.

There is a third, equally dangerous movement, and it is especially worrisome in the Arab world. That movement is Islamism.

Make no mistake–I am not talking about Islam. In a democratic, free world, everyone has the choice of which religion they want to follow, or not to follow one at all. That freedom is sacrosanct. Islam is a major world religion and it deserves as much respect as any other personal religion.
But Islamism is a political movement whose goals are no less destructive than Nazism and Communism were in the 20th century. Political Islamism seeks nothing less than domination of people, subjugation of women, cessation of freedom of speech, and little choice in how people worship.

Islamism’s principles are antithetical to each of the Four Freedoms of President Roosevelt. It is an inherently evil movement that creates an environment of fear among those who are unfortunate enough to live under its strictures.
Islam, as a personal religion, needs to be protected. Islamism, the political movement, needs to be destroyed.

Only when this occurs can there be truly an Arab Spring. Only when the hundreds of millions of Arabs feel free to express themselves without fear, to change religions without fear, to elect women as their leaders without fear–only then can we say that spring has come to the Arab world.

Any government that is based on Islamic law is, by definition, a government that rejects the basic tenets of human rights, of true equality before the law.

This must change. The sooner that Islamism is defeated, the sooner than Arabs can enjoy real freedom and security.
This is the main reason why the recent unity agreement in the Palestinian Arab territories is so problematic. Hamas is an Islamist, terrorist group. It is not interested a free, democratic Palestinian state–instead, it is dedicated to creating a pan-Islamist nation stretching across three continents. Gaza is a regime of fear, and people there have suffered greatly as a direct result of Hamas’ aggressive, violent, anti-freedom agenda. While unity may be a laudable goal, it can only work as long as all of the parties agree to the basic principles of freedom and democracy. Hamas is not an organization that is even capable of such thoughts.

While American policy has been to create a Palestinian state, statehood itself is not a right. It must be earned. The Palestinian Arab people must elect, and be led by, leaders who truly understand the necessity of these four freedoms, and the importance of real peace.

Unfortunately, this has not yet happened. The Palestinian Arab Fatah leadership has consistently chosen incitement over true peace and cooperation with Israel, the Jewish state. They have adamantly refused to continue peace negotiations. And now they have chosen to partner with a terror group instead of move toward a real, permanent solution to Arab-Israeli peace.

Let me be clear. Israel exhibits all of the freedoms we are discussing, even while under a constant state of war. It is a strong, reliable ally of the United States. America will never abandon Israel nor will we endanger it.

Israel’s freedoms should be the model that the Arab world follows as it moves toward a true spring. And when the Arab world is ready to make a real, true peace with the Jewish state, the payoff will be tremendous for everyone, as all of the artificial fear and hate that has been stoked over the decades will melt away.

I am not talking about a detente, or a paper truce with Israel. I am talking about real peace, where Jewish doctors can come to Arab countries to treat Muslim children, where poets from Syria can recite their works in a Tel Aviv concert hall, where Arab and Israeli researchers can work together to solve shared problems such as water, energy and the environment.

This is my vision for peace and my vision for the Middle East. We have spent too much time missing the forest for the trees. Real peace will not come from endless meetings haggling over borders, nor from using human rights terminology to push a hateful agenda. A true peace will only exist where Arab and Jew alike can feel free to travel, speak and laugh in the entire region, without fear from their cousins. I want to see a train line running from Jerusalem to Amman, a highway from Haifa to Beirut, commercial airliners flying from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.

This is what an Arab Spring must result in. It is not merely a dream, but it is a vision that everyone needs to work toward. As the president of the United States, I  intend to lead the way toward this vision. I urge you you help me in this task.

Thank you, and God bless you.

The mainstream media reports about the May 15 Palestinian violence which accompanied the Nabka Day protests all talked about the desire to establish a Palestinian state within the pre-June 1967 borders.  Even “moderate” terrorist PA President Abbas reaffirmed that position.

“A Palestinian state is inevitable, the whole world supports the end of the occupation,” Abbas said, reaffirming the aim to establish a state on the pre-1967 borders.

Of course there are many issues with Abbas’ position, such as the Palestinians stated position that they have no intention of  making a real peace but a hudna, a temporary peace that would enable them to rearm, train and finally attack Israel and drive the Jews off “their” land.

Even if the Palestinians were to change their minds about wiping the Jewish State off the map, there would remain another major barrier to Israel reverting to the pre-June 1967 borders….they do not exist!

What Abbas knows but won’t admit is that there is no such thing as pre-1967 borders. That “green line” running through the West Bank is the 1949 Armistice Line. The armistice line was created solely because that’s Israeli and Arab forces stopped fighting at the end of the War of Independence (with some added adjustments in certain sectors). It was if the whistle blew and everyone dropped their gear. That 1949 line, that people call 1967 border, is really only a military line.

But don’t believe me, believe the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan:

Article II of the 1949 Armistice Agreement with the Jordanians explicitly specified that the line that was designated did not compromise any future territorial claims of the two parties, since it had been “dictated by exclusively by military considerations.” Of course the Jordanian rationale for that clause is to allow them to claim territory inside the armistice line for their very own.

Even the “famous” UN Resolution 242 which was passed by the UN Security Council five months after the Six-Day War recognized that the 1949 Armistice line was not supposed to designate final Israeli borders.

In an interview with the  MAAN News Agency (an independent Palestinian news service) Hamas party leader Mahmoud Az-Zahhar said that the party was willing to recognize a Palestinian State in some or all of “Palestine” but would never recognize Israel.

If only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are considered citizens of a Palestinian state, he continued, “what will be the fate of the five million Palestinians in the diaspora?”

At the same time, the Hamas leader confirmed the decision reached with Fatah to maintain the truce with Israel, calling the move “part of the resistance, not a cancellation,” and noting that “truce is not peace.”

Az-Zahhar isn’t saying anything new or radical, the concept of hudna has been used often by Palestinian forces.  As reported by Middle East expert Daniel Pipes.

On May 10, 1994, Yasir Arafat gave what he thought was an off-the-record talk at a mosque while visiting Johannesburg, South Africa. But a South African journalist, Bruce Whitfield of 702 Talk Radio, found a way secretly to record his (English-language) remarks. The moment was an optimistic one for the Arab-Israeli peace process, Arafat having just six days earlier returned triumphantly to Gaza; it was widely thought that the conflict was winding down. In this context, Arafat’s bellicose talk in Johannesburg about a “jihad to liberate Jerusalem,” had a major impact on Israelis, beginning a process of disillusionment that has hardly abated in the intervening years.

No less damaging than his comments about Jerusalem was Arafat’s cryptic allusion about his agreement with Israel. Criticized by Arabs and Muslims for having made concessions to Israel, he defended his actions by comparing them to those of the Prophet Muhammad in a similar circumstance:

I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca.Arafat further drew out the comparison, noting that although Muhammad had been criticized for this diplomacy by one of his leading companions (and a future caliph), ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the prophet had been right to insist on the agreement, for it helped him defeat the Quraysh and take over their city of Mecca. In a similar spirit,

we now accept the peace agreement, but [only in order] to continue on the road to Jerusalem.¹In the five years since he first alluded to Muhammad and the Quraysh, Arafat has frequently mentioned this as a model for his own diplomacy.

Hamas also has used the hudna concept.

According to Shoshanah Haberman from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hamas has declared or offered no fewer than 10 hudnas since 1993. In the cases in which hudnas were established, Hamas broke all of them. Most recently, Hamas tore apart its hudna with Fatah last summer, when it took over the Gaza Strip in a violent coup that led to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.

Hamas’ logic for a hudna is pretty simple: Use the hudna as an opportunity to regroup, then break it when the group feels strong enough to launch an offensive.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler told the world what he intended to do with the Jews, the response of the world was “its just words, nobody could be that sick.” They were wrong.  Hamas and and Fatah both, have told the world what they intend to do with the Jews.  The world is saying “Ah, that is just rhetoric and positioning.”  Just as the collective world did in the 1930′s, today the world is blind to the promised threats of the Palestinians as their heads are firmly entrenched in the sand.

In the next few weeks look for increased pressure from the EU and the United States on Israel to negotiate with the newly combined Hamas/Fatah Palestinian Authority. Israel should resist with all of its might, remembering the famous words written by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in The Iron Wall November 4, 1923

It is incredible what political simpletons Jews are. They shut their eyes to one of the most elementary rules of life, that you must not “meet halfway” those who do not want to meet you.

Most of the nation is still celebrating the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the monster behind one of the worst days in American history. Some are relieved bin Laden can no longer aid the jihadist cause; others take pleasure in knowing the suffering he caused us has been partially repaid.

But at least one voice is having none of it. At the Huffington Post, “specialist in transformational change” (whatever that means) Dr. Pamela Gerloff writes that celebrating bin Laden’s death is mentally unhealthy and geopolitically dangerous:

“Celebrating” the killing of any member of our species–for example, by chanting USA! USA! and singing The Star Spangled Banner outside the White House or jubilantly demonstrating in the streets–is a violation of human dignity. Regardless of the perceived degree of “good” or “evil” in any of us, we are all, each of us, human. To celebrate the killing of a life, any life, is a failure to honor life’s inherent sanctity.

Plenty of people will argue that Osama Bin Laden did not respect the sanctity of others’ lives. To that I would ask, “What relevance does that have to our own actions?” One aspect of being human is our ability to choose our own behavior; more specifically, our capacity to return good for evil, love for hate, dignity for indignity. While Osama Bin Laden was widely considered to be the personification of evil, he was nonetheless a human being. A more peaceable response to his killing would be to mourn the many tragedies that led up to his violent death and the thousands of violent deaths that occurred in the attempt to eliminate him from the face of the Earth; and to feel compassion for anyone who, because of their role in the military or government, American or otherwise, has had to play a role in killing another. This kind of compassion can be cultivated, as practitioners of many different spiritual traditions will attest […]

It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate “justice being done” may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge–not just “closure” but “getting even.” The world is not safer with Osama Bin Laden’s violent demise (threat levels are going up, not down); evil has not been finally removed from the Earth; the War on Terror goes on–so any celebration must be tempered with the sobering fact that much work still needs to be done to establish peace.

There’s a lot to unpack here, most of it awful. But first, for the sake of fairness and decency one fair point must be acknowledged: If we truly recognize the intrinsic worth of all human life, we have to recognize that even the worst among us have souls, warped and polluted though they may be, and be careful not to think casually of any killing—even just and necessary killing, as bin Laden’s death clearly was. Now, I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t found some satisfaction in the confidence that Osama now knows the afterlife isn’t quite what he expected, but I also have to admit those thoughts don’t live up to the standard my Savior has set for me.

So we shouldn’t take pleasure in exacting bloody vengeance, but there is another aspect to the celebration that is entirely appropriate. As I survey the reactions of friends, acquaintances, and pundits, it seems to me bloodlust is not the primary animating force of their celebration. Justice is. People are celebrating the fact that an act of tremendous evil has been punished, ensuring that bin Laden will never again threaten the United States and sending a clear message to our surviving enemies: hurt us, and we’ll find you, no matter where on earth you go, no matter how long it takes. And when we do, you won’t like what comes next.

Celebrating the destruction and punishment of evil is not only a proper impulse in a free society it’s a necessary one. Quite simply, a society that does not strongly embrace and venerate the punishment of evil is a society that is incapable of survival.

Gerloff’s failure to understand this is bad, but it’s not what makes her piece one of the most disgustingly immoral things I’ve read in recent memory. No, that would be the moral equivalence between America and the jihadists who want us dead. “Good” and “evil” are placed in scare quotes. We’re told a better response would be to “feel compassion” for anyone involved in any military or government who “has had to play a role in killing another,” as if a drone strike on a terrorist hideout and detonating yourself in a crowded subway are equally tragic. And then there’s this:

The truth is that “celebrating justice” when one person is killed–as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities–only incites further desire for revenge, which, from “the other side’s” viewpoint, is usually called “justice.”

Consider this: If a leader in our country were killed in the manner in which Osama Bin Laden was killed, as “justice” for his acts of aggression in the War on Terror–and supporters of that act were shown proudly chanting their country’s name, singing their national anthem, and demonstrating in the streets–Americans would likely feel more sickened than joyful, wouldn’t you think? The impulse to celebrate a death depends on what side you’re on.

It doesn’t matter how little you think of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or any American leader. It doesn’t matter how much you disagree with US military operations in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, or Afghanistan. There is no comparison between any of our leaders or actions and those of al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah. “The other side” might say their cause is justice and ours is revenge, and some might even believe it. But reality is what it is regardless of “viewpoints.” Those who seek to kill and dominate infidels are the bad guys, and the ones trying to stop them are the good guys.

Period.

If the rest of the country were so foolish as to believe that the key to peace with monsters is quashing the celebration of monsters’ deaths, the ensuing suffering would be staggering. However unhealthy the “psychology of revenge” may be, it pales in comparison to the poison that is the neurosis of moral equivalency.

We knew this was coming. No American victory in this day and age, not even the long-overdue death of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, is safe from political hijacking by the useful idiots of the Left.  Within hours of hearing the good news, left-wing Daily Beast flunky Peter Beinart took to the keyboard to declare that the War on Terror is finally over.

Wow, what a relief! So that means Iran’s nuclear program is kaput? Er, no. Well, maybe it means the UN Security Council has stopped playing nice with Middle Eastern thug regimes. Wait, that didn’t happen, either. I know – peace between Israel and the Palestinians is finally in sight! Nope, try again. Um, then maybe anti-American sentiment among Muslim populations is waning? Uh-uh.

If none of that’s the case, then what does Beinart mean?

I don’t mean that there is no threat of further jihadist attack. In the short term, the threat may even rise. I don’t mean that we should abandon all efforts at tracking terrorist cells. Of course not. But the war on terror was a way of seeing the world, explicitly modeled on World War II and the Cold War. It suggested that the struggle against “radical Islam” or “Islamofascism” or “Islamic terrorism” should be the overarching goal of American foreign policy, the prism through which we see the world […] It made East Asia an afterthought during a critical period in China’s rise; it allowed all manner of dictators to sell their repression in Washington, just as they had during the Cold War; it facilitated America’s descent into torture; it wildly exaggerated the ideological appeal of a jihadist-Salafist movement whose vision of society most Muslims find revolting.

Bin Laden’s death is an opportunity to lay the war on terror to rest as well. Although President Obama avoids the phrase, its assumptions still drive our war in Afghanistan, a crushingly expensive adventure in nation building in a desperately poor country whose powerful neighbor wants us to fail. Those assumptions fuel anti-Muslim racism in the United States, where large swaths of the Republican Party have decided they are at risk of living under Sharia law. And they blind us to the differences among Islamist movements, allowing Glenn Beck and company to depict Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as al Qaeda’s farm team.

Instead, we can now take on real problems, like debt and China. Because Barack Obama has been such a crusader on those issues so far.

I’m struggling to decide what the most contemptible part of this screed is. Is it the insane implication that Obama taking one problem less seriously will lead to him taking the others more seriously, despite his manifest unseriousness towards both? The way he relies on his own past smears of conservatives as Islamophobes to prop up his latest thesis? Where he casually says, oh by the way, the Cold War was no big deal either?

I don’t know what the sleaziest element is, but it’s easy to see which one is the most dangerous:

The war on terror is over; Al Qaeda lost.

This has perhaps been no greater point of contention between hawks and doves since the September 11 attacks: is the War on Terror simply an effort to destroy the terrorist organization under whose banner 9/11 was carried out, or is it a larger struggle against the broader ideological movement of which al Qaeda was but one part?

I hate to break it to you, but despite the loss of their leader, al Qaeda has by no means been neutered, and either way, they’re far from the only Islamofascist game in town. Extremists have won a string of governments throughout the Middle East, and in particular, NRB’s Moshe Phillips notes that Hamas is still kicking. Indeed, learning where bin Laden was hiding—right under the noses of our Pakistani “allies”—should be enough to illustrate why it’s a bit early to herald a new era of U.S.-Mideast relations.

Then again, it’s not as if any of the above would change Peter Beinart’s mind—recall that according to him, the War on Terror has never been a war. Whether Osama bin Laden’s relaxing in a compound or sleeping with the fishes means nothing to him; he’d be saying it’s time to pack up regardless. In that sense, his entire column is a farce—bin Laden’s death is just the latest pretext of seriousness he’s using to whine, “are we there yet?”